I just checked.
“Bounties upon the exportation of any homemade commodity are liable, first, to that general objection which may be made to all the different expedients of the mercantile system ; the objection of forcing some part of the industry of the country into a channel less advantageous than that in which it would run of ts own accord ;”
No, he was specifically referencing capitalism as the most modern form of economic exploitation. How would one know about this economic exploitation? Simple, he observed it as wage slavery. Now, I know some of you will shriek at the thought of “wage slavery,” but consider this,
Now, I would disagree with Brad on one specific issue. As we are Anarchists we do not want to make everyone a proletarian, but rather we wish to make all proletarians entrepreneurs - that is, we wish to make them entrepreneuriats.
Actually, he did not use the word mercantilism. He used the word mercantle system. The term was adopted from Germans in the 20th century. Before capitalism there was merchant capitalism, however. I believe that’s what he’s referencing… so basically, capitalism.
I don’t necessarily want to become an entrepreneur.
If I can sell my labor on the open market for a guaranteed rate and let someone else risk their capital in the process then I’m all for it. I really don’t want my paycheck to reflect the profit/loss of the company I work for so I sell my labor at a discounted rate to reflect not only this non-risk premium but also the time preference of wages today vs higher wages later when the ultimate profits are realized from my labor contribution to the production cycle.
You wish to take this option away from me because of some ‘wage slavery’ subjective view on my relationship with my corporate masters?
sez comrade marx :
[i]“…Or perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour?”
[/i] Isn’t it amazing ? This clown calls Bastiat a ‘dwarf economist’ ? Regardless of his cheap rhetoric and other fallacies, it seems to me that marx was well aware of the meaning of laissez-faire, and it was the target of his ‘awesome’ analysis.
Marx was explicitly attacking classical liberalism. He was no well meaning ‘socialist’ who opposed mercantilism and ‘economic exploitation’.
Public ownership and state ownership are not necessarily the same thing. Indeed, the very fact that state property is often called “public” is obfuscatory and misleading, since the state most certainly is not the public. Since the state is an exclusive and oligarchal institution, state property cannot truly be “public” in any meaningful sense to begin with. Systems such as the USSR most certainly are not examples of public ownership. Also, “the accumulation of capital” takes place in state-communist societies - only the capital is monopolized into the state. More confusion, more confusion, more confusion.
Private ownership by itself could likewise imply a plethora of thngs, some libertarian and others not. The private ownership of a gang of thugs or a rightful owner? Private ownership as a legal category or privilege or as a natural product of labor and exchange? Should one defend “private ownership” as such, regaurdless of context or clear principles of justice? By “private ownership” do we mean that which the state legally recognizes as such or what actually is “private ownership” in a libertarian sense? Hell, according to some people here, a monarch constitutes a “private owner”. Is monarchy therefore “capitalism”?
Once again, this is all far too vague, so vague that either category could refer to anything from forms of anarchism to forms of totalitarianism. And as I’ve tried to point out a million times before, this cold and arguably utilitarian approach sidesteps the fundamental question of aquisition: through what means is this “public” or “private” property obtained? If a group of people homestead a previously unused or a clearly abandoned piece of property or voluntarily aquire it somehow and then proceed to share or enact a policy of worker ownership of the means of production, is this “capitalism” or is this “socialism”, is this “private property” or is this “public property”?
Are all currently existing titles to “private property” (as well as historical ones) just according to a libertarian analysis? Is a fuedal monopolist a “capitalist”? Afterall, they “privately own” the means of production on the land. Or perhaps fascism is also “capitalism”? Afterall, there certainly were not worker run factories or anything remotely like that going on in fascist countries and for the most part property is “private” under the law. What exactly does “private” mean anyways? Exclusive control you say? Oh, well in that case the state is “private property” of the oligarchy who exclusively control it. More confusion, more confusion, more confusion.
These kinds of questions pose a serious problem to the way that this is being presented and should clue you in as to why I tend to avoid cliche use of both the terms capitalism and socialism.
Noone has argued for taking that option away from you, and it’s an option that I would quite likely choose myself. Rather, the entire point is to create a plurality of alternative options so that this is only one option out of many, and this can only be done by opening up competition in the broadest sense of the term. Is the notion of people being able to opt out and persue alternatives really this alien to you? If people want worker’s self-management or if they prefer to be wage laborers, it’s kind of irrelevant so long as they can pursue that option on the free market (of course, “the free market” does not necessarily refer to current conditions in which one’s options are artificially restricted as a consequence of state intervention - defending such conditions in the name of “the free market” is the ugly fallacy of vulgar libertarianism that unfortunately so often rears its ugly head on the libertarian right). Noone has to take eachother’s options away.
Noone has argued for taking that option away from you, and it’s an option that I would quite likely choose myself. Rather, the entire point is to create a plurality of alternative options so that this is only one option out of many, and this can only be done by opening up competition in the broadest sense of the term. Is the notion of people being able to opt out and persue alternatives really this alien to you?
150+ years later, and the joke is on Marx though. [:P] He was wrong even when he was writing - now it’s just well known how wrong the pompous twit was.
Niccolo, do you have a link to that article by Spangler?
-Jon
Strictly speaking, yes. I think you mean “free market” though - which is not something that characterizes a monarchical system at the level of law and order.
-Jon
No, Marx was conflating laissez-faire with the state of the economy in the 19th century. Much like many other state-socialists conflate laissez-faire with the state of the economy in the 21st century.
Will there be any interventions by the state on the open market?
Bastiat was proven rationally, but I fail to see how he could have been proven empirically - Bastiat’s system has never been seen, why regard it as though it has?
Will there be any interventions by the state on the open market?
If I read you correctly there would be intervention by somebody to put an end the this immoral ‘wage slavery’ and turn the proletariat in an entrepreneur class…sans the ability to own the means of production of their own entrepreneurial activities.
Or the ability to pay someone in real wages as that would be slavery.
I guess the only option left is to have all the workers equal owners in the endeavor and become as equally liable for the losses as they benefit from the profits and in order to work in these types of ‘collectives’ they would need to provide capital investment to provide an ownership claim along with their inclusion of their labor since the real fruits of their labor could realistically not generate profits for a year or more.
Unless you are advocating the new workers get a share of the current profits at the expense of the former and current workers even though they didn’t create any value to derive profits from.
Going off the subject a bit though since the argument about ‘what capitalism means’ is as interesting as watching my dog lick herself.
Please, just answer the question.
Is it just me, or is the point being deliberately missed over and over again?
Well at least you’ve given me a straightforeward answer (that yes, under these definitions, monarchy is “capitalism”), and I would hope that you would agree with me then that terms such as “capitalism” or “private” don’t necessarily refer to a free society (unless you consider monarchies, fascisms, chattel slaveries and so on to be free societies and practises that is, and I certainly don’t and would that hope you don’t either).
As defined in this thread, these are broad enough categories to include a libertarian-authoritarian range. “Capitalism” can refer to anything from voluntary market activity to systems such as monarchy and fascism. The same goes for the terms “socialism” and “public”. It can refer to anything from a decentralized voluntary commune to significant state ownership and control in an economy.
Niccolo insists on always using the statist definition of “capitalism” and that’s his perogative. Personally, if I’m refering to that I’ll use the term “state-capitalism” to at least aknowledge that it is different from the laissez-faire and anarchic interpretations of “capitalism”. But overall I’m neutral to the words and find them archiac and misleading when used in public discourse, so I try to avoid them, or I insist on recognizing nuances and making a distinction between various forms and interpretations of both “capitalism” and “socialism”.
The way that the terms are often used in public discourse, one is given a false dichotomy in which one’s only options are state-socialism and state-capitalism - state-ownership vs. some combination between state ownership and “private” ownership. The political left tends to oppose state-capitalism and then blame it on a non-existant free market while the political right tends to support state-capitalism while defending it as if it were a free market. This is all very confusing and misleading, and unfortunately all too often some libertarians follow the path of the political right in this regaurd: supporting the free market as a theory or goal while simultaneously ending up defending certain aspects of the current market that are not the consequence of freedom.
Holy crap! I agree with Niccolo for once!
Niccolo,
My point is that marx was arguing ‘theoretically’ against libertarianism. Trying to deny that, is a bit naive in my opinion. If you think that praising marx will help you convert left-leaning people to libertarianism, fine. But the claim that marx was only criticizing mercantilism (which you say he called ‘capitalism’), is false.
Well, with respect to classifying monarchy as a system based on ‘private property’, I think that your criticism is being missed…
To say that item ‘A’ is ‘private property’ without making clear what is the origin of item ‘A’ makes no sense to me. If private property merely means control, then thieves ‘own’ what they steal ?
Jon, what is it that monarchs ‘own’ ? Do they ‘own’ their subjects ?