I don’t think you really answered my question, so let me ask again:
Is it legitimate for A to sell the product of his labor by contract in advance to B?
Why wouldn’t it be?
Indeed.
Now, suppose B buys a widget-producing machine on Monday. He meets with A on Tuesday, and they sign a contract whereby A sells to B in advance the product of his labor resulting from use of this machine (i.e. whatever widgets he might produce), in exchange for an hourly wage for every hour he spends producing widgets. On Wednesday, A comes to the factory and starts using the machine, producing widgets. Per their contract, these widgets are the property of B. As the widgets roll out, B sells them to other people. B then pays to A the wages he is bound to pay by the terms of the contract.
Is this legitimate?
No. As Spooner says:
It is an obvious principle of natural justice, that each man should have the fruits of his own labour. [p.7]
In order that each man may have the fruits of his own labour, it is important, as a general rule, that each man should be his own employer, or work directly for himself, and not for another for wages; because, in the latter case, a part of the fruits of his labour go to his employer, instead of coming to himself . That each man may be his own employer, it is necessary that he have materials, or capital, upon which to bestow his labour." [Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure,p. 8]
By the vary fact that A uses B’s machines to make products, that makes it exploatation (on which employment is based), being that A doesn’t receive the full product of his labor.
Rent of means of production is illegitimate.
In my example, A does own the full product of his labor; that’s why he was able to sell it in advance to B.
And you already conceded that it is legitimate to sell the product of one’s labor in advance.
Absolute ownership and the right to contract mean that a person can sell their labor service for whatever they want and under whatever conditions they want. This makes employment legitimate.
The actual trade going on in an employer / employee is a transfer of risk. The employee prefers the guaranteed wage, the employer prefers the risk of selling the product on an open market.
If both parties didn’t benefit by employment the situation would not occur, as it is an entirely voluntary relationship.
Stsoc’s claims rest on a denial of these other praxeologic factors in favor of a dubious moral argument predicated on a misunderstanding of economics, contract, and ownership, and a stubborn refusal to admit that people own themselves and can sell their labor whatever they want and under whatever terms they want. He’s already admitted he would inject himself into victimless situations, and by that admitted he is an aggressor. There’s really nothing left to discuss. In a free society he would be anathema.
Once you admit you would inject yourself into victimless situations, that logic can be extended indefinitely until total dictatorship. Don’t think gays should marry? Think they’re doing something wrong even though neither of them are complaining of harm? Stop them against their will. Don’t think abortion should be done? Stop that.
The line must be drawn at victimlessness or else you open the entire can of worms. All sorts of reasons can be invented by governments for injecting themselves if only you give ground on that one problem of needing a victim in order to inject coercion.
I interpreted Spooner differently,
It’s and obvious principle of natural justice, that each man should have the fruits of his labor; and all arbitrary enactmants by governments, interfering with this result, are nothing better than robbery. p7
is this not an argument against taxation and not labour?
p8
Then he went on to explain that it would be preferable for a man to have the full fruits of his labour and by working for himself he can have the full fruits of his labour. He then went on to make the basic economic point that working for someone else, a part of the fruits of his labour is going to his employer.
This raises a valid point in that an employee could just register his own business and then contract to his employer as a sub contractor. Are you saying that sub contracting is illegitimate? A welding coop could not contract with a building coop?
It is impossible for A to own the full product of his labor if he has to pay for the use of the means of production that he uses to labor.
Do profits reflect a reward for risk?
Personal preferences don’t prove anything.
Likewise with voluntary slavery, which is fortunately banned by law even in the current system.
Why voluntaryism is not enough?
Property and Contract in Economics
You stubbornly refuse to admit that people’s person and actions are inalienable.
Read the short chapter “Employees Versus Independent Contractors” from here: http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/inalienable-rights/consent/
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The worker pays for capital goods that he needs in the process of production whether be buys them or rents them. If true that he can’t get the “full product of his labor” if he has to pay for capital goods needed in production, well then it follows that the only time the worker gets the full product of his labor is when someone gives him the capital goods for free, which is obviously absurd.
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If A owns the products which he produces (as in my example), how is that not the “full product of his labor”? What else is there?
I’m going to move on to another issue…
Until now, I’ve granted arguendo your claim that a worker is necessarily the owner of the product of his labor. My example demonstrated that even granting this claim, employment is still legitimate. Now, I would like to show why that claim is actually false.
The crux of the error is the assumption that the use of things confers ownership thereof, when rather only use of unowned things confers ownership thereof. The proof of my claim is a reductio ad absurdum; namely, if it is true that a person acquires ownership over X by using X, even though X is already owned, then it follows that a thief acquires ownership over a car that he steals, in the same way that a hiker acquires ownership over an unowned apple that he picks - but this is absurd. The thief does not become owner of the car precisely because the car was already owned.
Production is a process of transforming one thing into another. For a person to “mix his labor” with something is for him to use it, the terms are synonymous. Production involves workers using or mixing their labor with one thing for the purpose of turning it into another thing. Now, the worker is no more the owner of what he produces than the car-thief is owner of the car. The worker’s use of (or mixing of his labor with) some property (i.e. capital goods) does not make him the owner of that property precisely because that property was already owned by someone else.
Employment does not involve alienation of persons/actions. See my example above, which shows an instant of employment where the worker is not alienating himself or his actions, but rather he is alienating the product of his labor in advance, which you conceded is legitimate.
If he buys them, he has made a self-investment, and can proceed to be as a self-employed worker make something of which he will be the exclusive owner. If he rents them, he never recieves the full product of his labor being that whenever he makes something there is a part he will never receive because he has to pay the rent of the means of production that he uses to labor. As I already quoted:
In order that each man may have the fruits of his own labour, it is important, as a general rule, that each man should be his own employer, or work directly for himself, and not for another for wages; because, in the latter case, a part of the fruits of his labour go to his employer, instead of coming to himself . That each man may be his own employer, it is necessary that he have materials, or capital, upon which to bestow his labour." [Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure,p. 8]
I have not said that. I have just said that being that labor is central to gaining of property, it is a necessity not to rent someone else’s means of production to labor because then one never recieves the full product of one’s labor; and the rentier acquires property without laboring by merit of ownership over something that would without labor not give any such property to that owner.
I have illustrated that it by the example of service jobs that I posted a dozen times, here it is again:
The service provider provides the service (e.g. fixing something) to the customer (and not to the employer) and the customer payes the employer (not the employee) and that money belongs to the employer, not the employee who is the service provider.
Again- the employee does not provide service to the employer (but to the third party- customer) but alienates (/transferes the title over) his labor to the employer, and then the employer gets payed for the service, as if he did it, which he didn’t.
In that example the worker doesn’t own the means of production he labors on, but rents it from another, making that example an example of an illegitimate action.
1)Thus voluntary charity =slavery
Helping someone is illegitimate, it is alienating the helper from the product of their labor without paying them, labor is inalienable, thus you cannot choose to give it away.
Do you think charity is ok?
2)Well ok then I choose to help you if you pay me lunch.
Is that ok?
3)I choose to help you if you pay me $10 an hour
What is the difference whether I’m paid in good will, goods, or a wage? This makes no sense.
This is simply false, because the product of A’s labor is not a static quantity. Without productive capital A’s labor is lets say quantity X, and with the employer’s productive capital the product of A’s labor is X+Y. The reason A is willing to work for the employer is because the wage he can earn by himself without productive capital X is lower than than the wage the employer is offering him to sell the employer X+Y.
Nothing stops A from buying his own productive capital, but he will have to earn the capital to invest on the market first. And to do so, he will try to work in his most productive capacity in order to earn the most money. And if the most money is coming from employers offering work, which it surely is, he is not wrong to take it!
I repeat: either way the worker pays for the capital. I fail to see why paying for it up front (buying) is ethical while paying for it over time (renting) is not. That seems like an entirely arbitrary distinction. Moreover, for capital of any significance, the worker probably cannot afford to buy it outright, and has to take out a loan to buy it, in which case he is once again paying for it over time. But this is just and renting isn’t?
Again, so what? What’s wrong with renting?
No, but it’s implied by your argument. One of the reasons you say employment is illegitimate is because the worker does not receive the full product of his labor. If we take “the full product of his labor” to mean the product he actually produces, then what you’re complaining about is that the worker doesn’t own the products he produces. Hence my rebuttal: he is not entitled to ownership over those products. They are the property of the capitalist. And thus the fact that a worker does not receive the “full product of his labor” (defined as the products he produces) does not show that employment is illegitimate.
Renting is not paying over time, paying over time is buying and paying in installments.
No. In socialism that retains money (mutualism) that is precisely how workers would start businesses, by interest-free loans (mutual credit).
Contadictory with labor theory of property (which when consistently applied identifies right to property with right to the full product of one’s labor). The contadiction is directly seen in renting of means of production, being that labor is central to property and that only labor is productive, and the laborer is denied the full product of his labor in favor of the rentier, even though he has not labored.
It is not.
Which contradicts the labor theory of property. Everyone is entitled to the fruits of one’s labor. And that means that everyone is entitled to the fruits of the labor he performs, not the labor he owns, because labor is inalienable and one cannot own other people’s labor.
The point is not in selling of products in advance, but in alienating labor, which is a correlate to the rent of means of production, and those two correlates constitute the core of employment.
Employer is not buying the products of labor in advance from his employees, you can see that from an example of a factory selling in advace it’s products to a buyer. The employees make the products, they go to the buyer, and the buyer gives money not to employees, but to the employer. The products were bought by the buyer in advance, not by the employer, the employer has earlier bought the labor of his employees for some time.
stsoc, I genuinely appreciate your contributions to this thread. Can you please explain why the labor theory of property would justify the interference of a third party in the affairs of mutually consenting adults who do not subscribe to the labor theory of property?
this is another fallacy, stsoc is ignoring the contribution of the laborers who created the means of production. The current laborer’s fruits would not be so great if he did not habe those means of production to work with, the person who created the capital needs tonbe compensated. Since capital is property which is transferable, this means the rightful owner might not be the person who built the machine, only the person who bought it. So youre back to prohibition of voluntary relationships, and my above post, a reply to which I am eagerly waiting upon.
You’ve stated several times that a worker does not receive the full product of his labor if he has to pay for the means of production. I appreciate that there is a distinction between renting and borrowing to buy, but there is not a distinction between them with respect to the question of whether or not the worker has to pay for the means of production; i.e. he pays whether he rents or buys. Hence, you cannot be claiming that renting the means of production is illegitimate because it involves the worker paying for the means of production, because by that logic, it would also be illegitimate for the worker to buy the means of production. So, I ask you again, what is the reason that renting the means of production is illegitimate?
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The capitalist has labored, that’s how he obtained the capital in the first place.
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The laborer is only “denied the full product of his labor” in the sense that he does not receive 100% of the market value of the product, because the capitalist gets a share for his ownership of the capital. However, to beat a dead horse, the exact same thing can be said for when the worker buys his own capital; i.e. he doesn’t get 100% of the value of the product because he has to pay someone else for the capital. Let’s say in both cases the worker ultimately gets 20% of the market value of what he produces (with the rest going to the capitalist in the case of an employee, and to the purchase of capital goods in the case of a self-employed worker); the only difference is that the employee gets his 20% straight up as a wage, whereas the self-employed worker has to put money for capital goods, then sell the product, and his net profit is the 20%. So, I repeat for the Nth time, the worker pays for the means of production, and in that sense does not receive the full product of his labor, regardless of whether he rents or buys the capital.
They were sold by the workers to the capitalist, who in turn sold them to the customers. Employment can be accurately characterized the way I characterized it: i.e. as workers selling their product in advance to the capitalist. If you disagree, provide a specific example of what you consider employment, and I will characterize it as an instant of workers selling their product in advance to the capitalist, and we can decide if my characterization makes sense. I’m convinced that any example of employment one could imagine could be characterized as such.
Because the labor theory of property is the only justification for property. Similarly why theory of individual autonomy (or of inalienable self-ownership) would justify a third party interfering in the affaris of consenting adults signing a contract of self-sale. The fact that those people do not subscribe to the theory of individual autonomy (or the idea of inalienable self-ownership) doesn’t make their actions valid.
Such contribution is irrelevant to the question who should get the product. Two things are here important- “marginal product of capital” is not produced by capital, but by labor, a tool laying on the ground will not produce anything, labor produces products, including means of production; and- labor is not an imput, being that production is not a techonological or a chemical process that “just happens”, but real people labor during production, and people are not property to be put in the same category as capital or land.
That does not entitle the owner of means of production to (a part of) all future products made using them, but to a recompensation for that labor. In order to be entitled to continuous income, he would have to exert continous labor that contributes to the process of production. That argument “fruits of labor would not be so great if there were no previous work by someone else” has been used by collectivists to claim that all labor is collective, and that all products have in themselves a marginar product that bellongs to community both current, and in history. I find that kind reasoning dangerous because it can be used to deny the labor theory of property and confiscation of all property by the community, as some marxist do espouse.
If he has to pay rent for the means of production.
That is not what I claim. I’m saying that in order to get the full product of one’s labor, one must own the means of production that he uses in his laboring.
Exactly. He is entitled to the capital (machines) he owns because he labored for them. Likewise, in order to be entitled to a part of the product of labor of some group of people, he has to labor for it with those people.
Do you see the discrepancy? His ownership over capital is justified by the fact that he labor for it, but when wokers make products they are not entitled to them, but the capitalist is, even though the workers labored to make those products, and the capitalist did not.
Exactly. And socialists see that as illegitimate.
I think it cannot. We both agree that the owner of the machine has earned it, so I don’t see anything wrong with buying / selling it. But when the owner of the machine rents it, he takes a part of the product of someone else’s labor, without laboring. Labor is central to property (that’s why it’s justification is called Labor theory of property), and the owner of the machine cannot do “proxy labor” trough his machine, he has to labor himself in order to get a part of the product of labor.
If he buys the means of production he makes a one-time payment, and is then the owner of the means of production. If he rents the means of production, he makes continuous payments and does not own the means of production. I don’t see how those two cases can be called the same.
If you would to tome to a widget producer, and order 10 widgets to be made, and then go on to sell to some people those 10 widgets before also in advance, before he made them, what is the difference between a situation where you would be the buyer and the widget producer the seller, and the one where you would be the employer and the the widget producer the employee. I’d say the hierarchical relation. If the widget producer is just a seller, he then can make the widgets when, where and how he wants, he only has to meet the buying conditions of what the buyer wanted and when he wanted it done. So, the wigdet producer sold in advance the product of his labor, which were then (before they were complete) sold by that first buyer to multiple people. That’s not employment. The employer-employee relationship would be the widget producer being told exactly at what times, where and how he should make the widgets.
Even though this doesn’t concern the legitimacy of rent of means of production, I think that the notion of rent could be useful here to illustrate the difference, and to say that rent of means of production can happen without employment. A worker’ self-managed firm could rent a factory from a capitalist in the same way someone would rent a car, that someone rents it and uses it the way he wants to, he is not being told where, when and how he must use the car, in that case the capitalist would be just the rentier taking whatever the price was agreed to for the rent of his capital, and he would not have anything to do with how the workers use that capital, they would self-manage.
So, just like employment is not rent of means of production, and when just renting of means production happens it is not emploment, because it mises something crucial to make it employment, likewise, buying the producer’s product in advance is not emplyoment, and when buying producer’s product in advance happens is is not employment because it lacks something crucial to make it employment. That crucial component is the hierarchial relation.
This is false. Labor theory of property does not justify property, certainly not with respect to individuals who do not subscribe to it.
Can you explain this in more detail, it sounds as though it would specifically prohibit such a thing, as by interfering in the affairs of consenting adults you are impinging upon their autonomy.
can you explain what makes an action valid? If these people believe their actions to be valid, and youre not around to explain to them that you disagree, how are they supposed to come to this realization?
nonsense, as the means of production were an integral part of creating the product. If there was no need to rent capital from the capitalist, the laborer would not have done so, and the question of paying the capitalist for the temporary use of his capital, and depreciation thereof, would not be an issue.
likewise, a laborer without capital will not produce much of anything, and what he does produce is unencumbered by the need to recompensate the owner of the capital. He sought permission to use someone else’s capital for a reason.
I also submit that you seem unaware of how much work the capital does, as compared to the labor, in many instances. Consider a cnc mill, where the laborer puts raw material in a vise, closes the door, and pushes a button. When the machine is fnished, he opens the door and removes the product from the vise. Are you telling me that the piece of steel with all its intricate machining is solely the product of a person who doesnt know how to machine anything, doesnt know what the product is for, and doesnt play any part in design? How does an unskilled laborer make highly skilled products and suddenly become entitled to those products? What if he waives any claim to the title, are waivers allowed in your system?
this is doublethink on your part, labor is an input, we just established that labor is a necessary input. You established that yourself “tool laying on the ground will not produce anything” not even if you lay it on top of some wood and nails, and a saw for good measure. No one said “production just happens” we recognize that it is the entrepreneur/capitalist who makes it happen by accumulating capital and making contracts of voluntary employment with people in order to get labor inputs, and buying material inputs. Even waivers if necessary to satisfy the local communist mob.
The owner is entitled to the products because he owns the inputs (having bought raw materials and contracted someone willing to provide labor) and this title isnt transferred until the products are sold. As for recompensation, its a matter of agreement between the compensator and the compensatee. Your opinion on the fitness of their compensation arrangement is irrelevant.
he doesnt get continuous income, he gets that income which he produces with his firm. He has to continue to pay his workers, continue to purchase raw materials, continue to market his products and achieve sales, he doesnt have time to run the machine so he puts an ad in the paper. And, someone just so happens to have idle hands and a desire for a wage. So they make an agreement, and that someone waives any claim he may have on those products, preferring a paycheck and the use of someone else’s capital for ownership of his own and the headaches thay come with all of that.
given that the creation of the means of production can be traced back to specific individuals, not the collective at large, I have to say that argument is idiotic in the extreme. I’m glad you consider it dangerous, but do you see the fallacy or do you only oppose it on consequentialist grounds?