I think I have a response to all of the following but would like to make sure my reaosning is clear as its early and I am very very tired. I thought perhaps as before I coudl achieve a bit of insight from others.
This is taken from here:
http://www.graveyardofthegods.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8688#p159263
Person A:
“okay, but loaning the MOP (means of production) seems like more of an exception than the norm. How much of the MOP are loaned, really? How is that really relevant?”
Person B (this is two posts combined):
“That’s my whole point. Not much is. That’s what has to change. I wasn’t arguing that it’s the most common, just that it was common enough to provide intuitive examples that expose the myth that MOP and RC are necessarily linked. It’s relevant because if the link is a fiction, then capitalism can’t claim things have to be the way they are. Throw on a belief that you can’t sell yourself into servitude or alienate your responsible agency and viola. The column “capital hires labor” becomes anti-libertarian and drops out, leaving only the “labor hires capital”. This means worker-control (not worker-ownership as an MOP focused approach implies and worker here, to head off the straw men, includes all workers, from the idea men to the line guy) or independent-contractor-type interactions.”
…
breaking the MOP-RC link just refocuses the argument away from property rights of means (which gets you nowhere) back to where is belongs: contractual roles. Once the focus is there, the argument turns to the simple concept, already held by capitalist when they defend their own property, that labor appropriates its fruit, (X, -AX, 0), because only labor is a responsible agent (things, like capital, can’t be juridically responsible). This implies worker control because master-servant relationships are anti-libertarian (unless you’re Robert Nozick, I suppose). The capitalist is imposing himself as responsible agent and master when it’s his capital, not him that is the real factor in production. If labor instead is in control, there is not master-servant relation since capital, a thing, can’t be a servant. The capitalist himself is not pulled wrongfully into the picture so he is not a servant either. All is well and the pieces fall together.
My planned response, more or less:
I do not see how this addresses the violation of the appropriation principle we both adhere to - mixing of labor
Lockes conditions for appropriation of property applies to unowned property:
“The “labour” of his body and the “work” of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property”
- John Locke, second treatise on government
He seems to say here that the owner of a lump of clay is claiming ownership of the resulting pot (the product of the workmans labor), by virtue of the clayowners clay acting as an agent claiming ownership of the product. We both agree that things cannot claim property. The clay can not claim to own “its” product nor can the clays owner by proxy (as if an agent can legitimately own another agent in the first place). Thats absurd. Agreed.
But It is not in this manner, as I understand it, that the clay owner has a claim to the pot. The clay owner is claiming the pot as his own because the clay is previously owned by him. The pot made from the clay is not the sculpters because he does not own the clay to begin with. Unless you claim that all labored upon matter is the property of whomever labors upon it, I dont think yoru argument works.
doubts about this working arising
However after a lot of discussion with some people on his theory outlined above the post I link to, It seems that his claim capital owner or laborer, either could be the entrepenuer in the situation. Either could be the contractual risk taker and both would recieve, in equilibrium or some such, the same revenue in both cases. I think he is assuming that everyone in labor wants to be the risk taking party. He then goes on to say the second half of what is above: http://www.graveyardofthegods.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8688#p159270
…and here perhaps he shuts down my Lockean argument? I am uncertain. He says that if the link between ownership of capital and the “RC” is not there, then who owns what is not a factor and the only thing left is appropriation?
