So, I was reading about a startup “incubator” in the UK by the name of the Difference Engine. They help build contacts and sculpt business models for newcommers and experienced folk who want to indulge. Mentors are successful entrepreneurs who volunteer their time to coach startups. As I’m frequently in the business of trying to categorize things… is this what, very generally speaking, voluntaryist or laissez-faire “socialism” might look like? You have here a group of people willingly redistributing their resources, in an organizational setting, to another group of people, for the intended collective benefit of all society. The program calls on successful entrepreneurs to make an investment in their “next of kin,” who in turn are to succeed and bring benefits to the community in which they base operations.
I’m someone who was really left before being really libertarian, and I know it’s not fashionable for many libertarians and anarchists to label something capitalistic and pro-business as socialist, but in my opinion this kind of organization embodies the general principle of “social justice”. What do you guys make of it?
P.S.: who else is into Steampunk out there? Difference Engine - how cool is that?
I don’t see how this is socialistic (I did not read the article, only your description of it). People who volunteer their time, effort, money to someone or something, a cause for example, is not socialism or socialistic. There is such a thing as charity.
Just because the intent may be to benefit society, doesn’t make it socialistic. They are actually receiving benefits themselves, their subjective value scales are fully intact and drive their decisions. There is a voluntary exchange. Time spent in this cause is ranked higher than sitting on the beach.
Seems free market to me.
You seem to be equating “benefiting society” to socialism, ie, if it benefits society then it must be socialism and not unhampered markets. I don’t see any connection between something that benefits society and socialism. In fact, if something benefits society, I don’t see how it could be socialism.
I’m actually not. I’m a “believer” in free markets, do not doubt. I’m just looking at this from the sociological/philosophical element in the socialist movement rather than the hard economics of what’s occurring. The early Utopians, allthewhile some flirted with violent Bakuninite anti-marketism, mostly avoided dichotomizing materialism and liberty and instead lumped them together. The more Tuckerite groups emphasized cooperation and non-coercion. So, in a hence, proto-voluntarism. You have a group of people who agitate for better real wages but philosophize about the managerial class simply volunteering that increase in living-standard as a sort of ethical-Kantian modus. I’ve witnessed a real-world example of this, in a factory as both salary and union leaders asked management to take a 10% pay-cut, and they agreed to it. How this relates back to the “incubator” Difference Machine is simply the observation of voluntary redistribution of resources. Charity is essentially that. But there is bad redistribution and good redistribution, that’s my assertion. We know from history that what instead occured was that the welfarists, taking their queues from earlier socialist philosophy, used coercive tax policies to fund what they had in mind as a “charity” state, if you read Clement Attlee. And that was mostly bad redistribution. But good redistribution instead is voluntary. Hence, charity. It embodies the fuzzy concept of “social justice”!
Voluntary redistribution of resources? But any exchange could be considered as such. If I exchange $3.00 for a bowl of ice cream, a voluntary redistribution of resources has occurred. If I donate $3.00 to charity, or spend 8 hours of my time mentoring someone, it is the same thing, but I would call it an exchange, not a redistribution. The term redistribution has many connotations and meanings. It implies that a correction is being made to the existing “distribution of resources”.
I have not read the writings of the various socialist thinkers you have referenced. I am replying to you because I disagree with your assertions based on my understanding of unhampered markets. I am not on a philosophical plain, my points are simple and based on basic concepts of economics.
No, there is only bad redistribution.
Good redistribution is not redistribution, it is voluntary exchange. I don’t see how charity embodies “social justice”. “Social justice” is just a code word for socialism, is it not?
Are you saying that there is a place for socialism in a voluntary society, but we would call it “good redistribution”, “charity” or “social justice”?
I agree that charity might fairly be called “good redistribution”. I wouldn’t call it “socialism”. Nor would I call it “social justice”. To me, social justice implies the righting of some wrong. Charity is not aiming to right a wrong—at least necessarily—that is, at least not in100% of cases. So, charity shouldn’t be thought of as a form of “social justice” imo. I would call charity “social awesomeness” or “social badassedness” or something.
I like the idea of the Difference Machine. Only read your post about it, so I don’t know much about it. Are you saying that its official goal is the betterment of society, or only that social benefit happens to be a cool byproduct?
Well in political vernacular. But strictly speaking it implies a change in the “distribution of resources”, as opposed to correction.
But if a socialist were to examine the practice, he would induct that charity represents a step towards a more materially-equal society, assuming the isolated system. This is a component of “social justice”.
Although I cannot definitively say what is good redistribution, as opposed to bad, I can make a value judgment. Individual parties in an exchange suffer from the same calculation problems that large bureaucracies such as GOSPLAN do/did, on a microeconomic level, namely lack of awareness to achieve the Pareto optimal results. So we can say that successful companies make the best value judgments. It boils down to an educated guess.
I’m saying that exchange and socialism can be considered, in a way, pretty much the same thing. And in any case, with a voluntary society, how would there be any mechanism to punish non-coercive pockets of socialism …? I think we’re engaging in semantics. But perhaps that’s necessary to overcome our differences and find common ground… workers of the world, unite!
Haha. But as to your concept of social justice.. I think there are socialists who think both ways. I personally believe that charity is 100% right-the-wrong, in the end. There’s a psychic profit to be made, remember.
Wrongs include, starving, homelessness, rape, etc. These ordinary things one might think of. They are not necessarily the result of exploitative market processes, nor am I claiming as such. But charities have utility, therefore they exist. If there is no utility, then they cease. Institutionally and microeconomically, charity is positivist. And we as donators make the value judgment that a starving man is probably more significant, than say, a student who needs funds.
We’re all subjectivists here. But without value judgments I could redefine socialism as the act of killing the ice cream man because Van Halen wrote a very annoying song about him. Obviously this is nonsensical, but because I’m being inductive about it. So I guess what it boils down to is who’s inductive reasoning is more factually valid, but factually valid just works on the assumption of what “is”, and in society what “works” for people.
Have you heard of Hayeks attack on the concept of ‘Social Justice’ as literally meaningless?
‘‘Only human conduct can be called just or unjust. If we apply the terms to a state of affairs, they have meaning only in so far as we hold someone responsible for bringing it about or allowing it come about, a bare fact or a state of affairs which nobody can change may be good or bad, but not just or unjust’’.
Society by definition is not an entity that can be held to account since society is a spontaneous order which is a state of affairs that has no goal or end(created by human action but not by human design). Social justice or justice as desert only makes sense in a made order where people are commanded what to do, since the distribution in such an order is the result of deliberate design not just a state of affairs. Only then does a ‘just distribution’ become a meaningful concept.
I am familiar with this. Society by definition is not an entity, nor are corporations. They are individuals in organized settings. So, it basically reduces down to an abdication of personal responsibility entirely, or full acceptance of such, for the deliberate or unintentional malallocation of resources by both government and business. My personal take is that social “justice” is a just a motif.. and it really refers to a utilitarian outcome of pleasures outweighing pains, at least to the serious thinkers among Socialist theory.