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Oncle Boris
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Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Kucinich
People pay more for more valuable labor. That and patent laws. |
Not exactly. Human beings being what they are, capitalist societies tend to establish a dictatorship of the means of production.
Basically, means of production survive humans, get split between an insane number of shareholders, and become uber-entities per se, attracting man by virtue of its accumulated power and wealth. When this happens, we start to forget that 'corporations' are an extension of property rights, but are truly nothing in themselves. They tend to form a 'predominant' discourse within society, for the natural consolidation process of power, becomes part of the free market dynamics.
The result of this is Corporations with free speech rights, corporations ruling the political block, etc. The predominant discourse generated by 'free market', historically, is the one with the most potential (because its imperative legiferates in the field of WORK-ACTING, the process by which the physis becomes a social order): it can go as far as to overcome religion and make morality subject of its rule.
Humans all have the necessary psychological dispositions to absorb the predominant discourse and perpetuate it. It results in an 'unnatural man', whose sense of value has been tainted by the centuries-long heritage that capitalism has brought to culture.
In truth, humans only pay for what they are told is worth something at their birth. Why do we buy cell phones in stores, while in fact we could be buying medication for the needy of the third world (that the clerk would take care to send for you)? Can you claim that the former has intrinsically more value than the latter?
See: social influences determine values extrinsically, and capitalism is by far the most competent system at doing this.
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:34
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quote:
Basically, means of production survive humans, get split between an insane number of shareholders, and become uber-entities per se, attracting man by virtue of its accumulated power and wealth. When this happens, we start to forget that 'corporations' are an extension of property rights, but are truly nothing in themselves. They tend to form a 'predominant' discourse within society, for the natural consolidation process of power, becomes part of the free market dynamics. |
Maybe you start to forget it. A corporation is NEVER more than an extension of property rights - it is made up of people. The corporation has no mind of its own. The people who own the corporation can decide to divert some of the funds from their property into politics, just like any person can divert some of their own funds. When a corporation does it, it's just a bunch of people acting in concert.
The result of this is Corporations with free speech rights, corporations ruling the political block, etc. The predominant discourse generated by 'free market', historically, is the one with the most potential (because its imperative legiferates in the field of WORK-ACTING, the process by which the physis becomes a social order): it can go as far as to overcome religion and make morality subject of its rule.
Humans all have the necessary psychological dispositions to absorb the predominant discourse and perpetuate it. It results in an 'unnatural man', whose sense of value has been tainted by the centuries-long heritage that capitalism has brought to culture.
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In truth, humans only pay for what they are told is worth something at their birth. Why do we buy cell phones in stores, while in fact we could be buying medication for the needy of the third world (that the clerk would take care to send for you)? Can you claim that the former has intrinsically more value than the latter? |
Who cares about "intrinsically"? I have a choice between a) buying a nice shiny new computer or b) feeding some poor African person. I happen to enjoy the nice shiny new computer more than feeding the poor African person, so I buy the computer.
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See: social influences determine values extrinsically, and capitalism is by far the most competent system at doing this. |
NO ONE gets their values internally. People are taught these values. (The only exception is when there are certain biological tendencies of human beings to form certain values, but even then this is not evidence of some fundamental truth but rather evolution.)
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Oncle Boris
This would make you a social-democrat who believes that capitalism requires that the produce of the means of production should be redistributed. |
Who said "should"? My view here is purely utilitarian: some form of welfare help capitalism run more smoothly.
I think I need to explain my viewpoint on capitalism a bit further, for comments like that to really make sense. In my mind, I make an analogy to computing: you can have an algorithm to solve a problem, or you can use a neural net, or a genetic algorithm, or some other form of bottom-up programming. Those systems are inherently superior because they do not depend on the reliability of some top-down rule (which is less a problem in computing than IRL, because IRL you have actual people), but approach or even reach the optimum solution with no direction at all (and sometimes no top-down algorithm is possible). The problem is that in some cases, a statistically large sample size and/or time period is required to reach a solution (evolution is an example of a real-world system like this). Thus, limited "tinkering" with the system can make it reach the near-optimal solution MUCH faster. Welfare is an example of this tinkering, as is government funding of research.
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In other words, you are agreeing that the workers should get a compensation for the disappearance of communal property. More precisely, you are conceding that ownership of the means of production is not an absolute right, but a conditional one. Which in turn means that you are only opposing the anarchists and communists on how it should be done, not on whether or not it should be. |
Of course I don't believe in "absolute" rights. I'm not DF. I think the draft is OK, the censorship during a World War is OK, that the income tax is OK. I'm much more in agreement with Mill: the object is to maximize liberty.
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Oncle Boris
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Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Kucinich
Maybe you start to forget it. A corporation is NEVER more than an extension of property rights - it is made up of people. The corporation has no mind of its own. The people who own the corporation can decide to divert some of the funds from their property into politics, just like any person can divert some of their own funds. When a corporation does it, it's just a bunch of people acting in concert.
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No. The corporation creates a field of interest that is already existing at the time of someone's birth. If corporations were merely an extension to property rights, then they would be shut down at the founder's death.
Because things aren't like this, they perpetually extend their influence.
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Who cares about "intrinsically"? |
Philosophers.
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I have a choice between a) buying a nice shiny new computer or b) feeding some poor African person. I happen to enjoy the nice shiny new computer more than feeding the poor African person, so I buy the computer.
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This is a problem of the egg and the chicken. Capitalism is great because it organizes itself into giving value to what has some, but in the same time it determines what is valuable. One has to be prior to the other- plausibly, the latter.
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NO ONE gets their values internally. People are taught these values. (The only exception is when there are certain biological tendencies of human beings to form certain values, but even then this is not evidence of some fundamental truth but rather evolution.) |
This is a problem, a huge one. The ideal system would give internal values before. In any case, 'internal vs. external' value is really an absurd debate. If you believe that something is an acceptable validating tool, then you have to give it some internal value. Utilitarianism says that this value is happiness- and NOT that this value is external (and thus is exposed to the egg/chicken problem). Actually, it infers an internal value from empirical principles, but at its basis it supposes that something has to be internally good.
Your evolution example is extremely interesting, but I am drunk and tired, so I won't tackle it. 
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:34
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BOSHKO!
sorry, just wanted to notify you that I finally saw your reply to my comments, and wanted to reply to you, as well. 
quote:
That's not anarcho-socialism, that's Worker Capitalism. Worker Capitalism is to Anarcho-Socialism what Social Democracy is to Leninism. This isn't to say that Worker Capitalism isn't a massive step forward. |
How would an anarcho-socialism work, then?
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To give one simplistic example, a worker-owned factory would have an incentive to pollute less since the owners would be the ones breathing in the pollution.
And they certainly wouldn't have an incentive to **** their workers over. |
If it were that simple, the same could be said about the capitalists.
And maybe they wouldn't have an incentive to **** over the workers, BEING the workers, and all that, how about screwing their customers?
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Bosh
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Taehan Mingook
Jan 1970
time: 00:34
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quote:
How would an anarcho-socialism work, then? |
Like I said before worker-owned companies is just the first step. To get to socialism you obviously have to get rid of the whole capitalistic framework. To do this you need some kind of federation of companies, perhaps something along the lines of the Mondragon Group in Spain (quite successful group of industrial cooperatives) at the same time you need an egalitarian banking system and then anarchism on the consumer side too and then everything's got to mesh together. If you want a detailed look at all this grab Looking Forward by Albert and Hahnel, I don't agree with all of what they say but they've got a basic idea right. If you want a more moderate look, grab the excellent Preface to Economic Democracy by Robert A. Dahl (very famous mainstream political theorist).
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If it were that simple, the same could be said about the capitalists. |
Not really. If, say, a factory is owned by a capitalist who lives in another country he doesn't really care if it pollutes. However if the workers own it and their kids are getting asthma because of its pollution then they have reason to care.
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BEING the workers, and all that, how about screwing their customers? |
Again at least slightly more incentive since the customers are their neighbors.
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Anarchists usually play on the second level of the argument (i.e., they say that some contexts are always valid). |
Not much of a practical difference between 100% and 99%.
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Denying the ability to own the means of production (which is kinda strange anyways, as almost ANYTHING can be a means of production) is really really big. |
You don't need laws outlawing capitalism. You just need strong enough unions to keep 'em in line
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Then why not simply have higher taxes and a "social safety net"? |
That doesn't resolve the issue of power. I want to have control over my own life (including the bit of my life where I'm at work) not just material goods.
Bah, this thread turned into a strandard capitalism vs. marxism debate and us anarchists got left out again 
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:34
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quote:
Like I said before worker-owned companies is just the first step. To get to socialism you obviously have to get rid of the whole capitalistic framework. To do this you need some kind of federation of companies, perhaps something along the lines of the Mondragon Group in Spain (quite successful group of industrial cooperatives) at the same time you need an egalitarian banking system and then anarchism on the consumer side too and then everything's got to mesh together. If you want a detailed look at all this grab Looking Forward by Albert and Hahnel, I don't agree with all of what they say but they've got a basic idea right. If you want a more moderate look, grab the excellent Preface to Economic Democracy by Robert A. Dahl (very famous mainstream political theorist). |
Will those describe at the change, or the final condition.
quote:
Not really. If, say, a factory is owned by a capitalist who lives in another country he doesn't really care if it pollutes. However if the workers own it and their kids are getting asthma because of its pollution then they have reason to care. |
Once again, I hate going into the specifics of the case, but that would imply that capitalists that live in the country will not pollute, etc. All in all, I live in a country that's full of various cooperatives, and believe me, it doesn't work. The workers of different factories, bus companies, etc. will gladly screw each other.
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Again at least slightly more incentive since the customers are their neighbors. |
once again, this ain't realistic in modern society with million sized populations. The people physically cannot control the economy, in anarchism, what happens is that different parts of the 'people' control different parts of the 'economy'. We need a central government that will be highly accountable to do this.
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Bosh
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Taehan Mingook
Jan 1970
time: 00:34
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quote:
Will those describe at the change, or the final condition. |
Michael Robin and Robin Hahnel is 100% "final condition" while Robert Dahl is more a general look at the issue from a political theory perspective. I've got to agree with Marx though on the idea of "writing the recipes of the future" can get silly at times, whats more important is general principles and willingness to figure things out via trial and error.
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Once again, I hate going into the specifics of the case, but that would imply that capitalists that live in the country will not pollute, etc. |
OK, look at it this way.
-100 workers work at a widget factory. Widget factory pollutes and this pollution results in a reduction of utility by 100 utils (units of utility) per worker (ie due to it smelling bad, giving their kids asthma etc.). Thus there's a 10,000 util disincentive to pollute
-The factory's owner lives farther away from the factory than the workers so he only gets a 50 util hit from the pollution.
So thus the workers have a 200-fold greater disincentive to pollute than the owner. Of course IRL things are more complicated, but the general principle honds.
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The workers of different factories, bus companies, etc. will gladly screw each other. |
Of course, there's just a somewhat greater disincentive to do so in Worker Capitalism.
Basically what it comes down to is organizing things on a federated structures and having the different federated structures interact (with consumper, banking and worker federations being the most important) and through trial and error getting things to work right and in a libertarian and efficient manner. Also, of course, of immense importance is cultural change. Having a non-patriarchical family is just as important to Anarcho-Socialism and anything else (etc. etc. etc.), it all meshes together and is self-reinforcing if it works right.
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12-03-2004 11:10
to Ramo, with some terrific posts.
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