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| Capitalism: A Debate |
R. A.:
Have the people freely created markets?
M. P.:
Yep, they said "Let's trade", and the markets came into being.
R. A.:
Did those with nothing to trade, with no property, have an equal say when free-market
capitalism was elected by the people? When some people said "Let's make war", did this
proposal and practice of war mean that the people elected to make war?
Free trade between equals is not the same thing as free markets. Free trade between
equals is fair exchange between peers; it is equivalent exchange between fellows. Free
markets are a form of competition, a form of conflict, with some winning and others losing.
Free market exchange is not about bettering both self and others; it is more about
beggaring others before they beggar you. Free market exchange is for-profit exchange; it
is giving less and getting more; it is buying cheap and selling high. Before modern capitalist
markets, people engaged in free exchange, free sharing, mutual aid, and cooperative help.
M. P.:
No, those with nothing to trade, with no property, did not have an equal say. when free-
market capitalism was established. But then, since they were dying of paralysis their main
concern was to have someone charitably take care of them.
R. A.:
If charity is the constant companion of private-property, free-market capitalism, then how
can capitalism usher in freedom, while introducing conditions, such as poverty, which
make charity necessary? If charity is necessary for free-market capitalism, then how can
freedom also be widespread? Material abundance and an abundance of freedom come and
go together. Bourgeois freedom coincides with bourgeois wealth; those who are without
bourgeois wealth are also without bourgeois freedom. If property is a precondition for
freedom, then subjection and slavery is the situation of those who are without property.
Capitalism needs poverty and scarcity, and this means that capitalism limits freedom to
the affluent and prosperous who own an abundance of property. People who are not free
are people who need charity.
M. P.:
What right do those with nothing to trade have to stop me trading?
R. A.:
No one wants to stop you from free and fair exchange. Even in a communist arrangement,
there must be free and fair exchange. The communist formula is an articulate expression
of free and fair exchange, of unfettered and equitable exchange. From each . . . to each is a
give-and-take blueprint. Communism is not about stopping free and fair exchange; it is all
about promoting, advancing, and nurturing free and fair exchange between equals. People
have unequal abilities and unequal needs, but as human beings and as citizens people are
fellows. We are different, and we are identical.
What rights do those with only their labor power to sell have and enjoy? Do the poor enjoy
the same freedom of exchange that the rich enjoy? Do those who are without property
have the same property rights as those who possess more property than they need for a
comfortable and generous life?
M. P.:
Just because I can't drive doesn't give me the right to stop others doing it.
R. A.:
I agree.
But, let's return to our discussion.
When and where was free-market capitalism ever consciously and democratically elected
by the people? Did all the people consciously and deliberately decide to constitute modern
capitalism, and to institute free-market commercial exchange? Do people have any say-so
when it comes to the political-economic system which they inhabit? Are we the people free
to choose the regimen, or the practice of political-economy in which we must spend our
collective life working, playing, loving, etc.?
M. P.:
Well of course not, I was born thousands of years after markets were invented.
R. A.:
When and where were free-markets invented and instituted? If free markets were once
invented, then why can't human beings dissolve and abolish what human beings once
instituted? If free-market capitalism was revolutionary and beneficial in the past, does this
mean that it will always be innovative and progressive? Can what was progressive in the
past become degenerate amd regressive in another time? If free-market commodity
exchange was invented about a thousand years ago, then are we no longer free to choose
a different way of life if and when we discover or decide another life is both possible and
preferable?
M. P.:
> I'm supposed to be an archeologist now?
R. A.:
You seemed so certain, so positive, that I assumed you had some empirical or historical
knowledge to share with us concerning the origination of free-market exchange. You say
free-market capitalism was invented, and I agree with this. Was this a pre-historic or
historic decision of conscious and enfranchised citizens? Was free-market capitalism
invented by a primitive or ancient community? If so, then can we believe that what was
invented by people is natural or necessary? Can we live without commodity production and
exchange? Can we live without profiteering exchange? Can we live successfully and
happily together without private property in the means of production and distribution?
M. P.:
No, it was a decision of individuals to do something that benefitted themselves and was
within their natural rights.
R. A.:
If what these individuals decided in some place and time in the past does not equally benefit
other individuals then or there, here and now, then where do the rights of the deciding
individuals begin and end, and where do the rights of the other individuals excluded from
the initial process of decision-making begin and end? Does a past generation have rights
over an existing and living generation, or of a future generation? Does a past generation
have a right to determine or decide for a future generation? Do the dead have more rights
than the living, in the same the way that capital has more rights than labor?
Are those who create markets freer than those who have not created, or do not create
markets? Do those who desire and demand free-market capitalism possess more rights
and liberties than those who detest and dislike free-market capitalism?
M. P.:
No, because most of those who do not create markets don't create them because they
already exist and make them free.
R. A.:
You say already exist. But, you have said that markets were invented. Markets have not
always existed.
In your opinion, markets are free and markets exist, but not because of conscious human
choice? What is freedom without choice? If people cannot choose a free-market system,
then is such a system truly free?
M. P.:
Well presently markets are not free. They exist because of the conscious human choice to
trade and the potential to make that choice.
R. A.:
It is important to make and keep a distinction between free exchange and free markets.
If I make a trade with a friend this free exchange is not a market transaction; it is not an
institutional proceeding, or an impersonal performance. It is not a profiteering activity.
It is not a competitive operation.
What is meant by free markets? Markets is a plural noun, while exchange is a singular
verb. Markets are structural and institutional; exchange is an activity.
Freedom does not exist before human intellect, or exterior to human volition.
M. P.:
No, freedom can only exist for a sentient and therefore can only exist during sentient
volition not before it. Absent any evidence of sentients preexisting humans I assume that it
can only exist during human volition. Freedom is exterior to human intellect and human
volition because it is the means to utilise human intellect and human volition.
R, A.:
Human beings are not necessary for freedom to exist?
M. P.:
Not if other sentients exist. I have no evidence they do so I would say they are.
R. A.:
Only markets are necessary for there to be freedom?
M. P.:
No the absence of the initiation of force is neccesary.
R. A.:
The marketization of human labor was attained when land enclosures impoverished the
farmers and peasants, and land enclosures were achieved by the use of force. The state
exists in order to protect and enforce property rights and trade contracts. Where's the
freedom of exchange without coercive force in really-existing capitalism?
Can you imagine a free-market capitalism without a police force able to employ and initiate
force to enforce contracts, able to break monopolies, etc.?
One of the requirements of free-market capitalism is the perpetuation of material scarcity,
and the preservation of human poverty. If scarcity and poverty are nrecessary for free-
market capitalism to successfully operate, then just how much freedom can there be in
such a system?
M. P.:
No, scarcity and poverty are not required.
R. A.:
Yes, scarcity and poverty are required. Supply and demand is how capitalism organizes
scarcity and poverty.
M. P.:
Then why is capitalism so bad at the perpetuation of material scarcity and poverty? And
why is it a requirement of capitalism that there be such? What about capitalism requires
it?
R. A.:
Scarcity increases demand, and so artificial scarcity is used to increase demand. Poverty
increases competition for jobs, which drives wages downward, which increases the ability
of capital to exploit labor. Also, poverty serves to curb demand, and that can serve to check
the tendency of booms to turn into busts.
The nature of free markets cannot be isolated or abstracted from the nature of capitalism,
from the historical peculiarities of capitalist private property, and from the factual
particularities of capitalist private profits.
You seem to believe that the free market derives the instrumental value of commodities
from how useful commodities are found to be. This is a very strange statement, and a very
awkward assertion.
B. S.:
It is a very straightforward and plain assertion.
R. A.:
Perhaps you only imagine the statement to be straightforward and unambiguous.
B. S.:
Perhaps you communicate in a cloud of your own invention.
R. A.:
Perhaps.
B. S.:
Free markets don't subject people to any laws.
That's the point. Regulated markets subject people to laws. That's why they're called
regulated.
R. A.:
When I talk about the logic and/or laws of capitalist free-markets, I'm talking about the
internal logic and self-regulating laws of the market. I'm talking about a self-governed and
self-rectifying laissez-faire system of free-market capitalism. Free markets are regulated
markets; they are self-regulated markets.
B. S.:
The character of free-markets is determined solely by the choices of the free people
participating in those markets.
R. A.:
If we are free to participate in the market, are we also free not to participate? Am I free not
to participate in markets? If I have no access to productive work or to consumer goods,
unless by way of the market, then I am free to participate, but I am not free to escape from
the market. If the market does not have a place for my labor, then the market deserts me,
and I am pauperized. Am I free?
M. P.:
Yes. Just stop selling stuff. How hard is that to understand?
R. A.:
If I stop selling my labor-power to a profiteering employer, then I will not be able to earn a
wage, a monetary income, with which I can purchase and procure what I need.
M. P.:
So not selling stuff makes it harder to live. This is hardly news. But sending money to
charities makes it harder to live and people are free to do that.
R. A.:
I can live without selling my labor power for a wage, if, and only if, I have free and full access
to good land and useful resources which I can work in order to produce what I need and
provide for myself and family.
In a free-market, cash-nexus economy of commercial competition and private profiteering,
none of us are free to abstain from complicity either in the exploitation of others, or in
allowing others to exploit us.
M. P.:
Sure you are. Just stop trading. Go out and hunt and gather.
R. A.:
Where?
Besides, subsistence hunting and gathering is not what I believe to be an optimal and
worthwhile arrangement.
If one needs property, or money to participate in markets, then there is a sense in which
participation in markets is not a free activity, not a gratuitous and unimpeded activity.
M. P.:
But you don't. You need only the ability to trade value for value to participate in markets.
R. A.:
You cannot trade value for value unless you possess value as property, as labor power, or
as money. In capitalism, market exchange is not value for value exchange, because every
market exchange is intended to be a profitable exchange. If I buy, I buy cheap. If I sell, I sell
dear. I do not engage in a market exchange in order to enter into a value for value trade.
Market exchange can be free without being fair. This is why Friedrich Nietzsche defined
commerce as "really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality". Those who oppose
competitive capitalism and free-markets are not against freedom; they are all for freedom.
What capitalism promotes is freedom without fairness, rights without goodness. Such a
system needs a state to enforce it. The state is necessary only because freedom without
fairness needs the protection of a police state. The state will be necessary for as long as
there are unlimited property rights without the limits of what is morally right.
M. P.:
Really? Then what are all those wage earners doing? They are trading their labour! Now I
suppose if one was a below average intelligence quadrepligic then one might not have
valuable labour to trade. But you aint so you do.
R. A.:
Labor power is value as property.
However, people who want and need to engage in productive work are not free to do so,
because the jobs belong to capital, the jobs serve capital, and if capital cannot profit from
another marginal measure of labor then unemployment will be the solution. When poverty
and unemployment are the solution to capitalist problems, then what are the problems?
If market booms are solved by market busts, then what precisely is the problem? If a bust
is a correction, then are booms an improper malfunction? Capitalism is full of problems
and contradictions.
M. P.:
That value need not be property or money. It can for instance be LABOR! Sorry to yell but
when I don't you don't get the point.
R. A.:
Labor is personal property. Labor is an attribute of every normal person. In capitalism, labor
has a monetary value as a means of earning a wage. In modern capitalism, labor is another
commodity to be purchased and marketed. When labor became a commodity, modern-day
capitalism's nativity was in its genesis.
M. P.:
So your argument is that those with no property and no useful labour can't participate in
markets? So what?
R. A.:
A person's labor power may be socially useful, but not useful to an profiteering employer.
When unemployment increases, this does not mean that labor's usefulness has decreased,
or that the needs of the people have decreased. Unemployment increases mean that the
capacity of capital to profit from labor has decreased, that the needs of capital have been
reduced. When employment goes from high to low, the capacity and the needs of people
have not changed, but the capacity of capital to multiply and reproduce itself in successive
business cycles is what has changed. When the needs of capital are deprived, then there
is a crisis. In a crisis, capital turns on itself. Capital cannibalizes capital.
M. P.:
All you are saying is my own point that you only need something valuable to trade to be in
the market.
R. A.:
Actually, a person's labor power has value, even if it does not have value to a profiteering
class of employers. Capitalist markets waste labor as much as they waste valuable time
and precious resources. If labor has no value to capital, then the problem is with capital,
not with labor. As long as there is persistent poverty and unnecessary scarcity, then there
is a real need for labor, even if capital cannot provide labor with a sufficient supply of work.
It is the responsibility of capital to employ labor; if this responsibility cannot be performed,
then it is the right and duty of labor to abolish capital.
M. P.:
Now if you are crippled and impoverised then yes, you can't participate in markets, but then
you don't need to. You need to participate in charity work, as the reciever.
R. A.:
There are able-bodied people who cannot freely or fully participate in the market for labor,
only because of the inability of employers to profit from employing the unemployed.
We hear a lot of commercial advertising which uses the word free about as senselessly
and carelessly as they use synonymous words like save and sale. Nothing is free, but we
are often told that some commercial product is free, that we will save if we buy it, or that it
is on sale for a limited time.
I believe in commercial ads like I believe in capitalist ideology: I don't.
B. S.:
It is probably true that a given culture will give rise to certain patterns, and prices, in its free
market. Likewise, a given culture will give rise to certain expressive conduct in its arenas
of free speech. If you live in that culture, you will be subjected to such expression, opinions,
etc. more than you if you live in a different culture. If you live in a perfectly free society which
happens to be 80% Hindu, you will be subject to a lot more Hinduism than if you live a
different, perfectly free, culture.
R. A.:
If a democratic majority freely follows Hinduism, then can't this freedom be a bigger and
better context within which each and every individual is free to make personal decisions
and independent choices.
M. P.:
What does democracy have to do with it?
R. A.:
Democracy has everything to do with freedom. If the majority is free to do what they will,
then any and every minority is just as free to do what they will. The caveat is that each and
all are free to do their own thing, and are obliged to let others do their own thing. The
majority is free; the minority is free. If the majority wants to do this, then the minority
cannot interfere in this. If the minority's rights and freedoms are encroached upon, then the
majority has transgressed its rights and its liberties.
M. P.:
The minority is only free to do as they will in a democracy if the majority allows it to.
R. A.:
Freedom does depend on people allowing people to do what they will, as long as no one
hurts or harms another by their actions. In a democracy, the people allow the majority to do what they will, as long as what the majority wills does not hurt or harm an individual or a
minority.
M. P.:
A democracy is not needed for people to be free to make personal decisions and
independant choices, an anarchy might be but not a democracy.
R. A.:
A democracy is needed if people are to be free to make public decisions, to make political
choices, which will influence and affect their personal and independent choices. Personal
decisions about private affairs are not properly within the sphere of democratic
deliberation, or properly within the arena of democratic decision-making. But, personal
choices made in an authoritarian state will be different from personal choices made in a
democratic republic.
I believe a democratic anarchism is the best form of anarchism, if people are going to come
together, to work and to live in harmony and in peace.
A peaceful majority is always a very real threat to an authoritarian minority; but a peaceful
minority is never a threat to a democratic majority.
M. P.:
Would that the reverse were true.
R. A.:
Only a ruling minority needs a police state to control the majority. Only a minority ruling-
class needs violence as a means to subdue the majority, and to deny them their rightful
demands and desires.
M. P.:
So your arguement is that the majority will personally beat up dissenters and not need to
hire police to do it for them? What good is that to the oppressed (even if it were true, which
it isn't)? The fact is that democracy can only endanger personal decisions and independent
choices.
R. A.:
Wrong! I am arguing that a democratic majority does not need to conquer, subdue, assault,
or attack a minority in order to get its way. Only a minority ruling class needs a police state
and a police force in order to have its way.
Only an arrogant minority needs to use misinformation and misrepresentation as a means
to suppress and to mystify the reasonable aspirations of the majority.
M. P.:
So what would an arrogant majority use as a means to suppress and to mystify the
reasonable aspirations of the minority?
R. A.:
A democratic majority has no reason to want to suppress the reasonable desires and
demands of a numeric minority, unless such a minority designs to designate itself a ruling
élite.
Right-wing conservative radio talk-show hosts love to talk about freedom of speech these
days. They are a fundamentalist faction, and their conservative ideology is a minority rule
ideology posing as a concern for minority rights. Although democrats embrace a minority rights constitutional provision, there can be no minority rule in a democratic and libertarian
commonwealth. Those long-winded conservative and fundamentalist babblers are not
always honest about their position as concerns democracy. Some who are honest, do not
explain how freedom and democracy are so opposed in their opinion. Some are just full of
it when it comes to historical facts concerning democracy.
Neal Boortz, for example, shows us what this freedom of speech really means. Boortz says
whatever he will without any challenge. If a caller substantively disagrees with what Boortz
says, then Boortz either screens the call, or abruptly hangs up the phone on the caller.
There is no way to carry on an intelligent and substantive debate, between commercials,
with Boortz, and his admirers enjoy his vulgar insolence.
M. P.:
Yep, cause it's his show and therefore he's allowed to.
R. A.:
Yes, this is true. Capitalism lives because of a class monopoly control of the means of
coercive and authoritarian government, and because of a class monopoly ownership title
in the means of mass communication.
How does this class control of political power and of propaganda serve the needs of the
people? Or does it matter?
M. P.:
If you want to say something on the radio buy your own trasmitter, persuade someone who
owns one to let you use it or make do without. Free speech doesn't mean you are free to
use other people's stuff without permission, anymore than freedom of travel means you
can steal cars.
R. A.:
If you need permission, then your freedom needs another's approval. What is freedom of
speech without freedom of access to the means of communication?
Capitalist freedom is the freedom of the capitalists to profiteer off the labor of others, and
free speech is the freedom of capitalism to be preached without genuine and honest
challenge, without intelligent debate, and without reasonable discussion of capitalism's
faults, or of a social-democratic alternative to capitalism.
M. P.:
Which is why there are literally thousands of people mounting genuine and (in some cases)
honest challenges to it, with intelligent (in some cases) debate and reasonable (in some
cases) discussion of capitalism's faults. I guarantee you there was an article critical of
capitalism in a capitalist owned newspaper today. I guarantee it. This delusion that
capitalism doesn't allow discussion of alternatives to it is mindless. I can spend all day
every day reading and listening to discussions of alternatives to capitalism.
R. A.:
Ideological capitalists criticize capitalism. But they believe a better capitalism can be
constituted. That is not a criticism of capitalism. Libertarian capitalists critique liberal
capitalism. Of course, it does serve to make capitalism appear intellectually open and
honest if, every now and then, some obscure and unknown socialist writer is published by a
capitalist publishing firm.
It is astonishing to hear conservative Republicans complaining about liberal Democratic
bias in the mass media. After all, this bias is nothing when compared with the bias of the
mass media against a democratic socialist and an anarchist communist alternative to
modern capitalism.
Capitalism is misunderstood. It is very difficult to criticize and condemn what is
misunderstood. The reason why capitalism is so misunderstood is simply that the powers
that be will not tolerate a populace better educated in economic and political theory --
whether it be scientific or philosophical.
M. P.:
Which is why there are so few socialists in universities.
R. A.:
There are a lot of welfare-state liberals and state-socialists in universities.
Socialism is misrepresented. The reason why socialism is so misrepresented is quite
simply that the powers that be cannot tolerate a public better informed in economic and
political alternatives.
M. P.:
Because such a public would abolish all forms and features of the socialism the rulers love.
R. A.:
Say what?
The idea of social democracy and the ideal of communal anarchism are a real threat to the
positions of political power and economic privilege enjoyed by grasping politicians and by
greedy proprietors.
M. P.:
And to the lives and liberties of all.
R. A.:
I would rather be free to choose my path in life, within a democratic society, than within a
society which has been created and constituted by an arbitrary minority, which has been
established by and for an arrogant power-grabbing élite.
M. P.:
But if the society is democratic then by definition you are not free to choose your path,
except as the majority allows.
R. A.:
What majority, in a social democracy, would deny an individual the freedom to follow their
own path?
M. P.:
Most of them in my experience.
R. A.:
You've experienced life in a socialist democracy?
M. P.:
As for which majority would deny my particular freedom who cares? What matters is are
they brave enough to do it when I'm armed.
R. A.:
I'm sure that your courage is superior to the courage of any social-democrat.
It matters that you believe a democratic majority will deny a minority, or an individual, the
right and freedom to go their own way and do their own thing. I can see no reason why a
numerical and democratic majority will obstruct the peaceful demands and reasonable
desires of a numerical and dissident minority. If a majority of men want to marry women,
then what does it matter to that democratic majority if there are some individual men who
want to marry men?
The only path a person cannot freely make or take, in a social democracy, would be any
path which violates another's freedom, or any path which does violence to another's
person, or any method or means that defrauds or appropriates another's possessions.
M. P.:
The majority of course defines what violates another's freedom, or ... does violence to
another's person or ... defrauds or appropriates another's possessions.
R. A.:
An intelligent and educated majority will know that what is done to a dissident minority will
likely be done to them, if and when they side with a minority at some other time, in some
other democratic project or plan. Take away another's freedom or possessions, and you
will always live under the threat of having your own freedom and property taken away. "Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is a moral maxim that every social-
democrat can fully agree with, and that every social-democracy must obey if it is to survive.
M. P.:
They can then punish these activites by actions that would violate another's freedom, or ...
do violence to another's person or ... defraud or appropriate another's possessions if they
hadn't defined these terms as something other than what they now are. The effect of this is
to allow the majority to do the things now called violating another's freedom, or ... doing
violence to another's person or ... defrauding or appropriating another's possessions with
impunity.
R. A.:
You're asking me to believe that citizens of a social-democracy will do anti-democratic
things, which would be like me asking you to believe that the denizens of a libertarian
capitalist society will do anti-libertarian and anti-capitalist things to each other -- such as
initiating a use of force and violence without valid provocation.
Socialists believe that capitalism is precisely a systematic method of taking away from
working producers some measure of the value they have created both by their individual
and their collective labors. This method of value-expropriation is done under the
appearance of free consent, under the guise of free contracts, . . .
M. P.:
This guise being so clever that no difference between a free contract and the disguised one
has ever been found.
R. A.:
. . . which allow for the lawful exploitation of labor as a legal right enjoyed by the class of
wealthy proprietors . . .
M. P.:
> And by anybody else.
R. A.:
. . . -- the private owners of land and of capital resources, both of which are cultivated and
created by the associated labor of multitudes of dispossessed producers.
B. S.:
That is not a reason to restrict free speech. Likewise, some free-markets may please or
displease some people; that is not a reason to make them less free.
R. A.:
I simply do not impute freedom to markets. We are taught, in these United States, to
associate these two words. I have come to the point of no longer recognizing, or
acknowledging the alleged connection I have been told is there.
I do not condemn free-market capitalism because it does not please me. I condemn free-
market capitalism because I believe the freedom is a limited and limiting freedom.
M. P.:
Then why insist on a freedom that is much more limited and limiting?
R. A.:
What freedom do I advocate that is more limited and more limiting than the competitive
freedom to exploit other people's labors, and to profit from other people's poverty -- which
is to say, the freedoms organized and embraced by methodical capitalism?
M. P.:
The freedom to decide how others work, trade and recieve goods and services. . . .
R. A.:
Who decides who works when and where and how in a capitalist system of employment?
How is the receipt of goods and services, quantity and quality, determined in a capitalist
system of wage-employment? There are people in dire need of medical care, of medicine
and therapy, who do not receive what they need because of the present capitalist system of
distribution.
M. P.:
. . . That is very limited and limiting of your economic freedom.
R. A.:
If communism is about people working as they are able and willing, and about people
receiving as they have need, then what can be so restrictive about such a system of
production and distribution?
B. S.:
Can you think without rhetoric?
R. A.:
I think with the words that I know, and I write with the personalized style that I choose.
B. S.:
You should think with logic, not words, and write with a style that communicates clearly.
R. A.:
I try to communicate clearly. I try to conform my thinking to the canons of logic; . . .
M. P.:
Try harder.
R. A.:
If you believe so much in individual freedom, then why do you believe that you have some
warrant in telling me how to think and write?
I cannot think without words, without language. The vocabulary I make use of befits what I
want to communicate. Sometimes the words do not come to mind when I need them. At that
point, my thoughts are frustrated.
<><><><><><><><><><>
"What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?"
-- Walt Whitman
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Posted by rallen2 on 2009-11-07 19:38:30 | Rating: | Views: 92
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