The Triviality of Capital Ownership

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Sat Dec 12 09:56:07 PST 1998


Red-green discussion here seems possessed by the delusion that popular or democratic ownership of the means of production will engender a revolution in ecological consciousness and policy. This is not nearly as obvious as it seems. Constituencies who benefit from "dirty" industries and consumption habits -- workers and consumers -- are likely to oppose regulation just as they do now. Ecological costs that are attenuated by either time or distribution (e.g., far in the future and uncertain; spread widely but thinly over many) could easily have less political sway than other interests that motivate smaller groups to greater intensity of political effort. This is a logical outcome in a democratic setting.

Another canard is that control of corporations frees up a cornucopia of resources. If we are talking about profits, it is only the part that is not reinvested that is relevant, unless we are talking about having less capital (of either brown or green variety). Of that, some is distributed to the non-rich as returns to savings. This would continue in some form or other under socialism, so this is not an escapable cost either. We're really reduced to talking about the excessive consumption (quantitatively and relatively speaking) of the better off. There's no pony in this pile of manure.

In a related vein, the congenitally reasonable Chris alluded to the partial socialization of markets in the context of the tobacco settlement, among other things. Some types of socialization benefit Capital, possibly including this one, as I suggested in a previous post. Everybody here understands lemon socialism. The better conservative criticism of social-democracy and/or planning usefully describes such phenomena, though it typically exaggerates its extent and likelihood. Just as a government can socialize losses that would otherwise be incurred by capital owners, so it can privatize losses in the interests of economic justice with prudent boundaries to state intervention. True advances would entail public takeover of genuine assets for the sake of socializing benefits, where the public sector enjoys some type of advantage in managing such assets. Otherwise, any returns to ownership can be captured through taxation. Ownership and/or regulation per se need not be beneficial.

The green view typically discounts the extent of broad public interest in accepting environmental costs, or it ends up positioning itself in opposition to the public, particularly the working class.

The statist fallacy is to overdraw the benefits of state intervention and discount the virtues of forbearance.

Obviously the truth of this depends on the cases in question. The green allegiance among the public, now, under socialism, or anywhere in between, is much less than it is cracked up to be, as are the progressive implications of the tobacco wars.

Cheers,

mbs



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