From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
Justin wrote: So, you don't actually believe that the producers should own the product of his labor in virtue of having produced it, but for the consequentialist reasons that his now owning it (collectively, I presume)has bad effects. That's a very different point. The first argument would hold that the effects, good or bad, don't matter. ****************************************** Mike B) responds:
I think that the producers (known these days as the workers) should own the social product of their labour in common. ******************************** Justin pontificated: Btw, my objection to your "thus" has nothing to do with market socialism. It's just an observation that the conclusion is not necessitated by the premises. "The notion of "following to mew but not to you" makes no sense. Logical validity is objective. An argument follows or it doesn't in virtue of its logical form. Your opinion of the matter is a never no mind. *************************************** Mike B) Thanks for the logic lesson, comrade Baas. ************* Justin: I happen to agree that in a apitalist socirty social wealth presents itself as a vat collection of commodities. That does not follow from the fact that capitalists own most of the property. ****************************** Mike B): No, it doesn’t follow. What follows is that workers sell their skills on the labour market for a price. Assuming supply and demand are working in a free market, the workers get a fair price for their skills e.g. garbage men get less for their labour than stockbrokers. So, the labourer’s skills are sold as a commodity to the buyer–the capitalist. The capitalist finds use-value in these skills, employing the worker to create wealth which the capitalist can appropriate and sell on the market as commodities. So, it’s all fair. The worker sells her skills for a price and the capitalist (through his magnificent entrpreneurial skill and guesswork vis a vis the market) sells the product of the workers’ labour whom he has employed. That social product, which the capitalist owns, is sold and voila! The wealth of the societies under capitalist domination appears as a vast accumulation of commodities.
********* Justin continued:
You need genralized market exvhange for generalized commodification, private property isn't enough. Market socialism is a point in case: there you have no private property, but genralized market exchange, so in that situation the wealth of society presents itself as a vast collection of commodities although the capitalists do not own it. ***************************** Mike B) So, under “market socialism” who owns the wealth which the producers create? Is the workers’ labour power still marketed as a commodity for wages under your version of "market socialism"? I would assume that if it is, that you would reject Marx’s call on workers to inscribe on their banner, “Abolition of the wages system”. And that is what makes you a liberal, comrade? ********************
Justin:
I suspect that what you really mean is that you think it is bad that social wealth should be commodified. ********************************************** Mike B) I think that it leads to the fetishism of commodities and a lot of other brakes on freedom. Commodity production is the soil from which classes grow. ************************
I don't, and here my market socialism really does matter. It does not follow, however, from the fact that social wealth is commodified that that situation is bad. Yes, I know hwy you think it i bad. I am just pointng out that you need more premises to get there -- premises with which I disagree. *************************************
I realize that you disagree with the notion of abolishing the wages system, comrade.
Communist greetings, Mike B)
===== ******************************************************************* Wage-slaves of the world unite! Reclaim the social product of your labour. Claim your free-time--it's your life. There is power is classwide organization. You have nothing to lose but your bosses and who needs them anyway?
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