[lbo-talk] barbaric

[Miles Jackson]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
> 
>>andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Right. It's called market discipline.
>>
>>However, harsh discipline is not a unique feature of Capitalism nor is
>>it essential to it.
> 
> 
> Your post is irrelevant to _market_ discipline. The discipline is that
> if you lose your job, and can't get another, you end up on the streets.
> No one is talking about the kind of direct "discipline" you seem to have
> in mind (orders enforced by coercion). Capitalism in principle (not in
> practice) eliminates direct coercion. No one is forced to work. They
> just starve if they don't. If by State Capitalism you mean the USSR,
> they did pretty much eliminate market discipline -- that is, no one ever
> got fired. And they did have good social services. Hence they did have
> to resort to coercion often.

And this is what makes capitalism so difficult to challenge: "Hey, if 
you don't like your job, get another one!  Or better yet, start your own 
business!"  --The brutal discipline of the market is obscured by the 
apparent lack of coercion.  The work of socialist activists would be a 
hell of a lot easier if capitalists had to hold people at bayonets to 
produce surplus value!

Miles