> 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.
Perhaps you are right and my comments where not directly relevant to Andie's, but I feel what I wrote is relevant to the overall thread.
My point was a further explanation of the root of the Barbarism inherent to Capitalism, specifically that terrorizing the worker to work harder is not unique to nor an essential feature of Capitalism, and thus not the reason that Capitalism is barbarism.
The terror is essential to prevent the worker form having independent access to the means of production.
> Capitalism in principle (not in practice) eliminates direct coercion.
Capitalism in principle and in practice is the strategy of increasing the price of Capital by withholding it from labour. This is based on coercion and is impossible without coercion.
> No one is forced to work. They
> just starve if they don't.
If the threat of starvation is not coercive enough to be though of as force, I am not sure what is.
> If by State Capitalism you mean the USSR,
All Capitalism is State Capitalism, Capitalism can not work without the State to guarantee the right of Capitalists to withhold Capital from workers.
I am sympathetic to, although not completely comfortable with the characterization of the USSR as State Capitalism. Although the parallels are compelling, this seems to be a confusing way to describe a system that is also quite different from Capitalism. In some ways Trotsky's "Degenerate Worker's State" is more accurate, though I would go on to point out, unlike Trotsky, that all States that alienate labour will degenerate, but that is a far different topic.
> 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.
Yes, I agree. A system that ignores market information will inevitably resort to coercion.
I do not equate Capitalism with the market, nor do I believe that Socialism is incompatible with the market.
I find it amusing that for all the Cold War rhetoric between "Capitalism" and "Communism," both in their late 20th century State manifestations are essentially Fordism-Taylorism with different taxation models and management structures. However, Fordism-Taylorism is not Capitalism.
-- Dmytri Kleiner, robotnik Telekommunisten, Berlin.
dk at telekommunisten.net http://www.telekommunisten.net freenode/#telnik