andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Yes, yes, primitive accumulation is in the antechamber
> to capitalism. Once you get through the door, however,
> guns are replaced by contracts.
You still have not grasped that the force in question is not necessarily applied to compelling workers to work, but rather in preventing independent access to the means of production, that is, force is needed to maintain unequal property relations.
Thank you, in any case, for admitting that unequal property relations can not arise out of free exchange.
Now, will you admit that inequality arises from unequal property relations? Since you already admit that unequal property relations can not arise out of free exchange, will join me in stating that free exchange is thus a component of Socialism and not Capitalism?
> You Proudhonists have
> resisted this elementary Marxist point for over 150
> years, insisting that capitalism is armed robbery
> (worse, calling this the Marxist view!), selecting
> quoting out of contexts the passages where Marx talks
> about force, and ignoring the analysis of Capital.
> Yes, Yoshie, I know that at the edges capitalism
> depends on armed force --as I said earlier, Weber,
> Nozick, Hayek, would all agree. But that's not how
> capitalism _works_. As Rosa Luxemburg said, we have
> not caught up with Marx yet. And that was 100 years
> ago! Thanks to you Proudhonists, we show no signs of
> doing so.
Andie, when logic fails you and your inability to explain your beliefs in your own words illustrates you do not understand what you purport to believe, frustration builds and the temptation to lash out with fallacious ranting is strong, but please try to keep it together.
Please respond to the actual arguments I am presenting instead of railing against 150 years of evil "Proudhonists."
> --- Tim <tim_boetie at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 00:53 +0100, Dmytri Kleiner
> wrote:
>> As I have asked Tayssir, so I asked you, can you
>> logically explain to
>> me, preferable in the language of classical
>> economics, how an
>> exploitive
>> class can arise out of free exchange without
>> resorting to force?
> Isn't this the wrong question, though? Maybe in some
> hypothetical world
> of free exchange and no force, there would be no
> exploitative class -
> but, getting a system of "free exchange" _in the
> first place_ requires
> force.
Hello Tim,
As a self-organizing worker I need to understand the role of exchange as it applies to worker's struggle. Thus, it is certainly not the wrong question for me.
Free exchange exists now, and has existed for all of human history, it does not need to be brought about. However, not all exchange is free as a result of unequal bargaining positions that result from unequal property ownership. Therefor it is unequal property relations that need to be eliminated, not free exchange that needs to be brought about.
> According to Marx's analysis, free exchange requires
> that workers be
> considered as separable from the means of production
> (otherwise, you
> couldn't have formally free labor, which underpins
> free exchange), and,
> furthermore, this separation has historically been
> accomplished by
> force. Hence free exchange has, as a precondition,
> the existence of an
> exploitative class.
I have no idea what you mean by free exchange in your comments, it seems you have conflated it with commodification of labour.
In my investigation on whether markets are a component of Socialism or Capitalism I often encounter this confusion.
The alternative to markets is totalitarian scientific management, i.e. State operated "Fordism-Taylorism," of which deskilling and commodification are a component, and therefore free labour, as you conceive it, is a prerequisite for this, but not for free exchange.
The ideal of Socialism is not "that workers be considered as separable from the means of production" but rather that "the means of production," Land and Capital, be available to labour at cost.
Thus free exchange, which drives the price of Capital to cost, is well suited for Socialism, however free exchange is incompatible with Capitalism, which seeks to drive the price of Capital to utility.
Land is an entirely different questions however, but that is another topic.
Once again, it appears that the belief of certainly Socialist tendencies that markets are not a component of Socialism is an article of faith that can not be logically defended.
-- Dmytri Kleiner, robotnik Telekommunisten, Berlin.
dk at telekommunisten.net http://www.telekommunisten.net freenode/#telnik