Bill Bartlett wrote:
>> Yes, but this ignores the fact that I have repeatedly clarified that the
>> force I am talking about is not necessarily applied directly to getting
>> people to work, but rather in maintaining unequal property relations.
> Well that's a valid way to look at it. But an equally valid way of
> looking at it, is that enforcement of property laws is merely a
> matter of the enforcing the rules which a majority of people in that
> society have consented to.
Regardless of the morality of it, the fact remains that the rules are created by force, and thus the point that Capitalsm can not exist without force remains.
[...]
> So fundamentally, it is a mistake to believe that existing unequal
> property relations are maintained by brute force.
They can not exist without force, as free exchange denies any class nonlabouring class any subsistence.
[...]
>> Political power is an extension of economic power, if you achieve
>> economic power, political comes along with it.
> If the circumstances permit. Though I believe there have been a
> couple of examples in Russia's recent history where people with
> enormous economic power have mistakenly made the same assumption.
> Only to discover to their great cost it it isn't necessarily true. ;-)
There will always be exceptions, however over time political power will conform to the interests of economic power.
>> Therefor my focus is on worker self-organized production and obviously,
>> the question of the suitability of free exchange as a component of
>> Socialism is crucial in the organization of worker-controlled enterprises.
> You are being somewhat vague. Dunno what you are talking about there.
> Sounds promising though, don't keep the details a secret.
There is some stuff on http://www.telekommunisten.net, but I am here to learn and debate, not advocate my own specific proposals. I do not think this is correct place for that.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>> Again I ask, when inputs can not
>> be secured by force, how can costs be externalized?
> Unfortunately, I can't seriously comment, as you seem uninterested in
> responding to the Wikipedia link I offered, or otherwise informing me
> how you stand more concretely. I don't even know where to search to
> find a backgrounder, so I can proceed without guesswork. You seem to
> imply that Parecon's explanations are simply illogical, which is your
> right, but that leaves us with little common ground to proceed on.
This is entirely a fallacious response, you are proposing that the origin of unequal trade is externalities not considered by the present actors in any given transaction that result in exploitation of non-present economic actors.
I have refuted this by pointing out that unless the present actors have had access to force to have acquired their inputs unfairly, this is impossible.
You are know trying to switch the burden of proving your contention to me and claiming to need to know more about my views to defend your own.
> As for externalities, I don't know your reasoning why they aren't
> intrinsic to market economies. (Stakeholders who didn't consent to a
> transaction nevertheless shoulder costs/benefits from it, which aren't
> accounted for in each transaction.)
If they didn't consent, and no force was used, how can anything have been taken from them?
> Nor do I understand what "free production" means, a very
> broad-sounding term which hides much complexity.
free = no coercion.
> Personally, I have no problem with you pointing me to sources I can
> look at. Sounds more efficient than me figuring out or guessing what
> you mean, over long posts.
Yet, it is debate that tests the mettle of our beliefs.
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
[...]
> Mostly unequal work relations are kept in place by the
> facts, that in the normal course of things are not due
> force or threat of force, that workers lack property,
> resources, and organizational opportunities, and must
> scrabble work to survive,
But the reason that "workers lack property, resources, and organizational opportunities" is that they are prevented, by force, from having them, there is no reason other than force they can not apply labour to land and form Capital themselves, and make their own property, resources and opportunities.
[...]
>> As force is not required for Socialism, thus it is mutual
>> productive capacity that Socialists need to form, not the
>> capacity for force.
> Well, Marx, anyway, thought that just working in a
> capitalist environment would teach workers how to run
> things -- he was certainly overoptimistic about this
> -- but that since at the margins, as Yoshie has been
> hammering away at in in her one-note way, when there
> is resistance, capitalist productive relations will be
> maintained with force in the end, workers (he thought)
> do need the capacity for force.
Only if workers differentiate themselves from Capitalists with insurrectionist tactics, otherwise, how can Capitalism tell if a joint-stock company is shareholder owned or worker-owned?
And yes, eventually a bottom-up revolution, even one that is non-insurrectionist and non-confrontational, will face top-down resistance, but the capacity for defense, evasion, and preservation and the capacity for offensive insurrectionist force are quite different.
Do the Capitalists have enough capacity for violence to intern the whole planet if Socialist refuse to fight over any one thing?
As many people have pointed out, they do not.
>> Political power is an extension of economic power,
>> if you achieve
>> economic power, political comes along with it.
> But I would like to know how workers are get
> economic power without political power.
By self-organizing their own productive capacity.
> I'm all for worker self-management. But the fact is
> that worker self-managed enterprises (WSM) have not,
> over the course of a century and a half, anywhere even
> threatened a little bit to supplant capitalist
> organizational forms as the dominant form of business
> organization.
Yes, and from the sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci from Antiquity up to December 16, 1903, all attempts at maned, heavier-than-air mechanical flight failed completely, yet that all changed the next day at Kittyhawk, North Carolina.
I agree that a Socialist mode of production has not been realized yet, yet I hope you will join me in believing that it is possible
> Those of us who like WSM have got to
> explain why. (I have a draft paper, now quite old,
> and will ultimately get around to a publishable
> version, on this point.)
I would be most interested in this paper, as answering these very question is the focus of my project.
I want to do more than explain why, I want to try out the answers.
[...]
>> The important thing to understand is that Capitalism
>> is not an efficient
>> mode of production, and therefore it can be defeated
>> economically.
> Efficient compared to what? The empirical evidence is
> that WSM is no less efficient than capitalist wage
> labor, but also not, on average, more.
Yet, if your remove private capture of surplus value and economic rent from the balance sheet, surely on paper this indicates that there is a lot of room for greater efficiency, so all this tells us is what you said earlier, that we need to look carefully and explain why.
-- Dmytri Kleiner, robotnik Telekommunisten, Berlin.
dk at telekommunisten.net http://www.telekommunisten.net freenode/#telnik