Capitalism and Freedom

[Lyev]

I was wondering what people thought of Milton Friedman and his book 'Capitalism and Freedom'. I've not read it, is it worth a read? I've been thinking a lot recently about free enterprise, the petit-bourgeoisie and private property. I know capitalism isn't freedom for the millions entrenched in wage slavery, but what is wrong with the private property that someone owns and uses on their own? Like a farmer or maybe a lumberjack or something? Also there's to seems to be some sort of stigma attached to the 'petit-bourgeoisie', people like butchers or fishmongers. Surely they're needed in socialist society too. Will people be allowed to start up their own business (free enterprise) in a communist society? Sorry if I sound like a cappie, I'm not, I'm just asking a few questions. Thanks for any answers.

[Aesop]

Define freedom? Libertarian and free-marketers often try to present freedom in negative terms in for example I have the freedom from government, in which I don’t have to pay taxes. In which freedom is defined in which the individual is free to do what he whats in the economic arrangement. Whilst leftist (including modern liberals surprise surprise) acknowledge that state sponsored positive freedom is also a freedom for example, Due to redistribution I have the freedom to go to school. In which freedom is a ting in which self-development is aided.

Well in terms of private property, let’s take land as one example. Land is a limited resource (this is a fact; even the first thing you learn about bourgeois economics is scarcity). So if we allow private property to exist then the way land will be allocated is on a first come first serve basis and those who have enough capital to purchase the land.

So in all, the existence of private property structural advantage the relative few at the expense of the many. For example person A owns land, the person B is forced to sell their labour to a individual in order to sustain basic levels of subsistence due to the monopolization of land by person A, lets say that person A is paying just £1 a day, person B is compelled by force to accept £1 a day for their labour or starve because there is no other avenues to go to or that other capitalist are offering the same price. So as you see from this example, in which negative freedom produces.

Going to your point about the ‘petit-bourgeoisie’, why they are sometimes criticized by us is mainly down to historical reasons. The petit-bourgeoisie historical have often sided with the ruling class when groups displaying and pushing for true equality (not merely formal equality) because it threaten their own interest(their small holdings) the French revolution is a great example with the Jacobins. In addition most petit-bourgeoisie anti-capitalism have been just anti-big corporations and not for the liberation of the masses.

Hope this helps.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I've been thinking a lot recently about free enterprise, the petit-bourgeoisie and private property. I know capitalism isn't freedom for the millions entrenched in wage slavery, but what is wrong with the private property that someone owns and uses on their own?
As long as you own some means of production, you can always decide to rent them out to someone else and thus make an income without working. And since all wealth is produced by work, if you get money without working that means someone else is working and not getting the full value of his labour. In other words, he is exploited. Any private ownership of means of production, even on a very small-scale level, can lead to such exploitation.

Of course, a socialist society can simply decide to ignore the problem and say that a little bit of exploitation is fine as long as it doesn't go too far. But that would be compromising our principles, and, more importantly, the people who engage in a little bit of exploitation today will want to engage in more exploitation tomorrow. Every small shopkeeper dreams of becoming a big capitalist some day.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I was wondering what people thought of Milton Friedman and his book 'Capitalism and Freedom'. I've not read it, is it worth a read? I've been thinking a lot recently about free enterprise, the petit-bourgeoisie and private property. I know capitalism isn't freedom for the millions entrenched in wage slavery, but what is wrong with the private property that someone owns and uses on their own? Like a farmer or maybe a lumberjack or something? Also there's to seems to be some sort of stigma attached to the 'petit-bourgeoisie', people like butchers or fishmongers. Surely they're needed in socialist society too. Will people be allowed to start up their own business (free enterprise) in a communist society? Sorry if I sound like a cappie, I'm not, I'm just asking a few questions. Thanks for any answers.

Read "Shock Doctrine" - it's not a radical perspective but does a good job destroying Milton's arguments both ideologically as well as through the real history of neoliberalism.

Milton praised the "freedom" that free-market policies brought to countries like "Communist" China and Chile during Pinochet. As "Shock Doc" points out, neoliberal "freedom" demands a totalitarian crack-down on labor and any dissent from the neoliberal project.

I think that in many places, the working class will need to win over many people in the petit-bourgeoisie and show that a worker-run society will be better than a capitalist run society. I don't think that the focus for worker takeovers should or even could be individually or cooperatively owned small business. Wage labor should be outlawed but if someone has their own business, I think they should be allowed to continue.

The main thing is that workers will have to take over the main sectors of the economy like shipping, trucking, power compnaies, phones, and so on. Once the working class can organize society under its own hegemony, then it won't really matter if there are 5, 10, 10000 small shops without wage workers. The small shop owners will have to play the worker's game, so they wouldn't be able to hire and exploit people even if they wanted to.

Obviously, many other induvidual small business-owners (and workers too) will oppose the revolution, and if a business owner tries to use their property to organize counter-revolution, then workers would probably want to take that business or property away.