Baffling economic argument or idiocy?

[comrade_cyanide444]

So this guy is arguing with me about Capitalism:

He showed me this video: http://www.youtube.com//watch?v=qrZbvvzCU8E

This basically gives the example of a berry farm where a farmer grows berries, but laborers harvest it. It talks about how the laborers had a very small percentage of the labor, while the farmer worked very hard. I'm not an economist. I'm a biologist. My head hurts from this stuff.

He also mentions that Communists assume that means of production can't be created, and can only be owned.

Forgive me for my stupid question, but what exactly ARE means of production? Machines? Cars?

[Tim Finnegan]

His argument is that, because capitalists contribute to the final product of the labour process through the contribution of capital, they too deserve a share of the product, therefore proving that exploitation does not exist, and that capitalists are also "workers".

However, this argument fails on multiple points:
Firstly, while he is correct to note that capital plays a part in producing the end product, he fails to note that it is able to do so because capital is, in itself, dead labour, and so what we actually find is that the end product is produced by different forms of labour. But whose labour is this dead labour? It is very rarely that of the capitalist, but of other workers, thereby meaning that the capitalist is in fact offering a value which he has appropriated elsewhere, and so invalidating any claims he may have to be a contributor.
Secondly, he assumes that the fact capital, i.e. dead labour contributes to the process of production means that it deserves a share in the profits of production. However, if the capitalist in this retains ownership of capital, then he cannot claim to have actually contributed labour, and so cannot claim any part of the profit of production beyond that necessary to maintain his capital, i.e. to replace that part of the dead labour expended in production through wear and tear. To take more would be like bringing a bottle of wine to a friend's house and then leaving with two. Every penny the capitalist took in profit would have to be met with the equivalent transfer of part-ownership of capital from himself to the workers for the relationship to be non-exploitative.
Thirdly, he ignores the fact that the capitalist and the worker do not meet as equals, but through wage labour, which renders the latter as the economic dependent on the former. This means that, even ignoring the previous two points, the eventual distribution of profit has nothing at all to do with the actual value of contributions, but, rather, on a deal brokered between the capitalist and the workers, thus rendering his entire argument irrelevant even within its own terms.

His analogy about the berry-farmer is, frankly, absurd, because capitalists are not small-holding farmers, and workers are not gallivanting campers. If it illustrates anything, it is, as you suggest, his own idiocy.


He also mentions that Communists assume that means of production can't be created, and can only be owned.
Actually, our entire argument is that all means of production are created by workers, and that capitalist have illegitimately appropriated them, hence our demand for their re-appropriation by their rightful owners. He is, embarrassingly for him, exactly wrong.


Forgive me for my stupid question, but what exactly ARE means of production? Machines? Cars?Anything which is involved in the production process. Immediately, this includes the machinery used to produce and distribute goods, but more broadly it includes the various elements of infrastructure upon which the production process is reliant, e.g. power lines, roads, sewage systems, etc.

[Ocean Seal]

The argument postulated is no longer valid. Because it implies that the farmer did labor himself. The farmer is in that case not a capitalist but rather another laborer. He tended to the bushes, and so on. Whereas a capitalist relied on the labor of others to build what he had for the most part. The farmer should keep a share which reflects his labor. However, he should not keep an excess.

This ancap has taken things too literally. Suppose one person designs baskets and the next person uses those baskets to collect berries. Should the first person only keep the baskets and starve and the next person only keep the berries and not be able to collect once again? No, that is simply silly, they should work together and split the profits based on how much labor went into making the baskets and how much effort went into finding the berries.

Lastly and most importantly, regardless of the contribution that the capitalist gives to society by creating means of production, his labor is no longer necessary. It is superfluous as the workers can create the means of production collectively and end the privilege of those with capital. The only reason to keep the bourgeoisie is the emotional argument that "they own" that property. Which we don't believe in, and neither does any class conscious worker who realizes the harm in private ownership of the means of production.

[comrade_cyanide444]

Ok and does capital increase productivity? He says this a lot. He states that capital goes into labor to increase productivity. Does this mean that the laborer will have money to purchase said produced goods ("capital")?

[Thirsty Crow]

Ok and does capital increase productivity? He says this a lot. He states that capital goes into labor to increase productivity. Does this mean that the laborer will have money to purchase said produced goods ("capital")?
No. He's using the term in a wrong way.
"Productivity" refers to the output of a basic unit of production in relation to the input it receives. Technological advances are par exellance also advances in productivity (since it takes less labour time to produce a given quantity of commodities).

[Lorax]

You need capital to produce stuff. By definition the capitalists are the ones with the capital. Did they acquire it by being more virtuous or industrious than the proletariat? For the most part no. The capitalists have accumulated capital largely by having capital in the first place. This is why we need to take it from their cold dead hands and produce stuff ourselves.

[ar734]

The video shows a group of people out camping and they see some berry buses off in the distance and they go and pick some. Only later does the video show that the people have trespassed onto a farmer's private property and stolen his crop of very carefully tended berries.

What the video confuses is primitive gathering by a small clan with small scale agriculture.

The accurate picture is this, from reality: There is a giant 100,000 acre berry farm owned by a capitalist who rarely even sees it. There are millions of dollars of equipment, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. (means of production.) the people who actually do the work (paid at minimum wage) don't own any of this equipment. (Unlike the farmer in the video who owns his own plot of land and the hoe he works the ground with.)

Two times a year or so, the capitalist hires, at a few dollars a day, a few thousand migrant workers and their families, to come in and pick the crop of berries. The workers don't keep the berries they picked (of course not!) And after picking the berries the workers are herded off the land.

More workers then package the berries which are shipped to WalMart.

The capitalist adds up his total costs (wages, equipment, interest, etc.) for the year, his total revenue and finds that he has a profit. he has never done a day's work in his life and he believes that his profit is due to his hard work and the "magic of the marketplace."

His profit actually comes from the fact that he has not paid the full labor cost of growing the berries. That's the beauty, or ugliness, of capitalism: taking something you didn't pay for, theft.

[Hit The North]

Ok and does capital increase productivity? He says this a lot. He states that capital goes into labor to increase productivity. Does this mean that the laborer will have money to purchase said produced goods ("capital")?

Alongside technological innovation (which has to be purchased with capital), it is the social organisation of labour which contributes to increased productivity. Under capitalism, because the labourer is alienated from the means of production and through this, because labour power becomes another commodity alongside means of production, this collective organisation becomes the property of the capitalist and is subject to the disciplinary power of capitalist accumulation.

Increased productivity for the capitalist is only useful if it reaps greater returns for the capitalist and keeps him/her in a competitive relationship with other capitalists. So upping the costs of labour by improving wages, is an option the capitalist would like to avoid, as these costs would eat into profitability. Therefore, wages usually rise at a slower rate than productivity and the worker, as ever, benefits from the increase in productivity far less than the capitalist.

By the way, the video argues from the assumption that organised collective labour is only possible under the power of capital. That, without this, workers would be isolated producers "owning" only the product of their direct labour. This is obviously nonsense (although an archaic bourgeois argument).

[Hit The North]

You need capital to produce stuff. By definition the capitalists are the ones with the capital. Did they acquire it by being more virtuous or industrious than the proletariat? For the most part no. The capitalists have accumulated capital largely by having capital in the first place. This is why we need to take it from their cold dead hands and produce stuff ourselves.

You only need capital to do this in a capitalist society. That is the point. In order to move forward we must abolish capital.

[Reznov]

Near the end of the video around 5:10 to 6:00, it starts saying,

"To further spell this out, imagine as a member of an anarchist commune. There I dig a large hole in the ground where no one will find me. There, I build an item, such as a chair, and I use it without the collective's knowledge. All property being abolished this is surely an act of theft upon everyone else. If the collective discovers my chair, it makes it public property. Therefore removing my control of this resource, and therefore coercing me from it. This coercion cannot be legitimate in a anarchist soceity and so the idea of property rights are a creature of the state is nonsense."

Then he says, "Anarcho-Socalists are forced to establish the most intrusive and totalitarian of tyrannies if property rights are to be succesfully abolished."

I have heard this argument lots of times in different wording, and have never been to really answer this effectively. How do we debunk this and respond?

[Hit The North]

How do we debunk this and respond?

That the idea of a product which is solely from individual labour and therefore the direct sole ownership of that labourer, is an abstraction which does not fit the reality of human production which is always communal and collective. Sole, atomistic production is a fantasy of bourgeois philosophy.

In other words human labour is a property of the species, not the individual. Therefore, the products of that labour should also be collectively "owned".

[Thirsty Crow]

I have heard this argument lots of times in different wording, and have never been to really answer this effectively. How do we debunk this and respond?
The historical conditions do not allow for petty commodity production (or autarky). Unless one would like to witness massive loss of human lives and plunging living standards.

But to go back to the argument itself: so this person proposes that someone would indeed want to dig a hole in the ground, sit there while producing a chair, and then sit on a chair. Read that again and tell me if it makes any sense.

[Lorax]

My disagreement with you here is probably just one of semantics but in my understanding, no revolution could abolish capital itself. Capital is one of the three factors of production in classical economics, along with land and labor. It includes the tools, machines, and factories that are used in production.

[Hit The North]

My disagreement with you here is probably just one of semantics but in my understanding, no revolution could abolish capital itself. Capital is one of the three factors of production in classical economics, along with land and labor. It includes the tools, machines, and factories that are used in production.

Yes, but classical political economy begins from the point of view that capital is ever-present in human production. In other words, the supposed naturalness of capitalist society provides the hermeneutic horizon for these thinkers. One of Marx's achievements is to show that, in fact, capital is a historical phase within production. The three ever-present elements of human production are (i) nature (land and raw materials) (ii) tools (or technology) to create something useful from nature and (iii) human labour power to create and wield the tools.