Red Leader
21st October 2005, 22:04
I was just thinking- the whole basic point of right wing thinking is that you work hard, and in return you will get what you deserve. So basicaly, if your down on your luck, capitalism is great because it provides everybody with the oppurtunity to rise up and become successful. There are many examples of where this has happened, where somebody has gone from ruins to riches and the like.
An argument that capitalists usually bring up against communism is that it wont work because people are lazy and don't want to work unless they get something in return.
My question is, what happens once you have become rich and powerful? After being poor and not doing anything at all for society, sitting around not trying to get a job, having no money and basicaly feeding of of welfare and government handouts, to suddenly (by however means) reaching the point of "success", do you simply stop working and let those who haven't quite made it to where you are yet serve you( ie servants and butlers and such)? do you sit in your yaht drinking champagne and eating cavier for the rest of your life? Is that what success is? That sounds pretty similar to how you started off.
So, again, what in the hell is it that you capitalists are striving for and why is it better then working for the sake of working?
Freedom Works
22nd October 2005, 14:03
The Capitalist Function
Socialist theory (predicated on the labor theory of value) concludes that profits are necessarily value stolen from workers by capitalists. This conclusion is mistaken. The function of the capitalist is as useful as is the function of the worker; profits are as warranted as wages.
The two functions the capitalist performs in the economy are the waiting function and the risk-bearing function. The waiting function occurs because all productive processes require time to complete. It is the capitalist who forgoes consumption by investing in the productive enterprise. While the worker is paid his wages as he works, the capitalist bears the burden of receiving payment only once the completed product has been sold.
The risk-bearing function is the entrepreneurial function of bearing the burden that a productive process may turn out to be counterproductive--that is, the value of the good produced may be less than the value of resources used to produce it. While the worker is paid his wages for his work, the capitalist bears the burden of receiving payment only if the completed product is a success.
Can either the waiting or the risk bearing function be abolished? No. Even in a socialist economy these two functions must take place. They are inherent in the nature of the productive process. The closest a socialist economy could come to abolishing the capitalist function would be to force upon the workers themselves the waiting and the risking. Notice that most workers are not too terribly interested in this option. They freely choose to enjoy current consumption rather than holding out for the prospect of greater payment in the future and prefer to be paid for their work, specifically, rather than being paid only if the product succeeds.
In stark contrast to the mistaken socialist theory, the relation between workers and capitalists is harmonious. A division of labor occurs wherein each party specializes in a self-chosen manner, each reaping the benefits of the efforts of the other.
viva le revolution
22nd October 2005, 14:42
Originally posted by Freedom
[email protected] 22 2005, 01:47 PM
The Capitalist Function
Socialist theory (predicated on the labor theory of value) concludes that profits are necessarily value stolen from workers by capitalists. This conclusion is mistaken. The function of the capitalist is as useful as is the function of the worker; profits are as warranted as wages.
The two functions the capitalist performs in the economy are the waiting function and the risk-bearing function. The waiting function occurs because all productive processes require time to complete. It is the capitalist who forgoes consumption by investing in the productive enterprise. While the worker is paid his wages as he works, the capitalist bears the burden of receiving payment only once the completed product has been sold.
The risk-bearing function is the entrepreneurial function of bearing the burden that a productive process may turn out to be counterproductive--that is, the value of the good produced may be less than the value of resources used to produce it. While the worker is paid his wages for his work, the capitalist bears the burden of receiving payment only if the completed product is a success.
Can either the waiting or the risk bearing function be abolished? No. Even in a socialist economy these two functions must take place. They are inherent in the nature of the productive process. The closest a socialist economy could come to abolishing the capitalist function would be to force upon the workers themselves the waiting and the risking. Notice that most workers are not too terribly interested in this option. They freely choose to enjoy current consumption rather than holding out for the prospect of greater payment in the future and prefer to be paid for their work, specifically, rather than being paid only if the product succeeds.
In stark contrast to the mistaken socialist theory, the relation between workers and capitalists is harmonious. A division of labor occurs wherein each party specializes in a self-chosen manner, each reaping the benefits of the efforts of the other.
I would suggest reading Wage labour and capital by karl marx.
John_worldrevolution.info
22nd October 2005, 14:48
There are two major flaws in that argument.
1) Workers also take on the risk factor. If a business invests in production capacity and over-produces then it will be the workers who get made redundant, not the boss.
2) The bosses make money to both invest and keep through the hard work of underpaid workers in which they keep the large proportion of surplus value. When a boss makes a 'risky' investment they are not gambling their own money, they are gambling the money (or surplus value) they have stolen from the working class.
Freedom Works
22nd October 2005, 17:23
1) Workers also take on the risk factor. If a business invests in production capacity and over-produces then it will be the workers who get made redundant, not the boss.
The workers aren't risking their investment, the Capitalist is.
2) The bosses make money to both invest and keep through the hard work of underpaid workers in which they keep the large proportion of surplus value.
Workers are not underpaid: they agree to the price, so it is necessarily fair.
When a boss makes a 'risky' investment they are not gambling their own money, they are gambling the money (or surplus value) they have stolen from the working class.
That makes the preposition that the Capitalist did not earn the money through being a worker.
enigma2517
22nd October 2005, 17:52
I've heard arguments similar to this before.
The capitalist is doing his part because he is being generous (or even taking a risk) by letting the workers utilize his "hard-earned" capital.
Of course, it really all goes back to how they acquired that capital to begin with. Workers mined the resources, delivered it to the work site, and built the structure, yet, somehow, it is the private property of the capitalist.
By the way, even if losses occur, the first people to get hit are the workers. Benefits and wages go before Ferrari's and mansions.
I heard a saying before...a thousand workers can replace one capitalist but one capitalist cannot replace one worker.
Freedom Works
22nd October 2005, 19:08
The capitalist is doing his part because he is being generous (or even taking a risk) by letting the workers utilize his "hard-earned" capital.
Trade is necessarily voluntary (or else it's not trade), and everything voluntary is necessarily benefitical, or else it would not occur.
Workers mined the resources, delivered it to the work site, and built the structure, yet, somehow, it is the private property of the capitalist.
That's because they agreed to the wage of the capitalist. No wage: no mining, delivering, or building would have occured; at least in the real world.
By the way, even if losses occur, the first people to get hit are the workers. Benefits and wages go before Ferrari's and mansions.
The Capitalist has a right to property, the worker does not have a right to a job.
I heard a saying before...a thousand workers can replace one capitalist but one capitalist cannot replace one worker.
You can say that until you are blue in the face, but both are necessary for progress to occur.
tunes
22nd October 2005, 19:58
Originally posted by Freedom
[email protected] 22 2005, 01:47 PM
They freely choose to enjoy current consumption rather than holding out for the prospect of greater payment in the future and prefer to be paid for their work, specifically, rather than being paid only if the product succeeds.
In stark contrast to the mistaken socialist theory, the relation between workers and capitalists is harmonious. A division of labor occurs wherein each party specializes in a self-chosen manner, each reaping the benefits of the efforts of the other.
Please, stop with the metaphysics. This is explaining nothing. Didn't we already talk about this?
KC
23rd October 2005, 03:02
If they agree to be 'exploited' they are necessarily not being 'exploited', because 'exploitation' is subjective.
If they don't agree then they starve to death. Since it is a coerced agreement it is void. Starting a business themselves won't work because they can't afford it. Going to work for better pay won't work because they are still being exploited, regardless of how much.
JKP
23rd October 2005, 22:28
Of course it is claimed that entering wage labour is a "voluntary" undertaking, from which both sides allegedly benefit. However, due to past initiations of force (e.g. the seizure of land by conquest), the control of the state by the capitalist class plus the tendency for capital to concentrate, a relative handful of people now control vast wealth, depriving all others access to the means of life. Thus denial of free access to the means of life is based ultimately on the principle of "might makes right." And as Murray Bookchin so rightly points out, "the means of life must be taken for what they literally are: the means without which life is impossible. To deny them to people is more than 'theft' . . . it is outright homicide." [Remaking Society, p. 187]
David Ellerman has also noted that the past use of force has resulted in the majority being limited to those options allowed to them by the powers that be:
"It is a veritable mainstay of capitalist thought . . . that the moral flaws of chattel slavery have not survived in capitalism since the workers, unlike the slaves, are free people making voluntary wage contracts. But it is only that, in the case of capitalism, the denial of natural rights is less complete so that the worker has a residual legal personality as a free 'commodity owner.' He is thus allowed to voluntarily put his own working life to traffic. When a robber denies another person's right to make an infinite number of other choices besides losing his money or his life and the denial is backed up by a gun, then this is clearly robbery even though it might be said that the victim making a 'voluntary choice' between his remaining options. When the legal system itself denies the natural rights of working people in the name of the prerogatives of capital, and this denial is sanctioned by the legal violence of the state, then the theorists of 'libertarian' capitalism do not proclaim institutional robbery, but rather they celebrate the 'natural liberty' of working people to choose between the remaining options of selling their labour as a commodity and being unemployed." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader, p. 186]
Therefore the existence of the labour market depends on the worker being separated from the means of production. The natural basis of capitalism is wage labour, wherein the majority have little option but to sell their skills, labour and time to those who do own the means of production. In advanced capitalist countries, less than 10% of the working population are self-employed (in 1990, 7.6% in the UK, 8% in the USA and Canada - however, this figure includes employers as well, meaning that the number of self-employed workers is even smaller!). Hence for the vast majority, the labour market is their only option.
Michael Bakunin notes that these facts put the worker in the position of a serf with regard to the capitalist, even though the worker is formally "free" and "equal" under the law:
"Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realisation, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 187-8]
Obviously, a company cannot force you to work for them but, in general, you have to work for someone. How this situation developed is, of course, usually ignored. If not glossed over as irrelevant, some fairy tale is spun in which a few bright people saved and worked hard to accumulate capital and the lazy majority flocked to be employed by these (almost superhuman) geniuses. In the words of one right-wing economist (talking specifically of the industrial revolution but whose argument is utilised today):
"The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them." [Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pp. 619-20]
Notice the assumptions. The workers just happen have such a terrible set of options -- the employing classes have absolutely nothing to do with it. And these owners just happen to have all these means of production on their hands while the working class just happen to be without property and, as a consequence, forced to sell their labour on the owners' terms. That the state enforces capitalist property rights and acts to defend the power of the owning class is just another co-incidence among many. The possibility that the employing classes might be directly implicated in state policies that reduced the available options of workers is too ludicrous even to mention.
Yet in the real world, the power of coincidence to explain all is less compelling. Here things are more grim as the owning class clearly benefited from numerous acts of state violence and a general legal framework which restricted the options available for the workers. Apparently we are meant to believe that it is purely by strange co-incidence the state was run by the wealthy and owning classes, not the working class, and that a whole host of anti-labour laws and practices were implemented by random chance.
It should be stressed that this nonsense, with its underlying assumptions and inventions, is still being peddled today. It is being repeated to combat the protests that "multinational corporations exploit people in poor countries." Yes, it will be readily admitted, multinationals do pay lower wages in developing countries than in rich ones: that is why they go there. However, it is argued, this represents economic advancement compares to what the other options available are. As the corporations do not force them to work for them and they would have stayed with what they were doing previously the charge of exploitation is wrong. Would you, it is stressed, leave your job for one with less pay and worse conditions? In fact, the bosses are doing them a favour in paying such low wages for the products the companies charge such high prices in the developed world for.
And so, by the same strange co-incidence that marked the industrial revolution, capitalists today (in the form of multinational corporations) gravitate toward states with terrible human rights records. States where, at worse, death squads torture and "disappear" union and peasant co-operative organisers or where, at best, attempts to organise a union can get you arrested or fired and blacklisted. States were peasants are being forced off their land as a result of government policies which favour the big landlords. By an equally strange coincidence, the foreign policy of the American and European governments is devoted to making sure such anti-labour regimes stay in power. It is a co-incidence, of course, that such regimes are favoured by the multinationals and that these states spend so much effort in providing a "market friendly" climate to tempt the corporations to set up their sweatshops there. It is also, apparently, just a co-incidence that these states are controlled by the local wealthy owning classes and subject to economic pressure by the transnationals which invest and wish to invest there.
It is clear that when a person who is mugged hands over their money to the mugger they do so because they prefer it to the "next best alternative." As such, it is correct that people agree to sell their liberty to a boss because their "next best alternative" is worse (utter poverty or starvation are not found that appealing for some reason). But so what? As anarchists have been pointing out over a century, the capitalists have systematically used the state to create a limit options for the many, to create buyers' market for labour by skewing the conditions under which workers can sell their labour in the bosses favour. To then merrily answer all criticisms of this set-up with the response that the workers "voluntarily agreed" to work on those terms is just hypocrisy. Does it really change things if the mugger (the state) is only the agent (hired thug) of another criminal (the owning class)?
As such, hymns to the "free market" seem somewhat false when the reality of the situation is such that workers do not need to be forced at gun point to enter a specific workplace because of past (and more often than not, current) "initiation of force" by the capitalist class and the state which have created the objective conditions within which we make our employment decisions. Before any specific labour market contract occurs, the separation of workers from the means of production is an established fact (and the resulting "labour" market usually gives the advantage to the capitalists as a class). So while we can usually pick which capitalist to work for, we, in general, cannot choose to work for ourselves (the self-employed sector of the economy is tiny, which indicates well how spurious capitalist liberty actually is). Of course, the ability to leave employment and seek it elsewhere is an important freedom. However, this freedom, like most freedoms under capitalism, is of limited use and hides a deeper anti-individual reality.
As Karl Polanyi puts it:
"In human terms such a postulate [of a labour market] implied for the worker extreme instability of earnings, utter absence of professional standards, abject readiness to be shoved and pushed about indiscriminately, complete dependence on the whims of the market. [Ludwig Von] Mises justly argued that if workers 'did not act as trade unionists, but reduced their demands and changed their locations and occupations according to the labour market, they would eventually find work.' This sums up the position under a system based on the postulate of the commodity character of labour. It is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed." [The Great Transformation, p. 176]
(Although we should point out that von Mises argument that workers will "eventually" find work as well as being nice and vague -- how long is "eventually"?, for example -- is contradicted by actual experience. As the Keynesian economist Michael Stewart notes, in the nineteenth century workers "who lost their jobs had to redeploy fast or starve (and even this feature of the ninetheenth century economy. . . did not prevent prolonged recessions)" [Keynes in the 1990s, p. 31] Workers "reducing their demands" may actually worsen an economic slump, causing more unemployment in the short run and lengthening the length of the crisis.
It is sometimes argued that capital needs labour, so both have an equal say in the terms offered, and hence the labour market is based on "liberty." But for capitalism to be based on real freedom or on true free agreement, both sides of the capital/labour divide must be equal in bargaining power, otherwise any agreement would favour the most powerful at the expense of the other party. However, due to the existence of private property and the states needed to protect it, this equality is de facto impossible, regardless of the theory. This is because. in general, capitalists have three advantages on the "free" labour market-- the law and state placing the rights of property above those of labour, the existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle and capitalists having more resources to fall back on. We will discuss each in turn.
The first advantage, namely property owners having the backing of the law and state, ensures that when workers go on strike or use other forms of direct action (or even when they try to form a union) the capitalist has the full backing of the state to employ scabs, break picket lines or fire "the ring-leaders." This obviously gives employers greater power in their bargaining position, placing workers in a weak position (a position that may make them, the workers, think twice before standing up for their rights).
The existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle ensures that "employers have a structural advantage in the labour market, because there are typically more candidates. . . than jobs for them to fill." This means that "[c]ompetition in labour markets us typically skewed in favour of employers: it is a buyers market. And in a buyer's market, it is the sellers who compromise. Competition for labour is not strong enough to ensure that workers' desires are always satisified." [Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American, p. 71, p. 129] If the labour market generally favours the employer, then this obviously places working people at a disadvantage as the threat of unemployment and the hardships associated with it encourages workers to take any job and submit to their bosses demands and power while employed. Unemployment, in other words, serves to discipline labour. The higher the prevailing unemployment rate, the harder it is to find a new job, which raises the cost of job loss and makes it less likely for workers to strike, join unions, or to resist employer demands, and so on.
As Bakunin argued, "the property owners... are likewise forced to seek out and purchase labour... but not in the same measure . . . [there is no] equality between those who offer their labour and those who purchase it." [Op. Cit., p. 183] This ensures that any "free agreements" made benefit the capitalists more than the workers.
Lastly, there is the issue of inequalities in wealth and so resources. The capitalist generally has more resources to fall back on during strikes and while waiting to find employees (for example, large companies with many factories can swap production to their other factories if one goes on strike). And by having more resources to fall back on, the capitalist can hold out longer than the worker, so placing the employer in a stronger bargaining position and so ensuring labour contracts favour them. This was recognised by Adam Smith:
"It is not difficult to foresee which of the two parties [workers and capitalists] must, upon all ordinary occasions... force the other into a compliance with their terms... In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer... though they did not employ a single workman [the masters] could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scare any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. . . [I]n disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage." [Wealth of Nations, pp. 59-60]
How little things have changed.
So, while it is definitely the case that no one forces you to work for them, the capitalist system is such that you have little choice but to sell your liberty and labour on the "free market." Not only this, but the labour market (which is what makes capitalism capitalism) is (usually) skewed in favour of the employer, so ensuring that any "free agreements" made on it favour the boss and result in the workers submitting to domination and exploitation. This is why anarchists support collective organisation (such as unions) and resistance (such as strikes), direct action and solidarity to make us as, if not more, powerful than our exploiters and win important reforms and improvements (and, ultimately, change society), even when faced with the disadvantages on the labour market we have indicated. The despotism associated with property (to use Proudhon's expression) is resisted by those subject to it and, needless to say, the boss does not always win.
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