Red_or_Dead
30th March 2008, 17:04
I found this following story on one of other internet forums. Does anyone have any good arguments on it?
Here it is:
The Parable of the Fishing Net
Let's suppose, that a clever proletarian, Jane Bourgeois, weaves a new invention: a fishing net, out of her own hair in her spare time. It's not difficult to do, and only takes her a half-hour. It just so happens, due to a genetic mutation, that she was lucky enough to be born with hair that is uniquely strong and amazingly durable. Nobody else is lucky enough to have hair like hers. This is just an undeserved advantage she was born with.
And yet, I think even a socialist will, so far, agree that, if anything can ever be someone’s rightful property, this capital-----her new fishing net-----is properly Jane’s. (If not, I wonder what could ever belong properly to anyone, or how anyone could be entitled to anything.)
Now, suppose Jane, who lives on a liberal, laissez-faire capitalist sort of island, offers to lend or rent her wonderful new invention to a fisherman named Frank. That is, she gives permission to Frank to use the net to catch fish, in exchange for a share of the catch.
Suppose Frank can catch three times as much with the net as without it, and so he is willing to give Jane a third of the catch in exchange for the use of the net. Now Jane can eat for the rest of her life without working (suppose her hair is also quite durable), and Frank can effectively double his take-home catch. They are both better off. So Jane becomes a capitalist; and Frank becomes a laborer.
Now, a month later, along comes the social-democrat. This young egalitarian sees that all the old lady does for her living is simply to give permission for her property to be used in production, while Frank gets up before the sun and does all the hard work. Quite true.
But the socialist then concludes from this fact that Jane has not personally contributed to production, and that her share of the catch is something of which she is unjustly depriving Frank. The socialist says that Jane is just a parasite, a “bloodsucker,” and ought to be liquidated.
But that is false, and does not follow.
Now, it must be admitted that it is true that Frank might be better off, at least in the short run, if he liquidated the old lady and kept the net, and all the fish, for himself.
But that would hardly be right or just, would it?
Nor would it show that he would be better off if she'd never been born. He'd be worse off if she'd never been born. If it wasn’t for her and her original investment in the net, Frank would not have had all that extra fish all these years.
Now, Jane, the lucky capitalist, got rich from the arrangement. But she did not get rich at the expense of Frank, nor does she deprive him of anything. Jane was lucky to be born so clever, and with such great hair. But Frank was lucky too. Lucky to meet Jane.
Remember what Bakunin says:
"What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor---that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else. The right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both."
Well, okay. That's true. But it's very misleading. Let's examine Bakunin's claim again, this time substituting Jane and Frank's case:
What is the hair-net, what is capital? For the hair-net owner it means the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor---that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of Frank. The right to exploit the work of Frank, who possesses no net of his own, and who thus is forced to sell his productive power to the lucky Jane.
Was Frank "forced" to sell his labor to Jane? Not if there was another net owner he could go to instead, or if he could have settled for less fish. Let's suppose for a minute that he could not survive on the amount he could catch without the net, and thus would starve to death unless he sold his labor to Jane for a share of the tripled catch, thus doubling his take, and allowing him to survive. Well, then, he's, in some sense, "forced" to sell his labor to somebody who has a net. But even then that isn't Jane's fault. It's still not her who "forces" him to sell his labor. I mean, it's not capitalists, or capitalism, or even socialism that ultimately "forces" us to work---it's Nature, the cruelest "system" of all. There's no economic or political system under which nobody ever has to work.
Bakunin makes it sound like Jane must be harming Frank. But that's not true.
Indeed, Bakunin, by his own twisted thinking, might as well complain that Jane is "forced" to obtain labor. Suppose, for example, that she's too old or frail to go out on the ocean and employ the net herself. (The most typical capitalist is an old lady, after all.) So why not just as well complain that Frank is "exploiting" Jane? Is he not using her, for his own purely selfish purposes, and reaping a "profit"---a gain---by doing so? Perhaps we could say they are both "exploiting" each other.
Clearly, they're both profiting by the arrangement.
But where's the social injustice?
Bakunin is angry that Jane can live without working. But knowing this fact does not show what Bakunin thinks it shows. Bakunin thinks it shows that Jane is ripping off Frank, that she's harming him, that she's depriving him of something that's rightfully his, or that she exists at his expense. Yet our example shows why none of these things are true. They don't follow.
Frank has to work, and Jane doesn't. So you could say that she is luckier than he is. But they're both lucky. They both gain. They're both better off. And Jane's great good luck does not in any way harm Frank, or benefit her at his expense. On the contrary, Jane's good luck profits Frank too, and that profit may even have come to him through no particular virtue of his own. He was lucky she picked him to deal with, rather than some other fisherman. Jane's lucky hair genes, on the other hand, might more easily be called a "virtue" of hers. (Aren't Einstein's brains a virtue of Einstein?)
Besides, everybody else on the island profits from Jane also. And certainly their profit is undeserved. Why? Because fish is cheaper on the market, now that the same amount of labor produces a greater supply of it. Certainly the other consumers on the island, who also have more fish to eat now, are reaping an unearned profit from Jane's lucky genes, and/or her invention of the net.
Capitalist Jane is enviable. She's lucky, and she gets to live without working. But she is not harming anybody, nor existing at anybody else's expense. On the contrary, the other people are lucky she came along. She's made them richer, not poorer.
Here it is:
The Parable of the Fishing Net
Let's suppose, that a clever proletarian, Jane Bourgeois, weaves a new invention: a fishing net, out of her own hair in her spare time. It's not difficult to do, and only takes her a half-hour. It just so happens, due to a genetic mutation, that she was lucky enough to be born with hair that is uniquely strong and amazingly durable. Nobody else is lucky enough to have hair like hers. This is just an undeserved advantage she was born with.
And yet, I think even a socialist will, so far, agree that, if anything can ever be someone’s rightful property, this capital-----her new fishing net-----is properly Jane’s. (If not, I wonder what could ever belong properly to anyone, or how anyone could be entitled to anything.)
Now, suppose Jane, who lives on a liberal, laissez-faire capitalist sort of island, offers to lend or rent her wonderful new invention to a fisherman named Frank. That is, she gives permission to Frank to use the net to catch fish, in exchange for a share of the catch.
Suppose Frank can catch three times as much with the net as without it, and so he is willing to give Jane a third of the catch in exchange for the use of the net. Now Jane can eat for the rest of her life without working (suppose her hair is also quite durable), and Frank can effectively double his take-home catch. They are both better off. So Jane becomes a capitalist; and Frank becomes a laborer.
Now, a month later, along comes the social-democrat. This young egalitarian sees that all the old lady does for her living is simply to give permission for her property to be used in production, while Frank gets up before the sun and does all the hard work. Quite true.
But the socialist then concludes from this fact that Jane has not personally contributed to production, and that her share of the catch is something of which she is unjustly depriving Frank. The socialist says that Jane is just a parasite, a “bloodsucker,” and ought to be liquidated.
But that is false, and does not follow.
Now, it must be admitted that it is true that Frank might be better off, at least in the short run, if he liquidated the old lady and kept the net, and all the fish, for himself.
But that would hardly be right or just, would it?
Nor would it show that he would be better off if she'd never been born. He'd be worse off if she'd never been born. If it wasn’t for her and her original investment in the net, Frank would not have had all that extra fish all these years.
Now, Jane, the lucky capitalist, got rich from the arrangement. But she did not get rich at the expense of Frank, nor does she deprive him of anything. Jane was lucky to be born so clever, and with such great hair. But Frank was lucky too. Lucky to meet Jane.
Remember what Bakunin says:
"What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor---that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else. The right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both."
Well, okay. That's true. But it's very misleading. Let's examine Bakunin's claim again, this time substituting Jane and Frank's case:
What is the hair-net, what is capital? For the hair-net owner it means the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor---that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of Frank. The right to exploit the work of Frank, who possesses no net of his own, and who thus is forced to sell his productive power to the lucky Jane.
Was Frank "forced" to sell his labor to Jane? Not if there was another net owner he could go to instead, or if he could have settled for less fish. Let's suppose for a minute that he could not survive on the amount he could catch without the net, and thus would starve to death unless he sold his labor to Jane for a share of the tripled catch, thus doubling his take, and allowing him to survive. Well, then, he's, in some sense, "forced" to sell his labor to somebody who has a net. But even then that isn't Jane's fault. It's still not her who "forces" him to sell his labor. I mean, it's not capitalists, or capitalism, or even socialism that ultimately "forces" us to work---it's Nature, the cruelest "system" of all. There's no economic or political system under which nobody ever has to work.
Bakunin makes it sound like Jane must be harming Frank. But that's not true.
Indeed, Bakunin, by his own twisted thinking, might as well complain that Jane is "forced" to obtain labor. Suppose, for example, that she's too old or frail to go out on the ocean and employ the net herself. (The most typical capitalist is an old lady, after all.) So why not just as well complain that Frank is "exploiting" Jane? Is he not using her, for his own purely selfish purposes, and reaping a "profit"---a gain---by doing so? Perhaps we could say they are both "exploiting" each other.
Clearly, they're both profiting by the arrangement.
But where's the social injustice?
Bakunin is angry that Jane can live without working. But knowing this fact does not show what Bakunin thinks it shows. Bakunin thinks it shows that Jane is ripping off Frank, that she's harming him, that she's depriving him of something that's rightfully his, or that she exists at his expense. Yet our example shows why none of these things are true. They don't follow.
Frank has to work, and Jane doesn't. So you could say that she is luckier than he is. But they're both lucky. They both gain. They're both better off. And Jane's great good luck does not in any way harm Frank, or benefit her at his expense. On the contrary, Jane's good luck profits Frank too, and that profit may even have come to him through no particular virtue of his own. He was lucky she picked him to deal with, rather than some other fisherman. Jane's lucky hair genes, on the other hand, might more easily be called a "virtue" of hers. (Aren't Einstein's brains a virtue of Einstein?)
Besides, everybody else on the island profits from Jane also. And certainly their profit is undeserved. Why? Because fish is cheaper on the market, now that the same amount of labor produces a greater supply of it. Certainly the other consumers on the island, who also have more fish to eat now, are reaping an unearned profit from Jane's lucky genes, and/or her invention of the net.
Capitalist Jane is enviable. She's lucky, and she gets to live without working. But she is not harming anybody, nor existing at anybody else's expense. On the contrary, the other people are lucky she came along. She's made them richer, not poorer.