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1. The "exploitation theory" is based around the owner receiving profit for themselves instead of the worker.
2. The owner needs to take profit for the business to survive.
3. The "exploitation theory" (the owner taking profit) is needed for capitalism to survive.
4. Capitalism cannot solve this problem.
"Classical economics" versus Marx is a myth itself.
Marx did not deny the classical economics of Smith and Ricardo, but took it to its logical conclusion. It was Ricardo, after all, who developed the labor theory of value.
Nor is the truism of supply and demand in contradiction with the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value answers why the supply and demand curves tend to intersect at one point rather than another.
And of course in practice, when was the last time you saw full employment? Fed policy is aimed at making sure that doesn't happen. Nor have prolonged periods of low unemployment led to a significant rise in wages recently; Greenspan and others have expressed surprise at how "well-behaved" wages have been.
You missed the point. In untainted free markets these profits would stabilize close to zero.
The reason for the initial imblance is because of time preference. The worker chooses to have resources NOW. The capitalist while still wanting resources NOW, allocates some of the his resources for LATER.
Smith and Ricardo had no part in inventing capitalism. They had some observations about how it works. Some observations were right and some were wrong.
Problems of the state, not capitalism.
So how would the company make money to grow? Also, is the CEO's paycheck determined by supply and demand?
Indeed, Ricardo corrected most of what Smith got wrong, then Marx clarified some of what Ricardo "failed to mention." In fact, they never even used the term capitalism -- and certainly had nothing to do with inventing it. Capitalism was invented the same way socialism will be invented, through changing property relations due to productive capacities and technology conflicting with existing property relations.
When profit reaches almost zero - the industry of a given good or service is mature. One can use a brick as an example. Try competing in the brick market. You will see your profits are razor thin.
Notice I said for a single given good or service. I said nothing about a single company.
Yes the CEO is a worker!
So you agree.
Capitalism does not really need a name, it's just that obvious.
Can you tell me when capitalism was invented? An approximate period will suffice.
Capitalism will always existed precisely because people have PROPERTY RIGHTS over THEMSELVES.
Owners need profit; that's what they live off of. Profit will never be non-existant in a capitalist society, and no matter how much profit is made, it is still profit nonetheless.
What? It shouldn't be named because it wasn't "invented"?
What is it with you and semantics?
I never said it needs a name to exist. I merely said that the name itself is indicative of something other than strictly free-market capitalism. Capitalism is a term that applies to varying forms of a somewhat similar economic structure.
Well yes, profit will always exist as long as progress is desired. If progress is not desired - then yes communism is great! Ofcourse it would lead mass starvation and regression should it be implemented. After which it would just be a stagnant society.
Capitalism works best with no 'structure'.
Capitalism is only thing that acknowledges economy.
There are no semantics - just very true observation. Should private property be abolished, private property would still exist. There is no way to get rid of capitalism.
What a depressing view, to think that the only motivation people have in life is money.
Again, semantics. Capitalism needs a structure to exist; it is a socio-economic structure. To say a structure can exist without a structure is retarded.
You're the one that argues semantics.
1. There's a difference between private and personal property.
2. You have yet to prove that private property will always exist. Every single argument you've presented in support of your opinion has been shot down easily.
There was no mention of money at all. The same thing applies to a barter and commodity economy. Profit = Progress. But more accurately Progress is directly proportional to Profit.
This is not the first time I mention this to you.
I meant it as structure that is decentralized. It is true that even a lack of structure is a structure in it of itself.
No. Personal and private are exactly the same.
You try to make this distinction for communism's sake, but it does not exist.
As long as you are in charge of yourself, private property will exist. If you deny this you might as well promote slavery.
Blabbering nonsense is hardly shooting down.
39-Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudiamonic
well-being. Annual Review of Psychology. 2001, 52, 141-166
We are not afraid of ruins. Workers built the palaces and cities of Spain and America. We can do it again. The bourgeoisie can destroy their world before abandoning history's stage but we have a new world in our hearts......a world that is growing every moment. It's growing while I talk to you.
You only get what you're Organized to take.
On property:
Private property is one of the three things all anarchists oppose, along side hierarchical authority and the state. Today, the dominant system of private property is capitalist in nature and, as such, anarchists tend to concentrate on this system and its property rights regime. We will be reflecting this here but do not, because of this, assume that anarchists consider other forms of private property regime (such as, say, feudalism) as acceptable. This is not the case -- anarchists are against every form of property rights regime which results in the many working for the few.
Anarchist opposition to private property rests on two, related, arguments. These were summed up by Proudhon's maxims (from What is Property? that "property is theft" and "property is despotism." In his words, "Property . . . violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism . . . [and has] perfect identity with robbery." [Proudhon, What is Property, p. 251] Anarchists, therefore, oppose private property (i.e. capitalism) because it is a source of coercive, hierarchical authority as well as exploitation and, consequently, elite privilege and inequality. It is based on and produces inequality, in terms of both wealth and power.
We will summarise each argument in turn.
The statement "property is theft" is one of anarchism's most famous sayings. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that anyone who rejects this statement is not an anarchist. This maxim works in two related ways. Firstly, it recognises the fact that the earth and its resources, the common inheritance of all, have been monopolised by a few. Secondly, it argues that, as a consequence of this, those who own property exploit those who do not. This is because those who do not own have to pay or sell their labour to those who do own in order to get access to the resources they need to live and work (such as workplaces, machinery, land, credit, housing, products under patents, and such like).
As we discuss in section B.3.3, this exploitation (theft) flows from the fact that workers do not own or control the means of production they use and, as a consequence, are controlled by those who do during work hours. This alienation of control over labour to the boss places the employer in a position to exploit that labour -- to get the worker to produce more than they get paid in wages. That is precisely why the boss employs the worker. Combine this with rent, interest and intellectual property rights and we find the secret to maintaining the capitalist system as all allow enormous inequalities of wealth to continue and keep the resources of the world in the hands of a few.
Yet labour cannot be alienated. Therefore when you sell your labour you sell yourself, your liberty, for the time in question. This brings us to the second reason why anarchists oppose private property, the fact it produces authoritarian social relationships. For all true anarchists, property is opposed as a source of authority, indeed despotism. To quote Proudhon on this subject:
"The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign -- for all these titles are synonymous -- imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once . . . [and so] property engenders despotism . . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings -- kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?" [Op. Cit., pp. 266-7]
In other words, private property is the state writ small, with the property owner acting as the "sovereign lord" over their property, and so the absolute king of those who use it. As in any monarchy, the worker is the subject of the capitalist, having to follow their orders, laws and decisions while on their property. This, obviously, is the total denial of liberty (and dignity, we may note, as it is degrading to have to follow orders). And so private property (capitalism) necessarily excludes participation, influence, and control by those who use, but do not own, the means of life.
It is, of course, true that private property provides a sphere of decision-making free from outside interference -- but only for the property's owners. But for those who are not property owners the situation if radically different. In a system of exclusively private property does not guarantee them any such sphere of freedom. They have only the freedom to sell their liberty to those who do own private property. If I am evicted from one piece of private property, where can I go? Nowhere, unless another owner agrees to allow me access to their piece of private property. This means that everywhere I can stand is a place where I have no right to stand without permission and, as a consequence, I exist only by the sufferance of the property owning elite. Hence Proudhon:
"Just as the commoner once held his land by the munificence and condescension of the lord, so to-day the working-man holds his labour by the condescension and necessities of the master and proprietor." [Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 128]
This means that far from providing a sphere of independence, a society in which all property is private thus renders the property-less completely dependent on those who own property. This ensures that the exploitation of another's labour occurs and that some are subjected to the will of others, in direct contradiction to what the defenders of property promise. This is unsurprising given the nature of the property they are defending:
"Our opponents . . . are in the habit of justifying the right to private property by stating that property is the condition and guarantee of liberty.
"And we agree with them. Do we not say repeatedly that poverty is slavery?
"But then why do we oppose them?
"The reason is clear: in reality the property that they defend is capitalist property, namely property that allows its owners to live from the work of others and which therefore depends on the existence of a class of the disinherited and dispossessed, forced to sell their labour to the property owners for a wage below its real value . . . This means that workers are subjected to a kind of slavery, which, though it may vary in degree of harshness, always means social inferiority, material penury and moral degradation, and is the primary cause of all the ills that beset today's social order." [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, p. 113]
It will, of course, be objected that no one forces a worker to work for a given boss. However, as we discuss in section B.4.3, this assertion (while true) misses the point. While workers are not forced to work for a specific boss, they inevitably have to work for a boss. This is because there is literally no other way to survive -- all other economic options have been taken from them by state coercion. The net effect is that the working class has little choice but to hire themselves out to those with property and, as a consequence, the labourer "has sold and surrendered his liberty" to the boss. [Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 130]
Private property, therefore, produces a very specific form of authority structure within society, a structure in which a few govern the many during working hours. These relations of production are inherently authoritarian and embody and perpetuate the capitalist class system. The moment you enter the factory gate or the office door, you lose all your basic rights as a human being. You have no freedom of speech nor association and no right of assembly. If you were asked to ignore your values, your priorities, your judgement, and your dignity, and leave them at the door when you enter your home, you would rightly consider that tyranny yet that is exactly what you do during working hours if you are a worker. You have no say in what goes on. You may as well be a horse (to use John Locke's analogy -- see section B.4.2) or a piece of machinery.
Little wonder, then, that anarchists oppose private property as Anarchy is "the absence of a master, of a sovereign" [Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 264] and call capitalism for what it is, namely wage slavery!
For these reasons, anarchists agree with Rousseau when he stated:
"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.'" ["Discourse on Inequality," The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 84]
This explains anarchist opposition to capitalism. It is marked by two main features, "private property" (or in some cases, state-owned property -- see section B.3.5) and, consequently, wage labour and exploitation and authority. Moreover, such a system requires a state to maintain itself for as "long as within society a possessing and non-possessing group of human beings face one another in enmity, the state will be indispensable to the possessing minority for the protection for its privileges." [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 11] Thus private ownership of the means of production is only possible if there is a state, meaning mechanisms of organised coercion at the disposal of the propertied class (see section B.2).
Also, it ought to be easy to see that capitalism, by giving rise to an ideologically inalienable "right" to private property, will also quickly give rise to inequalities in the distribution of external resources, and that this inequality in resource distribution will give rise to a further inequality in the relative bargaining positions of the propertied and the property less. While apologists for capitalism usually attempt to justify private property by claiming that "self-ownership" is a "universal right" (see section B.4.2 -- "Is capiitalism based on self-ownership?"), it is clear that capitalism actually makes universal autonomy implied by the flawed concept of self-ownership (for the appeal of the notion of self-ownership rests on the ideal that people are not used as a means but only as an end in themselves). The capitalist system, however, has undermined autonomy and individual freedom, and ironically, has used the term "self-ownership" as the basis for doing so. Under capitalism, as will be seen in section B.4, most people are usually left in a situation where their best option is to allow themselves to be used in just those ways that are logically incompatible with genuine self-ownership, i.e. the autonomy which makes it initially an appealing concept.
Only libertarian socialism can continue to affirm the meaningful autonomy and individual freedom which self-ownership promises whilst building the conditions that guarantee it. Only by abolishing private property can there be access to the means of life for all, so making the autonomy which self-ownership promises but cannot deliver a reality by universalising self-management in all aspects of life.
Before discussing the anti-libertarian aspects of capitalism, it will be necessary to define "private property" as distinct from "personal possessions" and show in more detail why the former requires state protection and is exploitative.
From the Anarcho-FAQ
We are not afraid of ruins. Workers built the palaces and cities of Spain and America. We can do it again. The bourgeoisie can destroy their world before abandoning history's stage but we have a new world in our hearts......a world that is growing every moment. It's growing while I talk to you.
You only get what you're Organized to take.
Okay, replace money with profit. Happy now? You like semantics?
You don't understand. I don't try to make this distinction. I do. Personal and private property are two forms that property is classified into. Classification is a product of thought. So yes, regardless of what they are classified as, they are all just objects.
What you're saying is the equivalent of saying that vertebrates and invertebrates are exactly the same; after all, they're all animals.
As long as you are in charge of yourself, property will exist. It isn't private. In fact, if you classifty it according to marxism, it's personal property.
Then bring some intelligent discussion to the board.
I agree with Lazar, but why not make the distinction? Private and Personal Property are both property, but not the same. Private property often refers to, in a marxist disscusion, the means of production in a laissez faire economy. While personal property is property often designed for one person use, a good example of this would be a tooth brush or clothing. It is not reasonable for us all to have a factory for our individual self, but there is "reason" that we have our own personal clothing. Look at it this way, does where you live have a toilet for each individual resident? Probably not and that is "reason."
But what you are arguing is semantics...private a personal property are up for opinion, the word doesn't matter its what the word describes that does.
!!! Nomenklatura=Commie Club !!!
<span style=\'color:red\'>ITS ON FIRE, ITS MY EMPIRE</span>
<u><span style=\'color:blue\'>SAVE THE WORLD-BURN CAPITALISM AND RELIGION</u></span>
<span style=\'colorrange\'>I don't hate AMERIKAN policy, i hate its diplomacy, well its policy is pretty shitty too</span>
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?- Marx
Groucho Marx
Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.46
=AR EH=
Private property in a real Marxist discussion doesn't refer to any such thing. Marx makes it very clear that private property is not to be thought of as an object or the thing itself, it is a social condition. If you consider that private property = means of production then abolition of private property becomes the abolition of the means of production.
Is this distinction important? Yes. Because under varying circumstances any object, regardless of it's function, can take on this social function and thus create the social condition of private property.
Did any of you guys read the article I posted in my last reply? It answers what you're discussing.
We are not afraid of ruins. Workers built the palaces and cities of Spain and America. We can do it again. The bourgeoisie can destroy their world before abandoning history's stage but we have a new world in our hearts......a world that is growing every moment. It's growing while I talk to you.
You only get what you're Organized to take.
Nah, I saw anarchist then Proudhon... and... well..
What? Do you read? or do you just splice words from different sentences?
Why does the distinction need to exist? Where does it stop?
Why not go further: moving private property (cars, bikes, ...), animal private property (dogs, cats, fish), electrical private property (computers, tv, radios), land property, house property, water property, air property?
Why just leave it at personal and private?
Why is owning a factory fall into only private, not personal?
How is a house not a "means of production"? I find my house to make me productive. It is no different than a factory. I can have people come over and work for me in my productive endeavours and the same thing would apply.
Toothbrush and clothing is pathetic example. Where do you keep these personal items? A dresser and cabinet? In side where? A house? Where? On land?
How far can your personal property extend? Who gets to judge what is personal and private (if the distinction exists)
If you clasify your own body as personal property (not the basis of private property, like I do) are other things only your personal property if you physically hold on to them? I think you realize this is silly.
If you want to get into semantics then I will concede that the only distinction you can make between personal and private is this: Personal property is your naked body staving to death in the cold, any addition to this (food, clothing, shelter) is Private property.
This is a stupid argument. If you are talking about animals then you will implicitly discuss all the variations. If you start to classify within private property you get into all the different types of private property I mentioned above.
Your right, the word itself does not matter. The fact that this 'word' extends from the natural possession of one's self ('word'is one and the same 'word', not two different 'word1' 'word2'.
You could, but that isn't relevant to the topic at hand.
Because of how private and personal are defined.
A house doesn't apply to the definition of "means of production". It is completely different than a factory.
Again, personal and private property are defined by the way they are socially looked at. They aren't material objects.
