From: Travas Gunnell (travasg@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Apr 18 2001 - 21:46:47 MDT
--- hal@finney.org wrote:
> What about other contractual arrangements? Suppose
> I give you some object
> in exchange for your promise to give me money on a
> regular, ongoing basis.
> This is not a loan because there is no promise to
> return the object.
> Does this make it morally OK? Why or why not?
>
> I'm having trouble understanding the dividing line
> between which kinds
> of freely-chosen, voluntarily-agreed-to arrangements
> between private
> individuals are acceptable in this system and which
> are not.
>
> Hal
A few more snippets from the FAQ that nobody seems to
be reading:
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI4.html
----
I.4.12 Won't there be a tendency for capitalist
enterprise to reappear in any socialist society?
This is a common right-libertarian objection. Robert
Nozick, for example, imagines the following scenario:
"[S]mall factories would spring up in a socialist
society, unless forbidden. I melt some of my personal
possessions and build a machine out of the material. I
offer you and others a philosophy lecture once a week
in exchange for yet other things, and so on. . . .some
persons might even want to leave their jobs in
socialist industry and work full time in this private
sector. [this is] how private property even in means
of production would occur in a socialist society."
Hence Nozick claims that "the socialist society will
have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting
adults." [Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp. 162-3]
As Jeff Stein points out, however, "the only reason
workers want to be employed by capitalists is because
they have no other means for making a living, no
access to the means of production other than by
selling themselves. For a capitalist sector to exist
there must be some form of private ownership of
productive resources, and a scarcity of alternatives.
The workers must be in a condition of economic
desperation for them to be willing to give up an equal
voice in the management of their daily affairs and
accept a boss" ["Market Anarchism? Caveat Emptor!", a
review of A Structured Anarchism : An Overview of
Libertarian Theory and Practice by John Griffin,
Libertarian Labor Review #13, Winter 1992-93, pp.
33-39].
In an anarchist society, there is no need for anyone
to "forbid" capitalist acts. All people have to do is
refrain from helping would-be capitalists set up
monopolies of productive assets. This is because, as
we have noted in B.3, capitalism cannot exist without
some form of state to protect such monopolies. In a
libertarian-socialist society, of course, there would
be no state to begin with, and so there would be no
question of it "refraining" from doing anything,
including protecting would-be capitalists' monopolies
of the means of production. In other words, would-be
capitalists would face stiff competition for workers
in an anarchist society. This is because self-managed
workplaces would be able to offer workers more
benefits (such as self-government) than the would-be
capitalist ones. The would-be capitalists would have
to offer not only excellent wages and conditions but
also, in all likelihood, workers' control and
hire-purchase on capital used. The chances of making a
profit once the various monopolies associated with
capitalism are abolished are slim.
...
Notice also that Nozick confuses exchange with
capitalism ("I offer you a lecture once a week in
exchange for other things"). This is a telling mistake
by someone who claims to be an expert on capitalism,
because the defining feature of capitalism is not
exchange (which obviously took place long before
capitalism existed) but labor contracts involving
capitalist middlemen who appropriate a portion of the
value produced by workers - in other words, wage
labour. Nozick's example is merely a direct labor
contract between the producer and the consumer. It
does not involve any capitalist intermediary taking a
percentage of the value created by the producer. It is
only this latter type of transaction that libertarian
socialism prevents -- and not by "forbidding" it but
simply by refusing to maintain the conditions
necessary for it to occur, i.e. protection of
capitalist property.
Lastly, we must also note that Nozick also ignores the
fact that acquisition must come before transfer,
meaning that before "consenting" capitalist acts
occur, individual ones must precede it. As argued
above, for this to happen the would-be capitalist must
steal communally owned resources by barring others
from using them. This obviously would restrict the
liberty of those who currently used them and so be
hotly opposed by members of a community. If an
individual did desire to use resources to employ wage
labour then they would have effectively removed
themselves from "socialist society" and so that
society would bar them from using its resources (i.e.
they would have to buy access to all the resources
they currently took for granted).
----
Unfortuanately I don't have a lot of time to spare to
pick through all these emails and give decent
responses. Though for the most part, properly reading
through the FAQ will probably answer most questions
and criticisms that people might have.
Also, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be away
from email for several days, so y'all will just have
to get along without me. ;-)
-Travas
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