[p2p-research] Fwd: Launch of Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies, preliminary plans

[Christian Siefkes]

Kevin Carson wrote:
> On 2/6/09, Christian Siefkes <christian at siefkes.net> wrote:
>>  So the problem isn't unfair prices, it's the fact that people have to sell
>>  their labor power, because they don't have anything else to sell. And this
>>  situation will necessarily arise in a market system (even in a fictitious
>>  scenario where initially everybody had some means to production--inevitable,
>>  some people would go bankrupt and again have only their labor power to sell).
> 
> This was at the heart of Marx's conflict with Proudhon and
> market-oriented Ricardian socialists like Thomas Hogskin.  As Maurice
> Dobb pointed out in his introduction to Contribution to the Critique
> of Political Economy, "unequal exchange" was "the kind of explanation
> that Marx was avoiding rather than seeking":  "It did not make
> exploitation consistent with the law of value and with market
> competition, but explained it by departures from, or imperfections in,
> the latter."  And this explanation left him vulnerable to a response
> from left-wing classical liberals, including market socialists like
> Hodgskin and the American individualist anarchists:  "join with us in
> demanding really free trade and then there can be no 'unequal
> exchanges' and exploitation."

The power of Marx argument is that he demonstrates that all the detrimental
effects of capitalism actually do occur regardless of unequal exchanges,
i.e. _even if all exchanges are equal and "fair"_. Hence, you can demand as
much as you like that all exchanges should be equal, you might even
completely realize that goal -- it won't make a difference. All the
detrimental results of capitalism (social inequality continually rising;
most people either having to work very much or live in poverty; competition
preventing interoperability and the free sharing of innovation; the need for
endless growth destroying Earth and people; etc.) will remain in place.

As for exploitation (Marx uses that word in a purely *technical* sense, not
in the *moral* sense as it is commonly understood), that's a different
matter. Exploitation results from the simple fact that capitalists can hire
people's labor power, and that the value produced by a worker is usually
higher than the value of her labor power.

Exploitation will usually only be possible if some people are *forced* to
sell their labor power because they have nothing only to sell. If they had
some means of production, it would usually make more sense for them to
employ these means and sell the *results of their labor*, rather than
selling their *labor power*, since in that way they can realize the full
value produced by their labor, not just the value of their labor power. But
the fact that there are people who have nothing except their labor power to
sell ("workers"), is an the inevitable outcome of any system based on trade
(exchange).

Hence you can't, as Marx shows, have it both ways: you can have trade (e.g.
"free trade") _and_ exploitation, or you can stop trading and end
exploitation. (The latter option requires that we regard the means of
production as commons and that we jointly, more or less loosely coordinated,
produce what we need and distribute it among ourselves--as is already the
case in commons-based peer production.) The choice is yours (ours), but it's
a choice you (we) have to make.

> This defensive posture was indicated, I think, by Engels' argument
> against the "force theory" in Anti-Duhring that the development of the
> wage system would have followed the same path even had there been no
> land expropriations, slavery, authoritarian state controls on labor,
> etc., involved in the primitive accumulation process.  In so doing, he
> essentially backtracked (apparently with Marx's approval, given that
> Marx is supposed to have examined the manuscripts) from Marx's
> brilliant historical analysis in vol. 1 of Capital.

The historical analysis you mention (I agree that it is brilliant) is
actually quite short, is comprises only chap. 24 (on the "so-called
primitive accumulation") of vol. 1. Marx always separates logical analysis
and historical developments--the rest of vol. 1, and most chapters of vol.
2+3, are dedicated to the logical analysis of the operations of capitalism,
where he shows that the division of most of humanity into two classes
("capitalists" who jointly control the means of production, and "workers"
who don't) is the inevitable outcome of market exchange (trade). So Engels
only confirms what Marx already demonstrates, with powerful arguments, in
his analysis of Capital.

[...]
> As a wide range of thinkers have pointed out, it is only possible to
> get labor to work for less than its full product only when it is
> deprived of independent access to the means of subsistence and
> production.

True--but how exactly can you avoid the possibility of bankruptcies and
other personal failures that would leave a person with nothing except her
labor power to sell, if, on the other hand, you want "free trade"?

Best regards
	Christian

-- 
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian at siefkes.net ---------
|   Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/   |   Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
|   Better Bayesian Analysis:           |   Peer Production Everywhere:
|   http://bart-project.com/            |   http://peerconomy.org/wiki/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
A man who serves academics is used to all forms of mental derangement and
behavioural aberration.
        -- Stephen Fry, The Liar

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