[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/16/09, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, as you say, if the *consumer* is the owner, this is true (or can
>  be true for experienced gardeners) even for a single-owner plot, and
>  almost always will be true for a multi-owner (owned by multiple
>  consumers) plot since their price for the product will then be exactly
>  cost without the needless drain of profit.
>
>  When *consumers* are the owners, production is for "use value"
>  (product) instead of "exchange value" (profit).

It doesn't require the consumer to be owner.  It simply requires that
all production be undertaken with the primary purpose of consumption:
either with the producer producing directly for his own consumption,
or for direct exchange with other producers.

>  But the article seems to focus on "exchange value" (profit), with no
>  regard for "use value" (product) at all.  Typical wrong-headed,
>  business-oriented, scarcity-seeking mentality.

> The concept of "cash crops" is as vile and destructive as any and all
>  "for profit" business since the only purpose of that production is to
>  keep price above cost (to collect profit from the consumer).  This is,
>  unfortunately, also the case for all "worker owned" business.

I think you're confusing profit with exchange value, and conflating
two different senses of the term "profit," as well as neglecting the
importance of exchange value.

Exchange value, absent artificial scarcity rents and monopolies, is
simply a way of quantifying the cost of production inputs including
labor.  To use Michel's example downthread, the portion of exchange
value added from the supply and distribution chain SHOULD be greater
when oil costs $400/barrel than when it costs $60/barrel, and when the
good is produced in China than when it is produced in the neighboring
town.

Profit in the sense of long-term scarcity rents that don't diminish in
the face of free market entry is bad.  Profit in the sense of
temporary quasi-rents over natural exchange value are good because
they serve as a signaling mechanism to direct resources to where they
are most  valued; such "profits" are a self-correcting problem, if
market entry and the flow of production factors are free.

> Even if he cannot do the work himself (let's say an accident has left
>  him paralyzed), he will benefit tremendously by owning the plot of
>  land and the tools needed for that work, since he will then only pay
>  for the costs of production (wages are also a cost) and never for
>  profit.

I know consumer-owned production is a big thing to you, Patrick, but
as a wage slave of many years duration I regard producer sovereignty
over production as equally important.  As Dan Clore put it, the
"consumer is king" bit doesn't work out so well when you have to be a
slave for eight hours a day, and your only compensation is getting to
play king for a bit when you go to the store.

I think that in a free society of self-employed producers dealing with
each other as equals, when there are no artificial scarcities or
monopoly to enable one to extort from the other, most of the problems
you object to will be gone.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html