[p2p-research] [Commoning] Fwd: article: Markets vs Free Markets by Center for a Stateless Society

[Kevin Carson]

 On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Brigitte Kratzwald
 <brigitte.kratzwald at attac.at> wrote:


 > 1.They say: „The only alternative to a market is to have rationing by
 > command.“ It is exactly this argument that kills any discussion by
 > reducing it to this either-or-position. There are a lot of possibilities
 > in between, one of them, also I wouldn't favour it so much, is the
 > Keynesian Welfare State. And another one, I favour much more, is
 > commoning, the democratic, need-oriented control of production by all
 > people concerned.

Well, I would argue that Keynesianism itself is not a response to
problems that emerged from a genuine free market, but rather to a
maldistribution of purchasing power itself caused by a sort of
"rationing by command":  namely reduced wages from the reduced
bargaining power of labor, and increased rents to the propertied
classes resulting from artificial scarcities and artificial scarcity.

When such artificial scarcity rents polarize income, economies are
destabilized in the ways described by underconsumptionist theories
like those of J.A. Hobson and Keynes.  And there are only two possible
responses:  either to partially correct the maldistribution of
purchasing power through redistributive measures and aggregate demand
stimulus, or to remove the artificial property rights.

> > 2.They complain about the banks' „unnatural control over buying labor and
> > selling their products.“ But they do not question, whether buying labour
> > and selling products, i.e. commodities, is the best way to organise the
> > production and reproduction of our lives.

The sale of labor-power and buying and selling of goods on the market
are two separate issues.  It's possible to have a market economy where
cooperatively organized production predominates.  And I'm pretty sure,
given past feedback from Anna Morgenstern, that she would argue that
wage labor would be less common (and better paid where it exists) if
the effects of artificial property rights on the bargaining power of
labor were removed.  Also, most left-wing market anarchists like me
and Morgenstern define a "market" to include all non-coercive economic
transactions between consenting individuals--including gift economies,
communalism, etc.  So market anarchism would be fully consistent with
the decentralized production of a majority of needs in the
informal/household economy.

> > 3.Markets, even if they are „free“, allocate commodities according to how
> > much money one has and not according to needs. Even, if they suppose, that
> > money would be distributed more equal in their system, this is
> > questionable.

I think it's quite likely.  I don't think it would be possible to
amass fortunes in the hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars,
absent artificial property rights and artificial scarcity rents.  And
the threshold of comfortable subsistence, given the removal of all
forms of mandated artificial overhead cost of everyday living (as Paul
Goodman put it, there's a 300% or 400% markup in the cost of doing
anything, and decent poverty becomes impossible), would be much lower.
 The largest concentrations of wealth that could be achieved by
genuine effort and entrepreneurship would probably be in the low
millions of dollars, because the reward for innovation would result
entirely from first-mover advantages rather than entry barriers
enabling the innovator to live forever off the rents of one-hit
wonders.  So a genuine market society, without entry barriers and
artificial scarcity rents, would probably have a distribution of
wealth ranging from large pebbles to small rocks, instead of--as at
present--boulders to dust.

> > 4.The focus on the market still reduces people to consumers, and social
> > relations to economic relations, instead of stressing the importance of
> > co-operative production and democratic regulation as commons do.

Commons are a fully legitimate form of property even in a society with
free market exchange.  There's no more incompatibility between a
market and democratically regulated common property than there is
between a market and non-monetized relations within a household.

> > 5.And at last, the notion of „free marktes“ as far as I know, should
> > support circulation and thus stimulate consumption and possibly is useful
> > for situations of deficiency. But in our situation, where it is about
> > reducing consumption of ressources I don't think that free markets are a
> > solution. It is the big value of a commons' perspective that it is
> > possible to combine social justice with sustainable ressource use.

The market, as such, does not presuppose any particular theory of
property rights.  Property rights rules should be defined, IMO, so as
to internalize as many costs as possible and minimize externalities.
Also, the traditional common law of public and private nuisance should
be restored to its full vigor, as it existed before American state
courts in the mid-19th century rendered it more "commerce-friendly."
To a large extent, the dumbed-down standards of the regulatory state
have preempted far more stringent tort liability standards.  For
example, I'd like to see the price of oil reflect tort damages for the
effect of land subsidence in the Gulf coast region in contributing to
hurricane damage.  I'd also like to see oil tankers pay the full price
of maintaining the security of sea lanes, instead of externalizing it
on the Navy.  I'd like to see the coal mining companies subject to
tort action for the full effects of mountaintop removal in destroying
entire watersheds.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html