[p2p-research] against human rentals

Wed Aug 4 15:04:15 CEST 2010

thanks Chris, I senses that what you are trying to achieve is broadly
related to david's efforts,

Michel

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 6:09 PM, chris cook <cojock at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Michel
>
> I think that we must indeed look again at the legal protocols necessary to
> define property rights and the relationship between the subject individual
> and objects such as land/location; energy; and knowledge.
>
> It was Bentham who pointed out that Property is a relationship, not an
> object.  When we say 'Property' we actually should say "the object of a
> man's property' or an object that is 'proper' to the man.
>
> The property relationship is that bundle of rights and obligations -
> defined by protocols -  that connect the individual to productive assets
> like land, energy or knowledge.
>
> My innovation is to encapsulate - in what I call a 'Capital Partnership' -
> the property relationship in a consensual two way (reciprocal/ interactive)
> legal protocol rather than in a one way protocol imposed by statute ('Law')
> or judges (Common Law - 'Equity'). The French distinguish between the former
> as 'contrats de societe' and the latter as 'contrats de mandat', and it is
> our total reliance on absolute Anglo Saxon legal relationships and property
> rights which got us in the mess we are in.
>
> You might find this recent presentation at a 'systems thinking' conference
> of interest.
>
> http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/economic-systems-thinking230710
>
> It includes my approach to the 'Factors of Production' which form the basis
> of a political economy.
>
> It is the legal protocols which define our relationship with these factors
> and thereby enable the two economic relationships which together comprise
> Finance Capital ie Property and Money. I use consensual protocols - the
> Capital Partnership, and Guarantee Society - to define these relationships
> and to create the single continuum of what i have always termed 'Open
> Capital'.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Chris
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 14:03:13 +0700
> Subject: against human rentals
> From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> To: p2presearch at listcultures.org
> CC: dk at telekommunisten.net; free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com;
> nicholas at themediasociety.org; cojock at hotmail.com
>
>
> Dear friends,
>
> I sense the book below is making a very important argument, and I'd like to
> feature it as book of the week,
>
> however, I'd like assistance in contextualizing the debate, I'm thinking of
> Kevin in particular here?
>
> see http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy
>
>
>  Case for Economic Democracy
> From P2P Foundation
> Jump to: navigation<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#column-one>,
> search <http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#searchInput>
> *= an argument for the Labor Theory of Property<http://p2pfoundation.net/Labor_Theory_of_Property>which opposes "human rentals" (or wage labour) on principled grounds of
> inalienable human rights.*
>
>
>
>    - Book: PROPERTY AND CONTRACT IN ECONOMICS: The *Case for Economic
>    Democracy*. David P. Ellerman*
>
> Available via http://www.ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Books/P&C-Book.pdf
>
>
>    Contents[hide]
>
>    - 1 Summary<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#Summary>
>    - 2 Excerpts<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#Excerpts>
>       - 2.1 Introduction<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#Introduction>
>       - 2.2 Conclusion<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#Conclusion>
>    - 3 More Information<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy#More_Information>
>
> [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy?title=Case_for_Economic_Democracy&action=edit&section=1>
> ] Summary"The book is divided into three main parts. In Part I, the focus
> is on property, principally the descriptive and normative questions of
> property appropriation. The conventional view of property appropriation is
> clouded by a basic myth which needs to be cleared away before the questions
> can even be adequately posed. Then the functioning of the property system–in
> the presence of the employment contract–can be analyzed. The normative
> perspective is provided by the old "labor theory of property" which is
> simply the usual juridical norm of imputation applied to the matter of
> property appropriation. The history of the labor theory of property has
> always been obscured by the confusion with the labor theory of value, a
> confusion sponsored for different reasons by both Marxian economists and
> neo-classical economists. That intellectual history is analyzed and a number
> of standard misinterpretations of the labor theory of property are
> discussed.
> In Part II, the focus is on contract, principally the employer-employee
> contract and its individual and collective predecessors, the voluntary
> self-sale contract and the Hobbesian pactum subjectionis. Here we find the
> analysis of intellectual history to be most revealing. Liberal capitalism
> presents the most basic social question as being "consent or coercion."
> Slavery and autocracy lie on the side of coercion while capitalism and
> democracy are grouped together on the side of consent. But we find a
> different story. We find that the most sophisticated defenses of slavery and
> autocracy were in fact liberal and based those institutions on implicit or
> explicit voluntary slavery contracts or political pacts of subjugation.
> The definitive answer to the liberal defenses of slavery and non-democratic
> government came not from general liberal appeals to consent or from
> procedural fussing about the reality of the "implicit contracts" but from
> the doctrine of inalienable rights that descends from the Enlightenment. The
> real point of debate turns out not to be "consent or coercion" but
> "alienable or inalienable basic rights." As noted above, neo-classical
> economic theory and liberal capitalist ideology contain no coherent and
> uncontrived notion of inalienability that would rule out vote-selling, the
> self-sale contract, or the Hobbesian pactum subjectionis. Yet these
> prohibitions are fundamental to the modern western democracies. Thus we find
> the usual correlation of capitalism with democracy to be superficial. On the
> real question of alienable or inalienable natural rights, capitalism lies on
> one side of the fence and democracy on the other.
> We resurrect the Enlightenment doctrine of inalienable rights (called the
> "de facto theory of inalienable rights") and present it in modern terms.
> That old doctrine of inalienable rights has considerable "bite" left in it.
> In fact, it supplies a critique of the contract for renting human beings, a
> contract which could also be viewed as the limited Hobbesian pactum
> subjectionis for the workplace, namely the employer-employee contract. The
> theory concludes that the employment contract is invalid "in the light of
> natural law" (to use the older language).
> Parts I and II of the book are written for "intelligent general reader."
> Part III applies the results of Parts I and II, namely the labor theory of
> property and the de facto theory of inalienable rights, to economics. Here
> it is assumed that the reader has an acquaintance with upper level
> undergraduate economics.
> The initial focus in Part III is on descriptive theoretical flaws in
> capital theory and in general equilibrium theory (the Arrow-Debreu model)
> that purports to prove the possibility of a competitive equilibrium with
> positive pure profits. Then the focus turns to marginal productivity (MP)
> theory which plays the role of both a descriptive and a normative theory in
> neo-classical economics. A single corn-and-labor model is developed so that
> marginal productivity theory, the Marxian labor theory of value and
> exploitation, and the labor theory of property can all be compared and
> contrasted in the same model.
> Finally, the basics of a modern theory of property and contract are
> sketched. The theory has both a descriptive and a normative side.
> Neo-classical economics has a "fundamental theorem" which relates the
> notions of competitive equilibrium and allocative efficiency. We develop the
> similar notions for property theory and sketch the fundamental theorem of
> property theory.
> The ideas and theories resurrected and developed in this book are in sharp
> structural and paradigmatic conflict with the conventional wisdom in
> economics and legal theory. The arguments presented here are developed in
> the form of a running debate with this conventional wisdom–a debate that is
> summarized at the end of most chapters. The debate is difficult at times to
> follow since the conventional wisdom does not even pose the right questions.
> Pouring better wine into the wrong bottles will not suffice. New bottles are
> developed–or rather, much older bottles are rediscovered and refurbished for
> modern usage."
> [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy?title=Case_for_Economic_Democracy&action=edit&section=2>
> ] Excerpts [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Case_for_Economic_Democracy?title=Case_for_Economic_Democracy&action=edit&section=3>
> ] IntroductionIntroduction: End of the "Great Debate", by David Ellerman:
> The Great Debate between Capitalism and Socialism is at last over. The free
> market and private property have decisively won. Does that mean the "end of
> ideology" or the "end of history"? Can we rest assured that there are no
> fundamental structural flaws in the western-style economy? Our legal system
> is structured to forbid discrimination on the basis of race, but racism
> persists. Is that the only type of social problem that remains–where the
> structure is correct in principle but the implementation is flawed?
> We shall argue that the current western-style economic system is
> fundamentally and structurally flawed. The problems are not just in the
> implementation of sound principles. Moreover, we shall argue that the system
> is flawed because it violates the principles of the institutions that are
> usually associated with capitalism. That is, it violates the basic
> principles of both private property and democracy. From the conventional
> point of view, this will seem to be a strange position. Isn't capitalism
> usually identified with private property and democracy? That identification
> has been based on the Great Capitalism-Socialism Debate, on assuming that
> "the alternative" to capitalism is state ownership of businesses and
> one-party dictatorships. But that debate is over, and accordingly capitalism
> can now be evaluated in a new light.
> Since "capitalism" is so often definitionally identified with a private
> property market economy, we must give a more precise definition of
> "capitalism" so that we are not just arguing about definitions. By
> "capitalism" we mean production organized on the basis of the
> employer-employee relationship. We shall also use "the employment system" or
> "employer-employee system" as more accurate but less known names of the
> system based on the employer-employee relation. The alternative is a private
> property market economy where everyone is self-employed (individually or
> jointly) in their workplace. A firm where the managers and workers are
> jointly working for themselves will be called a "self-employment firm," a
> "worker-owned firm" (where "worker" always includes all who work in the
> business enterprise), or a "democratic firm" in contrast to the conventional
> "capitalist firm" or "employment firm."
> The basis question is this –the employer-employee relation or universal
> self-employment in the workplace?
> We shall have more that one occasion to use a slavery analogy. Consider a
> private property market economy where the workers were largely privately
> owned slaves, like the American economy before the Civil War. Suppose the
> defenders of such a system managed to restrict consideration of an
> alternative to a system of state businesses with state or socially owned
> slaves. The "Great Debate" would be between the "Athenian" model of
> privately owned slaves and the "Spartian" model of publicly owned slaves.
> The Athenian model would most likely be more efficient. Over the years, it
> would demonstrate its superior efficiency while the Spartian model might
> eventually collapse under its own weight. Would the victory of the Athenian
> model of private slave ownership signal the "end of history"? Would the
> victory mean that the Athenian model contained no structural flaws, only
> problems of implementing otherwise correct principles?
> The Great Debate of our day has been similar except that the question has
> been the voluntary private or public hiring (or renting) of workers instead
> of the private or public ownership of workers. In spite of its political
> importance, the public-private debate has been conceptually wrong-headed
> from the beginning. The real question about slavery is not the public or
> private ownership of slaves but whether the master-slave relationship should
> be allowed (involuntarily or voluntarily) or should people always be
> self-owning (which implies that the right of self-determination should be
> inalienable even with consent). Today, the real question is not about the
> public or private employment of workers (as it was in the
> capitalism-socialism debate). The question is: should the hiring or renting
> of people be allowed at all or should people always be self-employed in the
> their place of work?
> Some would say that the universal self-employment system should be
> presented as a variant of capitalism rather than an alternative. That may
> be; there is no need to argue only about words. But there are conceptual and
> historical reasons to use the word "capitalism" exclusively to represent the
> employer-employee system so long as one is clear, precise, and explicit
> about that usage. When people are self-employed in their firms, then the
> suppliers of capital are not hiring the workers. Labor (in the sense of all
> the people, managers and blue-collar workers, who work in the firm) is
> hiring capital. Since Labor would then be the "residual claimant" (the party
> receiving the profits left from the revenues after the costs are covered),
> it would be odd to call that arrangement a variant of "capital-ism." In any
> case, *the reader has been forewarned; "capitalism" herein refers to the
> use of the employer-employee system. The alternative is a private property
> market economy based on universal self-employment*.
> ...
>
> We have considered a number of areas where conventional economics is
> directly at odds with the legal structure of the western democracies.
> Modern legal systems · prohibit vote-selling by citizens,
> · prohibit voluntary self-sale contracts between adults,
> · take basic political rights of self-determination to be inalienable,
> · would not recognize any political pactum subjectionis, and
> · impute responsibility only to persons (never to things regardless of
> their "productivity").
> All these practices are in direct conflict with the most fundamental
> recommendations of conventional economics. On the one hand, economics does
> not advocate that these practices be changed to be consistent with economic
> theory and, on the other hand, it does not give a coherent and uncontrived
> explanation of why these practices should be considered as "exceptions." In
> short, economics tends to duck these basic issues. There have always been
> these intimations of structural shortcomings, lacuna, and flaws in
> conventional economics. Economics has only seemed to be coherent and
> complete theory because it chooses to ignore the paradigm-threatening
> discrepancies between the theory and the legal structure of the modern
> western democracies.
>
> The discrepancies outlined above between received economics and modern
> legal systems are not minor problems that can be patched up without
> disturbing the basic paradigm of neo-classical theory. They drive to the
> core of the notions of property and contract. Hence this book is about
> property and contract. It is not simply that the concepts of standard
> economics need to be applied with even more cleverness to resolve these
> discrepancies. New concepts need to be developed–or rather old concepts need
> to be rediscovered, dusted off, and represented in modern terms. Hence our
> theoretical discussions will be interrupted by forays into the intellectual
> history of ideas almost totally unknown in the conventional histories of
> economic thought." (
> http://www.ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Books/P&C-Book.pdf)
>
>
> --
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>
>
>
>
>

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