[p2p-research] against human rentals

[Alex Rollin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hodgskin
Breakthrough from the early 1800s!

Thomas Hodgskin (b. 12 December 1787 Chatham, Kent, d. - 21 August
1869 Feltham, Middlesex) was an English socialist writer on political
economy, critic of capitalism, free-market anarchist[1] and defender
of free trade and early trade unions.
Born of a father who worked in the Chatham Naval Dockyard, Hodgskin
joined the navy at the age of 12. He rose rapidly through the ranks in
the years of naval struggle with the French to the rank of first
lieutenant. Following the naval defeat of the French the opportunities
for advancement closed and Hodgskin increasingly ran into disciplinary
trouble with his superiors, eventually leading to his court martial
and dismissal in 1812. This prompted his first book An Essay on Naval
Discipline (1813) a scathing critique of the brutal authoritarian
regime then current in the navy.
Entering Edinburgh University for study he later came to London in
1815 and entered the utilitarian circle around Francis Place, Jeremy
Bentham and James Mill. With their support he spent the next five
years in a programme of travel and study around Europe which resulted,
inter alia, in a second book "Travels in North Germany" (1820).
After 3 years in Edinburgh, Hodgskin returned to London in 1823 as a
journalist. Influenced by, amongst others, Jean Baptiste Say, his
views on political economy had diverged from the utilitarian orthodoxy
of David Ricardo and James Mill. During the controversy around the
parliamentary acts to first legalise and then ban worker's
"combinations" Mill and Ricardo had been in favour of the ban whereas
Hodgskin supported the right to organise. Taking Ricardo's labour
theory of value he used it to denounce the appropriation of the most
part of value produced by the labour of industrial workers as
illegitimate. He propounded these views in a series of lectures at the
London Mechanics Institute where he debated with William Thompson with
whom he shared the critique of capitalist expropriation but not the
proposed remedy. The results of these lectures and debates he
published as "Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital" (1825),
"Popular Political Economy" (1827) and "Natural and Artificial Right
of Property Contrasted" (1832). The title of "Labour Defended" was a
jibe at James Mill's earlier "Commerce Defended" and signalled his
opposition to the latters taking sides with the capitalists against
their employees.
Though his criticism of Employers appropriation of the lion's share of
the value produced by their employees went on to influence subsequent
generations of socialists, including Karl Marx, Hodgskin's fundamental
Deist beliefs identified production and exchange based on the labour
theory of value (freed from the supposedly illegitimate expropriations
of rent, interest and owner's profits) as part of "natural right", the
divinely ordained proper relations of society contrasted to
"artificial" contrivances — the source of disharmonies and conflicts.
He rejected the proto-communism of William Thompson and Robert Owen by
the same appeal to "natural right".
In 1823 Hodgskin joined forces with Joseph Clinton Robinson in
founding the "Mechanics Magazine". In the October 1823 edition
Hodgskin and Francis Place wrote a manifesto for a Mechanics
Institute. This would be more than a technical school but a place
where practical studies could be combined with practical reflection
about the condition of society. The inaugural meeting to found the
Institute took place in 1823 but the idea was taken over by people of
less radical views concerned about Hodgskin's unorthodox economic
views including George Birkbeck a well known educator from Glasgow.
Despite his high profile in the agitated revolutionary times of the
1820s, he retreated into the realm of Whig journalism after the Reform
Act 1832. He became an advocate of free trade and spent 15 years
writing for The Economist. He worked on the paper with its founder
James Wilson and with the young Herbert Spencer. Hodgskin viewed the
demise of the Corn Laws as the first step to the downfall of
government and his libertarian anarchism was regarded as too radical
by many of the liberals of the Anti-Corn Law League. He left the
Economist in 1857. He continued working as a journalist for the rest
of his life.

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi kevin,
>
> i think your notion here of severable agreements is a breakthrough concept,
> and really hope you can elaborate, eventually for a blog entry,
>
> this may be the analogical concept to forking in the domain of physical
> resources,
>
> Michel
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Kevin Carson
> <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 8/6/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > yes, that sounds like a good transitional approach,
>> >
>> > by the way, I think that generally speaking, peer to peer differs and
>> >  moves
>> > away from the classic socialist approach by insisting on the maximum
>> > amount
>> > of personal sovereignty and control of the means of production ... i.e.
>> > it
>> > distrusts collective ownership that can be appropriated by institutions
>> > and
>> > the state, in favour of both individual and collectivist formst that are
>> > under maximum control of the individual who can freely invest or
>> > withdraw
>> > his productive resources,
>>
>> The individualist anarchists in America (and Hodgskin in England, who
>> was something of a kindred spirit) were socialists who also took the
>> ultra-individualist stance you describe.  Their position was that the
>> important thing was to remove monopoly rents on land and capital, and
>> then let free individuals cooperate (or not) as they saw fit.  Josiah
>> Warren, in particular, the ancestor of the American individualist
>> movement, had a temperamental aversion to all forms of cooperation
>> that didn't involve completely severable interests (e.g., he thought
>> that in cooperative production each separate piece of machinery should
>> be owned by one and only one person, with no joint shares in
>> anything).
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
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