XPost: alt.anarchism, alt.politics, alt.politics.socialism   
   XPost: alt.politics.liberalism   
   From: jamesd@echeque.com   
      
   James A. Donald:   
   > > But, in fact, a large proportion of capital that is   
   > > actually invested is in fact this sort of   
   > > [smallholder] capital.  By and large, stuff is not   
   > > owned by enormously wealthy plutocrats, but rather   
   > > by older successful middle class people.   
      
   Haines Brown   
   > If we fixate on the distribution of capital among its   
   > individual owners, we inevitably fail to grasp the   
   > dynamics of the capitalist system and as a result are   
   > unable to struggle against it. I would like to   
   > elaborate this point a bit in terms of a broader   
   > consideration of just how we start out to represent   
   > the system in thought.   
   >   
   > One reason for my strong objection to a reduction of   
   > our conception of society to the sum of the   
   > characteristics of its individual members (such as now   
   > much productive capital they own) is that it makes   
   > authentic (i.e., grassroots) social change virtually   
   > impossible.   
      
   This could be rephrased as "If we pay attention to the   
   way capitalism actually works, we notice that abolishing   
   capitalism will require great violence against a great   
   many people, not just against a few bloated plutocrats,   
   so pay no attention"   
      
   > We must understand the system as a whole in dynamic   
   > terms so that we grasp both its limits and its real   
   > potentials in order to act effectively in terms of it.   
      
   I would rephrase this as "Thinking in terms of   
   abstractions, rather than living people, makes it easier   
   to envisage liquidating those abstractions, while   
   thinking about liquidating one's neighbors is   
   disturbing"   
      
   > A reductionism makes such action impossible. It makes   
   > real potentials at best mere inferences that can have   
   > no determinate relation with anything else.   
      
   "Determinate relations" are actions. A causes B, is A   
   doing B. If you say the capitalist class does X, it is   
   pretty obvious that X is a crime.  If you say Joe does   
   x, it pretty silly to suggest that x is crime.   
      
   For example "The market" dictates what pay we shall   
   receive, and what price we shall pay.  So obviously "the   
   market" must be oppressing us, and must be met by   
   violence.  But Joe the supermarket owner obviously does   
   not dictate his prices, nor what he can pay his   
   suppliers or his cash register girls, and it is   
   transparently ridiculous to suggest that his prices must   
   be dictated by laws and force. (Which does not stop   
   politicians from doing that, but their silliness is   
   evident, so they do not do it too much)   
      
   > To reduce the capitalist system to an effect of greedy   
   > individuals gets us into trouble. For example, let us   
   > suppose that somehow all capital is equally   
   > distributed among the entire population. What then has   
   > changed?   
      
   Not much, and in a few years the capital would be back   
   in the hands of mostly the same sort of people as when   
   it started.  Indeed, there is a Scrooge McDuck comic   
   about this hypothetical.   
      
   > The basic issue is whether capital is owned privately   
   > or socially, not who owns it or how much individual   
   > capital owners happen to possess. Why is this? Because   
   > privately owned capital is subject to private   
   > interests, and private interests represent a reduction   
   > of the social whole to some (or in our hypothetical   
   > example here, the sum of all) of its parts   
      
   This statement can be rephrased as "capitalism is   
   inconsistent with totalitarianism, and totalitarianism   
   is obviously good, for everyone should do what is good   
   for society, rather than good for themselves."   
      
   >. As a result, while the part (the individual) will   
   > presumably acquire more disposable wealth because of   
   > the redistribution of capital, society does not   
   > develop as a result of it.   
      
   On the contrary, the only societies that do develop are   
   capitalist - recent examples of societies switching from   
   socialism to capitalism are India and China.  Stagnated   
   while socialist, developed while capitalist.   The   
   alleged development of the Soviet Union turns out to be   
   more a matter of conquering advanced countries and   
   stealing their stuff.   
      
   > Private ownership of the means of production   
   > necessarily means the relative impoverishment of   
   > society, and the best capitalism can do is to provide   
   > workers with sufficient means for their social   
   > reproduction at the level required by the current   
   > state of economic production (the market value of   
   > labor; subsistence wages).   
      
   But obviously, the more capitalist society, the richer   
   the people - America and Hong Kong being paradigmatic   
   examples.  Cuban society *and* individuals are   
   impoverished.   
      
   > Only when this does not suffice is the capitalist   
   > state forced to attend to needs of the social whole,   
   > such as the road system, education, national defense,   
   > etc., and to the extent it does so, it opens greater   
   > room for individual development.   
      
   But again, the roads and public facilities in Cuba and   
   North Korea are dreadful.   
      
   In practice, the main goods produced by socialist   
   societies are means of control - barbed wire, weapons,   
   stuff like that.  The entire wealth and intellectual   
   energy of the nation is channeled towards the costs of   
   coercion, rather than meeting personal needs.  When the   
   Soviet Union fell, its civilian goods, cars and   
   suchlike, were revealed as shoddy imitations, a Potemkin   
   village of modernity, which no one would buy at any   
   price if they had a choice, a cardboard mockup of a   
   developed economy, but their guns, their night vision   
   goggles, stuff like that, were pretty good, and quite   
   saleable.   
      
   > The argument I've sketched above turns out to be the   
   > same as that used to explain economic exploitation at   
   > the point of production. The capitalist purchases   
   > labor power in the labor market, where he pays a fair   
   > price for it as he does for the other factors of   
   > production (in principle, all's fair in the   
   > marketplace). Although production yields greater value   
   > than the sum of its input values (surplus value is   
   > what motivates production), the worker gets little of   
   > it.   
      
   But he gets most of it.  As I posted earlier:   
   : :	most production goes to ordinary people: The   
   : :	bulk of cars built and sold are ordinary   
   : :	cars, the bulk of  houses built and sold are   
   : :	ordinary houses. This is consistent with the   
   : :	national accounts which show that the bulk of   
   : :	pre tax income goes to labor, and the only a   
   : :	small portion goes to capital.   
      
   > In the cases of both the private ownership of capital   
   > and of the wage system, we can only explain things by   
   > treating them as emergent processes in which the   
   > emergent whole is more than (has lower entropy than)   
   > the sum of its parts. I here resist as best I can any   
   > reductionist approach. A double reductionism is   
   > characteristic of capitalist ideology: it reduces the   
   > whole to its parts (social atomism), and it reduces   
   > the whole to empiria (empiricism).   
      
   I would rephrase this as "It focusses on the rights of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)