A response to Ownership and Privilege

I've been having a discussion with Larry over at the Barefoot Bum blog.
The conversation started with this post on labour and labour power. It was followed with a response post titled ownership and privilege. Please read those posts and the comments first or this won't make much sense.
I tried to post this as a comment but the comment software didn't like it, too wordy or something. So I'm posting it here and will comment a link to this post. I'm open to continuing the discussion here or on the original post. Without further ado, here is my reply:

As a minor point of clarification, I lifted that definition of capitalism off dictionary.com. I think it's a fairly reasonable one, I wouldn't have posted it if I disagreed, just wanted to attribute it properly.
Now, to more substantive matters.

This ownership is the direct privilege of the owner to produce what he pleases, at the rate he pleases, and exchange the products with whom he pleases for the price he pleases.

In theory at least, the capitalist is subject to the coercive forces of competitive markets. Say I own a small factory producing widgets. Initially I produce only a small number at an enormous profit margin. This creates a large productive surplus for myself, that I can either reinvest in expanding my widget empire or just fritter away on vacations or marble counter-tops or whatever (that being my privilege as the owner of capital). However, these excessive profit margins encourage another capitalist to come along and build his own widget factory and undercut my prices. This will lead to a price war until only the person who can produce widgets at the lowest price that will still result in a better return to their capital than other market opportunities will remain, and the price of widgets will approach their real cost. Now, of course this is strictly theoretical, there are all sorts of barriers to entry that can allow non-competitive or monopolistic industries to thrive. These situations are recognized in economic theory and the prevailing wisdom is that in these particular situations (the electrical grid or telephone networks are an example) it is appropriate to introduce some form of government regulation, or even outright control. More importantly than what theory dictates, this is how much of the western world generally runs its economies. In situations where a special interest group of some sort has managed to gain an industry that isn't subject to market forces (your prison and healthcare industries come to mind, or to be fair the energy industry in Alberta) then I think of that as corporatism, not capitalism.


First, a production surplus must be concentrated to employ as capital; a surplus equally distributed to the population will mostly be directly consumed. Second, capital is physically necessary to produce the physical things all human beings need — food, housing, clothing, etc. — to survive and prosper.

So how is capital concentrated and allocated in a communist model? Is it more a democratic process? Is there a kind of central stockpile of capital that groups can submit requests to that voters/workers vote to either allocate to or not? In theory I like the sound of that but I'd want to know more details before I was convinced it was a plausible means of allocation

By definition, the owners of concentrated capital can produce and exchange these products as they please, exempt from social controls. It therefore follows that the owners of capital have indirect privilege over the very survival of the population, and there is no systematic compensating privilege for the workers, the owners of only their own labor power.

Again I would argue that the allocation of capital is subject to market coercion. In aggregate, capital will flow to the areas where it can expect the highest return, or in other words, to produce the greatest amount. Regarding the privilege of the workers: Many companies offer stock options, which basically make employees mini capitalists. Also, I think the increased mobility of labour is worth considering. My first job out of college was working technical support. The company ran into financial trouble, their stock plummeted and was eventually frozen on the TSX at a couple cents a share for over a year. When I got wind of these changes I decided to find an alternative employer. I'm sure a lot of capitalists lost a lot of money in sunk costs on that company, meanwhile I got all the wages I earned during my employment, and enough experience to move on to a higher paying job at a more stable company. I understand that this is not always the case for workers. People who have been working in a factory all their lives only to have it close down are in for a very rough time. Fortunately, modern economic theory and policy recognizes this and realizes that it is of benefit to everyone to promote labour mobility and provide a social safety net for displaced workers.

I'd like to go back to a comment you made in the post we started this discussion on labour and labour power:
Probably not, or at least not much. The small capitalists (petite bourgeoisie) typically derive their income from their own labor, not from simple ownership of capital; their ownership is not absentee but instrumental, similar to a mechanic owning his tools.

So we agree that owning a certain level of capital, particularly human capital (like a doctor or engineer "owning" their degree) is not exploitative, at least not much. I also think, and I'm sure you'll agree that corporations, at least once they get to a certain size, have serious market distorting effects that they can use to realize gains that are detrimental to anyone but them. My question (and I'm really asking, I honestly have no idea) is where this change happens and how? Let's look at an example:
Sam Walton opens a convenience store, he hires some staff, works long hours in the store personally, and thanks to a solid management style and some innovative inventory and stocking methodologies manages to make a pretty tidy profit while providing jobs at a competitive wage and goods at prices lower than his competitors. At this point Sam is one of the petite capitalists you spoke of and I don't see how anything he's doing is harmful. At some point the business expands and become Wal-Mart, one of the biggest ugliest examples of capitalism gone wild, importing shitty products from wage slaves in china to be sold by disinterested disenfranchised employees in the west and (at least in the states) relying on government welfare to meet the basic needs of its employees. What the hell happened? Where did it go wrong? As an aside, try reading through as much of "The Wal-Mart triumph" as you can stomach and then going to an actual Wal-Mart, the contrast is depressingly absurd.

Roman Polanski

OK, I should really be doing homework right now, but I have to get this off my chest.
Why the hell is anyone (including Salman Rushdie, who until now I was very fond of) defending Roman Polanski? The guy admitted to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. Do I have to keep writing? I can't imagine any circumstances that would make this at all a defensible action. I'm honestly completely flabbergasted at the outpouring of support I've seen for the man on the internet. That's not to say everyone is with him of course, but a disturbing number of people seem to be willing to overlook the fact that he DRUGGED AND RAPED A CHILD because he had a hard life, or made good movies, or "hasn't he suffered enough?". Well, no, I don't really think so. Fuck Roman Polanski and the horse he rode in on.

Propagandhi!

I've been listening to these guys since around the 9th grade and I'm finally going to get to see them this Halloween. Here's "And we thought that nation-states were a bad idea" (maybe it's not so surprising I hold the political views I do, thanks Propagandhi)




Publicly subsidized! Privately profitable! That's the anthem of the upper-tier (the puppeteer untouchable). We focus a moment, nod in approval and bury our head back in the bar-codes of these neo-colonials while our former nemesis (ah, the romance!): the nation-state, now plays fund-raiser for a new brand of power-concentrate. Try again, but now we're confused- what is class-war? Is this class war? Yes, this is class war. And I'm just a kid- I can't believe that I gotta worry about this kind of shit!
What a stupid world! Yeah, this is just beautiful... absolutely no regard for principle. What a stupid world. (We're): 1) born 2) hired 3) disposed! Where that job lands, everybody knows and you can tell by the smile on the CEO's that the environmental restraints are about to go. You can bet that laws will be set to ensure the benefit of unrestricted labor-laws (all kept in place by displaced government death squads). They own us. They produce us. They consume us. Can you fucking believe this? What a stupid world. Fuck this bullshit display of class-loyalties. The media and our leaders wrap it all up in a flag- their fucking shit-rag. hooray!

Hans Rosling - Myths about the developing world

Life as music

Manufacturing Consent

Dear Americans

Please figure out this health care thing, I am really sick of all my favorite sites and stumble links talking about it. Also, I do not particularly care bout a Kennedy dying, or Michael Jackson for that matter.

Regards

Cornucrapia

Developing world teaching

Because we're on the topic, and because I found it interesting

Rights vs. Obligations

Regan says:

Your definition of a right is incorrect.

Using your definition of a right (you only have a right to things that other people don't have to provide for you) there are precious few rights that exist. Almost everything that we hold to be a "right" is provided either by other people directly (food/shelter/clothing) when we're helpless infants, or by society at large (right to free speech). Canada has a nice long list of things you're legally entitled to and education is one of them:

"Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."

From the universal declaration of human rights, which Canada signed. So when you say you don't consider education to be a right, I have to wonder where that comes from. You're legally guaranteed an education as a right in this country. It's not a "societal obligation" (as you further defined it in the comment section), it's a legal right, and there is a huge difference between two.

I suppose the short form of it is that I think that it's an important distinction whether or not education is a right or not, seeing as we're talking about alternatives to the current education system, which currently IS a legal right.

How I feel about any education reforms rest pretty heavily on whether or not it's a right or not. Suddenly taking that right away is a big deal. Is it a right (the actual definition of right) under your new system like it currently is?


I think the problem stems from a misunderstanding of my definitions. I don't regard whether something is enshrined in law or not as relevant to whether it is defined as a right or a societal obligation. For me, a right is something that you can lose, that is, I can say something and lose my job for it, depriving me of freedom of speech, or I can be sitting in my own home and have my right to privacy taken from me by someone spying. Contrariwise, societal obligations are things that society can fail to provide for me, such as food, shelter, medicine and education. Societies have an obligation to provide such things, because that is the function of a society, if a society deems the most effective way to provide those things is to enshrine them in law, excellent idea, similarly if a society decides that protecting the rights of individuals is best done through the rule of law, that's also excellent.

So, two questions: Are these workable, accurate definitions of rights and societal obligations? If so, is education a right or a societal obligation?

Get your snack on

Inspired by, and listened to during, a sweet, after work snack.