[flagged]
It's too late now, but it would be lovely to go back in time, say 50 years, and keep plugging away with attempts to undermine the ideologies: there is no such thing as an 'economy', still less 'economic growth' (and as for 'sustainable' growth ...).
We'd probably still lose though. The winners have already bought up half of New Zealand to retire to as things go increasingly awry amongst the general population.
Even the mention of a critique of capitalism rather than a particular "implementation" or set of policies within a capitalist instance is enough to rile people up and turn them off what you're saying. Thankfully, in (some) academic circles there is much less of this kind of uncritical backlash against challenging orthodoxies.
When Marx wrote,
>Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine: “Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. [Follow your own course, and let people talk – paraphrased from Dante]
Little did he know, these prejudices of public opinion would get us to the catastrophe we're heading towards now, both culturally (Adorno et al.), ecologically (Bookchin, Patrick Murray) and socially (Marx, Marcuse, Althusser etc.)
True on the warning though I think I'd dispute the 'clearly' aspect. As a philosophy undergrad (admittedly in a dept with a solidly 'analytic' tendency) I found that kind of stuff (from fairly glancing acquaintance) a bit indigestible. In any case AFAIK it never found much demotic expression, so was never going to be politically very useful. Zizek's closer perhaps. But still hardly enough to lift the curtain for most not academically acculturated.
Most of us have no idea that common sense is ideological, and, by and large, academia hasn't done much to help this situation.
a) Generate similar aggregate wealth to capitalism.
b) Generate less aggregate wealth, but similar or better median wealth by more equal distribution.
c) Median wealth isn't something we should even care about.
d) Some other thing I didn't think of and if so what is that thing?
I do not think that a post-capitalist society would be capable of producing with the efficiency of the capitalist system, but I also don't think that such a level of production is necessary or even desirable if we must also balance efficiency and productivity with a happy society. In particular, it's up to us to decide which are false needs and which are true needs. Marcuse critiqued the nature of technology in capitalism as using the worker (i.e the worker is merely an appendage of the machine) rather than being used by the worker, and the fact that the benefits time-wise are captured by those who own the machines, not those who are replaced by them.
On the other hand, technology is continually improving, and a post-capitalist society must necessarily be placed (if it is to exist at all) at a later point than capitalist society, and capitalist society carries with it a great many inefficiencies, such as the multiple reproduction of research due to firms holding trade secrets, Bitcoin mining, cycles of overproduction etc.
I also don't think it's merely an issue of equitable distribution; the critique of capitalism isn't focused on what's "fair", since as Marx pointed out, doesn't the capitalist or liberal say that the current distribution is fair? The issue seems to be much more with ownership of productive capacity in society and the qualitative nature of the production process, in particular concerning abstract labour.
As such, I think I'd go with (b), but there are elements of (a) and (c) is worthy of consideration because perhaps "wealth" in the terms we'd think of as comparable with capitalism (ownership of money, individual ownership of capital) would not be good measures of "wealth" in a future society, especially given the current crisis of [capitalist] wealth at the cost of ecological damage.
That is literally true of course, but in order to be actionable it's got to have plausible alternatives. A critique without an alternative can be interesting, but isn't very useful on its own.
> I do not think that a post-capitalist society would be capable of producing with the efficiency of the capitalist system, but I also don't think that such a level of production is necessary or even desirable if we must also balance efficiency and productivity with a happy society. In particular, it's up to us to decide which are false needs and which are true needs. Marcuse critiqued the nature of technology in capitalism as using the worker (i.e the worker is merely an appendage of the machine) rather than being used by the worker, and the fact that the benefits time-wise are captured by those who own the machines, not those who are replaced by them.
I agree with this in principle, but it raises the question: When is that time? The thing about production is that when more stuff gets made, people get lifted out of poverty. When food gets mass produced and cheap, hunger starts to disappear, for instance.
For instance, suppose we were to freeze growth in the present instant. Hold world GDP constant for the rest of time. If we take all 80 trillion dollars of that and spread it evenly over the current human population, that's about $11,000 per year per person. Certainly, an enormous step up for many, or even most, people. But do we really want to stop there? Is that 'enough' material well-being for everyone to be content with?
> On the other hand, technology is continually improving, and a post-capitalist society must necessarily be placed (if it is to exist at all) at a later point than capitalist society, and capitalist society carries with it a great many inefficiencies, such as the multiple reproduction of research due to firms holding trade secrets, Bitcoin mining, cycles of overproduction etc.
Indeed there are major inefficiencies in decentralized systems. This is why 'firms' form even inside of capitalist economies. A firm is a command-and-control micro-economy inside of a market economy. They form because of the transaction costs of markets. Unfortunately, for large scale coordination, most other systems haven't seemed to work very well.
> I also don't think it's merely an issue of equitable distribution; the critique of capitalism isn't focused on what's "fair", since as Marx pointed out, doesn't the capitalist or liberal say that the current distribution is fair? The issue seems to be much more with ownership of productive capacity in society and the qualitative nature of the production process, in particular concerning abstract labour.
I'm not personally too concerned with 'fairness' either. I think it's a concept that can be massaged into saying almost whatever the person proposing it would like. What I do see though is the growth produced by capitalism lifting a very large number of very real people out of poverty, even though it may be unfair that a small number of people are made hyper-wealthy in the process, that doesn't negate the fact that a very large number of people are, in absolute terms, better off than they were before.
It seems to me that many critiques of capitalism are arguing over the relative size of the pie slices, while ignoring the fact that in absolute terms, everyone has a bigger slice than they would under other systems. And while there are quasi-reasonable arguments for pure concern with inequality (e.g. that people derive their sense of self-worth from their relative position), i'm not sure I buy them as governing principles of a large scale polity.
> As such, I think I'd go with (b), but there are elements of (a) and (c) is worthy of consideration because perhaps "wealth" in the terms we'd think of as comparable with capitalism (ownership of money, individual ownership of capital) would not be good measures of "wealth" in a future society, especially given the current crisis of [capitalist] wealth at the cost of ecological damage.
Just to clarify, the definition of 'wealth' i'm using is more in the sense of purchasing power. In other words, when walmart cuts the price you have to pay for a chair in half, that increases your wealth, even if the number in your bank account is unchanged.
The standard capitalist answer to issues like ecological damage is externality pricing. That is, you should treat the environment as a public good and charge people money commensurate with the damage they do to it. Is there a reason you think that isn't a viable solution?
The first part of the statement only makes sense if you take the second part; people are lifted out of poverty not because more stuff is being made, but because with more stuff being made, more people can afford it. I'm not talking about eliminating growth, I'm saying that the way society operates at the moment (which I view as through exploitation and coercion) has given us such a vast product, but the issue isn't of needing to "grow" at the rate we currently are to solve issues such as hunger, it's to allocate resources according to who needs them rather than the profit that can be made from them.
Nobody, not even Marx himself, would doubt the quantitative number of people that capitalism has brought out of poverty, but neither would anyone really doubt how many then-slaves in the Roman Empire were rescued from wretched conditions of not even being able to get by. The question is not whether capitalism is "good" or not, it's whether we can acheive the same or better advances in other systems which come without various negative qualitative aspects for society, culture and ecology. The issue was never that some people are getting hyper-wealthy, the issue was that capital enables this to happen only from the exploitation of others. Everyone is better in absolute terms, but the absolute terms don't tell the whole story, nor does capitalism show signs of improving the lives of many in the third-world other than by a dogma similar to "the ends justify the means" - continue working in a sweatshop, for one day your country will be as rich as mine!
Again, the issue isn't that some people have big pie slices and others have small ones, it's that some people are deprived of access to social means of production, and with that they are reduced to a relation that depends on someone else to provide them with access. This social relation still persists regardless of the pie slices, because we're talking about one person who owns raspberry pie and the other a horrible pear pie.
I don't think externality pricing would work very well in the long term where such large sums of money can be amassed that the tax won't matter very much (so damage continues) and I doubt that sufficiently large taxes could come about in a democracy controlled by capital rather than "the people" - a people who still prefer the luxuries (i.e perhaps even false needs from Establishment ideology) so would be unwilling to restrict their supply.
Right, but if you refer back to my prior comment, I did that calculation for you. Is that enough? It's an empirical question. When is it enough.
> Nobody, not even Marx himself, would doubt the quantitative number of people that capitalism has brought out of poverty, but neither would anyone really doubt how many then-slaves in the Roman Empire were rescued from wretched conditions of not even being able to get by. The question is not whether capitalism is "good" or not, it's whether we can acheive the same or better advances in other systems which come without various negative qualitative aspects for society, culture and ecology.
Right, but let's make that a bit more rigorous. What do we mean by "same or better advances without various negative qualitative aspects"? You seem to still place some value on the traditional notion of 'growth' (e.g. more stuff, cheaper stuff, better stuff). So, presumably you'd like some social organization that produces growth and 'qualitative' benefits in some pareto-optimal configuration. I suppose essentially everyone agrees broadly with that.
I think where we diverge is that I think a system that is broadly capitalist with some regulation and externality pricing is likely to be most able to achieve a pareto-optimal balance of all of those things. Non-market coordination mechanisms don't seem like they work very well at the scale of modern civilizations.
> Again, the issue isn't that some people have big pie slices and others have small ones, it's that some people are deprived of access to social means of production, and with that they are reduced to a relation that depends on someone else to provide them with access. This social relation still persists regardless of the pie slices, because we're talking about one person who owns raspberry pie and the other a horrible pear pie.
That's not actually true though. They're not deprived of access to the natural world. They're deprived of access to the fruits of others labor, which seems quite a bit more fair.
> I don't think externality pricing would work very well in the long term where such large sums of money can be amassed that the tax won't matter very much (so damage continues)
Well, you'd set the externality at the price that'd balance the harm. If it costs $10 to counter an ounce of carbon released into the atmosphere, you price it at $10, or $10 + epsilon to account for imperfect enforcement, etc.
> and I doubt that sufficiently large taxes could come about in a democracy controlled by capital rather than "the people" - a people who still prefer the luxuries (i.e perhaps even false needs from Establishment ideology) so would be unwilling to restrict their supply.
I agree that that's a tricky problem, but once you get into the issue of "how private incentives and public governance interact" you're down a rabbit hole that doesn't turn out too well for other modes of organization either :-).
I don't know, I feel as though I don't understand the question, and I'm confused as to why there has to be "enough" at some point - in the optimal situation, we'd stop producing bread once everyone who wants bread has the amount they want (barring people who want to horde it).
>You seem to still place some value on the traditional notion of 'growth' (e.g. more stuff, cheaper stuff, better stuff).
The notion of growth in terms of what we can use rather than growth in terms of what is profitable is important, and I think capitalism only has the ability to chase what is profitable, in the sense that houses will be produced for assets rather than living in, and this trend only continues to get worse thanks to the nature of the commodity, a contradiction of use value and exchange value. It's true that everyone agrees with it, but only few would say that the qualitative issues are rooted in the production process of capital itself, something I believe to be the case. We either have a free society, or a society dominated by capital.
I have to admit on this point I'm a little lost myself - as to what society without capital would look like in terms of the distribution of resources, to what extent this is mathematically possible (given the information, and going beyond the ECP) and to what extent the criticism of capitalism is addressed afterwards. Whether or not market Socialism is even a Socialism at all is up for question, as is whether schemes like those imagined by Cockshott et al. are feasible in the Marxian critique.
>They're not deprived of access to the natural world. They're deprived of access to the fruits of others labor, which seems quite a bit more fair.
Everyone has access to the natural world, but this is the realm of Right, which liberal society insists to be the same for bourgeois and proletarian - all imbued with the same "natural rights", but it wasn't long before Rawls et al. put the question of what use is a right if you can't take advantage of it? The working class is deprived of its labour, and all workers are doubly free: free from general social means of production (the right to use society's productive capacity) and free from the products of their own labour made with these means of production (to take what you made is declared theft, due to the mystification of means of production as provided by the capitalist rather than provided by labour). The capitalist (a personification of capital), on the other hand, is free to access the fruits of others' labour, and on the scale of the whole of society, makes sure of this fact - surrender your labour, or rely on the charity of the state, a degrading form of administered living. But even if we consider the case that everyone is free to produce things themselves on whatever land they can afford, who would want to live in such a society? Should the alternative to selling one's labour be highly individualised and impractical for the great majority, and only possibly providing the bare means for sustenance for a person and her family?
>If it costs $10 to counter an ounce of carbon released into the atmosphere, you price it at $10, or $10 + epsilon to account for imperfect enforcement, etc.
How does this take into account the fact that some people, usually the ones with the most emmissions, can pay their way out of it rather comfortably? Isn't it rather perverse that the company is paying money which it gained off the backs of its employees to "offset" its ecological damage? And the notion that one can simply pay a fine for damage is questionable, and we don't seem to do it with anything else in society. If I break your window (which is either extremely difficult to repair or even impossible to), I'm rightfully punished for it; I don't simply pay a fine and walk off.
Totally. But what is the level of material comfort at which we do that? Is it the lifestyle of an american making $60,000/year? Is it the lifestyle of a subsistence farmer in Africa?
> The notion of growth in terms of what we can use rather than growth in terms of what is profitable is important, and I think capitalism only has the ability to chase what is profitable, in the sense that houses will be produced for assets rather than living in, and this trend only continues to get worse thanks to the nature of the commodity, a contradiction of use value and exchange value. It's true that everyone agrees with it, but only few would say that the qualitative issues are rooted in the production process of capital itself, something I believe to be the case. We either have a free society, or a society dominated by capital.
So this is an interesting distinction. Saying "we ought only produce what we want to use" is another way of saying "produce efficiently". Capitalism is extremely efficient in this regard. Capitalist businesses tend to produce exactly the quantity of goods they believe they can sell, and any surplus they produce is loss to them, so they try to minimize it as aggressively as possible. So, if "produce the exact amount you want" is what you want to achieve, I think ruthless capitalism is the system you want to have.
However, I think maybe what you mean more precisely is that capitalism also itself encourages an increase in appetite. In part through advertising, and maybe also to an extent via a culture of 'more'. Though I think I would argue that that second thing is mostly a function of the first thing combined with human nature. I think this is a real issue, and I don't have any great solution to it. Advertising is mostly deadweight loss, it's just zero-sum attrition between companies. It doesn't create any value for anyone, except in the case when it informs you of a product you want or need that you didn't know existed. This aspect of capitalism is problematic, but I guess I don't see it as an existential flaw, relative to the other benefits.
> in the sense that houses will be produced for assets rather than living in, and this trend only continues to get worse thanks to the nature of the commodity, a contradiction of use value and exchange value
This is a pretty significant misunderstanding of capitalism. Houses do not get over-produced as investment assets. The market logic of that makes no sense. An investment is only valuable if people want to buy it. The only reason houses are good investments is because actual people want to actually live in them. If people stopped wanting more houses to live in, their value as investments would decline precipitously. Capitalism is extremely efficient in this way, and this front is probably the worst you could possibly criticize it from.
> I have to admit on this point I'm a little lost myself - as to what society without capital would look like in terms of the distribution of resources, to what extent this is mathematically possible (given the information, and going beyond the ECP) and to what extent the criticism of capitalism is addressed afterwards. Whether or not market Socialism is even a Socialism at all is up for question, as is whether schemes like those imagined by Cockshott et al. are feasible in the Marxian critique.
I have kicked around a solution for this in my head that is sort of like a sovereign wealth fund. The gist of it is the state owns all the 'investable' capital, but farms out the actual investment of it to VC firms and hedge funds, just like the private markets do now for wealthy individuals. Those funds take a fee for their services, but they don't earn any of the actual return on the capital itself. However, because they take a fee that is primarily performance based, their incentives are aligned with the growth of the funds. Private citizens may invest their personal capital with the sovereign wealth fund and earn the same rate of return as everyone else. The state would avoid directing economic activity, but would end up as the primary equity owner of most businesses. Therefore, most of the surplus value produced by these entities would flow to the state (and partially back to the citizens directly, but at an equal rate).
Ideally the economy would work much the way it does now. People would still have incentives to start private businesses because they would be able to retain many of the shares for themselves. But their wealth would usually not grow wildly out of proportion to everyone else, and if it did, the state and therefore the public would also benefit fairly significantly. I haven't thought through all the details, but it seems like something that could plausibly create more equitable wealth distribution, though likely wouldn't do much for the environmental externalities.
> The working class is deprived of its labour
I'm not sure in what sense they are deprived of their labour, though? Is someone preventing them from not working? Yes, many people feel compelled to work, because it's easier than foraging for food in the forest. But that's a free choice that they're making, and that they only can make because of all of the other people who chose to collectively pursue the same thing. I'm not sure from what comes this notion that freedom means the freedom to have things given to you that other people worked to create.
> and free from the products of their own labour made with these means of production (to take what you made is declared theft, due to the mystification of means of production as provided by the capitalist rather than provided by labour)
Hrm? There's no mystery. The process works like this: You start a business and you say to me: "Hey, if you make these widgets for me in my widget factory, i'll give you $10/hour, but I keep the widgets". I may either say "sure, let's make a deal", or "No i'd rather build my own widget factory and make my own widgets, thanks". You're free to build your own widget factory any time you choose.
Now, there is one real catch there, which is access to land. Land is a unique type of capital in that it is fixed, very limited in supply, and not created by any person. This is why i'm strongly in favor of a "land value tax":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Which attempts to address the inequity of land ownership, and I also think it should be levied against other 'land like' assets, such as intellectual property.
> How does this take into account the fact that some people, usually the ones with the most emmissions, can pay their way out of it rather comfortably?
It isn't trying to take that into account, it's trying to fix the problem. By pricing the externality, you disincentivize the behavior, and if you price it correctly, you actually pay for its own cleanup. Externalities should be priced at their cost to society. So, in theory, when you emit a unit of carbon, you pay a tax that covers the cost of remediating it.
Now, if you really want to stop a behavior, you can do other trickier things like charge even more than its cost, but then rebate the surplus evenly to the general population. This would have the effect of making the tax more progressive in practice, and is a dial you can turn to whatever level you deem appropriate.
> If I break your window (which is either extremely difficult to repair or even impossible to), I'm rightfully punished for it; I don't simply pay a fine and walk off.
That's actually exactly how it works. If you break my window, I can sue you for damages that you will have to pay. This is actually the entire premise of externality pricing. We treat the environment as the public's property. If private actors are damaging that property, they need to compensate the collective us for that harm. And the court may choose to levy both remedial and punitive damages, which can both be baked into the externality price if you desire.
I don't think I'm qualified to answer the question of a bare minimum for lifestyle, and I don't think such a decision is possible right now, under the influence of many people being unable to distinguish false needs from true needs; humans change according to the society they find themselves in, and according to the material conditions which drive to new societies.
>Saying "we ought only produce what we want to use" is another way of saying "produce efficiently". Capitalism is extremely efficient in this regard.
I disagree, by "use" I mean the satisfaction of human needs rather than the growth of capital. I accept that in many (or even most) situations, there is a close alignment between them, but the number of cases in which they align closely is a quantitative measurement, as opposed to what is in my judgement the much more important qualitative dimension by which future production is decided. My point here was much less about efficiency, but on the contradiction of what's actually happening; the material need a house serves is expressed when it is built by the concrete labour which goes into it, but the coordination of abstract labour is totally different - to the point where people "use" the exchange value of a house. Consider the term "commodification" which applies more to culture in general, but is also relevant in capital's stance that use-value can be compromised (to an extent to which it is not itself aware in the anarchy of the market) in favour of exchange value.
I think your idea is interesting and worthy of consideration for those not interested in the aspects of capital as it relates to society and ideology, but it's not "the best" we can do in terms of a "market socialism" of the sort proposed by John Roemer or Thomas Sekine, or even one without capital as proposed by Peter Hudis. I can't really say I know enough about them, but your solution seems to have little to say on notions of systemic exploitation which some (like those I just named) view as core to the capitalist labour process.
>Yes, many people feel compelled to work, because it's easier than foraging for food in the forest.
By this it seems that you are admitting it is a farcical choice, even as you have presented it - submit yourself to this order, or forage for food in the forest as though society had never produced the riches it has. This is the poverty of Robinson Crusoe; if we were to extend the Kantian imperative to society's production, it would seem not only impossible but totally wrong to live in a society of isolated producers foraging in the forest. If everyone exempts themselves from capital, then capitalist society collapses. My point is this: even by working in the forest, you are still placed in a social relation by dint of having to work in the forest rather than sharing in the product of society. In a sense, freedom really does mean access to the general product of society, because freedom is counterposed with necessity.[0] This is the notion underlying every idea of freedom, and it was as misunderstood by Stalin ("he who does not work, neither shall he eat") as it is by the bourgeois order ("there is no alternative"). There is no "free choice" to step outside the relations of production, which is why a Communist country could not possibly exist - it's outstripped by capitalist efficiency and the totality of capital immediately.
>The process works like this: You start a business and you say to me: "Hey, if you make these widgets for me in my widget factory, i'll give you $10/hour, but I keep the widgets"
Where did you get the factory? Under what premise, whose threat of force and justification have you barred me from taking it or sharing in it? Did you build it yourself? How can I build my own factory without access to capital (and the credit system) and why should I either have to work for you (as you dictate my human essence, my labour, according to the exact method and timings that you dictate for the duration you dictate) or subject myself to the scrutiny of the market, and have this other authority dictate what I produce? How is it that I can only survive through these options only? The fact is that your situation carries with it ideological assumptions (wage labour is seen as not only acceptable but morally right or even righteous to offer) and historical assumptions (the right to separate me from the products I make and from the means of making products), and generalized commodity production ($10 only means something if I can spend it elsewhere, I produce not only items of use with my labour but also items of exchange, and the exchange is to be maximized over the use). I also question how you're able to sell the products I make without either tricking people into paying more than they're actually worth, or paying me less than my labour is worth. Finally there's the question of what you do with the profit (assuming you make some) - of course like a good capitalist you re-invest it. The situation is ideological thus: Imagine if I start a business and say to you: "Hey, you are a slave with little or no mobility, conditioned to this fate by your birth or regulations in society, work for me, and I'll give you some shelter and food. Otherwise you can leave Rome and find some farmland and live on that." - repeat with the feudal mode of production (you are a lord who demands my corn-tithe, but in exchange I get to work your land using your tools). And here there is a hierarchy maintained, ostensibly living on consent (as if consent were sufficient, albeit necessary). In individualising the issue, you've shifted the talk from capital to capitalists, from labour to labourers and from capitalists and labourers to individuals who are all starting off the same - an assumption which is untenable in any society. In other words, the land owned and the property of the capitalist is already justly acquired (and we should remember that the division as it currently stands traces back to what we'd both regard as unjust acquisitions of land and power, through brute force and subsequent passing down through generations in families or in contracts). Your example only makes sense in the case of any two individuals (and we must consider any two because you and I are not alone on this planet, and if there is an injustice against one, who cannot partake, we have an unjust society) if we have Socialism! I have access to the social means of widget-production, as do you.
There is a fundamental asymmetry between capital and labour, which your example can't show so simply, and it's the reason why labour unions exist and why Socialists have campaigned for the past century and more for decent working conditions and to some extent acheived them. Marx knew it, Lincoln knew it and Jefferson knew it. I understand you weren't trying to model the totality of social relations with such an example, but we can't take the example and say "that's all that's happening, multiplied by 7.5 billion". The difference between this world and Crusoe's island isn't merely in size, it's in nature, which has come about through historical development.
[0] “Is “free competition” then really “free?” nay, is it really a “competition” — to wit, one of persons — as it gives itself out to be because on this title it bases its right? It originated, you know, in persons becoming free of all personal rule. Is a competition “free” which the State, this ruler in the civic principle, hems in by a thousand barriers? There is a rich manufacturer doing a brilliant business, and I should like to compete with him. “Go ahead,” says the State, “I have no objection to make to your person as competitor.” Yes, I reply, but for that I need a space for buildings, I need money! “That’s bad; but, if you have no money, you cannot compete. You must not take anything from anybody, for I protect property and grant it privileges.”Free competition is not “free,” because I lack the THINGS for competition. Against my person no objection can be made, but because I have not the things my person too must step to the rear. And who has the necessary things? Perhaps that manufacturer? Why, from him I could take them away! No, the State has them as property, the manufacturer only as fief, as possession. (Max Stirner)
I'm not sure I understand what precisely you're trying to say here. It seems you accept that capitalism produces an efficient quantity of goods with respect to demand. You seem to have a problem with the 'abstraction' that capitalism provides...but ultimately that abstraction is simply a complex interaction necessitated by efficiency, if you absolutely had to, you could map it all out. It is a concrete phenomenon, though i'm not sure why it would matter if it were abstract either.
> By this it seems that you are admitting it is a farcical choice, even as you have presented it - submit yourself to this order, or forage for food in the forest as though society had never produced the riches it has.
I agree that that is the choice, though I don't accept it as farcical. Humans labored to create the riches society has, why should you be entitled to them by birthright? Does being human entitle you to the products of other human's labor?
> Where did you get the factory? Under what premise, whose threat of force and justification have you barred me from taking it or sharing in it?
Yes, the primitive accumulation problem is real. However, most citizens actually have quite free access to capital, in the developed world at least. Credit is fairly easy to obtain if you have a decent business plan. The idea that access to capital (in the developed world) is some major barrier preventing people from starting businesses isn't really an accurate reflection of the capitalist world as it operates.
Now, you will have to pay a price for that capital, because the person who owns it is renting it to you. If you want to trace that ownership all the way back, you will eventually run into some form of theft, sure. But it may take you many generations to get there, and the equilibrium of the iterated game is that those resources will flow (regardless of their initial distribution) to those members of society who employ them most productively (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem).
What does this mean? It means that, in some sense, the primitive accumulation argument is invalid on a long enough time scale and with low enough transaction costs. Do those assumptions hold in practice? Not exactly, but they are close enough to reality (in my opinion) that we should be deeply skeptical of any other algorithm for resource allocation (which economic systems ultimately are - resource allocation algorithms).
> Why should I either have to work for you (as you dictate my human essence, my labour, according to the exact method and timings that you dictate for the duration you dictate) or subject myself to the scrutiny of the market, and have this other authority dictate what I produce?
That's an interesting question, but it has, to me, a deeply satisfying answer. Which is that this 'market' abstraction is really a concrete thing. It represents the (approximate) utility-weighted needs and wants of the entire rest of civilization. You receive the resources of civilization in exchange for contributing to it. We probabilistically solve that extraordinarily complex equilibrium via the price mechanism.
> I also question how you're able to sell the products I make without either tricking people into paying more than they're actually worth, or paying me less than my labour is worth.
How do you define 'worth'? Is 'worth' cost? Is it the value to you? Or is it the point at which supply and demand balance? Capitalists choose the final answer. They choose it because it solves the pareto-optimal resource allocation problem with respect to the needs and wants of all humans, weighted by those humans prior contributions to the civilization. An almost impossibly elegant solution to the problem.
> The situation is ideological thus: Imagine if I start a business and say to you: "Hey, you are a slave with little or no mobility, conditioned to this fate by your birth or regulations in society, work for me, and I'll give you some shelter and food. Otherwise you can leave Rome and find some farmland and live on that." - repeat with the feudal mode of production (you are a lord who demands my corn-tithe, but in exchange I get to work your land using your tools).
There is a very important distinction here though. Your examples are caste systems. You cannot become a feudal lord, no matter how hard you work. In a modern capitalist economy, however, all you need to move from the worker class to the capitalist class is a business idea and a willingness to take some personal risk. In my view, that completely changes the moral character of the situation.
> There is a fundamental asymmetry between capital and labour, which your example can't show so simply, and it's the reason why labour unions exist and why Socialists have campaigned for the past century and more for decent working conditions and to some extent acheived them. Marx knew it, Lincoln knew it and Jefferson knew it. I understand you weren't trying to model the totality of social relations with such an example, but we can't take the example and say "that's all that's happening, multiplied by 7.5 billion". The difference between this world and Crusoe's island isn't merely in size, it's in nature, which has come about through historical development.
I sort of agree here. I'm not sure I would describe it as such a fundamental asymmetry. Capital competes for labor just as much as labor competes for capital. Now, there are often situations where there are profound power imbalances, and I think labor unions can be useful in achieving the proper power balance in many situations. So I do agree that capital tends to have more power, but that power is not unchecked (in the way that say, a slave owner's is unchecked). If I run a garment factory with terrible working conditions, there is a market opportunity for you to open another garment factory next door with better working conditions, and poach all my skilled laborers. You can see this quite clearly with high skill professions, like computer programming. Tech companies compete fiercely with each other for top talent. It can be harder to see in lower skilled professions, but the competitive pressures are there.
You think that because a think isn't concrete it doesn't exist? Growth is a real thing, whether you like it or not, and it has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty and hardship.
The average person is much better off than they were 100 years ago. That is a direct, inalienable consequence of growth. If you think there is something (e.g. the environment) that is worth more than that, there's certainly cases to be made for that, but that is a value judgment. But it is absolutely not true that growth does not exist or is not important.
I believe what is at stake here is that another possible direct, inalienable consequence of growth is that the average person 100 years from now is worse off than we are now, because we squandered their future in the name of growth. To ignore this might lead one to miss a lot parent’s point.
The real (physical, chemical, biological) processes that have gone on during the last two centuries are not 'growth' in any way that respects the meaning of the term. They constitute an increase in entropy in our ecologies: evolved complex systems are broken down to feed simple technological ones. That process can be considered 'growth' only by mentally excising most of the systems involved (ie. to form 'economics'!). As those systems collapse, the illusoriness of the 'growth' will be clearly exposed as a fake. A few generations of humans will have made hay at the expense of numberless future humans & nonhumans.
In the context of pollution, environment and climate change resources are not part of GDP until they are used or harvested. A tree has zero value until it is cut, oil has zero value until it is in a pipeline, a river so polluted it catches fire is of zero consequence in GDP. Neither does it consider the health and welfare of a population, quality of life and other non monetary activity (within a household, community schemes etc). Lastly it does not account for progress: It is purely a monetary measure. No account is made of improvements to efficiency or new methods.
We could have negative GDP growth without reducing quality of life, as it's not all about money. Solar panels, computers etc are getting more capability for less cost, environmental damage and pollution has monetary costs to health, perhaps mental wellbeing too.
Thus it tends to promote purely the monetary aspect, and belittle to the point of insignificance (by calling it an externality) everything else. In short it doesn't measure anything especially useful.
We live in ecologies, not economies.
I doubt that would be a popular metric with some though as that would imply far more value to not exploiting than doing so.
That's before you get to the more vague aspects of quality of life that can't be given spreadsheet space like community, family, friendship, health etc.
> We live in ecologies, not economies.
Too true.
I'm not optimistic for how the next 100 years plays out.
That depends on what "we" means. If "we" means human meat machines, that's arguably true. On an evolutionary timescale, the global ecosystem is incredibly resilient. We could likely take out most multicellular species, and within a billion years or so, they'd get replaced.
The problem, of course, is what we'll have for dinner, in the interim. And maybe we could work around it all. The "free market" to the rescue! But damn, that'd be a different world, for sure.
And if we went full virtual, we could let the global ecosystem recover. Or just use the mass for something else.
I can think of a billion or so people who would disagree with that proposition.
And you can't speak for the billion: my material circumstances have improved dramatcally over my lifetime, but I'd give every last bit of that, and more, to see future generations be permitted to live on a world that was not dying.
Are you unaware of the concept of 'externality pricing', or do you think it is flawed in some way?