Recently in a few conversations with Marxists, the common arguement that comes up that capitalism is nothing more than re-worked feudalism. That is, the owners of land and capital use force to take the product of the worker's labor. This is all old hat and pretty familar with everyone here. Basically I'm looking to explore the differences between ownership of land and capital under capitalism, and under feudalism. I understand the arguments against various value theories, ie. Bohm-Barwerks critcism of exploitation theory, marginalism, etc. Thats not what I'm thinking about here. I can easily make the case against the LTV, "surplus labor", and the like.
What I'd like to address are counters to the "But the workers need capital to survive, and it is kept from them by force!" argument. Marxists usually retreat to this after you demolish some of the more naive ideas about Marxist exploitation and LTV. I've usually seen it framed as the relationship between a peasent and a feudal lord: The worker labors in the fields of the lord, and at the end of the day hands over a portion of his crops to the guys with the swords. Implying that the land-owners do little but threaten force to the workers, not nessecarily to harm them directly, but to kick them off of the land they need to survive, so that they will starve. This is similar to the wage-slavery argument, and is the arguement made against private property under capitalism.
I think we can say that both Marxists and Libertarians/Austrians agree that property aquired by force is illegitimate. So, starting from that point of agreement, some things that pop into my mind are:
1.) First off, under feudalism, land was aquired illegitimately through force and distributed by vassalage rather than free exchange. That is, peasents as a class could not own land. In capitalism, everyone is free to purchase land/capital if they have the savings to meet the market price via voluntary exchange.
2.) Unlike feudalism, in a free society, the "workers" aren't really restricted in terms of armament or protection. The "protection" offered by feudal lords in the early stages was tied to certain land areas rather than to people's individual property. Thus the peasents, who originally homesteaded thier land, were essentially forced to give it up for "protection" from roving maruaders. It's unclear if the agressors were actually different from the lords who extended this "service". Contrast this to a free-society protection system, where any owner of land or capital can contract with various protection services, regardless of geographical location, e.g. the Icelandic Commonwealth.
How else can we make this distinction? Basically, we're talking about why its legimate to own private land and capital in capitalism, contrasted with the illegimate control of these resources under feudalism.
Yeah right, the free market forces of industry that brought the serfs off the farms are going to put them back for the lulz. You think it was the government that abolished the Middle Ages?
Capitalism entails the rational division of labour. Why is everyone suddenly going to become a subsistence farmer? There are better things for workers to do than be peasants.
Thier argument about feudalism isn't that we'll return to agrarian Lord-and-Serf society, but rather that the capitalists use violence to extract economic rent from the non-capital owners. The feudalism connection is a frequent favorite among Marxists because it seems anti-liberty, violent, and barbaric, equating capitalism with slavery. Basically they try and paint capitalism as "feudalism with machine presses and electricity", as Marx said "The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist."
The Marxists I talk to often reject utilitarian arguements for capitalism. When you mention that employers help employees by providing them pay up front instead of waiting to sell the product at market, they usually counter that the worker has no choice in the first place because he "has no access to capital". They then usually make some comment along the lines of "a slave who lives a more wealthy life because he produces more is still a slave".
I know that usually posters here tend to think that Marxists are a funny little minority, but I've seen a strong upswelling of people sympathetic to them on certain forums I frequent. I've also had a few friends, that I don't talk to frequently, start to sway in that direction after reading a bunch of Chomsky and other left-opinions. Basically I'm trying to build a strong body of information I can draw up quickly to counter these positions without having to go back and "review my notes" as it were.
Critical question would be - who, in their opinion, forces you to work for 'capitalist'? Somehow they never mention this. If there is nobody then how this is the same as being slave, where you have explicit persons that force you to make payments in money or labor? If the only thing that "forces" you to work for 'capitalist' is that you are dirt poor then this is no force in the sense of using violence and there is no exploitation because there is always a choice of working by yourself. When you are forced to take a piss by your body are you a slave?
This, I believe, is the crux of thier arguement. The claim is that the worker doesn't have access to land or capital, and therefore cannot work for themselves in a manner where they will not starve. They usually throw out a reductio ad absurdum where a hypothetical capitalist or company owns all the land. The person is forced to submit to the conditions of the capitalist in order to survive. Without the "violence inherent in property", the worker could simply work the land without having to give the crop over to the landlord for a wage. This is different, they claim, then the usual laws of nature, where a person must work for food, shelter, etc. merely to survive.
Keep in mind that at this point I usually have already made the point that we are assuming the capital owner aquired the capital justly.
This is a bit of a tange, but now that I'm thinking about it, does anyone have any information of, for example, Chinese (or other developing nations) peasant/subistence farmers leaving thier farms willingly because they can earn more in factories? This would be good emperical information to show that people will sell thier labor willingly to improve thier lives. rather than just work for themselves.
LogisticEarth:What I'd like to address are counters to the "But the workers need capital to survive, and it is kept from them by force!" argument. Marxists usually retreat to this after you demolish some of the more naive ideas about Marxist exploitation and LTV. I've usually seen it framed as the relationship between a peasent and a feudal lord: The worker labors in the fields of the lord, and at the end of the day hands over a portion of his crops to the guys with the swords. Implying that the land-owners do little but threaten force to the workers, not nessecarily to harm them directly, but to kick them off of the land they need to survive, so that they will starve. This is similar to the wage-slavery argument, and is the arguement made against private property under capitalism.
This is the crux of Marxist and much other leftist belief - that being deprived of what they "need" (at least survival-wise, but often otherwise too) justifies their taking of it from others without those others' consent. I'd start by simply asking them to demonstrate this justification.
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Voluntaryism Forum
LogisticEarth: I understand the arguments against various value theories, ie. Bohm-Barwerks critcism of exploitation theory, marginalism, etc. Thats not what I'm thinking about here. I can easily make the case against the LTV, "surplus labor", and the like.
Even, if you don't look for answers about it here, still pin the Marxists down on there false conceptions on those issues.
LogisticEarth:I think we can say that both Marxists and Libertarians/Austrians agree that property aquired by force is illegitimate.
LogisticEarth:1.) First off, under feudalism, land was aquired illegitimately through force and distributed by vassalage rather than free exchange. That is, peasents as a class could not own land.
LogisticEarth:What I'd like to address are counters to the "But the workers need capital to survive, and it is kept from them by force!" argument.
Exactly how is this kept from them by force? As a norm workers do get wages and they'd be able to use some of this to acquire capital.
Continuing to play devil's advocate here, the responses I could probably expect would be basically accusing me of claiming it was moral to let people starve in wilderness, or, less politely, saying "fuck you, got mine!".
The counter to this, I believe, may be to argue that is is illegitimate for someone to physically force someone to labor for you (slavery), but it is equally illegitimate to steal the fruits of ones labor (stealing the property of the capitalist). The only morally acceptable outcome is to come to voluntarily agreement about how the "capital-less worker" can aquire some of the employer's property in order to survive. One of these possibilities is wage labor.
A response to thier reductio ad absurdum might be to go to Crusoe economics: Crusoe and Johnson are stranded on an island, each of thier own plots of arable land. There is no other arable land on the island. They both have more than enough crop yield to, in Marxist terms, "reproduce thier labor-power" two or three times over. One day Johnson's land is inundaded by sea water in a storm, destroying all crops and making the land unable to grow more. He now faces the threat of starvation, yet Crusoe has "extra" land that he could use. Does he have a right to go start working some of Crusoe's land without compensation to? More importantly, does he have the right to harm or kill Crusoe if he resists?
The only people who think employees are exploited by employers are people who have never been an employer, and probably have never worked for an employer in the private sector. It is not easy being an employer.
More importantly, it is government that distorts the relationship between employer and employee. In trying to make this relationship benefit the employee the government has only made it more expensive for employers to hire employees especially the young and unskilled.
"Continuing to play devil's advocate here, the responses I could probably expect would be basically accusing me of claiming it was moral to let people starve in wilderness"
It does not follow from Autolykos post. It would be useful to agree on some standards in debate with your friends, like using logic for example instead of one's own biased emotion (admittedly this is not an easy thing to do...).
"The counter to this, I believe, may be to argue that is is illegitimate for someone to physically force someone to labor for you (slavery), but it is equally illegitimate to steal the fruits of ones labor (stealing the property of the capitalist). The only morally acceptable outcome is to come to voluntarily agreement about how the "capital-less worker" can aquire some of the employer's property in order to survive. One of these possibilities is wage labor."
Voluntary agreements benefit both parties. Violent actions benefit only one party. Which method are they going to use to satisfy their needs? Either voluntary - then there is no substantial difference in our views - or by force, thus becoming opressors they seek deliverance from.
LogisticEarth:Continuing to play devil's advocate here, the responses I could probably expect would be basically accusing me of claiming it was moral to let people starve in wilderness, or, less politely, saying "fuck you, got mine!"
My own position here is that I think it's moral (in the sense of not wrong) to "let people starve in the wildnerness" or say "Fuck you, got mine!" However, I also think it's unethical (in the sense of not good) to do such things. The point is, not giving people (certain) things is hardly the same as hurting those people.
LogisticEarth:The counter to this, I believe, may be to argue that is is illegitimate for someone to physically force someone to labor for you (slavery), but it is equally illegitimate to steal the fruits of ones labor (stealing the property of the capitalist). The only morally acceptable outcome is to come to voluntarily agreement about how the "capital-less worker" can aquire some of the employer's property in order to survive. One of these possibilities is wage labor.
I think Marxists and many other leftists are mistaken about what the fruits of a wage laborer are. They aren't the physical products of his labor. Rather, they're the wages he receives in exchange for his labor. After all, he didn't agree to make things that are then sold to the capitalist. Thinking otherwise is a hold-over from the old cottage-industry era.
"Exactly how is this kept from them by force? As a norm workers do get wages and they'd be able to use some of this to acquire capital." - Torsten
This is the first response that comes to mind.
It isn't feudalism, it's Capitalism - hence the different names.
Get rid of all words like "free", "slave", "serf", "illegit" and any other meaningless morality play word - than speak of the universal mechanics involved in human action.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
Autolykos: LogisticEarth:The counter to this, I believe, may be to argue that is is illegitimate for someone to physically force someone to labor for you (slavery), but it is equally illegitimate to steal the fruits of ones labor (stealing the property of the capitalist). The only morally acceptable outcome is to come to voluntarily agreement about how the "capital-less worker" can aquire some of the employer's property in order to survive. One of these possibilities is wage labor. I think Marxists and many other leftists are mistaken about what the fruits of a wage laborer are. They aren't the physical products of his labor. Rather, they're the wages he receives in exchange for his labor. After all, he didn't agree to make things that are then sold to the capitalist. Thinking otherwise is a hold-over from the old cottage-industry era.
I think it is true that access to land is restricted, but that's not because of capitalism. It's because of the state and environmental regulations, etc.
vive la insurrection: It isn't feudalism, it's Capitalism - hence the different names. Get rid of all words like "free", "slave", "serf", "illegit" and any other meaningless morality play word - than speak of the universal mechanics involved in human action.
Yeah left lib types who insist - no matter where they are what situation they are in - will call things like capitalism, free market, etc different, (which for us is irrelevant just use whatever works to the audience) ; and than refuse to care about anything than constant sloganing, anti concepts, and creating noise, and setting us-them "cool guy" purely intellectual categories.
When you encounter someone like this get out of the conversation - they are not speaking or thinking economics, science, philosophy, etc what they are doing is more along the line of trying to subsidize their social signaling devices by using the right words at the right time.
Johnny Doe:Problem with the word "capitalism", is that people associate it with any type of society, i.e. from laissez-faire-/anarcho- etc to crony-/state capitalism etc.
That would make it (emotionally) loaded terminology. And this maybe just the problem with the word capitalism. When Marxist and those influenced by them talk about it you even don't know, if they are talking about supporters of an ideology of "capitalism" or the owners of capital. I recall a debate with someone, where I pointed out that the Greens were just Marxists using ecological issues to have an argument against "Capitalism" (meaning private ownership of factories, machines and the like). He replied that he would have an issue with "Capitalism", too (meaning international corporations). The issue at hand was that the government needed excuses for regulation/intervention something that would restrict private business and may even benefit larger corporations (like it is the case in the pharmaceutical industry).
a quick thing to remember though is that 'capitalism' is a term that was coined by Karl Marx. Many people like the(some) Left libs, dont like the word capitalism because they hold on to the Marxist definition to it which is something like, "private ownership of the means of production with the legal structure on commerce and the market is provided by a given State." I mean in that sense, I guess, I am anti-capitalist, if we were to give capitalism that meaning.
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
Actually Marx waffles on the definition of Capitalism.
At times he calles it "free buying and free selling" and at other times he seems to like it to the exploitation of the proletariat by the state controlling bourgeois.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
Thanks for all the input guys.
Now that I think of it, is there any Austrian/Libertarian "study guide" or whatnot to Capital? I've been trying to read bits and peices of it to get a solid grounding in Marx's arguement, so I can't be accused of straw-manning or being ignorant of his theories. I unfortunately don't have a huge amount of time, and trying to plow through Marx is difficult. I've seen a lot of online lectures from various proffessors, (e.g. David Harvey), but since the basic premises of the argument are wrong, (ie. LTV) it's usually very frustrating to try and sit through them.
LogisticEarth: I've seen a lot of online lectures from various proffessors, (e.g. David Harvey), but since the basic premises of the argument are wrong, (ie. LTV) it's usually very frustrating to try and sit through them.
Most Anti-Capitalists and Marx supporters won't realle know what the Labour Theory of value and "extraction of surplus labour" is. They simply base their argument on the view that is "unfair" if a worker earns US$1000 per month, while some businessman earn US$1.000.000 per month. They look at these facts and just say it's unfair, which then settles the argument for them. Marx wanted to use these people, but was actually writing to convince people that are a bit more sophisticated. There problem was that workers got richer over time in Western countries and most of them didn't care that much about others having multiple times their wealth, so they came up with a new theory on how taylorism and scientific management was taking the power away from workers in the process. Just to bad that business are moving away from this, too and are looking now into initiatives like lean manufacturing and austrian economics that involves (and empowers) workers again. I started a thread on this, too. You may want to look at it. The concept of lean thinking / lean manufacturing is also interesting in connection with the value theory, as worker activities can be value-adding activities, necessary, but not value-adding and of course just waste. As far as I know Marx didn't discriminate between that. Plainly spoken a labour was a labour hour for him.
There's some bits in the first pages of Capital that labor that doesn't create "use-value" (utility) doesn't create value, and that therefore that labor is "wasted". This is why the common "mud-pie" argument against Marx is technically a strawman. My understanding is that Marx claimed that ANY labor that created a use-value was likewise created value, regardless of marginal ultility. I've tried to get Marxists to define this but there's a lot of obfustication around that topic. I think because going down that rabbit hole leads you to the conclusion that labor is valueless without provided utility, thus confirming that labor is not a "value-creating substance" as Marx claims, but rather that value is a subjective concept in people's minds.
This leads to a lot of funky stuff on the part of the Marxists like "simple-labor" and "complex-labor" and all that jazz. The bottom line is that a lot of Marx makes sense at a casual glance because labor is indeed a large cost of producing anything in the aggregate, but the claims he makes from those basic observations don't hold up.
LogisticEarth:There's some bits in the first pages of Capital that labor that doesn't create "use-value" (utility) doesn't create value, and that therefore that labor is "wasted". This is why the common "mud-pie" argument against Marx is technically a strawman. My understanding is that Marx claimed that ANY labor that created a use-value was likewise created value, regardless of marginal ultility.
I recall it being similar, but Marx still boils it down from Use-Value=Labor-Input. The theory then goes and equals total revenue = total value = total labor input *). A real distinction with labor waste isn't done, but I only recall this vaguely. It maybe worthwhile for me to read it up. So if you could post the refering text relating to value/labor as you mentioned this would be helpful, since I will be working it into an introductory lecture on the historical background of lean manufacturing.
*) value of labor = price of product. The argument is that the profit the "capitalist" makes is an (unjustified) extraction of surplus labor, hence the capitalist is exploiting the workers.My counterargument is then "How do you know", perhaps the capitalist is exploiting the customers by charging to much? I then just take it further and let's ignore the seller side for an argument. Assume it's a bakery, the workers there make bread. What would happen, if the "capitalist" wouldn't pay them wages, but simply give them the bread they produced in the bakery? Would they accept that? No, they want the money for their labor.
Btw.: The author I had in mind concerning taylorism and the power struggle in the work place (according to him to get the skilled workers in place) was Harry Braverman and the book in question would be Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century .
I'm not so sure Marx ever says use-value=labor-input. My understanding is that use-value is a seperate "property" of a commodity, and "value" is the amount of labor required to produce that commodity. This is what Marx is talking about in the first pages of Capital, vol 1. when he talks about comparing corn and iron. That is, say, one bushel of corn exchanges for 10 kg of iron, and the "common element" at the base of this exchange rate must be labor. This is regardless of use-value, and according to Marx creates an equilibirium exchange-value. He then later talks about how supply and demand can have the price (which is different than value) fluctuate around this equilibrium. But "if supply and demand and reletively balanced", the price will equal, or be very near to, the shared labor-value of the two commodities.
Regarding "wasted labor", I'm pretty sure this is where "socially nessecary labor-time" comes in, which is the "socially average" time nessecary to produce a commodity. If you take longer than the "socially averege" time to produce your commodity, you're wasting labor and not producing value.
I don't have Capital in front of me, and I'm certainly not an expert on it, so unfortunately I can't give you page numbers referencing the above topics.
Poking around on Wikipedia regarding this, I found this quote from Engles on the Surplue Value page:
"Whence comes this surplus-value? It cannot come either from the buyer buying the commodities under their value, or from the seller selling them above their value. For in both cases the gains and the losses of each individual cancel each other, as each individual is in turn buyer and seller. Nor can it come from cheating, for though cheating can enrich one person at the expense of another, it cannot increase the total sum possessed by both, and therefore cannot augment the sum of the values in circulation. (...) This problem must be solved, and it must be solved in a purely economic way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force — the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?" "
The bolded part is one of the big problems with the LTV. The idea is that exchanges occur when values are equal, rather than the marginalist/subjective view where exchanges occur when both parties value the other's goods more highly than the seller. This is, I believe, why so many of Marx's criticis focus on his lack of attention paid to time, and how it affects the utility, and therefore prices. Since, for Marx, exhange is a zero-sum game, if one party is to prosper, it is at the expense of the other, rather than a mutally beneficial exchange.
In reality, due to marginal utility, wants, needs, etc, every successful trade increases the overal "psychic profit" (as Rothbard puts it in MES) of the system. Marxism, to my knowledge, doesn't address this, which is why they balk at the idea that a worker can "benefit" from being paid in wages now rather than waiting to sell the "full product" later, if they did all the work themselves and accumulated thier own capital. Once they see that they're wrong about the possibility of a mutually beneficial exchange in the form of wage labor, they must fall back on the "worker doesn't have access to capital" argument. Of course, since in a free society any worker, through savings, can accumulate his own capital, they then attack the ownership of capital in the present. Because the capitalist uses force to restrain the worker from using his machines, he is put in an advantagous position to demand a raw deal from the worker. This is the heart, I believe, of the Marxist criticism of capitalism, and ties back into the Capitalism/Feudalism stuff that started off this thread.
Notice though that we have totally demolished the idea that it's wage-labor that they claim actually causes the "problem". It's devolved into a dissagreement over property rights and ethics/morality. In my limited understanding, this basically throws Marx's whole crisis theory out the window.
Marxism- A Materials List
Here is a materials list that I put together.