Political Theory

Re: Marxian exploitation

nirgrahamUK — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:35:07 GMT

perhaps you could say something interesting?

Re: Marxian exploitation

Torsten — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:06:18 GMT

Can we continue with the subject of Marxian exploitation. Or has someone still something to say concerning the issue of opting out the state?

Re: Marxian exploitation

Torsten — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:39:32 GMT

banned:

Alright. I'm going to come and kill you and your family unless you move out. You've got a free choice to avoid murder, it's totally voluntary.

Guess in such a case most people would move out, yet in the staying or leaving the US scenario they wouldn't. In fact people are moving into the US. Dpes your murder scenario also allow me to sell my property first.

Re: Marxian exploitation

Brainpolice — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:32:15 GMT

Torsten:

JonBostwick:
Its not voluntary for anyone because no one is given the chance to opt out. However, if people were given the choice most would choose to remain subjugated, at least at first.
No, that chance is given, since the US is not restricting emmigration. On the other hand this "chance to opt out" comes at a price. You will have to sell your property, pack and leave for somewhere else for a new start. Seemingly many people don't opt for that option right now.

The chance to opt out does not necessarily require you to move, since that presumes that the government may control such property to begin with. All it really means is that you don't have to patronize or associated with the institution or make use of its services or pay for it. This does not require you to give up your property, merely to have it be left alone.

Re: Marxian exploitation

banned — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:51:23 GMT

Torsten:
No, that chance is given, since the US is not restricting emmigration.

Alright. I'm going to come and kill you and your family unless you move out. You've got a free choice to avoid murder, it's totally voluntary.

Re: Marxian exploitation

Torsten — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:16:29 GMT

JonBostwick:
Its not voluntary for anyone because no one is given the chance to opt out. However, if people were given the choice most would choose to remain subjugated, at least at first.

No, that chance is given, since the US is not restricting emmigration. On the other hand this "chance to opt out" comes at a price. You will have to sell your property, pack and leave for somewhere else for a new start. Seemingly many people don't opt for that option right now.

Re: Marxian exploitation

macsnafu — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:56:20 GMT

R.J. Moore II:

I'm not convinced that a genuine free market would have the same degree of wage-labor that we have today. I'd assert that there would be more oppurtunity for people to become enterprenuers, individual proprietors and to form alternative forms of buisiness.

This certainly seems likely but I think it is worth pointing out, especially for our ocassionaly overzealous mutalist friends, that most employers are not actively or willingly involved in created these conditions. An employer giving less to his employees than he would on a free market is perfectly rational and acceptable. They can't even know what a 'market' wage would be, and they would also go out of business if they paid it (which helps nobody, least of all his employees). The problem is the system that allows wages to be held down by an abundance of unemployed and inflationary finance that overcapitalizes industries.

As was recently made clear to me, the real problem is not that people don't have options, but that they have fewer options than they would under a truly free market. This coincides perfectly with the idea that liberal democracies (such as the U.S.) are "comparatively" free, but clearly not totally free, as mixed economies.

It's much more fun to say that all government is evil and all government intervention is wrong, but to be persuasive, we must clearly delineate what is wrong, and why it limits people's options, as well as fairly recognized the degree of freedom that currently exists.

Re: Marxian exploitation

JonBostwick — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:31:39 GMT

They attribute taxation with holding up society.
Maybe some 'progressives' do...so for them government is voluntary. How nice.

Its not voluntary for anyone because no one is given the chance to opt out. However, if people were given the choice most would choose to remain subjugated, at least at first.

There is little chance of people getting the chance to opt out of the state until a large number of people actively want to.

Re: Marxian exploitation

BinaryT — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:43:14 GMT

Brainpolice:
Well, while the common arguements for the existance of wage slavery (in particular, the broad claim that wage labor by its very nature always is or must be "wage slavery") have been completely refuted over and over again, there is a sense in which it is a very real phenomenon to the extent that the alternatives are legally barred.

Well of course the marxist exploitation crap is utterly useless. In order to refute it you need only understand that labor is itself a good. After that it comes down to whether or not the current system is usury or not. And of course it is - usury created by the state with its privileges.

I think Tucker has it right when he says

"If the men who oppose wages - that is, the purchase and sale of labor - were capable of analyzing their thought and feelings, they would see that what really excites their anger is not the fact that labor is bought and sold, but the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labor, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labor by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labor, and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously. And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labor, and then, when there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a laborer exchanging with fellow-laborers. Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury."

About the freed market, I wonder if anyone would choose not to become an entrepreneur or join some sort of worker cooperation. I think the organisational structure in which you have one or a few people supplying the capital for new means of production and whatnot, and then living off of the rent, would be quite rare.

Re: Marxian exploitation

R.J. Moore II — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:25:00 GMT

I'm not convinced that a genuine free market would have the same degree of wage-labor that we have today. I'd assert that there would be more oppurtunity for people to become enterprenuers, individual proprietors and to form alternative forms of buisiness.

This certainly seems likely but I think it is worth pointing out, especially for our ocassionaly overzealous mutalist friends, that most employers are not actively or willingly involved in created these conditions. An employer giving less to his employees than he would on a free market is perfectly rational and acceptable. They can't even know what a 'market' wage would be, and they would also go out of business if they paid it (which helps nobody, least of all his employees). The problem is the system that allows wages to be held down by an abundance of unemployed and inflationary finance that overcapitalizes industries.

Re: Marxian exploitation

Brainpolice — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:52:30 GMT

Well, of course the workers are being exploited. They are not getting paid what they would have been paid in a freed market.

Well, while the common arguements for the existance of wage slavery (in particular, the broad claim that wage labor by its very nature always is or must be "wage slavery") have been completely refuted over and over again, there is a sense in which it is a very real phenomenon to the extent that the alternatives are legally barred. To the extent that genuine competition in the labor market is restricted, that there are massive barriers to entry to becoming an enteprenuer oneself or to forming alternative forms of buisiness organization, workers are indeed "wage slaves".

Of course, the common libertarian response to the claim of "wage slavery" is that the worker can quit and pursue another job or become self-employed or become an enterprenuer themselves. At face value, this makes perfect sense, but it doesn't entirely apply to the current unfree market in which one doesn't have much of a real option to do so due to government intervention. I'm not convinced that a genuine free market would have the same degree of wage-labor that we have today. I'd assert that there would be more oppurtunity for people to become enterprenuers, individual proprietors and to form alternative forms of buisiness.

Re: Marxian exploitation

BinaryT — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:37:12 GMT

It is of course wrong to believe that values are somehow "objective" and the people are "wrong" for not using the LToValue. However, there are several people who derive their own values in things from the labor put into them (and don't claim them to be objective), and using the LToV this way seems to me compatible with the Austrian view.

I don't see how you can "disprove" the entire LToV, however the claim that it is some sort of objective fact is of course false.

BlackSheep:
Someone that says that workers are exploited is a dummy in this day and age. With all the free enterprise and prosperity that even countries like mine here have, it's absolutely ridiculous this kind of communist rethoric.

Well, of course the workers are being exploited. They are not getting paid what they would have been paid in a freed market.

Re: Marxian exploitation

Jon Irenicus — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:57:11 GMT

I also came across this, and this, recently.

-Jon

Re: Marxian exploitation

PeterWellington — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:29:05 GMT

Marxists don't recognize the natural power balance between employer and employee. Employees are looking to "exploit" just as much as the employer. How many employees do a cost/benefit analysis to determine if they're a net benefit to the company? Would a grocery bagger turn down $1,000,000 salary?

In a free market, an exploitive company always represents an opportunity for another company to come along and steal away their employees with higher wages and better treatment. Ironically, it's often the government intervention designed to "protect" workers that can slow down this process (through high barriers to entry created by regulations).

Re: Marxian exploitation

Juan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:26:09 GMT

Jon:
The negative consequence that people prefer paying taxes to is not necessarily violence from the tax man.

How do you know ? That may be true with respect to some people, but I think the majority pay because they don't want their houses sized, don't like to be jailed, and don't like to be shot.

They attribute taxation with holding up society.

Maybe some 'progressives' do...so for them government is voluntary. How nice.

The state is built on more than violence, there is a reason it fields an army of intellectual supporters.

Well, there's a lot of fraud going on as well, I guess. However, I don't think that such a thing as 'voluntary servitude' is to be taken literally. I think the phrase was an attempt to show to the 'masses' that government can't physically control its subjects. However, government controls its subjects using the threat of physical violence, fear, coercion. I wouldn't call that 'voluntary'.