The Magistrate
A Few Thoughts On Socialism, Since The Matter Has Lately Come Up....
In society, no person has the right to injure others for their personal benefit. Everyone recognizes this in the case of a stick-up artist with a pistol in his hand and a snarl of 'Gimmie yer wallet!" on his lips. But a great many things flow from any serious attempt to apply this principle universally. For at the core of our present economic practices is the blunt statement that ownership conveys the right to do injury to others for one's own gain. Indeed, this is even raised to the status of an imperative, presented as something a person does not just have the right to do, but something a person is right to do, and ought to do, whatever the promptings of personal conscience, or protests by those it is done to, might otherwise dictate. An owner who pays cut-throat wages; an owner who lays off workers to increase a profit margin; an owner who looses poisons on the land; an owner who shirks taxation: all these do real injury to fellow citizens, and do it for their own gain. People who do these things constrict the lives of others, disrupt and unsettle the lives of others, inflict illness and its attendant costs on others, force others to open their pockets further to the tax collector, and they do them for no better or different motive than the stick-up artist: they want more money than they have at present, and no scruple whatever in effecting that desire, whatever the harm done to another in its fulfillment.
The chief difference between the case of the stick-up artist and the grasping owner is not the different style of their methods of aggrandizing themselves at the expense of their fellows. The chief difference in their situations is the attitude of the state in which they operate. The state takes an adversarial relation to the stick-up artist: police hunt them, courts jail them. The state does no such thing with the grasping owner: the state is the grasping owner's friend, it is in very fact the pistol in his hand. It is by means of the state that the owner can effect his injuries to others, and the owner depends on the state for his very existence. For the very fact of ownership, the secure possession of a great deal of valuable property in the face of those with less property, or none at all, requires the power of the state, and the exertion of state power on the owner's behalf. Nothing is more puerile and false than the claim of owners that they arise and exist independently of the state, that they owe it nothing, that the state is even their adversary. Without the armed power of the state, the habit of obedience to the state, and the civil order this maintains, it would not be possible for an owner to act in ways that injure many other citizens, indeed, it would be scarcely possible to main concentrations of ownership such that one individual owned a good deal more than others. Equilibrium would be restored, and maintained, by that simplest tool of mass numbers, the mob.
Capital is simply value in excess of immediate consumption, fixed for storage in some durable form for later use, whether that be something so basic as pile of food or so esoteric as a piece of paper people have agreed to regard as more valuable than some other piece of paper. Humankind has been accumulating surplus value ever since the species commenced its existence, and the piles have gotten rather large. They are essential to any complex society. A great deal of what people in society need done, and want done, does not have any immediate pay-off, whatever it may bring in time. While engaged in such doings, people must still eat, be clothed and sheltered, amuse themselves. That is done out of the accumulated surplus, which is replenished by the proceeds of the ventures they are engaged in when these come to fruition, and produce a value greater than what has been consumed in the course of its production. The accumulations of surplus value are the enablers of complex social orders, the engine which moves social activity, and the augmentation of surplus value is the nearest thing to a collective purpose for a complex social order.
That this surplus value should be regarded as a private possession, and the increase of it wrought by the labor of many go into the purses of those who claim it as a private possession, is hardly necessary to its function in society. Tended by stewards rather than held by owners it would perform exactly the same function, and produce exactly the same benefits, for the society around it. It is undoubtedly true that some people would be better at superintending the employment of a society's surplus value than others; there is no field of human endeavor in which differentials in aptitude and skill cannot be discerned. But a system of private ownership of the accumulations of surplus value no more guarantees it will be in hands best suited to manage it than a system of private 'ownership' of the state (in the forms of autocracy or hereditary monarchy) guarantees the state will be well governed. In any society, it swiftly becomes the case that most who enjoy private ownership of large portions of accumulated surplus do so through inheritance, through accident of birth into a privileged class of owners. "No damned nonsense about merit" attends their position as those who possess, direct, and personally profit from, the accumulated surplus that is the heart of the society they exist within, or their position at the apex of it.
A chief method by which the owners of the accumulated surplus value defend their private possession of it is by blurring the concepts of property in capital goods and property in personal effects. They pretend that to deprive them of ownership of banks and factories and fleets of transport and great tracts of land is to deprive people of their personal possessions, and since the same word, 'property', is employed for both things, it is a fairly simple trick to pull off. They have been helped at times by ill-judged social movements who have in fact engaged in the same blurring from the opposite direction, and regarded a carter possessing a truck or a neighborhood baker possessing an oven as objects for expropriation equally with the owners of a fleet of several thousand trucks, or of a dozen factory ovens turning out millions of loaves and cakes each year. But a moment's reflection will disclose that these things are no more identical than a mouse and an elephant, and that the difference is the degree in which they are able by their possessions to impact the lives of others for good or ill. The small proprietor can do little in either direction, and must look the people he or she directly affects in the face: the great owner can do great good or great harm to great numbers, and to people he or she will never see.
It is perverse to the point of absurdity to attempt to seriously maintain decisions concerning how surplus value is to be deployed ought to be made without any concern for the general effects one use or another will have on the society in which it exists, and the people who comprise that society, and insist instead that the sole concern governing how surplus value is deployed ought to be getting more of it into one individual's pockets, whatever any other consequences might be. Actions which have great public effects are properly the concern of the public, and ought to be directed by the public, as the nearest thing possible to a positive assurance they will be made in the public interest. Once this is grasped, it is clear that the private owner of surplus value, and the aggrandizement of the private owner of surplus value, is an irrelevance, where it is not an active agent of harm. A public stewardship would have incentive to increase the accumulated surplus, for doing so is a public good, that enables a society to do more, and is essential to its growing larger and becoming more prosperous. A public stewardship would have no incentive to do this in a way that harmed large portions of the public, and indeed would be actively discouraged by the public from doing any such thing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4294629
What a blowhard. He doesn't need to be "thinking" about anything, much less types of economies.
With dictionary and thesaurus in hand, he goes about trying to sound intelligent. Break down what he says and it turns out he doesn't say anything at all.
Hitting the highlights...
An owner who pays cut-throat wages; an owner who lays off workers to increase a profit margin; an owner who looses poisons on the land; an owner who shirks taxation: all these do real injury to fellow citizens, and do it for their own gain. People who do these things constrict the lives of others, disrupt and unsettle the lives of others, inflict illness and its attendant costs on others, force others to open their pockets further to the tax collector, and they do them for no better or different motive than the stick-up artist: they want more money than they have at present, and no scruple whatever in effecting that desire, whatever the harm done to another in its fulfillment.
While there are unscrupulous owners/employers out there, that's no reason to punish the whole. I'm not sure what a "cut-throat wage" is, but if the person being hired doesn't want to work for what is being offered, then he is free to not take the job. If the work being offered is truly worth more, some enterprizing individual will recognize that he can open the same type of business, pay people what they're worth, and run the other business out of town. That's just common sense, which explains why the minor civil officer primitive can't grasp it.
"An owner who lays off workers to increase a profit margin." Isn't that special, the totalitarian in them always comes out. I suppose when mechanization of factories came along, the minor civil officer primitive would have chided the owner for buying a machine that took the place of 5 workers. Hopefully, in protest, he doesn't use a computer, an industry of which could certainly employ more humans were it not for those machines.
2nd paragraph.
Nothing is more puerile and false than the claim of owners that they arise and exist independently of the state, that they owe it nothing, that the state is even their adversary.
What a complete non sequitur. That the state might be the vehicle through which corps are registered as entities has nothing to do with the fact that the same state can be their adversary. It can certainly be an adversary if you are violating the law, and it should. But way too often, the state wields its power in a way that reduces the freedom of the owner to conduct business in a reasonable manner. And more often than not, the state is doing so at the bidding of some liberal group who, as is typical, wants something for nothing.
3rd paragraph
Capital is simply value in blah, blah, blah...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Glad to see you remember some of Into to Business 101.
4th paragraph
That this surplus value should be regarded as a private possession, .... is hardly necessary to its function in society. Tended by stewards rather than held by owners it would perform exactly the same function, and produce exactly the same benefits, for the society around it.
First of all, its not *regarded* as a private possession, it is one. And if you believe "stewards" can "perform exactly the same function, and produce exactly the same benefits," and be just as successful, then go for it. One would think that someone as intelligent as you claim to be would have put this into practice by now and have shown the world through your actions that this "steward" economy is superior to one of "owners."
Ah, but you haven't, have you?
It is undoubtedly true that some people would be better at superintending the employment of a society's surplus value than others; there is no field of human endeavor in which differentials in aptitude and skill cannot be discerned. But a system of private ownership of the accumulations of surplus value no more guarantees it will be in hands best suited to manage it than a system of private 'ownership' of the state (in the forms of autocracy or hereditary monarchy) guarantees the state will be well governed.
Which has nothing to do with anything. Once again, you need to prove it though actions, and I'm still looking for all these successful "steward" companies that undoubtably have to be there since, you know, they work just as well.
To take it a step further, according to your own "logic"
, what happened on Wall Street and in the financial sector these past couple of weeks could just have easily happened under your "steward" idea since, like you said, "it is undoubtedly true that some people would be better at superintending the employment of a society's surplus value than others; there is no field of human endeavor in which differentials in aptitude and skill cannot be discerned."
5th paragragh.
They have been helped at times by ill-judged social movements who have in fact engaged in the same blurring from the opposite direction, and regarded a carter possessing a truck or a neighborhood baker possessing an oven as objects for expropriation equally with the owners of a fleet of several thousand trucks, or of a dozen factory ovens turning out millions of loaves and cakes each year. But a moment's reflection will disclose that these things are no more identical than a mouse and an elephant, and that the difference is the degree in which they are able by their possessions to impact the lives of others for good or ill. The small proprietor can do little in either direction, and must look the people he or she directly affects in the face: the great owner can do great good or great harm to great numbers, and to people he or she will never see.
Complete misunderstanding of how business works by the minor civil officer primitive.
A large corp is not to be compared to a small corp because the large corp can do more harm? This is supposed to be logic?!? No wonder they wander aimlessly in the wilderness of stupid.
Never occurs to them that the large corp started out as a small corp. Never occurs to them that the small corp might want to become a large corp.
Yes, a small corp can generally provide better personal service, but there's some products you don't care about the service, you just want the product at the lowest price. And anyone stupid enough to believe that a large corp can ignore their customers and a changing economy have never witnessed the decline of K-mart and the rise of Wal-Mart. Sure, there's a larger margin of error, but it's still the backbone of every successful business.
6th paragraph.
It is perverse to the point of absurdity to attempt to seriously maintain decisions concerning how surplus value is to be deployed ought to be made without any concern for the general effects one use or another will have on the society in which it exists, and the people who comprise that society, and insist instead that the sole concern governing how surplus value is deployed ought to be getting more of it into one individual's pockets, whatever any other consequences might be.
I'm pretty sure sucessful businesses are fully aware of the cost/benefit ratio and how their actions might enhance or reduce the very society they are trying to market. Don't you worry your pretty little head about that, minor civil officer primitive.
Actions which have great public effects are properly the concern of the public, and ought to be directed by the public, as the nearest thing possible to a positive assurance they will be made in the public interest. Once this is grasped, it is clear that the private owner of surplus value, and the aggrandizement of the private owner of surplus value, is an irrelevance, where it is not an active agent of harm.
So far, you haven't show that "steward" run companies would be better than "owner" run companies. You're going to have to do better than "the nearest thing possible to a positive assurance." I either want 100% complete positive assurance, or I'll stick with what's been proven and tested, which is not socialism.
A public stewardship would have incentive to increase the accumulated surplus, for doing so is a public good, that enables a society to do more, and is essential to its growing larger and becoming more prosperous. A public stewardship would have no incentive to do this in a way that harmed large portions of the public, and indeed would be actively discouraged by the public from doing any such thing.
There's no evidence that a society of people who have no individual incentive to achieve, but are working for the whole, will become more prosperous. You can't find any country where that is the case. You can't find any country where public stewardship guarantees that something won't be done that harms large portions of the public, or that this method would reduce it anymore than capitalism. There is not an economy that has ever existed where you can't find individuals who find ways to game the system and in turn cause harm to others. This silly notion that socialism, and the stripping of individual incentives in favor of the whole, would somehow prevent or even reduce events that cause harm to others is a lie.
If the minor civil officer primitive had any shame, he would admit his dishonesty, but believing a lie is always easier, and so he will continue to dwell there.
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