Anarchist/ libertarian socialist economics
brian turner
David Graeber expressed the opinion that capitalism requires a
powerful state. He implied that the anarchist/libertarian socialist
alternative would not be burdened with this problem.
** ...I am not aware of anyplace where wage labor (as opposed to say,
some kind ** of more diffuse patronage relationship) has ever emerged
where there
** was not a state to create the conditions which would make it
possible.
** ...[It's] hard for me at least to see how our project is going to
** lead to a totalitarian nightmare considering we're not even trying
** to take over the mechanisms of the state.
(please forgive the out-of-context use of these quotes)
It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
development)--both past (Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson, John Kenneth
Galbraith) and present (Ha-Joon Chang, Joseph Stiglitz, Meredith
Woo-Cumings, Peter B. Evans, Alice Amsden...)--who point out that
capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
interventionist state to overcome market failures. These critiques of
laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally) would also
apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be created, how
would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt there are
any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
anarchism. Therefore, I think anarchism/libertarian socialism should
be an ideal, a direction to move in, but realistically,
social-democracy/welfare state, Fabian socialism, market socialism
with state intervention are the realistic leftist alternatives in my
opinion. All compatible with democracy and civil liberties; with the
understanding that democracy will never be perfect.
David Graeber
bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner) wrote:
Why do you feel that a _state_, specifically - that is,
an organization which is based on a monopoly of the use of
violence in a given territory; an inherently coercive,
bureaucratic mechanism - would be more efficient at the
distribution of goods, or in creating the climate for an
efficient distribution of goods, than any other possible
arrangement? Or, perhaps more to the point, why do you assume
that it would be so much more efficient than any non-coercive
alternative that this greater efficiency would outweigh the
obvious advantages of having a free society in which no one
is coerced?
After all, it's not as if it would be impossible to create
larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on without
a state.
DG
Constantinople
@posting.google.com:
> In another thread (getting too crowded so I'm posting here instead),
> David Graeber expressed the opinion that capitalism requires a
> powerful state. He implied that the anarchist/libertarian socialist
> alternative would not be burdened with this problem.
>
> ** ...I am not aware of anyplace where wage labor (as opposed to say,
> some kind ** of more diffuse patronage relationship) has ever emerged
> where there
> ** was not a state to create the conditions which would make it
> possible.
>
> ** ...[It's] hard for me at least to see how our project is going to
> ** lead to a totalitarian nightmare considering we're not even trying
> ** to take over the mechanisms of the state.
>
> (please forgive the out-of-context use of these quotes)
>
>
> It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
> alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
> of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
> development)--both past (Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson, John Kenneth
> Galbraith) and present (Ha-Joon Chang, Joseph Stiglitz, Meredith
> Woo-Cumings, Peter B. Evans, Alice Amsden...)--who point out that
> capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
> interventionist state to overcome market failures.
The inclusion of Galbraith in your list of economic authorities signals
that your economic opinions are not to be taken seriously, not without some
actual argument on your part. Mentioning authorities in a subject can add a
bit of persuasive force to your arguments but only if they are genuine
authorities. So, rather than trying to impress by namedropping, why not try
to argue that the interventionist state is required to overcome supposed
market failures.
Joseph K.
wrote:
Your use of the word 'utopian' is incorrect. To let people do what
they want freely is not utopian, but on the contrary, is utterly
realistic: is to let happen what would happen if there were no
collective ideology coercively applied on us all.
>> I seriously doubt there are
>> any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
>> anarchism. Therefore, I think anarchism/libertarian socialism should
>> be an ideal, a direction to move in, but realistically,
>> social-democracy/welfare state, Fabian socialism, market socialism
>> with state intervention are the realistic leftist alternatives in my
>> opinion. All compatible with democracy and civil liberties; with the
>> understanding that democracy will never be perfect.
On the contrary, what you find good is a contamination of ideas of the
Left with right-wing authoritarian ideology.
> Why do you feel that a _state_, specifically - that is,
>an organization which is based on a monopoly of the use of
>violence in a given territory; an inherently coercive,
>bureaucratic mechanism - would be more efficient at the
>distribution of goods, or in creating the climate for an
>efficient distribution of goods, than any other possible
>arrangement? Or, perhaps more to the point, why do you assume
>that it would be so much more efficient than any non-coercive
>alternative that this greater efficiency would outweigh the
>obvious advantages of having a free society in which no one
>is coerced?
Nice variation of the question, though it seems to me the efficiency
of the distribution of goods would not be reduced by the absence of an
institutionalized system of indoctrination and coercion.
> After all, it's not as if it would be impossible to create
>larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on without
>a state.
Corporation would probably cease to exist, given their strong
dependence on intellectual property rights and patent laws (enforced
by the State), so in a sense the mean size of coordinated systems
would be reduced in anarchy (also counting the dissapeareance of the
State, the largest and richest system of coordination inside any
community).
Joseph K.
Matt
> Corporation would probably cease to exist, given their strong
> dependence on intellectual property rights and patent laws (enforced
> by the State),
I don't see that there is any such strong dependence, aside from
corporations that have specifically invested in intellectual property.
A greater obstacle to corporations in anarchy is limited liability,
which we discussed a few months ago on alt.anarchism.
--
Matt
brian turner
But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is* impossible "to
create
larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on without a
state." You might could construct a system of market exchange without
a state (or a minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating
disputes). But I assume you desire growth also. Capitalist
development has usually required coordinating and risk absorbing
action by the state, and I think it would for anarchist socialism too.
Coordination and risk absorption requires institutions. Developing
such institutions will lead to a state, even if you give it a label
like "the Northwest regional inter-syndicate cooordinating agency".
And a state is not necessarily more coercive than a collective, it's
the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
return.
brian turner
> > It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
> > alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
> > of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
> > development)--both past (Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson, John Kenneth
> > Galbraith) and present (Ha-Joon Chang, Joseph Stiglitz, Meredith
> > Woo-Cumings, Peter B. Evans, Alice Amsden...)--who point out that
> > capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
> > interventionist state to overcome market failures.
> The inclusion of Galbraith in your list of economic authorities signals
> that your economic opinions are not to be taken seriously, not without some
> actual argument on your part. Mentioning authorities in a subject can add a
> bit of persuasive force to your arguments but only if they are genuine
> authorities.
I think Galbraith's ideas--the New Deal or Western Europe welfare
state as I read it--have worked out ok in practice, with plenty of
flaws but it still created growth. Anarchist socialism is mostly
theoretical for the time being. I'm not an expert on Spain's
revolution, but I gather it wasn't around long enough in a stable
environment to draw lessons on its economic performance.
> So, rather than trying to impress by namedropping, why not try
> to argue that the interventionist state is required to overcome
> supposed market failures.
Ok, fair enough, though in my defense the namedropping wasn't so much
to impress, but 1) laziness--i.e. see their arguments 2) Also, I
especially like to bring attention to Ha-Joon Chang and Meredith
Woo-Cumings' work because--unlike Stiglitz for instance--I think they
are underappreciated and I hope maybe someone will look up their work
upon seeing the name. I should say that Meredith Woo-Cumings is
probably not characterized accurately, as I said before, as a critic
of laissez-faire capitalism. She merely describes the way South Korea
used finance as method of intervention and growth promotion, as
opposed to advocating it. And she's written about how historical
legacies impact policy paths in Latin America vs East Asia.
Here are some quotes, the kind of thing I was talking about--that is,
arguments for the necessary role of the state in capitalist
development, a role that anarchist socialists have not really
considered might apply to laissez-faire socialism too. I'd rather
them speak for themselves rather the me try to paraphrase it, which I
would probably do badly. Also, these are just little out-of-context
samples, not representing their entire arguments obviously.
1) Galbraith _The New Industrial State_ (1972 ed) p47-48
"Outside of the industrial system, most notably in agriculture, the
government also intervenes extensively to set prices and ensure demand
and thus to suspend the operation of the market and eliminate market
uncertainty. This it does because the participating units--the
individual farms--are not large enough to control prices. Technology
and the associated commitment of capital and time require nonetheless
that there be stable prices and assured demand. But within the
industrial system similar action is also required where exacting
technology with extensive research and development, mean a very long
production period and a very large of capital. Such is the case in
the development and supply of modern weapons, in the exploration of
space and in the development of a growing range of modern civilian
products or services including transport planes, high-speed ground
transport and various uses of nuclear energy. Here the state
guarantees a price sufficient, with suitable margin, to cover costs.
And it undertakes to buy what is produced or to compensate fully in
the case of contract cancellation. Thus, effectively, it suspends the
market with all associated uncertainty. One consequence, as we shall
see, is that in areas of most exacting and advanced technology the
market is most completely replaced and planning is therefore most
secure. As a further consequence this has become for participants a
very attractive part of the industrial system. The fully planned
economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who
know it best."
2) Joseph Stiglitz _Whither Socialism?_ (1995) p. 252
"Those advocating centralization and hierarchical decision structures
worry about the duplication that can result in 'polyarchical'
(decentralized) structures. The worry about the problems of
coordination, and the failure to internalize externalities, and they
worry about the absence of 'checks' on the adoption of bad projects.
(The more recent literature on the economics of information has
identified a broader range of externalitylike effects that arise
whenever information is imperfect or markets incomplete).
Yet the thrust of that work was that there are offsetting
advantages of decentralization: the diversification of risk, the
absence of bureaucratic waste, the multitude of opportunities provided
by polyarchic organizations (the opportunities for a second chance),
and the ability it provides for competition, which can be used as a
basis of both selection and incentives.
The mixture of polyarchical and hierarchical organizations that
we observe in market economies reflects the advantages and
disadvantages of these alternative modes of organizing decision
making. (I do not, however, want to suggest that the particular mix we
observe is optimal). Firms and the government seem always to be
struggling to find the balance that is appropriate for the particular
conditions facing them."
-----
Joseph Stiglitz "Rational Peasants, Efficient Institutions, and a
Theory of Rural Organization: Methodological Remarks for Development
Economists" in _The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions_ editor
Pranab Bardhan (2000). pgs 23-24
"More generally, while peasants may, in many respects, be rational,
responding to market forces, they are not fully informed about the
consequences either of their actions, or of the institutions through
which they operate. Indeed, how could we expect them to be, when we,
who have devoted our lives to studying these questions, are ourselves
uncertain? This in itself could provide part of the explanation of
why institutional rearrangements that increase productivity are not
adopted.
But even if they were sufficiently well informed that in their
economic relationships with those with whom they interact there are no
obvious 'inefficiencies', resource allocations may not be
Pareto-efficient. The theorem that asserts that market resource
allocations are Pareto-efficient is of very restricted validity. Not
only does it require perfect competition, but it is only valid if
there is a complete set of markets and perfect information, conditions
that are clearly not satisfied.
Indeed, one of the distinguishing features of LDCs [lesser
developed countries] is the absence of certain markets. This absence
itself is something that the theory should explain, and in fact the
information-theoretic models, focusing on the consequences of
informational asymmetries, adverse selection, and moral hazard, have
not contributed to our understanding of why certain markets are likely
either not to exist or to be 'thin'. Greenwald and Stiglitz
['Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete
Markets' Quarterly Journal of Economics 1986 #101] have shown that
market allocations with incomplete markets and imperfect information
are, in general, constrained Pareto-inefficient; that is, there exist
government interventions, taking explicitly into account the costs of
information and of establishing markets, which can make everyone
better off. They show that there are, in effect, pervasive
externalities in these markets; actions by one individual affect the
welfare of others. These externalities can be partially internalized
-- and are done so, for instance, by the interlinking of markets
within LDCs -- but a complete internalization of these externalities
would obviously be inconsistent with decentralization [.....]
Of course, societies adapt to the absence of a complete set of
markets: institutions develop to perform the functions that otherwise
would have been served by missing markets. Thus, sharecropping can be
viewed in part as an institutional adaptation to the absence of
certain risk (insurance) markets. But, as we have emphasized
elsewhere, the fact that institutions respond, that they perform
certain economic functions, does not mean that they perform those
functions 'optimally', that the resulting equilibrium is, in any
meaningful sense, efficient"
3) Ha-Joon Chang "The Role of Institutions in Asian Development" from
Asian Development Review 1998 16:2
"Traditionally, there have been two major camps on these issues. On
the one hand, there have been those that the decentralized
coordination mechanisms of the market is the most efficient
institution of coordination and that such mechanism will emerge with
little difficulty when there are gains from trade to be made, even in
countries with little prior experience of the market economy. On the
other hand, there have been those who believe that market mechanisms
either do not exist or malfunction in developing countries, and
therefore the government has to intervene to fill such gaps by playing
the role of coordinator.
More recently, however, a third position has emerged, which says
that neither market nor the government can achieve all the complex
coordinatory tasks that are required in complex modern societies.
Those who supportthis position -- a position that is taken in the
present paper -- argue that markets and governments are just two of
many institutions of coordination and administration and that business
corporations, industrial associations, labor unions,
government-private sector consultation bodies, and so on, are all
important institutions of coordination."
------
Ha-Joon Chang, Yilmaz Akyuz, Richard Kozul-Wright "New perspectives on
East Asian development" Journal of Development Studies; August 1998
Conventional analysis offers very little explanation for the rapid and
unprecedented rise in savings and investments in Japan and the
first-tier NIEs from their very low levels in the 1950s, but
emphasises stable macroeconomic conditions and 'getting the
fundamentals right' by opening the economy to world market forces in
improving both allocative and productive efficiency.(9) Productivity
growth is, in this view, essentially the outcome of allowing markets
to operate freely to the fullest possible extent; hence the call for
rapid domestic liberalisation and full integration with the world
economy.(10) There are two basic problems with this approach. First,
it assumes that the level and structure of investment will be
optimally guided by price signals. This tends to downplay the many
problems which arise from the fact that investment involves an
irreversible commitment of resources to an uncertain future where
price signals are, at best, imperfect signals and waiting strategies
can forestall long-term investment commitments. Secondly, it ignores
the strong complementarities between investment and other aspects of
the growth process, including exports and technological progress,
which can give rise to a very high social return to investment. But if
dynamic externalities linked to scale economies and learning require
effective linkages between these complementary aspects of
industrialisation and growth, where these do not emerge spontaneously
effective policy initiatives must supplement or replace market forces.
[.........]
The export-investment nexus: The challenge of economic development
does not end with achieving high levels of investment. Even if all the
resources mobilised are invested productively, there is still ground
for asking whether they are being invested in the 'right' areas.
Answering this question has often been obscured by arguments about the
effectiveness of industrial policy in countries at a more advanced
stage of economic development. Unlike developed countries, developing
countries are not initially operating at the technological frontier of
international best practice. Consequently, promoting industrial
development does not involve their 'picking winners' in an uncertain
technological race based on innovation, but lifting the propensity to
invest and promoting movements along existing learning curves,
including learning how to acquire mastery over readily available
technologies and how to compete in mature-product markets with already
established firms. In this respect, an important feature of East Asian
development has been efforts to link the profit-investment nexus to
the export-investment nexus.
[...........]
Thus, in these countries measures to promote investment were linked to
the establishment of domestic capital and intermediate goods
industries and technological upgrading. These included re-instituting
import restrictions, rolling back tax exemptions on the import of
certain intermediate and capital goods and granting higher investment
tax credits to businesses purchasing domestically produced machinery.
In addition, a policy was pursued of building up a technological
capacity at the national, industry and even firm levels. In these
economies, tax and other incentives for enterprise training were
complemented by a more detailed national training programme, which
placed greater emphasis on technical subjects at higher levels of
education and on greater industry involvement in vocational training
schemes. Measures to facilitate local R&D, including direct financial
subsidies, have also been extensively used.
Given that technological and organisational leadership was located
abroad, the transfer and adaptation of foreign technology was, from an
early stage, recognised by policy-makers in East Asia as a critical
link in the process of industrial upgrading. Acquiring new
technologies required generating foreign exchange, and it was for this
purpose, as well as to provide an outlet for industrial production
without promoting domestic consumption, and to expose the recipients
of rents to a measured degree of competition on world markets, that
East Asian governments encouraged exports. As a result of these
various policy initiatives, the first-tier NIEs have been particularly
successful in upgrading their structure of manufacturing output
towards scale- and skill-intensive activities. By the second half of
the 1980s, the share of these activities in total manufacturing output
had passed that of resource and labour-intensive activities. The
rising share of these scale- and skill-inten! sive goods in total
manufacturing exports (although initially lagging in their share of
total output) also began to accelerate rapidly from the mid-1970s.
These goods not only comprise the majority of manufactured exports
from the first-tier NIEs but have also gained substantial shares in
world markets [UNCTAD, 1996].
[..........]
One particularly important feature of these business links has been in
the financial sector. Failures on the capital markets caused by
information imperfections and coordination problems are recognised to
pose a major obstacle to rapid investment and innovation, particularly
in developing countries, where risks are high [Stiglitz, 1994;
Studart, 1995]. The socialisation of risk through bank-based lending
has provided the means of overcoming these problems, and a variety of
institutional links between corporations and banks have been devised
to ensure a better investment regime [Akyuz, 1993]. In East Asia this
has also been an important focus for government-business
collaboration, either through state-owned banks or considerable state
direction of the financial sector [UNCTAD, 1994; Stiglitz and Uy,
1996].
[..........]
In this context, it is possible to identify similar policy measures
used to establish a dynamic profit-investment nexus, including
favourable fiscal measures and the deliberate creation of rents. Many
of these measures were first employed in agriculture; public
investment in agricultural infrastructure and services, favourable
incentives, including subsidised credits, and agricultural research
have played an important role in facilitating investment in
agriculture and improving productivity. In Thailand, in the 1950s and
1960s, for example, investment funds were channelled into
infrastructure to open up more cultivated land, investment incentives
were mainly offered to agro-business and the government intervened to
increase the credit available to crop growers and exporters.
Indonesia's impressive growth in agricultural output over the past
three decades has similarly been based on massive investment in
agricultural infrastructure, large fertiliser subsidies and strong
government direction." Again, as in the first-tier NIEs,
labour-intensive export-oriented manufacturing did not develop
spontaneously through the availability of cheap labour and free trade.
Besides the provision of infrastructure and primary education, direct
incentives, including tax breaks and subsidies, support for training
and export promotion measures have been used extensively to accelerate
investment in these industries and to exploit their comparative
advantages.
4) Alice Amsden _The Rise of the Rest: Challenges to the West From
Late Industrializing Economies_ (2001) p 289
"The implications for economic development theory of dropping the
assumption of perfect knowledge are radical but have barely begun to
be explored.
If knowledge is not perfect, then productivity and quality may
vary among firms in the same industry in different countries.
Consequently, simply allowing the market-mechanism to determine the
price level ('getting prices right') may be insufficient to enable
countries to compete internationally in industries in which they may
be expected to enjoy a comparative advantage (labor-using industries
in the case of labor-abundant countries, raw material-using industries
in the case of raw material-abundant countries, and so forth). The
price of labor, for example, may have to become negative before a
labor abundant country become internationally competitive in the most
labor-using industry, holding productivity and quality constant,
because the proprietary knowledge-based assets of a higher-wage
competitor may earn it lower unit costs -- as we saw in the case of
the Japanese textile industry vis-a-vis both the prewar Indian and
Chinese textile industries and the postwar Taiwanese and Korean
textiles industries."
[......]
...'government failures' can no longer be taken for granted if
governments do use institutional mechanisms to raise productivity and
jump-start economic growth. Government failures may be inevitable in
the absence of systemic machinery to prevent them, but not necessarily
in the presence of such machinery, as we saw in the case of 'the
rest'. The reciprocal control mechanism of 'the rest' was was hardly
perfect. But it illustrates the possibilities of minimizing
government failures even in economies plagued by 'moral hazard' and
corruption (but enjoying manufacturing experience).
There has not thus far been widespread recognition of the
systemic machinery that countries in 'the rest' put in place,
implemented, and monitored to avoid government failure and to pursue
developmental goals. Yet 'getting the control mechanism 'right''
whether or not prevailing prices were 'right' was central to the
postwar process of catching up.
James A. Donald
On 6 Mar 2003 12:27:06 -0800, bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner)
wrote:
> But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is*
> impossible "to create larger systems of coordination, or
> exchange, and so on without a state." You might could
> construct a system of market exchange without a state (or a
> minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating disputes).
> But I assume you desire growth also. Capitalist development
> has usually required coordinating and risk absorbing action
> by the state,
Observe the development is most, where these "coordinating and
risk absorbing" actions have been least.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Ve5KJar28RokYLlTQRmerneAg6HEYT2lCZy3nuNi
4BVPThP65W4MMkFMvNsDsFhTxf92Y08rNKrlzMZs8
michael price
As I recall we found that there were many ways of issuing "limited
liability" securities without actually limiting the claims of creditors.
It doesn't seem to be a big problem as long as someone insures your
liability.
michael price
But it has been done. The State did not create the market and would
actively opposed the switch to a wage based system, yet they happened.
> You might could construct a system of market exchange without
> a state (or a minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating
> disputes).
So you admit that this "impossibility" occurs?
> But I assume you desire growth also.
So? Once the system of market exchange gets going it does not need
the State to make it grow.
> Capitalist development has usually required coordinating and risk absorbing
> action by the state,
When? Which State agency sent Marco Polo to trade with the Chinese?
Which bureaucrat ordered Edison to invent the light bulb?
> and I think it would for anarchist socialism too.
> Coordination and risk absorption requires institutions.
Yes, but they need not be coercive. In fact since they need the
cooperation of thousands of people they better not be.
> Developing such institutions will lead to a state,
Why? Absorbing economic risk does not because easier because you can
shoot people.
> even if you give it a label
> like "the Northwest regional inter-syndicate cooordinating agency".
>
> And a state is not necessarily more coercive than a collective,
Yes it is. States have the power and legal right to kill people
for disobeying them.
> it's
> the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
> people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
> regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
> interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
> unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
> give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
> return.
But in a collective presumably you can leave if that something is not
delivered. You can't do that with a State.
michael price
But "market uncertainty" is only a symptom of the bigger problem, that
it is impossible to tell the future. How can you elminate someone else's
uncertainty without taking it on? He is describing not the elimination
of but the transfer of uncertainty and the associated costs.
Galbraith _The New Industrial State_ continues
> "This it does because the participating units--the
> individual farms--are not large enough to control prices."
So what? Nobody is. Prices relate to the totality of the costs of
factors of production, previous decisions, natural occurances, etc.
Being big doesn't allow you to control prices unless you become a
monopoly. Almost all people in the world have managed to make a living
without a monopoly.
Galbraith _The New Industrial State_ continues
> "Technology and the associated commitment of capital and time
> require nonetheless that there be stable prices and assured demand."
No they require that somebody take the risk that there will be unstable
prices and demand will not be present. The idea that this has to be the
government is moronic. Plenty of people will buy your futures contracts.
> "But within the industrial system similar action is also required
> where exacting technology with extensive research and development,
> mean a very long production period and a very large [amount] of capital."
No, again you don't need government guns to cover you in the event of
losses. You need investors. If you can't find any who think it's worth
the risk it probably isn't.
> Such is the case in the development and supply of modern weapons,
A notorously inefficent industry under the system he suggests.
> in the exploration of space
Ditto.
> and in the development of a growing range of modern civilian
> products or services including transport planes, high-speed ground
> transport and various uses of nuclear energy. Here the state
> guarantees a price sufficient, with suitable margin, to cover costs.
Thus removing an incentive to keep costs low. Note that nuclear
plants take over a decade just to return the amount of energy it takes
to make them. Most never make a profit, instead relying on extortions
of electricity purchasers who could get the power cheaper elsewhere.
Galbraith _The New Industrial State_ continues
> And it undertakes to buy what is produced or to compensate fully in
> the case of contract cancellation. Thus, effectively, it suspends the
> market with all associated uncertainty.
And replaces it with the government with even more uncertainty. The big
problem is that the beneficiaries of the activity do not pay the cost
of the uncertainty of it. The taxpayers do.
Galbraith _The New Industrial State_ continues
> "One consequence, as we shall
> see, is that in areas of most exacting and advanced technology the
> market is most completely replaced and planning is therefore most
> secure.
Some people's planning is. Other people's plans are shot to hell.
Galbraith _The New Industrial State_ continues
> "As a further consequence this has become for participants a
> very attractive part of the industrial system."
He got that right.
> "The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is
> warmly regarded by those who know it best."
Because those who know it best are the leeches who suck the
blood of the ignorant taxpayer and consumer.
brian turner
> On 6 Mar 2003 12:27:06 -0800, bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner)
> wrote:
> > But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is*
> > impossible "to create larger systems of coordination, or
> > exchange, and so on without a state." You might could
> > construct a system of market exchange without a state (or a
> > minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating disputes).
> > But I assume you desire growth also. Capitalist development
> > has usually required coordinating and risk absorbing action
> > by the state,
> Observe the development is most, where these "coordinating and
> risk absorbing" actions have been least.
> James A. Donald
> 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
> Ve5KJar28RokYLlTQRmerneAg6HEYT2lCZy3nuNi
> 4BVPThP65W4MMkFMvNsDsFhTxf92Y08rNKrlzMZs8
Below is Amazon.com's book description of:
---------------
_Embedded Autonomy_ by Peter B. Evans
In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too often
devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter Evans questions
such simplistic views, offering a new vision of why state involvement
works in some cases and produces disasters in others. To illustrate,
he looks at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational
corporations shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil,
India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties. Evans starts with
the idea that states vary in the way they are organized and tied to
society. In some nations, like Zaire, the state is predatory,
ruthlessly extracting and providing nothing of value in return. In
others, like Korea, it is developmental, promoting industrial
transformation. In still others, like Brazil and India, it is in
between, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Evans's years of
comparative research on the successes and failures of state
involvement in the process of industrialization have here been crafted
into a persuasive and entertaining work, which demonstrates that
successful state action requires an understanding of its own limits, a
realistic relationship to the global economy, and the combination of
coherent internal organization and close links to society that Evans
called "embedded autonomy." --This text refers to the Hardcover
edition.
---------------
So only after evaluating the type of intervention in each case could
the judgement you are suggesting be put forth. Otherwise, it is
addressing an argument not being made, it's a straw man. And corrupt,
rent-seeking intervention is the most common; that fact would be and
is a valid point made by some defenders of laissez-faire states. I.e.
some say yes, theoretically there are growth promoting good
interventions, but if you try for them, you will fail and end up with
a corrupt rent-seeking bureaucracy 95% of the time. This is pretty
accurate. Of course, the reverse could be true. Seeking to copy Hong
Kong doesn't mean you'll end up with Hong Kong.
And as I mentioned once before, the city of Hong Kong's growth rate
was not that different from the rest of East Asia. I don't know, I
doubt that the US growth rate (around 4% 1870-1970) was faster than
the more (good variety) interventionist states of western Europe,
especially if the wars are somehow taken out of the analysis.
brian turner
> >> How [under anarchist socialism] would growth be created, how
> >> would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
> >> be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
> >> like Marx proposed, than under markets)?
> Your use of the word 'utopian' is incorrect. To let people do what
> they want freely is not utopian, but on the contrary, is utterly
> realistic: is to let happen what would happen if there were no
> collective ideology coercively applied on us all.
Marx did not say how, in the stateless socialist future he envisioned,
collectives would interact with each other. We know he detested
markets (for that stage), but he didn't say what would replace
markets, other than saying the collectives would freely associate.
That's what I've heard Chomsky say too. Kropotkin's _Conquest of
Bread_, unless I overlooked it, only speaks of a "variety of trades,
mutually co-operating..." (pg 178...Cambridge 1995 edition).
Unless someone can explain how such a system of non-market free
association would work, I regard it as utopian. My guess is any
attempt would lead, intended or not, to market exchange. If there is
going to be market exchange, market failures are going to arise. If
market failures arise, the question of whether the state should
intervene arises.
Michael Albert--in the PARECON system--has sketched out a detailed
model, but I'm not sure if that's a good system; seems to require
excessive participation and planning of purchases n the part of
consumers.
David Graeber
nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
Actually, the State was in almost all cases actively
involved in creating wage-based systems. For example, during
the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when the enclosure
movements were forcing innumerable cottagers out of their
communities, vagabondage laws were created which made it
a felony for a landless able-bodied male _not_ to be employed
as a wage labor. Back then, "felony" meant "capital crime" -
so could literally be executed for refusal to work as a
wage labor (or inability to find a job). Later this was
qualified, but the government still reserved the right to
force the unemployed into wage labor jobs, no matter what
the wages or conditions, if they found anyone willing to
employ them...
Similarly in the colonies there was almost invariably
an endless, conscious, and determined effort to create
a wage labor-based system which usually involved all sorts
of violence and massive popular resistance. These things
simply never emerged spontaneously. The state was always
intimately involved.
DG
David Graeber
"Coercive" means threatening people with violence. Collectives
do not say "here's the rules, if you violate it we will send armed
men to take you hostage, beat you or shoot you if you resist,
and lock you up for the rest of your life if necessary to punish
you for defying us." Sure, people can use the term "coercion" more
broadly but if you want to claim there's no significant difference
between appealing to someone's sense of solidarity or desire to be part
of group of people they are attached to, and threatening to break
their heads open, then I would say you are just trying to come up
with reasons to justify physical brutality. Of course these are
not the same thing. But come on: you're not really suggesting
there's no difference here, are you?
But if, on the other hand, you were simply saying that "any
large complex institution regulating economic exchange is a
state even if it does not involve the systematic use of force",
then you have a very unusual definition. The typical definition
of the state is precisely, an institution which claims a monopoly
of the legitimate use of coercive force within a given territory,
at least in its own operations. (This comes from Weber incidentally,
but has been the basic social scientific definition ever since.)
It seems to me that what you are enunciating here is a really,
really extreme version of the functionalist theory of the state.
That is, that states are basically about providing organizational
services to their subjects. Thus the assumption used to be for
example, that centralized states first arose in areas with
complex irrigation systems (Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus valley,
the Yellow River...) because you needed some large bureaucratic
organization to handle the building, maintenance, distribution
of the water which was a key economic scarce resource, and this
went way beyond what was possible for small self-governing
village communities. A classic functionalist argument. Problem
was subsequent investigation proved it to be false. In fact,
it turned out those early governments had almost nothing to do
with irrigation maintenance - it actually does turn out to have
been managed by complicated democratic networks between the
peasants themselves, and in many areas, such as Bali, still is.
The reason why states developed where there was irrigation is
because with previous forms of agriculture there was very little
investment in one's land so that if a bunch of thugs showed
up and said they were the state and you had to turn over a
third of your crops in taxes (or whatever), people would just
move somewhere else. Once you've invested in some giant
irrigation works for ten years, you're pretty much stuck there.
The lesson is that the state was, in its origins, basically
a coercive (in my sense: violent) and parasitical institution and
that people are actually capable of organizing all sorts of
complex economic networks involving the distribution of scarce
economic resources even under bronze age conditions. Of course
yes, over time, once states existed, they often became the
medium through which people carried out public works,
redistribution, and so on, but the idea that you need a bunch
of thugs who insist that they're the only people with the
right to kill, maim, or generally hurt people within a given
territory, and forcibly extract resources from them, etc etc
in order to have any large-scale organization is simply untrue.
DG
brian turner
> [David Graeber] After all, it's not as if it would be impossible to create
> larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on without
> a state.
> > [Brian] But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is*
> > impossible "to create larger systems of coordination, or
> > exchange, and so on without a state."
> But it has been done. The State did not create the market and would
> actively opposed the switch to a wage based system, yet they happened.
> > [Brian] You might could construct a system of market exchange without
> > a state (or a minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating
> > disputes).
> So you admit that this "impossibility" occurs?
Yes, markets can be and I suppose have been (?) created without a
state. States can and have enhanced markets. I really meant an
effective growth-creating market system.
> > But I assume you desire growth also.
>
> So? Once the system of market exchange gets going it does not need
> the State to make it grow.
This is the big controversial question. I say it does. There are a
few cases of relatively free market development, but not many. The
state has been activist in most cases. Defenders of your position are
thus required to say that the state only appeared to play a
growth-enhancing role, that actually it was irrelevant, or even a
burden and growth would have been faster without it.
> > Capitalist development has usually required coordinating and risk absorbing
> > action by the state,
>
> When? Which State agency sent Marco Polo to trade with the Chinese?
> Which bureaucrat ordered Edison to invent the light bulb?
I'm not claiming that the state is due all credit, far from it. A
case where the state tries to do it all will end up poor. A country
where the state does nothing (beyond contract enforcement) is
*probably* going to be poor, but could be lucky and be a Hong Kong.
> > and I think it would for anarchist socialism too.
> > Coordination and risk absorption requires institutions.
>
> Yes, but they need not be coercive. In fact since they need the
> cooperation of thousands of people they better not be.
Theoretically, anarchism is possible. In practice, the freerider
problem and other problems prevent a lot of otherwise economically
rational cooperation. To overcome the freerider problem, for
instance, requires coercion. This coercion can be limited, and a
system of checks and balances can minimize abuse. I admit liberal
democratic states are far from perfect, pragmatically and morally.
> > Developing such institutions will lead to a state,
>
> Why? Absorbing economic risk does not because easier because you can
> shoot people.
It might, because the threat of imprisonment for tax avoidance means
the freerider effect--for growth promotion related public goods with
non-excludability--can be overcome. This is unfortunate, but the
alternative is even worse.
> > even if you give it a label
> > like "the Northwest regional inter-syndicate cooordinating agency".
> >
> > And a state is not necessarily more coercive than a collective,
>
> Yes it is. States have the power and legal right to kill people
> for disobeying them.
But a liberal democratic state has lots of checks and balances on
killing or imprisoning people.
> > it's
> > the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
> > people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
> > regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
> > interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
> > unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
> > give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
> > return.
> But in a collective presumably you can leave if that something is not
> delivered. You can't do that with a State.
Very true, that's a downside to it. Not having it has downsides too.
brian turner
> > And a state is not necessarily more coercive than a collective, it's
> > the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
> > people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
> > regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
> > interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
> > unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
> > give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
> > return.
> "Coercive" means threatening people with violence. Collectives
> do not say "here's the rules, if you violate it we will send armed
> men to take you hostage, beat you or shoot you if you resist,
> and lock you up for the rest of your life if necessary to punish
> you for defying us."
There is never going to be full agreement in an egalitarian
collective. So, what to do?
Regarding the state, checks and balances help, a constitution and
independent judiciary protecting rights helps; also freedom is
necessary, so the minority can try to convince the majority they are
right and vote in different leaders and different policies. True
enough, you can avoid this by getting rid of the state altogether, but
that has economic growth costs, some scholars think, which good reason
in my opinion.
> Sure, people can use the term "coercion" more
> broadly but if you want to claim there's no significant difference
> between appealing to someone's sense of solidarity or desire to be part
> of group of people they are attached to, and threatening to break
> their heads open, then I would say you are just trying to come up
> with reasons to justify physical brutality. Of course these are
> not the same thing. But come on: you're not really suggesting
> there's no difference here, are you?
Yes there are differences.
> But if, on the other hand, you were simply saying that "any
> large complex institution regulating economic exchange is a
> state even if it does not involve the systematic use of force",
> then you have a very unusual definition. The typical definition
> of the state is precisely, an institution which claims a monopoly
> of the legitimate use of coercive force within a given territory,
> at least in its own operations. (This comes from Weber incidentally,
> but has been the basic social scientific definition ever since.)
ok, to have growth under anarchist socialism, I predict you will have
a bureaucracy with no coercive power.
That's interesting, I wasn't familiar with that history.
As I confess everytime this issue comes up (usually with
anarcho-capitalists), the vast majority of the time a state intervenes
in economic matters, it is the type of state you are talking about, a
corrupt rent-seeking state (parasites or extortionists). While sadly,
that is the most common form of the state, it's not the only type.
Of course, a state can be totally fascist yet still be helpful
economically (Taiwan), ditto for only marginally democratic (18th,
early 19th century US). It can also be relativel benevolent (India)
yet be corrupt and rent-seeking.
James A. Donald
brian turner
> > > But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is*
> > > impossible "to create larger systems of coordination, or
> > > exchange, and so on without a state." You might could
> > > construct a system of market exchange without a state (or
> > > a minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating
> > > disputes). But I assume you desire growth also.
> > > Capitalist development has usually required coordinating
> > > and risk absorbing action by the state,
James A. Donald:
> > Observe the development is most, where these "coordinating
> > and risk absorbing" actions have been least.
brian turner
> In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too
> often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter
> Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision
> of why state involvement works in some cases and produces
> disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state
> agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations
> shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India,
> and Korea during the seventies and eighties.
Brazil and India are poor, and Korea has become rich as state
intervention has declined.
If state intervention in the computer industry is such a good
thing, why is the computer industry here rather than in India?
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Su2Oc5D7u4a0/MSZMnSltN1b/LUnEbxc8A8vsag6
4QqSf+/Cb/9QX6w0p7iUXpOQVH0wVgOwFk0VKo6Hf
michael price
Rubbish. At that time there were plenty of self-employed
craftsmen, were they arrested?
> Back then, "felony" meant "capital crime" -
> so could literally be executed for refusal to work as a
> wage labor (or inability to find a job).
Which would make no difference since without some form of
income they would starve anyway. Such laws were means of
harrasing beggars and people who didn't seem to have any
source of honest income and were probably thieves. They
were hardly means to coerce people into wage labour.
> Later this was
> qualified, but the government still reserved the right to
> force the unemployed into wage labor jobs, no matter what
> the wages or conditions, if they found anyone willing to
> employ them...
Sounds like a Graeber fantasy to me.
>
> Similarly in the colonies there was almost invariably
> an endless, conscious, and determined effort to create
> a wage labor-based system which usually involved all sorts
> of violence and massive popular resistance.
Bullshit, the colonies were in fact full of people granted land
by the state that removed the need for wage employment.
> These things
> simply never emerged spontaneously. The state was always
> intimately involved.
> DG
Yet you name one instance of it happening.
michael price
>
> > [David Graeber] After all, it's not as if it would be impossible to create
> > larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on without
> > a state.
>
> > > [Brian] But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is*
> > > impossible "to create larger systems of coordination, or
> > > exchange, and so on without a state."
>
> > But it has been done. The State did not create the market and would
> > actively opposed the switch to a wage based system, yet they happened.
>
> > > [Brian] You might could construct a system of market exchange without
> > > a state (or a minimal state doing nothing beyond adjudicating
> > > disputes).
>
> > So you admit that this "impossibility" occurs?
>
> Yes, markets can be and I suppose have been (?) created without a
> state. States can and have enhanced markets. I really meant an
> effective growth-creating market system.
>
> > > But I assume you desire growth also.
> >
> > So? Once the system of market exchange gets going it does not need
> > the State to make it grow.
>
> This is the big controversial question. I say it does.
Why? Why do you say it and why does it need it?
> There are a few cases of relatively free market development,
> but not many.
America, Britain, Renaissance Italy, in fact the whole industrial
revolution are some of the "few cases".
> The state has been activist in most cases. Defenders of your position are
> thus required to say that the state only appeared to play a
> growth-enhancing role,
No we aren't. It played a growth-disrupting role.
> that actually it was irrelevant, or even a
> burden and growth would have been faster without it.
Finally he gets it.
>
>
> > > Capitalist development has usually required coordinating and risk absorbing
> > > action by the state,
> >
> > When? Which State agency sent Marco Polo to trade with the Chinese?
> > Which bureaucrat ordered Edison to invent the light bulb?
>
> I'm not claiming that the state is due all credit, far from it. A
> case where the state tries to do it all will end up poor. A country
> where the state does nothing (beyond contract enforcement) is
> *probably* going to be poor, but could be lucky and be a Hong Kong.
So why not name the States where the state has done well interferring?
So far the only success story you name is free market. It seems the only
reason you seem to have your beliefs is because you want to.
>
>
> > > and I think it would for anarchist socialism too.
> > > Coordination and risk absorption requires institutions.
> >
> > Yes, but they need not be coercive. In fact since they need the
> > cooperation of thousands of people they better not be.
>
> Theoretically, anarchism is possible. In practice, the freerider
> problem and other problems prevent a lot of otherwise economically
> rational cooperation.
And how exactly does the State solve that? The state creates thousands
of free rider problems. To simply claim that it solves such and expect us
to believe you is arrogant and patronising.
> To overcome the freerider problem, for instance, requires coercion.
Not according to the evidence you presented.
> This coercion can be limited, and a
> system of checks and balances can minimize abuse. I admit liberal
> democratic states are far from perfect, pragmatically and morally.
>
> > > Developing such institutions will lead to a state,
> >
> > Why? Absorbing economic risk does not because easier because you can
> > shoot people.
>
> It might, because the threat of imprisonment for tax avoidance means
> the freerider effect--for growth promotion related public goods with
> non-excludability--can be overcome.
You haven't shown that. All you've shown is that certain people can
be prevented from free riding if you get to shoot them. Other free
riding may not be amienable to this sort of thing. In any case it has
nothing to do with the absorbtion of economic risk. In fact you haven't
shown that there are any "growth promotion related public goods" let
alone any need for them to be it to be funded by thuggery.
> This is unfortunate, but the alternative is even worse.
You haven't shown that all you have shown is that you believe bad things
will happen if people are free. Since bad things will happen if they are
not and you haven't compared the two this tell us nothing of the relative
virtues of the State.
>
> > > even if you give it a label
> > > like "the Northwest regional inter-syndicate cooordinating agency".
> > >
> > > And a state is not necessarily more coercive than a collective,
> >
> > Yes it is. States have the power and legal right to kill people
> > for disobeying them.
>
> But a liberal democratic state has lots of checks and balances on
> killing or imprisoning people.
And they don't always work. Even US governors are admitting this,
in any case these "checks and balances" were totally abandoned in
times of crisis and are being so abandoned again.
>
> > > it's
> > > the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
> > > people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
> > > regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
> > > interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
> > > unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
> > > give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
> > > return.
>
>
> > But in a collective presumably you can leave if that something is not
> > delivered. You can't do that with a State.
>
> Very true, that's a downside to it. Not having it has downsides too.
But you make no effort to compare these downsides. You just claim that
one of the downsides is a total lack of growth without evidence.
michael price
Interesting, do you have a cite? Even if irrigation did require
organsiational skill beyond that of the peasants it still does not
need armed thugs to get water from one point to another. A man with
above average education, organisational ability and access to wealth
(not neccesarily his own) could organise irrigation services for a
straight fee or percentage of the crop. He need not force anyone to
participate in the scheme to make a good profit. The functionalist
argument isn't at all convincing.
> The reason why states developed where there was irrigation is
> because with previous forms of agriculture there was very little
> investment in one's land so that if a bunch of thugs showed
> up and said they were the state and you had to turn over a
> third of your crops in taxes (or whatever), people would just
> move somewhere else. Once you've invested in some giant
> irrigation works for ten years, you're pretty much stuck there.
Good theory, seems to fit all observed facts. I would add that
irrigatable areas were obviously very fertile so leaving would be
costly even without abandoning the investment. Particularly if
you had forgotten how to hunt after years of building dams and
drainage ditchs.
> The lesson is that the state was, in its origins, basically
> a coercive (in my sense: violent) and parasitical institution and
> that people are actually capable of organizing all sorts of
> complex economic networks involving the distribution of scarce
> economic resources even under bronze age conditions.
Of even stone age conditions. Flint was traded enormous distances.
michael price
Because it hasn't had time to move there since the India state
stopped intervening so much. Give it time.
G*rd*n
|>> the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
|>> people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
|>> regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
|>> interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
|>> unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
|>> give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
|>> return.
dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber):
|> "Coercive" means threatening people with violence. Collectives
|> do not say "here's the rules, if you violate it we will send armed
|> men to take you hostage, beat you or shoot you if you resist,
|> and lock you up for the rest of your life if necessary to punish
|> you for defying us."
bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner):
| There is never going to be full agreement in an egalitarian
| collective. So, what to do?
There's a lot of thought about such questions, but it's
tedious reading since no one gets shot or sent to prison.
| Regarding the state, checks and balances help, a constitution and
| independent judiciary protecting rights helps; also freedom is
| necessary, so the minority can try to convince the majority they are
| right and vote in different leaders and different policies. True
| enough, you can avoid this by getting rid of the state altogether, but
| that has economic growth costs, some scholars think, which good reason
| in my opinion.
I take it you mean that economic growth is a good reason to
establish an institution of coercive force in a community,
i.e. the State. But this raises the question of what is
meant by "economic growth" and how much of it is worth how
much inequality and force. Economic growth is one of those
odd things that looks very different from different points
of view. I could, for instance, bring a factory into a
previously undeveloped area and destroy the physical
environment there for the benefit of a few, and this would
be called "growth" in spite of the fact that the lives of
most of the people affected by the development had been made
worse. Moreover, I could then change the rules and say that
the area needed cleaning up, so now undoing what the factory
had done would also be considered "growth". This is to say
nothing about the effects of permanent institutions of
coercion on the social environment: once you have a military
and a police force, they need somewhere to go and something
to do, and so, in the case of the United States for example,
we see the Drug War and oil imperialism, and many similar
evils. Advocates of State power as an economic good need
to make the balance of goods costs more explicit, e.g. answer
such questions as "How many people do you need to put in jail
to build a Boeing 747?"
All this assumes that State power _is_ required for economic
growth, something which has not been demonstrated, in that
we observe highly authoritarian communities with very little
economic growth in the usual senses of the term, and
economic growth of various kinds in a great variety of
political settings. The correlation of State power and
economic growth is far from obvious.
| ...
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 1/19/03 <-adv't
Constantinople
nyw.ny.ca
ble.rcn.com:
The state makes all sorts of laws; these do not demonstrate that the
state creates what the laws arguably support. There are laws against the
abuse of children by their parents, but it does not follow that, before
the state intervened, parents all abused their children.
brian turner
> [michael] So? Once the system of market exchange gets going it does not need
> the State to make it grow.
> [brian] This is the big controversial question. I say it does.
> Why? Why do you say it and why does it need it?
See those excerpts.
> There are a few cases of relatively free market development,
> but not many.
> America, Britain, Renaissance Italy, in fact the whole industrial
> revolution are some of the "few cases".
I have zero knowledge about Renaissance Italy. I'm certainly
interested if you want to share some observations about it. As for
the US and Britain's industrialization, they had significant state
intervention. Not nearly as much as late developers, but still
substantial. For the US, think of the railroads, the state's role in
the banking system, import substitution (strategic protectionism) for
northeastern textile industries, land grant universities (which fueled
the green revolution). I'm sure there was more, those are the things
that come to the top of my (not well read on the subject) head.
"Capital is wayward and timid in lending itself to new
undertakings...the State ought to excite the confidence of
capitalists." -- Alexander Hamilton [quoted in Meredith Woo-Cumings
editor _The Developmental State_ p 1].
> > The state has been activist in most cases. Defenders of your position are
> > thus required to say that the state only appeared to play a
> > growth-enhancing role,...
> No we aren't. It played a growth-disrupting role.
> > ...that actually it was irrelevant, or even a
> > burden and growth would have been faster without it.
> Finally he gets it.
I've always been aware of that argument for success cases. I've read
arguments on both sides for the East Asian cases, and while the
state's role was overstated by some authors, I think the evidence is
strong of its positive role.
When debating this once before, David Friedman weighed in with this
interesting article:
Yoshiro Miwa & J. Mark Ramseyer, Capitalist Politicians, Socialist
Bureaucrats? Legends of Government Planning from Japan, 10/2002.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/385.pdf
It argues that MITI's positive role in post-war Japan was a myth. I
think the authors definitely exposed many facile exaggerations of
MITI's might, but I also think they went too far, assuming that
because many claimed successes by MITI were fabricated, therefore
Japan was a laissez-faire case with a bureaucracy just getting paid to
sit around. I gave some quotes from Chalmers Johnson (author of _MITI
and the Japanese Miracle_) indicating his position was more nuanced,
not: strict state gives orders, firms bow their heads and follow.
> [b] I'm not claiming that the state is due all credit, far from it. A
> case where the state tries to do it all will end up poor. A country
> where the state does nothing (beyond contract enforcement) is
> *probably* going to be poor, but could be lucky and be a Hong Kong.
> [m] So why not name the States where the state has done well interferring?
> So far the only success story you name is free market. It seems the only
> reason you seem to have your beliefs is because you want to.
Some cases of state intervention that are usually considered positive
are: US, Britain, France, post-WWII Italy, late 19th early 20th
century Germany, Meiji Japan, Manchuria under the Japanese, post-war
Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, reform China, Brazil, Indonesia,
Israel, West Germany (this one's more controversial), Yugoslavia.
> [b] Theoretically, anarchism is possible. In practice, the freerider
> problem and other problems prevent a lot of otherwise economically
> rational cooperation.
> [m] And how exactly does the State solve that? The state creates thousands
> of free rider problems. To simply claim that it solves such and expect us
> to believe you is arrogant and patronising.
If there is a potential act of public cooperation that would be
economically rational, and 80-90% of the population supports it, but
cannot prevent the other 10-20% from benefiting from it (aka
non-excludability), the cooperation often will not happen, because the
people will resent paying for something others are getting for free.
The state compelling the 10-20% to pay, via taxes, eliminates the
freerider effect and the project could get done. This is similar to
how some private structures work too; i.e. to be a member of some
organization, you might have to pay dues that go not only for the
projects you like, but for ones you don't like. The difference is the
state's sanction for not paying taxes is jail, a private
organization's sanction is expulsion from the group.
> You haven't shown that. All you've shown is that certain people can
> be prevented from free riding if you get to shoot them. Other free
> riding may not be amienable to this sort of thing. In any case it has
> nothing to do with the absorbtion of economic risk. In fact you haven't
> shown that there are any "growth promotion related public goods" let
> alone any need for them to be it to be funded by thuggery.
Examples of state action that could be called absorbtion of risk would
be: when the state owns an enterprise, subsidizes an enterprise or
industry in general through a growing pains period (either directly or
through restriction of competition), is a lender or market of last
resort (insurance), lets the firm or industry benefit from public R&D,
takes action to reduce price fluctuations, takes action to generate
markets (internally or overseas), is a mediator that helps organize
intra-industry groups, etc.
> [m]...in a collective presumably you can leave if that something is not
> delivered. You can't do that with a State.
> [b] Very true, that's a downside to it. Not having it has downsides too.
> But you make no effort to compare these downsides. You just claim that
> one of the downsides is a total lack of growth without evidence.
It's not like one can measure it exactly, economics is the 'dismal
science'.
David Graeber
> dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
news:<dgraeber-070...@207-237-44-105.c3-0.nyw-ubr2.nyr-nyw.ny.cable.rcn.com>...
>
>
> > > And a state is not necessarily more coercive than a collective, it's
> > > the same principle on a bigger scale. In a democratic collective,
> > > people voluntarily agree to adhere to the decision of the group
> > > regarding the management of the collective, because it is in their
> > > interest to do so, even though one particular decision they may be
> > > unhappy with. Likewise with a democratic state. People voluntarily
> > > give the state limited coercive powers in order to gain something in
> > > return.
>
>
> > "Coercive" means threatening people with violence. Collectives
> > do not say "here's the rules, if you violate it we will send armed
> > men to take you hostage, beat you or shoot you if you resist,
> > and lock you up for the rest of your life if necessary to punish
> > you for defying us."
>
>
> There is never going to be full agreement in an egalitarian
> collective. So, what to do?
Sure you don't think the only two alternatives are
full agreement and threatening to physically attack people?
I assume that when you have differences with your friends,
or family, you don't normally try to settle it through
violence.
Societies without states have existed from time immemorial
and in many places still do. People can get by without some
bunch of thugs threatening to beat them all up if they don't
do what they're told. Doesn't mean everybody's always
happy. But people get by.
>
> Regarding the state, checks and balances help, a constitution and
> independent judiciary protecting rights helps; also freedom is
> necessary, so the minority can try to convince the majority they are
> right and vote in different leaders and different policies. True
> enough, you can avoid this by getting rid of the state altogether, but
> that has economic growth costs, some scholars think, which good reason
> in my opinion.
I understand the argument that in the absence of some
kind of planning/industrial policy argument, pure market
mechanisms don't provide a means for long-term investment
and growth. And in the existing system, this tends to be
done by states, either directly or through indirect means
like the US military Keynesianism system. But that's one
very particular situation.
>
>
> > Sure, people can use the term "coercion" more
> > broadly but if you want to claim there's no significant difference
> > between appealing to someone's sense of solidarity or desire to be part
> > of group of people they are attached to, and threatening to break
> > their heads open, then I would say you are just trying to come up
> > with reasons to justify physical brutality. Of course these are
> > not the same thing. But come on: you're not really suggesting
> > there's no difference here, are you?
>
> Yes there are differences.
>
>
>
> > But if, on the other hand, you were simply saying that "any
> > large complex institution regulating economic exchange is a
> > state even if it does not involve the systematic use of force",
> > then you have a very unusual definition. The typical definition
> > of the state is precisely, an institution which claims a monopoly
> > of the legitimate use of coercive force within a given territory,
> > at least in its own operations. (This comes from Weber incidentally,
> > but has been the basic social scientific definition ever since.)
>
> ok, to have growth under anarchist socialism, I predict you will have
> a bureaucracy with no coercive power.
Well, if you want to define any long-term strategic
investment mechanism as a bureaucracy, then I'd agree.
The word has a bad color in my mind so I prefer to think
it might be possible to create something - perhaps involving
new information technologies - that would be more participatory
but perhaps that's just playing with words.
Yes. But often this is just because the state is the only
game in town, I think. Hopefully this will change!
David
David Graeber
Craftsmen weren't usually landless but okay, if you
want to quibble over the word, I meant "not employed as
a farmer or otherwise as an established householder."
>
> > Back then, "felony" meant "capital crime" -
> > so could literally be executed for refusal to work as a
> > wage labor (or inability to find a job).
>
> Which would make no difference since without some form of
> income they would starve anyway. Such laws were means of
> harrasing beggars and people who didn't seem to have any
> source of honest income and were probably thieves. They
> were hardly means to coerce people into wage labour.
Not so. Haven't you seen the literature on "masterless
men" as they were called at the time? Some were beggars,
sure, some were doing odd jobs, but avoiding fixed employment,
many were traveling entertainers, musicians, or even, say
dentists (song-and-dance men at the time often also
pulled teeth), or engaged in minor trades or repair outside
of guilds or established, legal means, though certainly
that shaded into scam artists and thieves at times.
Others were simply unemployed - if you were looking for some
fixed job and couldn't find one, and hung around living off
alms, one might well end up in jail or during the initial
>
> > Later this was
> > qualified, but the government still reserved the right to
> > force the unemployed into wage labor jobs, no matter what
> > the wages or conditions, if they found anyone willing to
> > employ them...
>
> Sounds like a Graeber fantasy to me.
Oh, not again. The first time I brought this up on the
internet some right-wing type swore it wasn't the case and
demanded i come up with the statue numbers. I actually did -
dug them out of a book on vagabondage in Elizabethan England.
(I was working in a library then.) Didn't stop the fellow
from responding to every other thing I said with "oh yeah,
prove it!")
All right, how 'bout this little tidbit from the Statute
of Edward VI:
If any person shall bring to two
justices of peace any runagate servants or any other which
liveth idly or Ioiteringly by the space of three days they shall
muse that idle and loitering servant or vagabond to be marked
with a hot iron on the breast with the mark of V and adjudge
him to be slave to the same person that brought him for two
years after who shall take the said slave and give him bread
water or small drink and refuse him meat and cause him to
work - by beating chaining or otherwise - in such work as he
shall put unto be it never so vile: and if he shall absent
himself from his said master - by the space of fourteen days s
then he shall be adjudged by two justices of peace to be
marked on the forehead or the ball of the cheek with a hot
iron with the sign of an S and further shall be adjudged to be
slave to his said master for ever.
And so forth.
> >
> > Similarly in the colonies there was almost invariably
> > an endless, conscious, and determined effort to create
> > a wage labor-based system which usually involved all sorts
> > of violence and massive popular resistance.
>
> Bullshit, the colonies were in fact full of people granted land
> by the state that removed the need for wage employment.
We're talking not about the colonists but about the
colonized.
>
> > These things
> > simply never emerged spontaneously. The state was always
> > intimately involved.
> > DG
>
> Yet you name one instance of it happening.
I do?
Joseph K.
>Joseph K. <ni...@none.com> wrote in message news:<irkc6v8147ertgsl1...@4ax.com>...
>
>> >> How [under anarchist socialism] would growth be created, how
>> >> would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
>> >> be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
>> >> like Marx proposed, than under markets)?
>
>
>> Your use of the word 'utopian' is incorrect. To let people do what
>> they want freely is not utopian, but on the contrary, is utterly
>> realistic: is to let happen what would happen if there were no
>> collective ideology coercively applied on us all.
>
>
>Marx did not say how, in the stateless socialist future he envisioned,
>collectives would interact with each other. We know he detested
>markets (for that stage), but he didn't say what would replace
>markets, other than saying the collectives would freely associate.
>That's what I've heard Chomsky say too. Kropotkin's _Conquest of
>Bread_, unless I overlooked it, only speaks of a "variety of trades,
>mutually co-operating..." (pg 178...Cambridge 1995 edition).
Your paragraph above doesn't seem to be related to the paragraph you
were replying to.
>Unless someone can explain how such a system of non-market free
>association would work, I regard it as utopian.
What makes a system 'utopian', in your view?
Joseph K.
brian turner
> > [from Amazon.com's descrption of Peter B. Evans'
> > book _Embedded Autonomy_]
> > In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too
> > often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter
> > Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision
> > of why state involvement works in some cases and produces
> > disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state
> > agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations
> > shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India,
> > and Korea during the seventies and eighties.
> [james] Brazil and India are poor, and Korea has become rich as state
> intervention has declined.
Brazil is pretty rich, problem is the distribution of wealth is the
most unequal in the world outside a handful of African countries. And
that's because preventing class chasms has never been (as far as I
know) a priority for the Brazilian state until the current one.
South Korea became rich under Park Chung-Hee and the various 1980s
dictators. Park increased, not decreased the intervention, as well as
changing the types of intervention. The Japanese period was pretty
productive itself, albeit more designed to channel benefits to Japan
and not ordinary South Koreans.
> If state intervention in the computer industry is such a good
> thing, why is the computer industry here rather than in India?
India's state intervened in many unhelpful ways. But that's secondary
to your question. The US was rich already, thus has more to invest.
The US has the greatest university system in the world, and being a
big country, has a lot of great universities to draw from. Also, the
state intervened heavily in the creation of computers in the 1950s and
with other aspects of the industry later. Of course private
initiative and markets played important roles. I'm arguing against
anarchism and for a mixed market economy, not against anarchism and
for Brezhnevism.
brian turner
> I take it you mean that economic growth is a good reason to
> establish an institution of coercive force in a community,
> i.e. the State. But this raises the question of what is
> meant by "economic growth" and how much of it is worth how
> much inequality and force. Economic growth is one of those
> odd things that looks very different from different points
> of view. I could, for instance, bring a factory into a
> previously undeveloped area and destroy the physical
> environment there for the benefit of a few, and this would
> be called "growth" in spite of the fact that the lives of
> most of the people affected by the development had been made
> worse. Moreover, I could then change the rules and say that
> the area needed cleaning up, so now undoing what the factory
> had done would also be considered "growth". This is to say
> nothing about the effects of permanent institutions of
> coercion on the social environment...[deleted]
I agree 100% that "growth" can be politicized. I recall reading about
Japanese construction companies given 'busy work' paving over pretty
beaches. But I think my point about the importance of public
institutions for effective long term growth remains valid even if
growth is defined in proper ways.
brian turner
I won't try a general definition, I'll just tell you again what I
meant and you tell me if it's a proper label. Anarchists are against
central planning obviously, also against mixed-economy market systems.
Some even imply they are against markets altogether. I'm saying if
one is to be for no state, and against markets, to not be considered
utopian by me, an alternative should be suggested. Michael Albert, to
his credit, came up with one. But not one I would advocate.
James A. Donald
> > > In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has
> > > too often devolved into diatribes against intervention.
> > > Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a
> > > new vision of why state involvement works in some cases
> > > and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks
> > > at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and
> > > transnational corporations shaped the emergence of
> > > computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during
> > > the seventies and eighties.
James A. Donald:
> > Brazil and India are poor, and Korea has become rich as
> > state intervention has declined.
brian turner
> Brazil is pretty rich
Poor compared to more capitalist countries, poorer than Chile,
way poorer than Hong Kong.
If you look at country ratings in "Economic Freedom of the
world", wealth is closely proportional to economic freedom --
Laissez Faire There are a few outliers: Guatemala is poorer
than it should be, perhaps because of civil war, or perhaps
because the apparent economic freedom conceals crony
capitalism. Israel richer than it should be, probably because
there is a good deal less socialism for Jews than meets the
eye, but most countries fit the pattern.
> > If state intervention in the computer industry is such a
> > good thing, why is the computer industry here rather than
> > in India?
> India's state intervened in many unhelpful ways. But that's
> secondary to your question. The US was rich already, thus
> has more to invest.
But the countries that became rich, all had less intervention
than the countries that remained poor, and among the countries
that became rich, those that had less intervention (US,
Switzerland, and Hong Kong) became richer than those with more
intervention.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Hl4VoKm9xMplly85l5fliErJUh78xfOWh/ANe6+7
4x57IzPDX4J0cUf89ucVDG2I5mYy+2dxgaZxbzKKf
G*rd*n
| > I take it you mean that economic growth is a good reason to
| > establish an institution of coercive force in a community,
| > i.e. the State. But this raises the question of what is
| > meant by "economic growth" and how much of it is worth how
| > much inequality and force. Economic growth is one of those
| > odd things that looks very different from different points
| > of view. I could, for instance, bring a factory into a
| > previously undeveloped area and destroy the physical
| > environment there for the benefit of a few, and this would
| > be called "growth" in spite of the fact that the lives of
| > most of the people affected by the development had been made
| > worse. Moreover, I could then change the rules and say that
| > the area needed cleaning up, so now undoing what the factory
| > had done would also be considered "growth". This is to say
| > nothing about the effects of permanent institutions of
| > coercion on the social environment...[deleted]
bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner):
| I agree 100% that "growth" can be politicized. I recall reading about
| Japanese construction companies given 'busy work' paving over pretty
| beaches. But I think my point about the importance of public
| institutions for effective long term growth remains valid even if
| growth is defined in proper ways.
Yes, but what is the proper definition? The State has many
unpleasant characteristics which can be justified only by
pointing to specific goods which it produces and showing
that they balance the costs.
michael price
Outside of guilds... so in other words the problem wasn't the
that they weren't in wage labour it was that they didn't have a
guild.
The trouble is that those laws weren't about making people work
for wages they were about making them work for their current employer.
>
>
> And so forth.
>
>
> > >
> > > Similarly in the colonies there was almost invariably
> > > an endless, conscious, and determined effort to create
> > > a wage labor-based system which usually involved all sorts
> > > of violence and massive popular resistance.
> >
> > Bullshit, the colonies were in fact full of people granted land
> > by the state that removed the need for wage employment.
>
> We're talking not about the colonists but about the
> colonized.
Who were if I remember rightly simply enslaved or taxed into
starvation. Actual efforts to make them become wage labourers did
occur in Papua and New Guinea but nowhere else I know of.
>
> >
> > > These things
> > > simply never emerged spontaneously. The state was always
> > > intimately involved.
> > > DG
> >
> > Yet you name one instance of it happening.
>
> I do?
Sorry that should be "you do not name one instance of it happening".
michael price
> nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote in message news:<5678a39d.03030...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > [michael] So? Once the system of market exchange gets going it does not need
> > the State to make it grow.
>
> > [brian] This is the big controversial question. I say it does.
>
> > Why? Why do you say it and why does it need it?
>
> See those excerpts.
>
> > There are a few cases of relatively free market development,
> > but not many.
>
> > America, Britain, Renaissance Italy, in fact the whole industrial
> > revolution are some of the "few cases".
>
> I have zero knowledge about Renaissance Italy. I'm certainly
> interested if you want to share some observations about it. As for
> the US and Britain's industrialization, they had significant state
> intervention. Not nearly as much as late developers, but still
> substantial. For the US, think of the railroads,
The first railroads were privately funded and run. Later on the State
tried to use railway building to divert wealth from one area to another.
Try to find one case of this that in the US where this didn't involve
massive inefficency, losses and fraud.
> the state's role in the banking system,
Which was to take something relatively stable and totally bugger it
up.
> import substitution (strategic protectionism) for
> northeastern textile industries,
Which caused a war that left 620,000 dead and crippled the South
economically. It may have "encouraged industrialisation" but it
cost the intended benefits of it.
Hardly the effect on the North was positive, the South got screwed.
> Britain,
The problem is that Britain got wealthy trading not restricting trade.
It grew richer looting the empire but that is hardly the state
"establishing markets".
> France, post-WWII Italy, late 19th early 20th
> century Germany, Meiji Japan, Manchuria under the Japanese, post-war
> Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia,
The "asian tigers" all had freer economies after the war than before it.
> reform China,
Which is nowhere near rich.
> Brazil, Indonesia,
> Israel, West Germany (this one's more controversial), Yugoslavia.
>
> > [b] Theoretically, anarchism is possible. In practice, the freerider
> > problem and other problems prevent a lot of otherwise economically
> > rational cooperation.
>
> > [m] And how exactly does the State solve that? The state creates thousands
> > of free rider problems. To simply claim that it solves such and expect us
> > to believe you is arrogant and patronising.
>
> If there is a potential act of public cooperation that would be
> economically rational, and 80-90% of the population supports it, but
> cannot prevent the other 10-20% from benefiting from it (aka
> non-excludability), the cooperation often will not happen, because the
> people will resent paying for something others are getting for free.
> The state compelling the 10-20% to pay, via taxes, eliminates the
> freerider effect and the project could get done.
No it eliminates one type of freerider effect. If 10-20% of the people
won't support it maybe that is because they don't benefit from it. The
rest of the people are freeriding of the 10-20%. In any case it cannot be
assumed that all state interventions will be things that are economically
rational. Indeed it is more typical for the state to coerce people into
doing things that are economically irrational for the benefit of itself
and it's allies. These people get to freeride on the rest of us.
> This is similar to
> how some private structures work too; i.e. to be a member of some
> organization, you might have to pay dues that go not only for the
> projects you like, but for ones you don't like.
But the benefit from the projects you like must be greater than your
dues fees, regardless of how little you care about the others. For a
State the benefit of not being in jail must be greater than your "dues"
which is hardly the same thing.
> The difference is the
> state's sanction for not paying taxes is jail, a private
> organization's sanction is expulsion from the group.
>
>
> > You haven't shown that. All you've shown is that certain people can
> > be prevented from free riding if you get to shoot them. Other free
> > riding may not be amienable to this sort of thing. In any case it has
> > nothing to do with the absorbtion of economic risk. In fact you haven't
> > shown that there are any "growth promotion related public goods" let
> > alone any need for them to be it to be funded by thuggery.
>
> Examples of state action that could be called absorbtion of risk would
> be: when the state owns an enterprise,
Which need not make growth possible let alone likely.
> subsidizes an enterprise
Ditto.
> or industry in general through a growing pains period (either directly or
> through restriction of competition),
But that may or may not actually promote growth. It may instead misdirect
funds into the industry that are better invested elsewhere.
> is a lender or market of last resort (insurance),
And why is such a lender needed? If nobody else will lend someone money
why is it good to put a gun to my head so that I do?
> lets the firm or industry benefit from public R&D,
And why should they? If the thing the industry or firm is producing
is worth it they should be able to pay for _all_ their costs. This includes
R&D.
> takes action to reduce price fluctuations,
And why should do that? If having to cope with price fluctations is
a cost of being in the industry then the industry should pay it. If they
cannot then the industry clearly isn't worth it.
> takes action to generate markets (internally or overseas),
Again this is a cost, which should be bourne by the beneficiary.
> is a mediator that helps organize intra-industry groups,
Which work just fine without the State.
> etc.
>
>
> > [m]...in a collective presumably you can leave if that something is not
> > delivered. You can't do that with a State.
>
> > [b] Very true, that's a downside to it. Not having it has downsides too.
>
> > But you make no effort to compare these downsides. You just claim that
> > one of the downsides is a total lack of growth without evidence.
>
> It's not like one can measure it exactly, economics is the 'dismal
> science'.
Economics was called the "dismal science" because of Thomas Malthus's
(somewhat inaccurate) predictions of doom, not because it doesn't give
results.
David Graeber
Hawkers, peddlers and the like were of course engaged in
minor versions of what merchants were doing on a larger
scale. Except of course they could be rounded up and forced
to work for established, propertied heads of household.
> >
> > Not so. Haven't you seen the literature on "masterless
> > men" as they were called at the time? Some were beggars,
> > sure, some were doing odd jobs, but avoiding fixed employment,
> > many were traveling entertainers, musicians, or even, say
> > dentists (song-and-dance men at the time often also
> > pulled teeth), or engaged in minor trades or repair outside
> > of guilds
>
> Outside of guilds... so in other words the problem wasn't the
> that they weren't in wage labour it was that they didn't have a
> guild.
None of the statutes even mention guilds. The putting-out
system for example wasn't organized through guilds at all.
The concern was as I said with "masterless men" - that is,
people who neither had property of their own, nor were established
as dependents (servants, somewhere half between what we'd call
wage laborers and servants) of someone who did have property.
The general feeling is that everyone without property should
be working for, and therefore established within the household
of, a propertied householder. They needed to have a boss,
discipline, control.
No, it doesn't say that the person who brought them
in has to be their current employer. It says not having
an employer is a crime. The statute states that if you
are convicted of being unemployed or avoiding work (living "idly
or loiteringly") - whether you had previously been someone's
employee or not - you can be enslaved for two years to whoever
reports you. If you try to escape from _him_, then you're reduced
to slavery for life. Read it again. That's what it says.
That was in 1547 I believe. The vagabondage laws changed
over time but they remained highly punitive. Throughout the
period in which wage labor became the predominant form of
labor relation (as former patron-client style relations of
service were increasingly redefined to look more and more
like wage labor contracts) there was a steady application of
state power to ensure that anyone who fled such arrangements,
and tried to make it on their own hook, through what we would
now call the "informal sector" - casual employment, petty
trading, entertainment, all that off-the-books sort of stuff -
could be arrested and forced into dependence on a "respectable",
propertied citizen.
DG
Dan Clore
> dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message news:<dgraeber-080...@207-237-44-105.c3-0.nyw-ubr2.nyr-nyw.ny.cable.rcn.com>...
> > In article <5678a39d.03030...@posting.google.com>,
> > nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
> > > dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
> > news:<dgraeber-070...@207-237-44-105.c3-0.nyw-ubr2.nyr-nyw.ny.cable.rcn.com>...
> > > > In article <5678a39d.03030...@posting.google.com>,
> > > > nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
> > > > > bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner) wrote in message
> > news:<66dc0679.03030...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
> > news:<dgraeber-050...@wr9.anthropology.yale.edu>...
> > > > > But it has been done. The State did not create the market and would
By chance I'm currently reading _The Tudor Age: Commentaries
of an Era_, a collection of short extracts from texts of the
period edited by A.F. Scott. The section on Law and Crime
gives an extract from William Harrison, _The Description of
England_ (1587), covering the treatment of "vagabonds". In
part: "The punishment that is ordained for this kind of
people is very sharp, and yet it cannot restrain them from
their gadding: wherefore the end must needs be martial law,
to be exercised upon them, as upon thieves, robbers,
despisers of all laws, and enemies to the commonwealth and
welfare of the land. [. . .] But for their idle roguing
about the country the law ordaineth this manner of
correction. The rogue being apprehended, committed to
prison, and tried in the next assizes (whether they be of
gaol delivery or sessions of the peace), if he happen to be
convicted for a vagabond, either by inquest of office or the
testimony of two honest and credible witnesses upon their
oaths, he is then immediately adjudged to be grievously
whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with
an hot iron of the compass of an inch about, as a
manifestation of his wicked life, and due punishment
received for the same. And this judgment is to be executed
upon him except some honest person worth five pounds in the
Queen's books in goods, or twenty shillings in land, or some
rich householder to be allowed by the justices, will be
bound in recognisance to retain him in his service for one
whole year. If he be taken the second time, and proved to
have forsaken his said service, he shall then be whipped
again, bored likewise through the other ear, and set to
service: from whence if he depart before a year be expired
and happen afterward to be attached again, he is condemned
to suffer pains of death as a felon (except before excepted)
without benefit of clergy or sanctuary, as by the statute
doth appear."
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
All my fiction through 2001 and more. Intro by S.T. Joshi.
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
Lord Weÿrdgliffe and Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Said Smygo, the iconoclast of Zothique: "Bear a hammer with
thee always, and break down any terminus on which is
written: 'So far shalt thou pass, but no further go.'"
--Clark Ashton Smith
brian turner
> --
> > > > In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has
> > > > too often devolved into diatribes against intervention.
> > > > Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a
> > > > new vision of why state involvement works in some cases
> > > > and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks
> > > > at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and
> > > > transnational corporations shaped the emergence of
> > > > computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during
> > > > the seventies and eighties.
>
> James A. Donald:
> > > Brazil and India are poor, and Korea has become rich as
> > > state intervention has declined.
>
> brian turner
> > Brazil is pretty rich
>
> Poor compared to more capitalist countries, poorer than Chile,
> way poorer than Hong Kong.
It makes no difference if they are richer or poorer. What matters is
the growth rate in the period under the policies you are interested in
evaluating.
Brazil is the fastest grower in Latin America by some periodizations,
Chile by others. Alice Amsden has a chart on page 9 of her book _The
Rise of the Rest_ with some per capita GDP info. Chile grew faster
than Brazil from 1973-1995. $3900-$5300 for Brazil, $5000-$8800 for
Chile. But that excludes the 1960s which were very good for Brazil.
On the same page, you will see that Chile grew far slower than Taiwan,
South Korea, Malaysia; somewhat worse than Indonesia, and even India
did a little better. In a sense, that's not fair to Chile, because
the Asian countries had the Cold War benefit, and also had a thriving
region to sponge off of, while most of Latin America was growing very
slowly. But at least some of the large gap is explained by more
equality and better economic policies. Despite Brazil's good growth
rate record, their distribution of wealth is so awful, it almost
cancels out the benefit for the bottom half of the population.
The city of Hong Kong did not grow faster than Taiwan and South Korea
(under Park)--who enjoyed similar Cold War era perks--as I mentioned
before. Nor, I doubt, did Hong Kong grow faster than some other
important cities in the region. I do not say this to denigrate it.
Hong Kong indeed is a free market triumph, but it's one case, and a
fairly unique situation.
> If you look at country ratings in "Economic Freedom of the
> world", wealth is closely proportional to economic freedom --
> Laissez Faire There are a few outliers: Guatemala is poorer
> than it should be, perhaps because of civil war, or perhaps
> because the apparent economic freedom conceals crony
> capitalism. Israel richer than it should be, probably because
> there is a good deal less socialism for Jews than meets the
> eye, but most countries fit the pattern.
This chart might have value, but not for the purpose you are using it
for. This indicates where a country is now, it doesn't indicate how
it got there. Taiwan and South Korea have liberalized their economies
a huge amount in the late 1980s and all of the 1990s. The US used
import substiution to industrialize in the past, but long outgrew the
need for it.
Also, the list tells us obvious truths no one disputes, like corrupt
gangsters extorting money from people is bad for the economy. Corrupt
business liscensing is bad for the economy. This is the problem with
your considering intervention like putting sugar into a glass of
ice-tea, you can add more, can add less. There are different types of
intervention, harmful and helpful.
Presumably the list also tells us things like the lack of rule of law
is bad for the economy, war is bad for the economy, political turmoil
is bad for the economy.
> But the countries that became rich, all had less intervention
> than the countries that remained poor, and among the countries
> that became rich, those that had less intervention (US,
> Switzerland, and Hong Kong) became richer than those with more
> intervention.
The US did not in fact grow faster than the interventionist late
developers: Bismark's Germany, Meiji and Imperial Japan, then later
Taiwan, SK, China, SE Asian states, plus Brazil. Naturally, we can't
leave it at that. The US got rich because it was able to sustain
steady growth (around 4%) for an incredibly long period, while the
jury is still out on whether, say, Malaysia had a one time burst from
1965-95, or has longevity like the US did. Also, in fairness to the
US, it's easier to catch up than to be a trailblazer. On the other
hand, the US had some huge advantages like 2 big coasts for trade and
defense, lots of natural resources and a small educated population to
parcel it out among.
brian turner
> Societies without states have existed from time immemorial
> and in many places still do. People can get by without some
> bunch of thugs threatening to beat them all up if they don't
> do what they're told. Doesn't mean everybody's always
> happy. But people get by.
It sounds like you think all states are destined to be Mussolini or
Ceaucescu. I don't see why that has to be.
G*rd*n
| > and in many places still do. People can get by without some
| > bunch of thugs threatening to beat them all up if they don't
| > do what they're told. Doesn't mean everybody's always
| > happy. But people get by.
bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner):
| It sounds like you think all states are destined to be Mussolini or
| Ceaucescu. I don't see why that has to be.
The desirability or necessity of the State seems to depend
on a Hobbesian view of history and human nature, which if
true would logically require Mussolinis and Ceasescus to
appear under certain conditions likely to be encountered
sooner or later.
David Graeber
bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner) wrote:
No, I think most states are very mild versions of same.
A mild version of a bad thing is still a bad thing.
DG
brian turner
> The first railroads were privately funded and run. Later on the State
> tried to use railway building to divert wealth from one area to another.
> Try to find one case of this that in the US where this didn't involve
> massive inefficency, losses and fraud.
I'm not an American history expert, but my impression is it's fairly
uncontroversial that the state buidling of railroads sped up the
development despite such problems. I don't claim certainty here. And
again, I'm far from giving the state full credit for the US success,
in fact the private sector is primary in the US (unlike some other
cases), however it had a complementary role.
> > the state's role in the banking system,
>
> Which was to take something relatively stable and totally bugger it
> up.
I have nothing more to say on that, but your condemnation seems
extreme. Hamilton would certainly disagree.
> > import substitution (strategic protectionism) for
> > northeastern textile industries,
>
> Which caused a war that left 620,000 dead and crippled the South
> economically. It may have "encouraged industrialisation" but it
> cost the intended benefits of it.
According to the recent book _Look Away: A Political History of the
Confederacy_ the economic issues had faded in importance by 1860 and
the war ws solely about slavery, as the Confederate leaders admitted.
also notes that Jefferson Davis himself tried to organize an
industrial policy of a sort for the CSA.
> > [brian] Some cases of state intervention that
> > are usually considered positive are: ... Britain,
>
> The problem is that Britain got wealthy trading not restricting trade.
They established an industrial base through the usual strategic
protectionist policies, then freed trade in the 1850s, later
restricted trade for a few narrow situations where they were losing,
and then abandoned free trade in general when they lost their dominant
position in the early 20th century. The US has followed the same
pattern save the last; i.e. the US is still the world's economic
leader.
> It grew richer looting the empire but that is hardly the state
> "establishing markets".
Wouldn't you describe the Opium Wars as state action to create
markets? Though establishing markets need not be imperialistic, it
can be identifying and negotiating for markets.
> > France, post-WWII Italy, late 19th early 20th
> > century Germany, Meiji Japan, Manchuria under the Japanese, post-war
> > Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia,
>
> The "asian tigers" all had freer economies after the war than before it.
What makes you say that? And even if it were true--a point not
conceded--an examination of how these economies function will reveal
they were highly interventionist. Taiwan, in the first 15 years under
the KMT, had a large state-owned industrial sector, practiced import
substitution, tightly controlled the financial system, restricted land
accumulation, soaked the agricultural sector for investment capital,
invested heavily in R&D. After establishing an industrial base, they
shifted to an export strategy in the early 1960s, privatized some
industry, loosened up finance a bit -- while leaving some sectors
still under the previous arrangement. One of the reasons Taiwan had a
thriving small business sector as part of its "miracle" is that the
state so tightly controlled finance (because of inflation paranoia
from its mainland debacle), that family financing was the major means
of business capital generation. Also, the state restricted
competition with its state owned industries.
> > reform China,
>
> Which is nowhere near rich.
So what? The growth rate, even after correcting for exaggerated
growth accounting methods, is very impressive. Far faster than the US
or Britain in similar periods of their history. Albeit, the run is
likely over already or will soon be coming to an end, while the US was
able to grow steadily for a very long period of time.
[deleted]
> > Examples of state action that could be called absorbtion of risk would
> > be: when the state owns an enterprise,
> Which need not make growth possible let alone likely.
It is one way among several of achieving certain objectives. Most
economists would say it's not the best way, though a minority of
economists point to cases where success was achieved because of 1) the
state industry being in a market economy and subjected to competition
2) the establishment of effective monitoring and disciplining
institutions.
> > subsidizes an enterprise
> Ditto.
It's a broad tool, useful for both corrupt rent-seeking and helpful
timely stimuation.
> > or industry in general through a growing pains period (either directly or
> > through restriction of competition),
> But that may or may not actually promote growth. It may instead misdirect
> funds into the industry that are better invested elsewhere.
It may and often does, nevertheless it's one of the few (not the only)
ways of establishing an industrial base for a less developed country
in the presence of fierce competition.
> > is a lender or market of last resort (insurance),
> And why is such a lender needed? If nobody else will lend someone money
> why is it good to put a gun to my head so that I do?
Again, as usual, it's tool ripe for abuse. Yet because private
markets often have a short-term bias, something economically
irrational to a private lender might be economically rational from a
society-wide welfare maximization point of view.
> > lets the firm or industry benefit from public R&D,
> And why should they? If the thing the industry or firm is producing
> is worth it they should be able to pay for _all_ their costs. This includes
> R&D.
Theoretically, that's how it should work. The world doesn't work like
Economics 101 theory texts, that's why there's 201, 501, 801. Part of
the answer is freeriding, it's often too difficult to exclude others
from the benefits of basic research. A closely related part is R&D
often has positive externalities (meaning private markets will
undersupply). For other developments, they may be too diffuse and
risky (short-term biases again) for a private actor, yet have public
rationality. The issue is not well understood, but it is clear states
have played an important role in generating many technologies.
> > takes action to reduce price fluctuations,
>
> And why should do that? If having to cope with price fluctations is
> a cost of being in the industry then the industry should pay it. If they
> cannot then the industry clearly isn't worth it.
Not necessarily. Reducing price fluctuations reduces uncertainly,
which speeds up growth. One must ask, does the intervention to
stablize prices (not fix, which usually backfires) cause more harm
than the increased growth coming from less uncertainty?
> > takes action to generate markets (internally or overseas),
> Again this is a cost, which should be bourne by the beneficiary.
It is often difficult for a private actor to do it. State's have
information advantages and networds, and can do things more
efficiently. There are surely things they could do internally too,
for similar reasons of comparative advantage in information and
networks.
> > is a mediator that helps organize intra-industry groups,
>
> Which work just fine without the State.
Theoretically yes, in practice not necessarily. There are all sorts
of examples where economically rational cooperation won't occur.
Often a state can be a helpful mediator.
> > > But you make no effort to compare these downsides. You just claim that
> > > one of the downsides is a total lack of growth without evidence.
> > It's not like one can measure it exactly, economics is the 'dismal
> > science'.
> Economics was called the "dismal science" because of Thomas Malthus's
> (somewhat inaccurate) predictions of doom, not because it doesn't give
> results.
I think it's called that because it's a field where variables cannot
be easily isolated, like in Physics. Also there is the human factor,
which throws monkey wrenches into things.
James A. Donald
> > > > > In recent years, debate on the state's economic role
> > > > > has too often devolved into diatribes against
> > > > > intervention. Peter Evans questions such simplistic
> > > > > views, offering a new vision of why state involvement
> > > > > works in some cases and produces disasters in others.
> > > > > To illustrate, he looks at how state agencies, local
> > > > > entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations shaped
> > > > > the emergence of computer industries in Brazil,
> > > > > India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties.
James A. Donald:
> > > > Brazil and India are poor, and Korea has become rich as
> > > > state intervention has declined.
brian turner
> > > Brazil is pretty rich
James A. Donald:
> > Poor compared to more capitalist countries, poorer than
> > Chile, way poorer than Hong Kong.
brian turner
> It makes no difference if they are richer or poorer. What
> matters is the growth rate in the period under the policies
> you are interested in evaluating.
It is easy to cure a a headache if one lays off hitting oneself
on the head with a hammer.
Recent economic growth in India and China is obviously related
to them backing off from the policies that you praise.
> Brazil is the fastest grower in Latin America by some
> periodizations, Chile by others.
You are playing complicated games with statistics to obscure
the simple fact that countries with high levels of state
intervention are poor. We have seen lots of poor countries
become rich, and one rich country become poor. We know what
the formula is.
Back when everyone believed those claims of remarkable economic
growth in the Soviet Union, North Korea, etc, lots of countries
adopted four year plans and the like -- with unfailingly
disastrous results.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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mbrNK9sj6KJNzqwNOWlOB9ffMt1uxE31ko6TyoiN
4dkEMfDg35/zZXwFurvFzwiPvLDQRYeb37ajoOFBk
brian turner
> Recent economic growth in India and China is obviously related
> to them backing off from the policies that you praise.
I would never recommend anyone adopt the overall Maoist system. What
you are calling praise is my calling it, accurately- successful in
some areas, failed in many others; i.e. on net an average performer,
neither a disaster (except for the Great Leap Forward) nor a model
anyone should emulate. I do think collective farming, rapidly raising
human capital through social investments, and decentralized
small-scale rural industrialization are policies worth emulating, but
Mao was also an anti-market, anti-private sector, anti-voluntary
assocation fanatic and this I 100% reject.
Neither do I admire the Nehru model, which was also not a disaster;
see
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TotW/India.html
Though not an economic disaster, it was a health and vital stat
disaster. Two main problems with the Indian model (not all, I'm
aware) were corrupt business licensing and the caste system; and I
support neither.
And you are wrong that China's (now fading) and India's (still
continuing) reform era growth was nothing more than ending bad
policies. In China, part of the 1979-85 growth was simply filling in
spaces that the state had banished people from before, i.e., a one
time shot. However, after that, the vast majority if the growth was
growth could not be described this way. The reason, in my opinion,
that China is fading, is that corruption has totally taken over the
state. It's no longer a developmental state, it's a 1990s Russian
style predator state. Only radical political changes will fix it.
> > Brazil is the fastest grower in Latin America by some
> > periodizations, Chile by others.
>
> You are playing complicated games with statistics to obscure
> the simple fact that countries with high levels of state
> intervention are poor. We have seen lots of poor countries
> become rich, and one rich country become poor. We know what
> the formula is.
Looking at growth rates is neither playing games nor complicated. To
bring in the point G*rd*n raised--what actually is "growth"; are there
things counted as "growth" that shouldn't be?--would be complicated,
but I've avoided that jungle (which would lead to questions over my
head anyway), and stuck to straight forward GNP/GDP growth rates.
While growth rate comparisons could certainly be misleading if any
relevant context and qualifiers are discarded, your way--snapshots
with no historical context--is far more likely to be misleading. It's
elementary logic, if you want to know the impact of a set of policies,
look at the period when these policies are in place, and don't include
periods where the policies were NOT in place, as if that had something
to do with the policies in question.
To pick and extreme example to make the point. If Haiti implemented
the Hong Kong model today, and had Hong Kong results (against my
expectation) for the next decade, they would still be poorer than
Cuba, even if Cuba made no progress at all over the same period.
Could I then say--Cuba is richer, so the Cuban model is the way to get
to middle income level, not Haiti's. That would conveniently leave
off the fact that Haiti was desperately poor before the hypothetical
switch to the Hong Kong model, and Cuba was relatively well off by
Latin American standards anyway, before Castro; and that Haiti was
growing rapidly while Cuba was stagnant. Naturally, in other cases
it's not so polarized, but the principle is the same. Growth rate
matters, snapshots don't.
And by the way, I've stipulated every time this has come up that the
vast majority of attempts at intervention end in factional rent
seeking and sometimes outright predatory behavior. This is perhaps an
argument for laissez-faire (if you can't do good, at least do no
harm). The rich countries are the ones that have figured out how to
design public institutions that minimize this problem. Also, that
don't over-intervene, but that's a separate issue from the
harmful/helpful intervention question.
Brad Delong (UC-Berkely econ professor) again, has a good point in his
review of Landes' _The Wealth and Poverty of Nations_
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/Reviews/landes.html
"...If there is a second key, it lies in politics: a government strong
enough to keep its servants from confiscating whatever they please,
limited enough for individuals to be confident that the state is
unlikely to suddenly put all they have at hazard, and willing once in
a while to sacrifice official splendor and martial glory in order to
give merchants and manufacturers an easier time making money.
In short, economic success requires a government that is, as people
used to say, an executive committee for managing the affairs of the
bourgeoisie--a government that is responsive to and concerned for the
well-being of a business class, a class who have a strong and
conscious interest in rapid economic growth. A government not beholden
to those who have an interest in economic growth is likely to soon
turn into nothing more than a redistribution-oriented protection
racket, usually with a very short time horizon...."
----
Of course, being on the left on economic issues, I think the "business
class" can be and should be the majority of the population, which I
think would not harm growth.
michael price
> nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote in message news:<5678a39d.0303...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > The first railroads were privately funded and run. Later on the State
> > tried to use railway building to divert wealth from one area to another.
> > Try to find one case of this that in the US where this didn't involve
> > massive inefficency, losses and fraud.
>
> I'm not an American history expert, but my impression is it's fairly
> uncontroversial that the state buidling of railroads sped up the
> development despite such problems.
It is not uncontroversial at all. State building of railroads
happened after private roads and I challenge you to name one example where it
wasn't wasteful and corrupt.
> I don't claim certainty here. And
> again, I'm far from giving the state full credit for the US success,
> in fact the private sector is primary in the US (unlike some other
> cases), however it had a complementary role.
>
> > > the state's role in the banking system,
> >
> > Which was to take something relatively stable and totally bugger it
> > up.
>
> I have nothing more to say on that, but your condemnation seems
> extreme. Hamilton would certainly disagree.
The fact is that countries with little bank regulation had more stable
systems. The Federal Reserve was directly implicated in
>
> > > import substitution (strategic protectionism) for
> > > northeastern textile industries,
> >
> > Which caused a war that left 620,000 dead and crippled the South
> > economically. It may have "encouraged industrialisation" but it
> > cost the intended benefits of it.
>
> According to the recent book _Look Away: A Political History of the
> Confederacy_ the economic issues had faded in importance by 1860 and
> the war ws solely about slavery, as the Confederate leaders admitted.
Then why was the war started when a moderate on abolition and a fanatic
on protectionism was elected? Why did Lincoln himself say that if it
would win him the war he would let the south free the slaves?
> also notes that Jefferson Davis himself tried to organize an
> industrial policy of a sort for the CSA.
Which was far freer than the union policy.
>
> > > [brian] Some cases of state intervention that
> > > are usually considered positive are: ... Britain,
> >
> > The problem is that Britain got wealthy trading not restricting trade.
>
> They established an industrial base through the usual strategic
> protectionist policies,
English trade grew when they took the Dutch routes which was well
before they had protectionism.
Low base it's easy to get a good growth rate.
> Far faster than the US
> or Britain in similar periods of their history.
What simialar periods of history? China is benefitting from the
progress of more advanced countries which US and Britain never
had.
> Albeit, the run is
> likely over already or will soon be coming to an end, while the US was
> able to grow steadily for a very long period of time.
> [deleted]
>
> > > Examples of state action that could be called absorbtion of risk would
> > > be: when the state owns an enterprise,
>
> > Which need not make growth possible let alone likely.
>
> It is one way among several of achieving certain objectives.
It may be but it is certainly not the only way.
> Most
> economists would say it's not the best way, though a minority of
> economists point to cases where success was achieved because of 1) the
> state industry being in a market economy and subjected to competition
> 2) the establishment of effective monitoring and disciplining
> institutions.
>
> > > subsidizes an enterprise
>
> > Ditto.
>
> It's a broad tool, useful for both corrupt rent-seeking and helpful
> timely stimuation.
And generally used for the former.
>
>
> > > or industry in general through a growing pains period (either directly or
> > > through restriction of competition),
>
> > But that may or may not actually promote growth. It may instead misdirect
> > funds into the industry that are better invested elsewhere.
>
> It may and often does, nevertheless it's one of the few (not the only)
> ways of establishing an industrial base for a less developed country
> in the presence of fierce competition.
But that does not show it is the only way, which was your original point.
>
> > > is a lender or market of last resort (insurance),
>
> > And why is such a lender needed? If nobody else will lend someone money
> > why is it good to put a gun to my head so that I do?
>
> Again, as usual, it's tool ripe for abuse. Yet because private
> markets often have a short-term bias,
Only because people do. If the markets have a short term bias (which I do
not concede) then money invested for the long term will be more profitable.
Governments are not needed and in fact if they invest for the long term they
are not serving their short term motivated people well.
> something economically
> irrational to a private lender might be economically rational from a
> society-wide welfare maximization point of view.
But for it to be economically rational for "society" it must be economically
rational for somebody. That somebody can be the private lender.
>
>
> > > lets the firm or industry benefit from public R&D,
>
> > And why should they? If the thing the industry or firm is producing
> > is worth it they should be able to pay for _all_ their costs. This includes
> > R&D.
>
> Theoretically, that's how it should work. The world doesn't work like
> Economics 101 theory texts, that's why there's 201, 501, 801. Part of
> the answer is freeriding, it's often too difficult to exclude others
> from the benefits of basic research.
But usaully it's not hard to gain enough benefits to pay for the research.
For instance the people who developed Java didn't need the government to pay for
it.
> A closely related part is R&D
> often has positive externalities (meaning private markets will
> undersupply).
And sometimes it has negative externalities. The fact is that government
does not promote supply based on externalities so why expect them to maximise
the positive?
> For other developments, they may be too diffuse and
> risky (short-term biases again) for a private actor,
What evidence do you have that private actors have generally]
short term biases?
> yet have public rationality. The issue is not well understood, but
> it is clear states have played an important role in generating many
> technologies.
Which does not mean that they in general promote the development of
technology. Take the shuttle for instance. If it wasn't for millions
of dollars worth of technical expertise wasted on that deathtrap america
might have cheap orbital capacity (laser-lift or similar). But because
the technical resources are wasted and a competitor subsidised
>
>
> > > takes action to reduce price fluctuations,
> >
> > And why should do that? If having to cope with price fluctations is
> > a cost of being in the industry then the industry should pay it. If they
> > cannot then the industry clearly isn't worth it.
>
> Not necessarily. Reducing price fluctuations reduces uncertainly,
> which speeds up growth.
But doing this via government only transfers the uncertainty it does not
reduce it.
> One must ask, does the intervention to
> stablize prices (not fix, which usually backfires) cause more harm
> than the increased growth coming from less uncertainty?
And exactly how do you "stabilise" prices without knowing what is
a temporary change and what is the start of a trend? And if you can
tell this why would you need government to stabilise them? Besides if
stabilisation is so great why did the airline industry take off after deregulation.
>
>
> > > takes action to generate markets (internally or overseas),
>
> > Again this is a cost, which should be bourne by the beneficiary.
>
> It is often difficult for a private actor to do it. State's have
> information advantages and networds, and can do things more
> efficiently. There are surely things they could do internally too,
> for similar reasons of comparative advantage in information and
> networks.
>
>
> > > is a mediator that helps organize intra-industry groups,
> >
> > Which work just fine without the State.
>
> Theoretically yes, in practice not necessarily. There are all sorts
> of examples where economically rational cooperation won't occur.
So just because what you think is helpful doesn't always occur you
think the state should intervene?
> Often a state can be a helpful mediator.
And sometimes it can be a menace. What motivation does it have either
to be useful or not to be harmful?
>
>
>
> > > > But you make no effort to compare these downsides. You just claim that
> > > > one of the downsides is a total lack of growth without evidence.
>
> > > It's not like one can measure it exactly, economics is the 'dismal
> > > science'.
>
> > Economics was called the "dismal science" because of Thomas Malthus's
> > (somewhat inaccurate) predictions of doom, not because it doesn't give
> > results.
>
> I think it's called that because it's a field where variables cannot
> be easily isolated, like in Physics. Also there is the human factor,
> which throws monkey wrenches into things.
Well you're wrong. It was because of Malthus, before that economists
were thought rather cheerful.
Russil Wvong
> It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
> alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
> of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
> capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
> interventionist state to overcome market failures. These critiques of
> laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally) would also
> apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be created, how
> would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
> be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
> like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt there are
> any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
> anarchism.
Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
My idea of what a left-anarchist utopia would look like is based on
Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
of society have dropped out and become road proles. They can use cheap
biotechnology to make food, clothing, shelter, pretty much everything
they need. They don't bother with money -- they use reputation servers
to keep track of who's worth doing a favor for, and who's not. It
looks a lot like today's Internet, where various forms of software
(music, movies, pornography, newspaper articles, practical advice,
political rantings) are traded back and forth freely, except that it's
not just software -- everything's so cheap that it's basically free.
Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't, but there's
a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
left-anarchist utopia.
--
To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
all of this requires a very large organization to build, maintain,
and put into the field. Plus it's hideously expensive. I don't
see how you can do this without a state.
Historically, it's a problem of military technology. The Italian
city-states could maintain their independence behind their walls --
until artillery developed to the point where it could knock down
city walls. As military technology has become more and more
destructive and expensive, the minimum size of a political unit
capable of defending itself has become larger and larger, until
during the Cold War there were basically two giant states facing
off against each other, the US and the USSR. Everyone else
was dependent on one or the other for their security.
I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
over by force. That's how the Sforza family came to rule 15th-century
Milan ("sforza" is "force" in Italian).
In short, I think Hobbes was basically right. Without a state, you're
at the mercy of your neighbors.
Maybe there's some new paramilitary defense doctrine based on
guerrilla warfare that could defend against external attack without
a large, expensive, heavy-duty military organization. I guess I'll
believe it when I see it.
--
Gordon asks: if Hobbes was right, how do you prevent a dictator from
taking over a liberal-democratic state? Well, historically speaking,
the answer would appear to be, you can't; but so far the US and Britain,
the oldest of the liberal democracies, appear to be holding up, although
they're getting creaky (the alienation of young voters from their
governments is scary to contemplate). The US system was designed by
the American founders (based on separation of powers), while the
British system evolved over time. To me, the crucial element of both
is the rule of law. As long as the rule of law is maintained, a single
dictator can't take over.
But I think that ultimately, the legitimacy of the liberal democracies,
like any form of government, rests on their ability to deal effectively
with the problems and challenges faced by society. And my impression
is that a very large number of people in the West have lost their faith
that their governments have the ability, or even the will, to deal
effectively with such problems.
In the case of the US, I think the turning point was the Vietnam War.
Some references:
E. J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics.
Anthony King, Running Scared.
William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place.
Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations.
George Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill.
Seymour Lipset, Continental Divide.
The Cold War may be over, but people who believe in liberal democracy
still have a lot of work ahead of them.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
brian turner
> brian turner wrote:
> > It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
> > alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
> > of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
> > development) ... who point out that
> > capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
> > interventionist state to overcome market failures. These critiques of
> > laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally) would also
> > apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be created, how
> > would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
> > be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
> > like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt there are
> > any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
> > anarchism.
> Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
> high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
The environmental left might not think it is, but I suspect most
ordinary people even in rich countries would like more material
comfort (though not at any cost). And for developing countries there
is no question.
> My idea of what a left-anarchist utopia would look like is based on
> Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
> has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
> of society have dropped out and become road proles. They can use cheap
> biotechnology to make food, clothing, shelter, pretty much everything
> they need. They don't bother with money -- they use reputation servers
> to keep track of who's worth doing a favor for, and who's not. It
> looks a lot like today's Internet, where various forms of software
> (music, movies, pornography, newspaper articles, practical advice,
> political rantings) are traded back and forth freely, except that it's
> not just software -- everything's so cheap that it's basically free.
>
> Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
> are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't, but there's
> a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
> community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
> shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
> be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
> left-anarchist utopia.
>
> --
> To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
> nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
> The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
> the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
I'm convinced by the argument a few people have made about "collective
incentives", and I notice it play out in China. If people are a
member of a collective group, they will work hard for the collective
group if everyone's income increases, even if the marginal
contribution (from working hard rather than loafing) is small. If
incomes are not increasing, there will be more intra-collective
dispute and loafing. I think this also explains the hard work by
Japanese workers during its "miracle" years.
But what about Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan?
> Some references:
>
> E. J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics.
> Anthony King, Running Scared.
> William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears.
> Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
> Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place.
> Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations.
> George Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill.
> Seymour Lipset, Continental Divide.
>
> The Cold War may be over, but people who believe in liberal democracy
> still have a lot of work ahead of them.
Intersting list (I second Krugman's book, any of his actually). I've
saved this list for later reference, thanks.
Matt
{This was quite a thoughtful post, though not surpisingly so. It's not
addresssed to me but I'd still like to respond to some things}
> brian turner wrote:
>> It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
>> alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
>> of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
>> development) ... who point out that
>> capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
>> interventionist state to overcome market failures. These critiques of
>> laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally) would also
>> apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be created, how
>> would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
>> be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
>> like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt there are
>> any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
>> anarchism.
>
> Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
> high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
This could be way off, but is it possible economic growth is necessary
as a counter to the natural entropy that would otherwise gradually
deteriorate the economy?
That's terribly vague. What I mean is that an economy is a very
complex system, and if it's not finding ways to produce more wealth,
and more efficiently, it's going to stagnate and deteriorate when
parts of it don't perform as well. Drought, disease, flood, or
war could adversely affect production, so periods of growth would
be needed to compensate for this. But I have trouble seeing how
the economy would return to a perfectly stable equilibrium of no
growth, except just at the right times.
> Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
> has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
> of society have dropped out and become road proles. They can use cheap
> biotechnology to make food, clothing, shelter, pretty much everything
> they need. They don't bother with money -- they use reputation servers
> to keep track of who's worth doing a favor for, and who's not. It
> looks a lot like today's Internet, where various forms of software
> (music, movies, pornography, newspaper articles, practical advice,
> political rantings) are traded back and forth freely, except that it's
> not just software -- everything's so cheap that it's basically free.
That's an interesting, but strange, scenario: you would think a society
would get less advanced after collapsing, not become super-advanced.
> Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
> are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't, but there's
> a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
> community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
> shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
> be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
> left-anarchist utopia.
On the contrary, I think the reason food, shelter and clothing are cheap
is that capitalism has made them cheap. Put differently, we have
productive economies because people are rewarded for being productive.
This is not the case under anarcho-socialism. Anarcho-socialists can
build their new society in the shell of the old, but they can't replace
the old without destroying the wealth that makes their vision possible.
> To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
> nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
> The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
> the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
I've always been fond of this argument, but you have to take into
account the extremely low cost of giving away software. My impression
is that Linux hackers typically work on projects that have some utility
for themselves. When they finish, they get to enjoy what they've done,
yet they can give away their solution at virtually no cost, and without
losing the ability to use what they worked on.
By contrast, if you build yourself a cabin, and give it away, it's lost
to you. You can't use it anymore. Hence it's going to take more than an
ego-trip to get people to give away tangible goods and services.
Also, the reputation server idea is interesting (I haven't read
Sterling's book so don't know much about it) but in a way, it sounds
like traditional money--you "pay" someone with a promise that can
be redeemed for value. It's clear that in many cases, you would
not have anything of your own that's good for returning the favor,
so you'd want a promisory note that's fungible and works between
people--which sounds like money.
I suppose you could have such complex gift-giving or favor-trading
economies that don't use money, but it seems to me conventional
money is much better suited to exchange between people who don't
have all the same values and rule-systems. If you want to stick with
dorky computer analogies, money is like the IP of the net, linking many
smaller private networks that can follow their own rules.
> The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
> anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
> anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
> violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
> an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
Obvious counterexamples are the US in Vietnam and the Soviets in
Afghanistan. A state can lose even with greater technology and military
power. I'll concede an anarchy still needs to raise an army to fight
back, and I'll concede there is a public good problem raising an army
that could require a governmental solution (a decentralized guerilla
army comprising voluntary militias and protection agencies could make it
very painful and costly for a state to invade, but might not be enough).
For Saddam, the assets you mention are actually liabilities--they
are going to get pulverized, and if he relies on them, it will be
a fast war. If he wants to make it interesting he will fight as
anarchists would--sacrifice territory but make the invasion and
occupation very costly and frustrating, and perhaps even dispatch
terrorists to our soil to blackmail us with chem/bio or, less
plausibly, nukes (if he hasn't already). Now I hate terrorism,
but if a state were going to threaten civilians in my anarchy, it
would be justified for us to respond in kind if there were no other
alternative (along the same reasoning as MAD, as awful as that is
to contemplate).
> all of this requires a very large organization to build, maintain,
> and put into the field. Plus it's hideously expensive. I don't
> see how you can do this without a state.
Let's be precise: you might need an organization that can solve the free
rider problem with coercion. That's the real problem. The private
sector can provide large organizations and expensive goods. It doesn't
supply public goods very well, and it can't force cooperation to achieve
its objectives.
So suppose we have such a coercive organization that can solve such
problems. Is it necessarily a state, in the Weberian sense? In other
words, why does it follow that it has to have a monopoly over its
territory in the provision of law enforcement and courts?
I don't think it does. An anarchy could have an "exo-state" powerful
enough to wage war and collect taxes, and sometimes override property
rights in the service of war, but without a monopoloy of legitimate
force within the territory. It could not easily take power internally
because, contrary to the common objection, there would be no "vaccum of
power." Rather, there would be a balance of power between different
defense organizations, and they, in turn, would check the power of the
"exo-state."
That could be a necessary compromise if the threat of foreign invasion
is that real.
> Historically, it's a problem of military technology. The Italian
> city-states could maintain their independence behind their walls --
> until artillery developed to the point where it could knock down
> city walls. As military technology has become more and more
> destructive and expensive, the minimum size of a political unit
> capable of defending itself has become larger and larger, until
> during the Cold War there were basically two giant states facing
> off against each other, the US and the USSR. Everyone else
> was dependent on one or the other for their security.
Is that an inevitability, or a historical anomaly?
Even during the Cold War, weaker states took sides but didn't cede all
of their sovereignty to one of the two superpowers. Post cold war they
have more independence again. Just look at Cuba, sitting there
comfortably off our coastline despite US antagonism to it. It's not
inevitable that societies with weaker militaries will be conquered and
subsumed into societies with strong states.
In fact, societies with strong militaries have the additional burden
that the people running the government will want to use them; will
go to war more often than strictly necessary; and end up creating
more enemies, exposing the population to greater risk of attack.
> I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
> the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
> if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
> over by force. That's how the Sforza family came to rule 15th-century
> Milan ("sforza" is "force" in Italian).
That's what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket, which is
not what anarcho-capitalists propose.
--
Matt
michael price
> > It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
> > alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
> > of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
> > development) ... who point out that
> > capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
> > interventionist state to overcome market failures. These critiques of
> > laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally) would also
> > apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be created, how
> > would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
> > be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
> > like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt there are
> > any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
> > anarchism.
>
> Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
> high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
How well fed, clothed and housed?
>
> My idea of what a left-anarchist utopia would look like is based on
> Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
> has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
> of society have dropped out and become road proles. They can use cheap
> biotechnology to make food, clothing, shelter, pretty much everything
> they need. They don't bother with money -- they use reputation servers
> to keep track of who's worth doing a favor for, and who's not. It
> looks a lot like today's Internet, where various forms of software
> (music, movies, pornography, newspaper articles, practical advice,
> political rantings) are traded back and forth freely, except that it's
> not just software -- everything's so cheap that it's basically free.
And how is this better than capitalism with high levels of labour
renumeration? And how did the US collapse with such productive biotech?
>
> Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
> are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't,
Really? I got the impression that it's cheap as a percentage of wages
compared to say feudal times.
> but there's
> a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
> community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
> shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
> be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
> left-anarchist utopia.
I think constructing a "left-anarchist utopia" depends on people valuing
the utopia more than the increased material standard of living they could
get from capitalism. So the barrier is economic but also pyschological.
>
> --
> To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
> nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
> The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
> the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
But the reputation has to include a reputation for giving more than
you take. How do you compare giving 2 oranges with getting 3 apples?
Rating every trade for positive or negative reputation effects, not just
your own but for everybody you
>
> The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
> anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
> anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
> violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
> an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
Well not really. All you really need is to annoy them enough so that
they go away. Guerilla warfare should do the trick.
> all of this requires a very large organization to build, maintain,
> and put into the field. Plus it's hideously expensive. I don't
> see how you can do this without a state.
Well I don't see how you can maintain a large army in a "left anarchist
utopia" but under stateless capitalism mercenary contractors could certainly
be organsied.
>
> Historically, it's a problem of military technology. The Italian
> city-states could maintain their independence behind their walls --
> until artillery developed to the point where it could knock down
> city walls. As military technology has become more and more
> destructive and expensive, the minimum size of a political unit
> capable of defending itself has become larger and larger, until
> during the Cold War there were basically two giant states facing
> off against each other, the US and the USSR. Everyone else
> was dependent on one or the other for their security.
Not quite, France and Britain didn't really need the US to defend them
it was just cheaper.
>
> I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
> the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
> if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
> over by force.
I don't think that that's all that big a problem in the absence of a
State. If the mercenaries take over anyone can hire new mercenaries or
revolt themselves. The mercenaries would not have a comparative
advantage in producing legal systems and people under anarcho-capitalism
would expect to be able to pick from competing legal systems. So
people could only be forced to pick theirs by force. The mercenaries
would basically have to declare war on civil society and competitors
would jump in and offer to defeat them militarily (which would be cheap
because a lot of people would be backing their opponents and not many
backing them). In Italy the mercenaries were able to take over intact
state the people were accustomed to obeying which had established judical
systems.
> That's how the Sforza family came to rule 15th-century
> Milan ("sforza" is "force" in Italian).
>
> In short, I think Hobbes was basically right. Without a state, you're
> at the mercy of your neighbors.
And with a state you still are.
>
> Maybe there's some new paramilitary defense doctrine based on
> guerrilla warfare that could defend against external attack without
> a large, expensive, heavy-duty military organization. I guess I'll
> believe it when I see it.
Vietnam.
>
> --
> Gordon asks: if Hobbes was right, how do you prevent a dictator from
> taking over a liberal-democratic state? Well, historically speaking,
> the answer would appear to be, you can't; but so far the US and Britain,
> the oldest of the liberal democracies, appear to be holding up, although
> they're getting creaky (the alienation of young voters from their
> governments is scary to contemplate). The US system was designed by
> the American founders (based on separation of powers), while the
> British system evolved over time.
The US system was to a large extent based on the British evolution of law.
They kept most of the British system.
> To me, the crucial element of both
> is the rule of law. As long as the rule of law is maintained, a single
> dictator can't take over.
>
> But I think that ultimately, the legitimacy of the liberal democracies,
> like any form of government, rests on their ability to deal effectively
> with the problems and challenges faced by society. And my impression
> is that a very large number of people in the West have lost their faith
> that their governments have the ability, or even the will, to deal
> effectively with such problems.
But faith in whether something works doesn't make it work. If government
is failing and faith in it is being lost them I think the former causes the
later, not vice versa.
Russil Wvong
> Russil Wvong <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
> > high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> > clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
>
> The environmental left might not think it is, but I suspect most
> ordinary people even in rich countries would like more material
> comfort (though not at any cost).
Maybe. This is a digression, but I'd question the assumption that
economic growth is necessary in rich countries. We're a lot richer than
we were a couple generations ago, but my impression is that we aren't
much happier. Ronald Inglehart's research appears to show that there's
a point of diminishing returns -- in cross-country comparisons, there's
a close correlation between average per-capita income and average life
expectancy (as well as things like subjective levels of happiness)
below US $6000/year or so -- where South Korea is, roughly -- and not
much correlation above that level.
http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/images/papers/genes2.gif
That doesn't necessarily contradict what you're saying about the average
person wanting more material comfort. Even if there's diminishing returns,
there's two benefits to increasing levels of consumption: (a) it's better
to have something to look forward to, and (b) consumption is related to
status. Can't do much about (b) -- human nature again, if everybody
increases their consumption by the same amount there's no status gain --
but with respect to (a), a gradually increasing level of consumption
during an individual's lifetime doesn't necessarily equate to overall
economic growth, I think (making some assumptions about decreasing
levels of saving during an individual's lifetime).
I think the main reason for governments in industrial democracies to
pursue economic growth is that we don't know how to maintain a stable
level of employment without economic growth. And unemployment is
extremely painful.
> And for developing countries there is no question.
Sure. I haven't seen much left-anarchism from poor countries.
> > To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
> > nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
> > The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
> > the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
>
> I'm convinced by the argument a few people have made about "collective
> incentives", and I notice it play out in China. If people are a
> member of a collective group, they will work hard for the collective
> group if everyone's income increases, even if the marginal
> contribution (from working hard rather than loafing) is small. If
> incomes are not increasing, there will be more intra-collective
> dispute and loafing. I think this also explains the hard work by
> Japanese workers during its "miracle" years.
Perhaps. Some cultural factors here, I think. I remember Kenichi Ohmae
talking about the Japanese case in "The Mind of the Strategist" -- it
was drummed into every schoolchild that without natural resources, if
the Japanese didn't work hard, they would starve.
> > But I think that ultimately, the legitimacy of the liberal democracies,
> > like any form of government, rests on their ability to deal effectively
> > with the problems and challenges faced by society. And my impression
> > is that a very large number of people in the West have lost their faith
> > that their governments have the ability, or even the will, to deal
> > effectively with such problems.
> >
> > In the case of the US, I think the turning point was the Vietnam War.
>
> But what about Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan?
I don't know. I don't think anyone knows what's behind the declining
legitimacy of the liberal democracies since the 1960s. Some observations:
- Vietnam and Watergate led to much more critical journalism looking
for political lies, misdeeds, and scandals, not just in the US but
elsewhere.
- There was an explosion of radicalism, which again wasn't confined
to the US (Chomsky being an example).
- Rising expectations, maybe due to the postwar economic boom. People
seem to have very high expectations about their safety and security,
for example. There was a scathing essay, "Milksop Nation", in the
Economist a few issues back, talking about this. Accidents which
might have been dismissed as tragedies a couple generations ago now
lead to calls for government action and lawsuits. Solzhenitsyn
commented on this during the Vietnam War in his Harvard Address:
he attributed it to the Enlightenment assumption that all problems
stem from material want.
- People became much more aware of problems which are international or
global: the nuclear standoff, the environment, global population
growth, the gap between rich countries and poor countries. In none
of these cases were governments able to do much about it.
- Conversely, median income stagnated after about 1973 (until the 1990s).
Again, governments couldn't do much about it.
- Other domestic problems that governments seemed helpless to address:
the decay of inner cities, urban crime and violence, drug abuse,
rising divorce rates.
- Joshua Meyrowitz puts forward an interesting hypothesis: he suggests
that television has weakened authority, by putting political leaders
under the spotlight, where every flaw, no matter how minor, is
instantly visible to the public. And the weakening of authority
has in turn made governing much more difficult.
- Neil Postman suggests that television has turned politics into a
branch of show business. We now judge public figures, including
political leaders, by how well they entertain us; our political
judgments have become superficial; in fact, television may have
made us less intelligent (by crowding out reading, for example).
- Walter Lippmann (in "Public Opinion", 1921) argues that political
issues have become so complex that it's practically impossible for
the average citizen to be well informed. And we're not.
- Mancur Olson ("The Logic of Collective Action") points out that
reaching collective agreements is simply very difficult. And
this messy and unsatisfactory process is highly visible, again
due to television.
> > Some references:
> >
> > E. J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics.
> > Anthony King, Running Scared.
> > William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears.
> > Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
> > Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place.
> > Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations.
> > George Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill.
> > Seymour Lipset, Continental Divide.
> >
> > The Cold War may be over, but people who believe in liberal democracy
> > still have a lot of work ahead of them.
>
> Intersting list (I second Krugman's book, any of his actually). I've
> saved this list for later reference, thanks.
You're welcome. I've been thinking for a while about writing up a
"Liberal Democracy FAQ" -- not a rah-rah document, but a document
covering both the strengths and weaknesses of the liberal democracies.
No idea when I'll get to it, though.
Robert Putnam and Alexis de Tocqueville should probably be on the list
as well, but I haven't read their books yet. :-)
Russil Wvong
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 at 08:00 GMT, Russil Wvong <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> This was quite a thoughtful post, though not surpisingly so.
Thanks!
> > Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
> > high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> > clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
>
> This could be way off, but is it possible economic growth is necessary
> as a counter to the natural entropy that would otherwise gradually
> deteriorate the economy?
Hmm. That seems to me more like trying to keep the system stable, as
opposed to growing.
Another point that I forgot to mention in my reply to Brian: the
Economist pointed out in one of their millenium issues that measurable
economic growth is a phenomenon of the last 150 years or so -- from a
historical point of view, it looks less like an inevitable process and
more like a one-time event. And diminishing returns has to set in at
some point (of course, it could be a long ways off) -- maybe all the
wheelbarrows have been invented already. More recent inventions like
nuclear power plants are hugely expensive and have big, big costs (like
safety and waste disposal).
> > Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
> > has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
> > of society have dropped out and become road proles. They can use cheap
> > biotechnology to make food, clothing, shelter, pretty much everything
> > they need. They don't bother with money -- they use reputation servers
> > to keep track of who's worth doing a favor for, and who's not. It
> > looks a lot like today's Internet, where various forms of software
> > (music, movies, pornography, newspaper articles, practical advice,
> > political rantings) are traded back and forth freely, except that it's
> > not just software -- everything's so cheap that it's basically free.
>
> That's an interesting, but strange, scenario: you would think a society
> would get less advanced after collapsing, not become super-advanced.
I think Sterling's idea is that in the US, technological change is a
kind of tornado that just keeps going no matter what, heedless of
politics and economics and regardless of the effects -- just look at
Linux, which in theory could wipe out Microsoft's billion-dollar
operating system business, and which was developed by _volunteers_ with
a lot of time on their hands. If you think about it, it's a very strange
phenomenon. Sterling's extrapolating Internet phenomena to the real world.
He's also drawing an analogy between the US political system and a large,
complicated, and buggy software system.
Here's a couple quotes. The novel takes place in 2044 or thereabouts.
"What did the Golden Age [of science] get us? The public couldn't
handle the miracles. We had an Atomic Age, but that was dangerous
and poisonous. Then we had a Space Age, but that burned out in
short order. Next we had an Information Age, but it turned out
that the real killer apps for computer networks are social disruption
and software piracy. Just lately, American science led the Biotech
Age, but it turned out the killer app there was making free food for
nomads!"
And:
Political reality in modern America was the stark fact that
electronic networks had eaten the guts out of the old order,
while never finding any native order of their own. The horrific
speed of digital communication, the consonant flattening of
hierarchies, the rise of net-based civil society, and the decline
of the industrial base had simply been too much for the American
government to cope with and successfully legitimize.
There were sixteen major political parties now, divided into
warring blocs and ceaseless internecine purges, defections, and
counterpurges. There were privately owned cities with millions
of "clients" where the standard rule of law was cordially ignored.
There were price-fixing mafias, money laundries, outlaw stock
markets. There were black, gray, and green superbarter nets.
There were health maintenance organizations staffed by crazed
organ-sharing cliques, where advanced medical techniques were
in the grip of any quack able to download a surgery program.
Wiretapping net-militias flourished, freed of any physical locale.
There were breakaway counties in the American West where whole
towns had sold out to tribes of nomads, and simply dropped off
the map.
There were town meetings in New England with more computational power
than the entire U.S. government had once possessed. Congressional
staffs exploded into independent fiefdoms. The executive branch
bogged down in endless turf wars in an acronym soup of agencies,
every one of them exquisitely informed and eager to network, and
hence completely unable to set a realistic agenda and concentrate
on its own duties. The nation was poll-crazy, with cynical
manipulation at an all-time toxic high--the least little things
produced tooth-gritting single-issue coalitions and blizzards of
automated lawsuits. The net-addled tax code, having lost all
connection with fiscal reality, was routinely evaded by electronic
commerce and wearily endured by the citizenry.
With domestic consensus fragmenting, the lost economic war with China
had allowed the Emergency congressional committees to create havoc of
an entirely higher order. With the official declaration of Emergency,
Congress had signed over its birthright to a superstructure of
supposedly faster-moving executive committees. This desperate act
had merely layered another operating system on top of the old one.
The country now had two national governments, the original, halting,
never-quite-superseded legal government, and the spasmodic, increasingly
shrill declarations of the State-of-Emergency cliques.
> > Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
> > are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't, but there's
> > a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
> > community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
> > shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
> > be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
> > left-anarchist utopia.
>
> On the contrary, I think the reason food, shelter and clothing are cheap
> is that capitalism has made them cheap. Put differently, we have
> productive economies because people are rewarded for being productive.
Sure, that's part of it; but we also have a very large stock of capital
equipment. You can grow food much more effectively if you've got
tractors and combines than if you've got a hoe. Sterling extrapolates
to leaf-protein machines which basically produce food for nothing.
> > To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
> > nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
> > The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
> > the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
>
> I've always been fond of this argument, but you have to take into
> account the extremely low cost of giving away software. My impression
> is that Linux hackers typically work on projects that have some utility
> for themselves. When they finish, they get to enjoy what they've done,
> yet they can give away their solution at virtually no cost, and without
> losing the ability to use what they worked on.
Definitely.
> By contrast, if you build yourself a cabin, and give it away, it's lost
> to you. You can't use it anymore. Hence it's going to take more than an
> ego-trip to get people to give away tangible goods and services.
Maybe. I think the shelter problem is definitely the toughest (Sterling
finesses the problem with tent-dwelling nomads). The whole thing only
works if you assume that everything is practically free.
A trivial real-life example: I just sent Jim Henley a copy of
"The Threatening Storm". Seems that he's got a popular weblog,
so I thought he should see Kenneth Pollack's whole argument.
http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2003_03_02.html#003884
> Also, the reputation server idea is interesting (I haven't read
> Sterling's book so don't know much about it) --
Just like Amazon, I think, which lets you rate buyers and sellers.
> -- but in a way, it sounds
> like traditional money--you "pay" someone with a promise that can
> be redeemed for value. It's clear that in many cases, you would
> not have anything of your own that's good for returning the favor,
> so you'd want a promisory note that's fungible and works between
> people--which sounds like money.
Yep. Another quote (a dialogue between the protagonist and a former
nomad):
"Well, money isn't everything, but just try living without it."
Kevin shrugged. "People lived before money was invented. Money's
not a law of nature. Money's a medium. You *can* live without
money, if you replace it with the right kind of computation. The
proles know that. They've tried a million weird stunts to get by,
roadblocks, shakedowns, smuggling, scrap metal, road shows....
Heaven knows they never had much to work with. But the proles are
almost there now. You know how reputation servers work, right?"
"Of course I know about them, but I also know they don't really
work."
"I used to live off reputation servers. Let's say you're in the
Regulators--they're a mob that's very big around here. You show up
at a Regulator camp with a trust rep in the high nineties, people
will make it their business to look after you. Because they know
for a fact that you're a good guy to have around. You're polite,
you don't rob stuff, they can trust you with their kids, their cars,
whatever they got. You're a certifiable good neighbor. You always
pitch in. You always do people favors. You never sell out the gang.
It's a network gift economy."
"It's gangster socialism. It's a nutty scheme, it's unrealistic.
And it's fragile. You can always bribe people to boost your ratings,
and then money breaks into your little pie-in-the-sky setup. Then
you're right back where you started."
"It can work all right. The problem is that the organized-crime feds
are on to the proles, so they netwar their systems and deliberately
break them down. They *prefer* the proles chaotic, because they're
a threat to the status quo. Living without money is just not the
American way. But most of Africa lives outside the money economy
now--they're all eating leaf protein out of Dutch machines. Polynesia
is like that now. In Europe they've got guaranteed annual incomes,
they've got zero-work people in their Parliaments. Gift networks have
always been big in Japan. Russians still think property is theft--
those poor guys could *never* make a money economy work. So if it's
so impractical, then how come everybody else is doing it?"
> > The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
> > anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
> > anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
> > violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
> > an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
>
> Obvious counterexamples are the US in Vietnam and the Soviets in
> Afghanistan.
In both cases, the winning side had a lot of help. Vietnam didn't even
have any arms factories -- all arms came in from the outside.
> A state can lose even with greater technology and military power.
True enough. But military power matters.
> For Saddam, the assets you mention are actually liabilities--they
> are going to get pulverized, and if he relies on them, it will be
> a fast war. If he wants to make it interesting he will fight as
> anarchists would--sacrifice territory but make the invasion and
> occupation very costly and frustrating, and perhaps even dispatch
> terrorists to our soil to blackmail us with chem/bio or, less
> plausibly, nukes (if he hasn't already). Now I hate terrorism,
> but if a state were going to threaten civilians in my anarchy, it
> would be justified for us to respond in kind if there were no other
> alternative (along the same reasoning as MAD, as awful as that is
> to contemplate).
He could. And he might. But I think he's still going to lose,
because the US has greater firepower and it's got a vital interest
at stake (the stability of the Middle East).
> > all of this requires a very large organization to build, maintain,
> > and put into the field. Plus it's hideously expensive. I don't
> > see how you can do this without a state.
>
> Let's be precise: you might need an organization that can solve the free
> rider problem with coercion. That's the real problem. The private
> sector can provide large organizations and expensive goods. It doesn't
> supply public goods very well, and it can't force cooperation to achieve
> its objectives.
>
> So suppose we have such a coercive organization that can solve such
> problems. Is it necessarily a state, in the Weberian sense? In other
> words, why does it follow that it has to have a monopoly over its
> territory in the provision of law enforcement and courts?
>
> I don't think it does. An anarchy could have an "exo-state" powerful
> enough to wage war and collect taxes, and sometimes override property
> rights in the service of war, but without a monopoloy of legitimate
> force within the territory. It could not easily take power internally
> because, contrary to the common objection, there would be no "vaccum of
> power." Rather, there would be a balance of power between different
> defense organizations, and they, in turn, would check the power of the
> "exo-state."
Interesting idea, although a balance of power is not at all easy to
maintain. Usually it involves a fair amount of warfare (which would
be civil war, in this case).
> > Historically, it's a problem of military technology. The Italian
> > city-states could maintain their independence behind their walls --
> > until artillery developed to the point where it could knock down
> > city walls. As military technology has become more and more
> > destructive and expensive, the minimum size of a political unit
> > capable of defending itself has become larger and larger, until
> > during the Cold War there were basically two giant states facing
> > off against each other, the US and the USSR. Everyone else
> > was dependent on one or the other for their security.
>
> Is that an inevitability, or a historical anomaly?
I think the general trend of larger and larger political units is
pretty clear. Nuclear weapons might change this (a la Raven in
"Snow Crash" -- a guy who rides around on a motorcycle with a
stolen Soviet nuclear warhead in a sidecar, connected to a dead-man
switch). But nuclear weapons are an extremely blunt instrument,
so it's hard to use them effectively.
> Even during the Cold War, weaker states took sides but didn't cede all
> of their sovereignty to one of the two superpowers. Post cold war they
> have more independence again. Just look at Cuba, sitting there
> comfortably off our coastline despite US antagonism to it. It's not
> inevitable that societies with weaker militaries will be conquered and
> subsumed into societies with strong states.
Sure, it's not inevitable. But it's important to remember the distinction
between status quo states (like the US), which are satisfied with the
status quo and would be happy for all international borders to stay the
same, and revisionist states (like Nazi Germany, France under Napoleon,
the Soviet Union, Iraq under Saddam Hussein) who want to revise the status
quo, expanding their borders. Being a neighbor of a status quo power
(like Cuba or Canada) doesn't pose a big security problem. Being a
neighbor of an expansionist power is a huge security problem. Being
a buffer between two expansionist powers is even more of a problem.
> > I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
> > the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
> > if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
> > over by force. That's how the Sforza family came to rule 15th-century
> > Milan ("sforza" is "force" in Italian).
>
> That's what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket, which is
> not what anarcho-capitalists propose.
Maybe. But playing multiple armies (internal or external) against each
other seems like a very dangerous game, and one that's hard to maintain.
Especially if there's wars going on, which will tend to strengthen some
of the players and weaken others. Hans Morgenthau provides some
interesting historical perspective with respect to wars and mercenaries
in "Politics Among Nations".
Thanks for your comments!
David Graeber
<russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Depends on where you try to do it. Wouldn't work in New York!
And then there's the fact that the "forces of order" just plain
don't like people who live off the books. What people have
discovered who try is that property is utterly entangled with
the state. The moment one has a house, or a vehicle, or a storefront,
or any other significant bit of property there are literally
scores of legal regulations - licenses, inspection cerificates,
tax forms, etc etc - which mean that one must either submit oneself
constantly to state oversight and control, or else live with the
knowledge that the cops can descend on you at any moment and
either evict, expropriate, or arrest you. For those who wish to live
outside the cash economy, it is precisely the state which ensures that
they cannot: even, if, say, someone decides to give you an old
building, and you somehow avoid the complex tax payments this
will involve, the moment the authorities hear that you are
going to use it as a free anarchist social center, you can
be absolutely guaranteed that inspectors will show up telling
you you're not up to code in a dozen ways and that if you don't
make fifty thousand bucks worth of repairs in six months they're
shutting you down. And then you have to spend most of your
time, instead of giving away free food like you intended, holding
fund-raisers or selling things to prevent being kicked out...
Another interesting thing is legal status. The Independent
Media Centers run into this all the time. There is an understanding
that organizations work in certain ways - and most of the laws
and regulations do not even imagine this might be egalitarian
or democratic. It ranges from the very innocuous - ie, if you're
in the phone book and you're not an individual, then you're
a "business", even if a non-profit one - to very constraining
(either an individual's name must be on the lease, or title,
or whatever, or you must be incorporated, and if you want to
be _recognized_ as a non-profit then there's all sorts of
elaborate things you have to do which presume there are certain
officers, roles, internal forms of organization...) It is
precisely when you get economic that the state starts telling
you how to organize yourself, interestingly enough.
> --
> To me, there's two big objections to left-anarchist utopia. One is human
> nature: like it or not, people tend to pursue their individual interests.
> The reputation-server idea may be one way of overcoming this problem --
> the Linux project demonstrates the power of harnessing people's egos.
As Marcel Mauss pointed out, the very term "self-interest'
could not be translated into most human languages (at least,
as they existed say five hundred years ago) without writing
maybe a paragraph of explanation. There will always be a
tendency of people to compete over something. But what that
something is seems pretty arbitrary if you look at it ethnographically,
it could be almost anything, and there's no reason at all to
assume that things like food or life necessities will be on
the list. (Also, that the basic unit of competition will always be
an individual.) So I guess I'm mainly agreeing with you: I'm
guessing a viable egalitarian society would be one with an
infinity of different things one _could_ compete over and one's
main life allegiances might end up be which one happens to
pursue, ranging from martial arts clubs to musical-comedy production
to software production.
>
> The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
> anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
> anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
> violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
> an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
> all of this requires a very large organization to build, maintain,
> and put into the field. Plus it's hideously expensive. I don't
> see how you can do this without a state.
Yeah, that's the basic problem, isn't it? I have written
before that anarchism was the core of the revolutionary left in
the late 19th century precisely because that was a time when
war between "civilized" countries seemed obsolete. Come the
20th century, when no one would take you seriously unless you
could create and maintain huge mechanized killing machines,
the Marxists immediately replaced the anarchists - because
anarchists by definition are never going to be very good at
creating vast mechanized killing machines and for the Marxists,
that often proved the only thing they were particular good at.
But "war on terror" notwithstanding we are returning to 19th
century style standards with the end of the Cold War and I
think that's precisely the reason that, the moment Marxism
faded, it was anarchism that replaced it - particularly within
those countries (Western Europe, the US, certain parts of
Latin America) where war between nations no longer seems
a possibility.
>
> Historically, it's a problem of military technology. The Italian
> city-states could maintain their independence behind their walls --
> until artillery developed to the point where it could knock down
> city walls. As military technology has become more and more
> destructive and expensive, the minimum size of a political unit
> capable of defending itself has become larger and larger, until
> during the Cold War there were basically two giant states facing
> off against each other, the US and the USSR. Everyone else
> was dependent on one or the other for their security.
>
> I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
> the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
> if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
> over by force. That's how the Sforza family came to rule 15th-century
> Milan ("sforza" is "force" in Italian).
>
> In short, I think Hobbes was basically right. Without a state, you're
> at the mercy of your neighbors.
>
> Maybe there's some new paramilitary defense doctrine based on
> guerrilla warfare that could defend against external attack without
> a large, expensive, heavy-duty military organization. I guess I'll
> believe it when I see it.
>
You're going to have to see a general demilitarization of
society. Anarchism can't emerge on a global scale except under
conditions of broad social peace. Otherwise it can only exist in the
cracks and fissures between the areas the powerful see as worth
fighting over - that's starting to happen too. But there are
strategies for this too: part of neoliberalism means triage of
areas without notable resources, and in many areas that means
a withdrawl of police and armies. Areas open up. The question is
how to create links between those areas - even parts of cities
in many parts of the world - and places in the developed world
where anarchists have access to resources. It's a complicated
question and people are just beginning to start to work on
this sort of thing but greater ease of communications makes
it much more plausible than ever before.
DG
Joseph K.
I am curious about people who use concepts, like 'utopian', without
being able to define them. How can you use that term without being
able to try a definition? It seems to me you are just repeating
clichés and/or your arguments are fuzzy.
>I'll just tell you again what I
>meant and you tell me if it's a proper label. Anarchists are against
>central planning obviously, also against mixed-economy market systems.
> Some even imply they are against markets altogether.
You have a mistaken view of anarchism. Anarchism is a political
ideology, not an economical one. I am perfectly confortable with
markets.
Joseph K.
G*rd*n
| > > It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
| > > alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the critique
| > > of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
| > > development) ... who point out that
| > > capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted) required an
| > > interventionist state to overcome market failures. These critiques of
| > > laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally) would also
| > > apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be created, how
| > > would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures which would
| > > be even more severe under utopian "freely associating collectives"
| > > like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt there are
| > > any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than for right
| > > anarchism.
Russil Wvong <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
| > Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
| > high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
| > clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
| >
| > My idea of what a left-anarchist utopia would look like is based on
| > Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
| > has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
| > of society have dropped out and become road proles. They can use cheap
| > biotechnology to make food, clothing, shelter, pretty much everything
| > they need. They don't bother with money -- they use reputation servers
| > to keep track of who's worth doing a favor for, and who's not. It
| > looks a lot like today's Internet, where various forms of software
| > (music, movies, pornography, newspaper articles, practical advice,
| > political rantings) are traded back and forth freely, except that it's
| > not just software -- everything's so cheap that it's basically free.
| >
| > Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
| > are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't, but there's
| > a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
| > community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
| > shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
| > be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
| > left-anarchist utopia.
dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber):
| Depends on where you try to do it. Wouldn't work in New York!
| And then there's the fact that the "forces of order" just plain
| don't like people who live off the books. What people have
| discovered who try is that property is utterly entangled with
| the state. The moment one has a house, or a vehicle, or a storefront,
| or any other significant bit of property there are literally
| scores of legal regulations - licenses, inspection cerificates,
| tax forms, etc etc - which mean that one must either submit oneself
| constantly to state oversight and control, or else live with the
| knowledge that the cops can descend on you at any moment and
| either evict, expropriate, or arrest you. For those who wish to live
| outside the cash economy, it is precisely the state which ensures that
| they cannot: even, if, say, someone decides to give you an old
| building, and you somehow avoid the complex tax payments this
| will involve, the moment the authorities hear that you are
| going to use it as a free anarchist social center, you can
| be absolutely guaranteed that inspectors will show up telling
| you you're not up to code in a dozen ways and that if you don't
| make fifty thousand bucks worth of repairs in six months they're
| shutting you down. And then you have to spend most of your
| time, instead of giving away free food like you intended, holding
| fund-raisers or selling things to prevent being kicked out...
| ...
Something like $150,000 in the case of ABC No Rio.
But one aspect of this problem is that there are so few actually
trying to do anything. It's easy for the local government to
bust two or three experiments in anarchy; it would be far more
difficult if there were hundreds or thousands. This raises
the question of why people in general are so extremely passive,
and what to do about it. As Russil says, it is not the crude
economics of the situation that command such behavior. One
could argue that the immediate implication of this problem is
that most people are happy and satisfied with their lives,
in spite of their words and behavior implying the contrary.
Narnia Fan
> bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner) wrote in message news:<
> > It's not like one can measure it exactly, economics is the 'dismal
> > science'.
>
> Economics was called the "dismal science" because of Thomas Malthus's
> (somewhat inaccurate) predictions of doom, not because it doesn't give
> results.
For an in depth treatment of the origin of of the epithet
"dismal science" see the following URL or at least the
nugget quoted here.
start of quote
===================
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html
"Everyone knows that economics is the dismal science. And
almost everyone knows that it was given this description
by Thomas Carlyle, who was inspired to coin the phrase
by T. R. Malthus's gloomy prediction that population
would always grow faster than food, dooming mankind to
unending poverty and hardship.
"In choosing Mill as their target, Carlyle and his
allies chose well. Like most classical economists,
Mill treated such characteristics as race as
analytically irrelevant."
While this story is well-known, it is also wrong, so
wrong that it is hard to imagine a story that is
farther from the truth. At the most trivial level,
Carlyle's target was not Malthus, but economists such
as John Stuart Mill, who argued that it was institutions,
not race, that explained why some nations were rich
and others poor. Carlyle attacked Mill, not for
supporting Malthus's predictions about the dire
consequences of population growth, but for supporting
the emancipation of slaves. It was this fact-that
economics assumed that people were basically all
the same, and thus all entitled to liberty-that
led Carlyle to label economics "the dismal science."
Carlyle was not alone in denouncing economics for
making its radical claims about the equality of
all men. Others who joined him included Charles
Dickens and John Ruskin. The connection was so well
known throughout the 19th century, that even
cartoonists could refer to it, knowing that their
audience would get the reference."
==================
end of quote
NarniaFan
Russil Wvong
> > high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> > clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
>
> How well fed, clothed and housed?
Well enough that they're not hungry and cold. The average person in the
West probably reached that level a couple decades ago, if not more.
> > My idea of what a left-anarchist utopia would look like is based on
> > Bruce Sterling's "Distraction": in the novel (set in a future US which
> > has broken down, more or less like Russia in the 1990s), whole sections
> > of society have dropped out and become road proles.
>
> And how is this better than capitalism with high levels of labour
> renumeration? And how did the US collapse with such productive biotech?
It's not "better" -- it's just Sterling's attempt to imagine what such
a society might look like. For a description of the US collapse, see
the quotes from the book in my reply to Matt.
Another quote:
Kevin was sitting and chatting with a man he introduced as "General
Burningboy." Burningboy was in his fifties, with a long salt-and-pepper
beard and a filthy cowboy hat. The nomad guru wore elaborately
embroidered jeans, a baggy handwoven sweater, and ancient military
lace-up boots. There were three parole cuffs on his hairy wrists.
"Howdy," the prole General said. "Welcome to Canton Market. Pull up
a floor."
Oscar and Greta sat on the carpet. ...
"Your friend here just paid me quite a sum, just to buy one hour of
my time," Burningboy remarked. "Some tale he had to tell me, too.
But now that I see you two...." He looked thoughtfully at Oscar
and Greta. "Yeah, it makes sense. I reckon I'm buying his story.
So what can I do y'all for?"
"We're in need of assistance," Oscar said.
"Oh, I knew it had to be somethin'," the General nodded. "We never
get asked for a favor by straight folks till you're on the ropes.
Happens to us all the time--rich idiots, just showin' up out of the
blue. Always got some fancy notion about what we can do for 'em.
Some genius scheme that can only be accomplished by the proverbial
scum of the earth. Like, maybe we'd like to help 'em grow heroin....
Maybe sell some aluminum siding."
"It's not like that at all, General. You'll understand, once you
hear my proposal."
The General tucked in his boots, cross-legged. "Y'know, this may
*amaze* you, Mr. Valparaiso, but in point of fact, we worthless
subhumans are kinda busy with lives of our own! This is Canton
First Monday. We're smack in the middle of a major jamboree here.
I've gotta worry about serious matters, like ... sewage. We got
a hundred thousand people showin' up for three days. You
*comprende*?" Burningboy stroked his beard. "You know who you're
talking to here? I'm not a magic elf, pal. I don't come out of a
genie bottle just because you need me. ...
"You see, son--and Dr. Penninger"--he nodded at Greta in courtly
fashion--"we're all the heroes of our own story. You tell me
you've got a big problem--hell, we've all got big problems."
"Let's discuss them," Oscar said.
"I got some excellent career advice for you over-achievers. Why
don't you clowns just *give up*? Just *quit*! Knock it off, hit
the road! Are you enjoyin' life? Do you have a *community*?
Do you even know what a real community *is*? Is there any human
soul that you poor haunted wretches can really trust? Don't
answer that! 'Cause I already know. You're a sorry pair of
washouts, you two. You look like coyotes ate you and crapped you
off a cliff. Now you got some crisis you want me to help you
with.... Hell, people like you are *always* gonna have a crisis.
You *are* the crisis. When are you gonna wake up? Your system
don't work. Your economy don't work. Your politicians don't
work. Nothing you ever do works. You're over."
"For the time being," Oscar said.
"Mister, you're never gonna get ahead of the game. You've had a
serious wake-up call here. You're disappeared, you're *dispossessed*.
You've been blown right off the edge of the earth. Well, you know
something? There's a soft landing down here. Just go ahead and
leave! Burn your clothes! Set fire to your damn diploma! Junk
all your ID cards! You're a sickening, pitiful sight, you know
that? A nice, charming, talented couple.... Listen, it's not
too late for your two to get a life! You're derelicts right now,
but you could be bon vivants, if you knew what life was for."
Greta spoke up. "But I really need to get back to my lab."
"I tried," said Burningboy, flinging up both hands. "See, if you
just had the good sense to listen to me, that fine advice of mine
would have solved your problems right away. You could be eatin'
mulligatawny stew with us tonight, and probably getting laid. But
no, don't mind old Burningboy. I'm much, much older than you,
and I've seen a lot more of life than you ever have, but what do
I know? I'm just some dirt-ignorant fool in funny clothes, who's
gonna get arrested. Because some rich Yankee from outta town needs
him to commit some terrible criminal act."
> > Back in the real world, in the industrial democracies, food and clothing
> > are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't,
>
> Really? I got the impression that it's cheap as a percentage of wages
> compared to say feudal times.
Not as cheap as food and clothing. Food is so cheap it's practically
free.
> > The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
> > anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
> > anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
> > violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
> > an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
>
> Well not really. All you really need is to annoy them enough so that
> they go away. Guerilla warfare should do the trick.
Not if you have something they really, really want.
> > I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
> > the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
> > if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
> > over by force.
>
> I don't think that that's all that big a problem in the absence of a
> State. If the mercenaries take over anyone can hire new mercenaries or
> revolt themselves.
They can try, anyway.
> ... people could only be forced to pick theirs by force.
Correct.
> ... competitors would jump in and offer to defeat them militarily
Afraid I don't understand this argument. We're not talking about selling
cars or video-game consoles. Competing mercenaries would "jump in"?!
Who goes to war, risking their lives, without some very strong reason?
> (which would be cheap because a lot of people would be backing their
> opponents and not many backing them).
You might want to take a look at some historical examples. The Maronite
Christians in Lebanon called in the Syrians to help them in their civil
war. When that soured, they called in the Israelis. It was a bloody
mess. The Israelis eventually pulled out (it was their Vietnam). The
Syrians are still there.
> In Italy the mercenaries were able to take over intact
> state the people were accustomed to obeying which had established judical
> systems.
The people were used to civil war; residences were often designed as
towers, to make them easier to defend. I wouldn't overestimate their
being accustomed to obedience.
> > In short, I think Hobbes was basically right. Without a state, you're
> > at the mercy of your neighbors.
>
> And with a state you still are.
Of course. That's why you need an army.
> > Maybe there's some new paramilitary defense doctrine based on
> > guerrilla warfare that could defend against external attack without
> > a large, expensive, heavy-duty military organization. I guess I'll
> > believe it when I see it.
>
> Vietnam.
North Vietnam had a hell of a lot of help from China and the Soviet Union.
> > But I think that ultimately, the legitimacy of the liberal democracies,
> > like any form of government, rests on their ability to deal effectively
> > with the problems and challenges faced by society. And my impression
> > is that a very large number of people in the West have lost their faith
> > that their governments have the ability, or even the will, to deal
> > effectively with such problems.
>
> But faith in whether something works doesn't make it work. If government
> is failing and faith in it is being lost them I think the former causes the
> latter, not vice versa.
Of course. Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply otherwise.
David Graeber
That could be one. Another is that once one reaches a
certain age one becomes afraid of living in fear - if not for
oneself, one justifies it for one's kids. To live in an
illegal world day after day, knowing at any moment the things
one depends on to keep one's children alive might vanish - that's
a lot to ask of anyone. The amazing thing is that sometimes
people are willing to do it at all, not that so many won't.
Most Americans are absolutely terrified of being on the
wrong side of cops just as they are of being on the wrong
side of criminals; it's not comfort, I think, but fear which
we're taught from the ground up and makes change so difficult.
And America is in many ways the most frightened country on
earth.
DG
Russil Wvong
> > are amazingly cheap by historical standards. Shelter isn't, but there's
> > a lot of buildings which aren't used at night (e.g. church basements,
> > community halls); a well-organized anarchist group could probably organize
> > shelter which is as cheap as food and clothing, although there wouldn't
> > be much privacy. I don't think economics is such a big barrier to
> > left-anarchist utopia.
>
> Depends on where you try to do it. Wouldn't work in New York!
For the whole city, no. I was thinking more of the homeless population
which we've got here in Vancouver. Unfortunately, drug use, alcoholism,
and mental illness are also big problems -- it's not just a matter of
lacking shelter and a fixed address. But with respect to the authorities,
I don't think they'd interfere here -- homelessness is one of the
biggest problems in civic politics here, if not the biggest, and the
authorities would welcome any attempt to try to tackle the problem.
> > The other big objection is the self-defense problem. Historically,
> > anarchists have been crushed by outside force (e.g. the Spanish
> > anarchists in the 1930s). To defend a society against external
> > violence, you need to be able to defeat a modern army, and defeating
> > an army requires artillery, tanks, airplanes, battleships, and so on;
> > all of this requires a very large organization to build, maintain,
> > and put into the field. Plus it's hideously expensive. I don't
> > see how you can do this without a state.
>
> Yeah, that's the basic problem, isn't it? I have written
> before that anarchism was the core of the revolutionary left in
> the late 19th century precisely because that was a time when
> war between "civilized" countries seemed obsolete.
Very interesting.
> But "war on terror" notwithstanding we are returning to 19th
> century style standards with the end of the Cold War and I
> think that's precisely the reason that, the moment Marxism
> faded, it was anarchism that replaced it - particularly within
> those countries (Western Europe, the US, certain parts of
> Latin America) where war between nations no longer seems
> a possibility.
Personally, I'm not so optimistic. I think the 1990s were an
unusually peaceful period, historically speaking. There's many
places where people aren't happy with the current status quo:
some examples that spring to mind are the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, the sanctions against Iraq, Kashmir, Tibet, the
delicate balance between China and Taiwan, the Kurds, even Quebec.
Since the French Revolution, nationalism has been one of the most
powerful forces in modern politics; I don't think that's going to
change. With continued population growth, conflicts over resources
are likely. Technological change, with its disruptive social effects,
is continuing. Over the long term, I think we're going to see
continued conflict and war.
Russil Wvong
> But one aspect of this problem is that there are so few actually
> trying to do anything. It's easy for the local government to
> bust two or three experiments in anarchy; it would be far more
> difficult if there were hundreds or thousands. This raises
> the question of why people in general are so extremely passive,
> and what to do about it.
Human nature again, perhaps? Virginia Satir: people will always
choose the familiar over the comfortable. They don't like change.
There's also the cars vs. magic carpets issue. Peter Nelson:
Compared to magic carpets, cars are *terrible*: they're dirty,
noisy, unsafe, unreliable, expensive to own and maintain,
polluting, and a general pain in the a**. But they EXIST.
Magic carpets are far better in every respect. But they don't
exist and there's no schedule for when we can expect delivery.
Our existing political and economic system may have a lot of problems,
but at least we know how it works. It won't be easy to get a
significant number of people to try a different system.
> One could argue that the immediate implication of this problem is
> that most people are happy and satisfied with their lives,
> in spite of their words and behavior implying the contrary.
I think there's considerable alienation and dissatisfaction, but
nobody really knows what to do about it. The books I listed
earlier provide ideas on how to tackle some of the major problems.
G*rd*n
| > But one aspect of this problem is that there are so few actually
| > trying to do anything. It's easy for the local government to
| > bust two or three experiments in anarchy; it would be far more
| > difficult if there were hundreds or thousands. This raises
| > the question of why people in general are so extremely passive,
| > and what to do about it.
russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong):
| Human nature again, perhaps? Virginia Satir: people will always
| choose the familiar over the comfortable. They don't like change.
|
| There's also the cars vs. magic carpets issue. Peter Nelson:
|
| Compared to magic carpets, cars are *terrible*: they're dirty,
| noisy, unsafe, unreliable, expensive to own and maintain,
| polluting, and a general pain in the a**. But they EXIST.
| Magic carpets are far better in every respect. But they don't
| exist and there's no schedule for when we can expect delivery.
|
| Our existing political and economic system may have a lot of problems,
| but at least we know how it works. It won't be easy to get a
| significant number of people to try a different system.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
| > One could argue that the immediate implication of this problem is
| > that most people are happy and satisfied with their lives,
| > in spite of their words and behavior implying the contrary.
russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong):
| I think there's considerable alienation and dissatisfaction, but
| nobody really knows what to do about it. The books I listed
| earlier provide ideas on how to tackle some of the major problems.
I've been experimenting in the so-called real world with a
couple of anarcho-communist projects. One is Food Not Bombs,
which was experimenting with itself long before I came around,
and another is a "free store". I'm trying to work out some
kind of incremental praxis that people can observe and join
or assist if they like, but not for communal organization --
communes appeal to and function for only a rather limited set
of people. It all seems very thin and tenuous, but, who knows,
they may be the first few threads of that magic carpet.
Russil Wvong
> I've been experimenting in the so-called real world with a
> couple of anarcho-communist projects. One is Food Not Bombs,
> which was experimenting with itself long before I came around,
> and another is a "free store". I'm trying to work out some
> kind of incremental praxis that people can observe and join
> or assist if they like, but not for communal organization --
> communes appeal to and function for only a rather limited set
> of people. It all seems very thin and tenuous, but, who knows,
> they may be the first few threads of that magic carpet.
Good luck. Another anarchist community is the Internet itself,
of course. Practically everything is given away for free because,
well, bandwidth is so cheap is practically free.
michael price
> michael price wrote:
> > Russil Wvong <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Interesting question, Brian. But given a society with a sufficiently
> > > high level of productivity -- high enough to keep everyone well fed,
> > > clothed, and housed -- is economic growth really such a big concern?
> >
> > How well fed, clothed and housed?
>
> Well enough that they're not hungry and cold. The average person in the
> West probably reached that level a couple decades ago, if not more.
Ok, so do you mean at the point where increased income stops having a
major effect on happiness? If so you're right most people in the west have
reached that point.
Like what?
>
> > > I think this objection also applies to right-anarchism: how does
> > > the society defend itself? Mercenaries don't solve the problem --
> > > if you hire mercenaries, there's not much stopping them from taking
> > > over by force.
> >
> > I don't think that that's all that big a problem in the absence of a
> > State. If the mercenaries take over anyone can hire new mercenaries or
> > revolt themselves.
>
> They can try, anyway.
>
> > ... people could only be forced to pick theirs by force.
>
> Correct.
Should have read "persuade to pick theirs by force."
>
> > ... competitors would jump in and offer to defeat them militarily
>
> Afraid I don't understand this argument. We're not talking about selling
> cars or video-game consoles. Competing mercenaries would "jump in"?!
> Who goes to war, risking their lives, without some very strong reason?
To "rule" a place you don't just need to have the military you need to
be accepted as the "legitimate" maker of rules. Under anarcho-capitalism
you do that by establishing a reputation as a good adjudicator. There
is no reason to believe that mercenaries will have such a reputation. So
to make money out of the adjudication business they would have to put a
gun to people's head and say "We run the place now.".
People would naturally resent this and hire people to tell them, "No,
you don't.". Now if the mercenaries actually had a doctrine that they
rightfully deserve to run the place that would be a problem. But they
don't, they just want to make money. Actually fighting everyone they
piss off (which would be almost everyone) and their hirelings would be
a loss making proposition. The chances are quite high they'd fold at the
first sign of serious opposition. The chances are even higher that some
of the mercenaries would desert and join the "liberators".
>
> > (which would be cheap because a lot of people would be backing their
> > opponents and not many backing them).
>
> You might want to take a look at some historical examples. The Maronite
> Christians in Lebanon called in the Syrians to help them in their civil
> war. When that soured, they called in the Israelis. It was a bloody
> mess. The Israelis eventually pulled out (it was their Vietnam). The
> Syrians are still there.
>
> > In Italy the mercenaries were able to take over intact
> > state the people were accustomed to obeying which had established judical
> > systems.
>
> The people were used to civil war; residences were often designed as
> towers, to make them easier to defend. I wouldn't overestimate their
> being accustomed to obedience.
They would be far more accustomed to it than people in an
anarcho-capitalist system. But that is not the point. The cities had
courts that people accepted as "legitimate" even if the people appointing
the judges changed. If the Gwelf (not sure of the exact spelling or
pronunciation) faction took over they didn't keep going to the house of
the former judge to get judgements.
>
> > > In short, I think Hobbes was basically right. Without a state, you're
> > > at the mercy of your neighbors.
> >
> > And with a state you still are.
>
> Of course. That's why you need an army.
Well yes, but _I_ don't have one. The State has one. The State is
the "neighbour" I am most worried about (since I moved away from one
particular lunatic) so how does having a State help?
>
> > > Maybe there's some new paramilitary defense doctrine based on
> > > guerrilla warfare that could defend against external attack without
> > > a large, expensive, heavy-duty military organization. I guess I'll
> > > believe it when I see it.
> >
> > Vietnam.
>
> North Vietnam had a hell of a lot of help from China and the Soviet Union.
So? There's always someone whose pissed off at your enemies.
michael price
I stand correctly, thank you.
G*rd*n
| > I've been experimenting in the so-called real world with a
| > couple of anarcho-communist projects. One is Food Not Bombs,
| > which was experimenting with itself long before I came around,
| > and another is a "free store". I'm trying to work out some
| > kind of incremental praxis that people can observe and join
| > or assist if they like, but not for communal organization --
| > communes appeal to and function for only a rather limited set
| > of people. It all seems very thin and tenuous, but, who knows,
| > they may be the first few threads of that magic carpet.
Russil Wvong <russi...@yahoo.com>:
| Good luck. Another anarchist community is the Internet itself,
| of course. Practically everything is given away for free because,
| well, bandwidth is so cheap is practically free.
Thin soup, though.
Russil Wvong
> Ok, so do you mean at the point where increased income stops having a
> major effect on happiness?
Yes, that's right. I think we're already there, lack of economic growth
isn't a big barrier to left-anarchism or right-anarchism. I think the
big barrier is the external security problem.
> > > All you really need is to annoy them enough so that
> > > they go away. Guerilla warfare should do the trick.
> >
> > Not if you have something they really, really want.
>
> Like what?
A couple possibilities:
1. Wealth. This is the classic barbarians-vs.-civilization scenario.
2. Territory that's connected to national pride (Kashmir, Palestine,
Kosovo). Nationalism is one of the most powerful emotional forces
in modern politics. It's not easy to secede.
> > > ... competitors would jump in and offer to defeat them militarily
> >
> > Afraid I don't understand this argument. We're not talking about selling
> > cars or video-game consoles. Competing mercenaries would "jump in"?!
> > Who goes to war, risking their lives, without some very strong reason?
>
> To "rule" a place you don't just need to have the military you need to
> be accepted as the "legitimate" maker of rules. Under anarcho-capitalism
> you do that by establishing a reputation as a good adjudicator. There
> is no reason to believe that mercenaries will have such a reputation. So
> to make money out of the adjudication business they would have to put a
> gun to people's head and say "We run the place now.".
>
> People would naturally resent this and hire people to tell them, "No,
> you don't.". Now if the mercenaries actually had a doctrine that they
> rightfully deserve to run the place that would be a problem. But they
> don't, they just want to make money. Actually fighting everyone they
> piss off (which would be almost everyone) and their hirelings would be
> a loss making proposition.
I'm not so optimistic. There's a well-defined body of techniques which
can be applied by conquerors: hostages, reprisals, massacres, ethnic
cleansing, secret police, torture, propaganda, co-option or decapitation
of local leadership, isolation from the outside world. And it's not so
hard to come up with a doctrine to legitimize one's rule.
Another historical example, from Edward Gibbon:
To what extent the profession of universalistic principles of
morality can go hand in hand with utter depravity in action is
clearly demonstrated in the case of Timur, the Mongol would-be
conqueror of the world, who in the fourteenth century conquered
and destroyed southern Asia and Asia Minor. After havig killed
hundreds of thousands of people--on December 12, 1398, he
massacred one hundred thousand Hindu prisoners before Delhi--for
the glory of God and of Mohammadanism, he said to a representative
of conquered Aleppo: "I am not a man of blood; and God is my
witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and
that my enemies have always been the authors of their own
calamity."
Gibbon, who reports this statement, adds: "During this peaceful
conversation the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and
re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks
of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his
soldiers might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was
enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number
of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in
columns and pyramids...."
Which raises another point: what happens if an invader slaughters
most of the inhabitants before outside forces can intervene? In
some cases (e.g. the recent wars in Yugoslavia), invaders don't want
the people, just the territory.
> > > In Italy the mercenaries were able to take over intact
> > > state the people were accustomed to obeying which had established judical
> > > systems.
> >
> > The people were used to civil war; residences were often designed as
> > towers, to make them easier to defend. I wouldn't overestimate their
> > being accustomed to obedience.
>
> They would be far more accustomed to it than people in an
> anarcho-capitalist system.
I'm wary of arguments which require human nature to change in some way
in order to work. Yes, some people will put up suicidal resistance to
superior force, but history demonstrates many other cases where people
have submitted to the superior force of a conqueror.
Another point: so far we've only been discussing the problem of
defending territory against an invader. But the security of a territory
may depend on the continued independence of _somebody else_ outside
the territory. The classic example is Britain's policy of maintaining
the balance of power in Europe; if a single power were to dominate
Europe, Britain wouldn't be able to resist it. Which is why Britain
has sent expeditionary forces to fight overseas, even when its own
security hadn't yet been threatened.
George Kennan argues that the external security of the US is similar:
it depends on a stable balance of power elsewhere in the world, and
that the US therefore has a stake in maintaining this balance. The
following is an excerpt from a lecture Kennan gave in 1950.
Today, standing at the end rather than the beginning of this
half-century, some of us see certain fundamental elements on which
we suspect that American security has rested. We can see that our
security has been dependent throughout much of our history on the
position of Britain; that Canada, in particular, has been a useful
and indispensable hostage to good relations between our country
and British Empire; and that Britain's position, in turn, has
depended on the maintenance of a balance of power on the European
Continent.
Thus it was essential to us, as it was to Britain, that no single
Continental land power should come to dominate the entire Eurasian
land mass. Our interest has lain rather in the maintenance of
some sort of stable balance among the powers of the interior, in
order that none of them should effect the subjugation of the
others, conquer the seafaring fringes of the land mass, become a
great sea power as well as land power, shatter the position of
England, and enter -- as in these circumstances it certainly would --
on an overseas expansion hostile to ourselves and supported by the
immense resources of the interior of Europe and Asia.
Which is why the US fought against Germany during World War I and
against Germany and Japan during World War II, and opposed the
Soviet Union during the Cold War.
> > > > In short, I think Hobbes was basically right. Without a state,
> > > > you're at the mercy of your neighbors.
> > >
> > > And with a state you still are.
> >
> > Of course. That's why you need an army.
>
> Well yes, but _I_ don't have one. The State has one. The State is
> the "neighbour" I am most worried about (since I moved away from one
> particular lunatic) so how does having a State help?
Ah. The State can protect you against invaders, and it can protect
you to some extent from your neighbors (by imprisoning criminals,
and by deterring criminal acts with the threat of punishment), but
of course your only real protection from the State itself is the
rule of law.
> > North Vietnam had a hell of a lot of help from China and the Soviet
> > Union.
>
> So? There's always someone whose pissed off at your enemies.
Not always enough to intervene, unfortunately. The US didn't want the
Soviet Union to invade Hungary in 1956, or Czechoslovakia in 1968, but
the US didn't intervene, because it would have been suicidal.
G*rd*n
| ...
| in order to work. Yes, some people will put up suicidal resistance to
| superior force, but history demonstrates many other cases where people
| have submitted to the superior force of a conqueror.
If one believes that any sort of important political change
can be successfully willed (it is obvious that unintended
changes occur) then one has to assume that at least some
aspects of human nature, to wit, culture, can be changed in
some intended direction under or against the political
facts of the moment, without assuming and being absorbed
by the form of those facts (becoming like one's enemy).
Evidence that this kind of thing is generally possible can be
found in the spread of Christianity and liberalism / capitalism.
In neither case did the activists of the revolutionary theory,
at the outset, contest territory or other important possessions
overtly with the ruling classes of the time. Rather, they
advanced through subversion and seduction, in effect corrupting
the power-holders with a more attractive vision of human
life and social relations than the one their opponents possessed,
and which the revolutionaries were usually careful to promote
everywhere as universally available. This is the strategy
which I think anarchists of the present must take. At least,
I can't think of any other which is possible, much less better.
michael price
> In article <5678a39d.03030...@posting.google.com>,
> nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
>
> > dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
> news:<dgraeber-080...@207-237-44-105.c3-0.nyw-ubr2.nyr-nyw.ny.cable.rcn.com>...
> > > In article <5678a39d.03030...@posting.google.com>,
> > > nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
> > >
> > > > dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
> > >
> news:<dgraeber-070...@207-237-44-105.c3-0.nyw-ubr2.nyr-nyw.ny.cable.rcn.com>...
> > > > > In article <5678a39d.03030...@posting.google.com>,
> > > > > nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner) wrote in message
> > > > > > > dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
> news:<dgraeber-050...@wr9.anthropology.yale.edu>...
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > It's my view that advocates of anarchist/libertarian socialist
> > > > > > > > > alternatives to capitalism are no less burdened to answer the
> critique
> > > > > > > > > of economists (and political scientists writing about economic
> Kenneth
> > > > > > > > > Galbraith) and present (Ha-Joon Chang, Joseph Stiglitz, Meredith
> > > > > > > > > Woo-Cumings, Peter B. Evans, Alice Amsden...)--who point
> out that
> > > > > > > > > capitalist development has usually (exceptions noted)
> required an
> > > > > > > > > interventionist state to overcome market failures. These
> critiques of
> > > > > > > > > laissez-faire capitalism (but not capitalism generally)
> would also
> > > > > > > > > apply to left anarchist proposals. How would growth be
> created, how
> > > > > > > > > would resource allocation failures be overcome (failures
> which would
> > > > > > > > > be even more severe under utopian "freely associating
> collectives"
> > > > > > > > > like Marx proposed, than under markets)? I seriously doubt
> there are
> > > > > > > > > any more answers to these questions for left anarchism than
> for right
> should
> > > > > > > > > be an ideal, a direction to move in, but realistically,
> > > > > > > > > social-democracy/welfare state, Fabian socialism, market
> socialism
> > > > > > > > > with state intervention are the realistic leftist
> alternatives in my
> > > > > > > > > opinion. All compatible with democracy and civil liberties;
> with the
> > > > > > > > > understanding that democracy will never be perfect.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Why do you feel that a _state_, specifically - that is,
> > > > > > > > an organization which is based on a monopoly of the use of
> > > > > > > > violence in a given territory; an inherently coercive,
> > > > > > > > bureaucratic mechanism - would be more efficient at the
> > > > > > > > distribution of goods, or in creating the climate for an
> > > > > > > > efficient distribution of goods, than any other possible
> > > > > > > > arrangement? Or, perhaps more to the point, why do you assume
> > > > > > > > that it would be so much more efficient than any non-coercive
> > > > > > > > alternative that this greater efficiency would outweigh the
> > > > > > > > obvious advantages of having a free society in which no one
> > > > > > > > is coerced?
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > After all, it's not as if it would be impossible to create
> > > > > > > > larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on without
> > > > > > > > a state.
> > > > > > > > DG
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > But that's precisely what I am arguing, that it *is* impossible "to
> > > > > > > create larger systems of coordination, or exchange, and so on
> without a
> > > > > > > state."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But it has been done. The State did not create the market and would
> > > > > > actively opposed the switch to a wage based system, yet they happened.
> > > > >
> > > > > Actually, the State was in almost all cases actively
> > > > > involved in creating wage-based systems. For example, during
> > > > > the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when the enclosure
> > > > > movements were forcing innumerable cottagers out of their
> > > > > communities, vagabondage laws were created which made it
> > > > > a felony for a landless able-bodied male _not_ to be employed
> > > > > as a wage labor.
> > > >
> > > > Rubbish. At that time there were plenty of self-employed
> > > > craftsmen, were they arrested?
> > >
> > > Craftsmen weren't usually landless but okay, if you
> > > want to quibble over the word, I meant "not employed as
> > > a farmer or otherwise as an established householder."
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > > Back then, "felony" meant "capital crime" -
> > > > > so could literally be executed for refusal to work as a
> > > > > wage labor (or inability to find a job).
> > > >
> > > > Which would make no difference since without some form of
> > > > income they would starve anyway. Such laws were means of
> > > > harrasing beggars and people who didn't seem to have any
> > > > source of honest income and were probably thieves. They
> > > > were hardly means to coerce people into wage labour.
>
>
> Hawkers, peddlers and the like were of course engaged in
> minor versions of what merchants were doing on a larger
> scale. Except of course they could be rounded up and forced
> to work for established, propertied heads of household.
But not neccesarily for wage labour. They could easily be
rounded up and forced to farm some land.
>
> > >
> > > Not so. Haven't you seen the literature on "masterless
> > > men" as they were called at the time? Some were beggars,
> > > sure, some were doing odd jobs, but avoiding fixed employment,
> > > many were traveling entertainers, musicians, or even, say
> > > dentists (song-and-dance men at the time often also
> > > pulled teeth), or engaged in minor trades or repair outside
> > > of guilds
> >
> > Outside of guilds... so in other words the problem wasn't the
> > that they weren't in wage labour it was that they didn't have a
> > guild.
>
> None of the statutes even mention guilds. The putting-out
> system for example wasn't organized through guilds at all.
> The concern was as I said with "masterless men" - that is,
> people who neither had property of their own, nor were established
> as dependents (servants, somewhere half between what we'd call
> wage laborers and servants) of someone who did have property.
Which would specifically not include members of guilds. Guilds
had masters remember?
> The general feeling is that everyone without property should
> be working for, and therefore established within the household
> of, a propertied householder. They needed to have a boss,
> discipline, control.
But wage labour is not neccesary to do this. In any case there
is no guarantee under this system that you would be protected by
taking wage employment. If someone employed you at a wage and
_they_ were not part of a guild etc. how would that help you?
>
>
> >
> > > or established, legal means, though certainly
> > > that shaded into scam artists and thieves at times.
> > > Others were simply unemployed - if you were looking for some
> > > fixed job and couldn't find one, and hung around living off
> > > alms, one might well end up in jail or during the initial
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > > Later this was
> > > > > qualified, but the government still reserved the right to
> > > > > force the unemployed into wage labor jobs, no matter what
> > > > > the wages or conditions, if they found anyone willing to
> > > > > employ them...
> > > >
> > > > Sounds like a Graeber fantasy to me.
> > >
> > > Oh, not again. The first time I brought this up on the
> > > internet some right-wing type swore it wasn't the case and
> > > demanded i come up with the statue numbers. I actually did -
> > > dug them out of a book on vagabondage in Elizabethan England.
> > > (I was working in a library then.) Didn't stop the fellow
> > > from responding to every other thing I said with "oh yeah,
> > > prove it!")
> > > All right, how 'bout this little tidbit from the Statute
> > > of Edward VI:
> > >
> > >
> > > If any person shall bring to two
> > > justices of peace any runagate servants or any other which
> > > liveth idly or Ioiteringly by the space of three days they shall
> > > muse that idle and loitering servant or vagabond to be marked
> > > with a hot iron on the breast with the mark of V and adjudge
> > > him to be slave to the same person that brought him for two
> > > years after who shall take the said slave and give him bread
> > > water or small drink and refuse him meat and cause him to
> > > work - by beating chaining or otherwise - in such work as he
> > > shall put unto be it never so vile: and if he shall absent
> > > himself from his said master - by the space of fourteen days s
> > > then he shall be adjudged by two justices of peace to be
> > > marked on the forehead or the ball of the cheek with a hot
> > > iron with the sign of an S and further shall be adjudged to be
> > > slave to his said master for ever.
> >
> > The trouble is that those laws weren't about making people work
> > for wages they were about making them work for their current employer.
> >
>
> No, it doesn't say that the person who brought them
> in has to be their current employer. It says not having
> an employer is a crime.
Irrevelent. The fact is that it gives employers power to prevent
you changing jobs. No matter how much you save up you cannot take a
month off to
> The statute states that if you
> are convicted of being unemployed or avoiding work (living "idly
> or loiteringly") - whether you had previously been someone's
> employee or not - you can be enslaved for two years to whoever
> reports you.
Which gives your employer a lot of power over you.
> If you try to escape from _him_, then you're reduced
> to slavery for life. Read it again. That's what it says.
What it says and the effect it has are two different things.
> That was in 1547 I believe.
At which time the percentage of people involved in wage labour
would not have been that high surely? Weren't most people still
peasant farmers then?
> The vagabondage laws changed
> over time but they remained highly punitive. Throughout the
> period in which wage labor became the predominant form of
> labor relation (as former patron-client style relations of
> service were increasingly redefined to look more and more
> like wage labor contracts) there was a steady application of
> state power to ensure that anyone who fled such arrangements,
> and tried to make it on their own hook, through what we would
> now call the "informal sector" - casual employment, petty
> trading, entertainment, all that off-the-books sort of stuff -
> could be arrested and forced into dependence on a "respectable",
> propertied citizen.
> DG
That might mean that the state hated independent trading it
doesn't mean it liked wage labour. The feudal state was based on
patron-client relations, why would it want them to change?
Russil Wvong
> russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong):
> | I'm wary of arguments which require human nature to change in some way
> | in order to work.
>
> can be successfully willed (it is obvious that unintended
> changes occur) then one has to assume that at least some
> aspects of human nature, to wit, culture, can be changed in
> some intended direction under or against the political
Er, I would make a distinction between human nature, which cannot
be changed except by evolution, and culture, which can be changed.
> Evidence that this kind of thing is generally possible can be
> found in the spread of Christianity and liberalism / capitalism.
> In neither case did the activists of the revolutionary theory,
> at the outset, contest territory or other important possessions
> overtly with the ruling classes of the time.
Not at the outset. But they certainly did later on; Christianity
spread through war and conquest as well as proselytization,
liberals destroyed the French aristocracy in the French
Revolution and attempted to liberate Europe with revolutionary
armies. It's remarkable how a pacifist ideology such as
Christianity can be used to justify bloody warfare such as
took place in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The interplay between ideas and interests is a fascinating one.
I think Hans Morgenthau's description is a good one: ideologies
are a kind of mask for power interests, as for example Catholicism
and Protestantism were used in what was basically a power struggle,
or as Marxism was used by the Bolsheviks to justify their seizure
of power. At the same time, the mask shapes what lies beneath:
ideology affects how people perceive and think about their own
interests.
> Rather, they
> advanced through subversion and seduction, in effect corrupting
> the power-holders with a more attractive vision of human
> life and social relations than the one their opponents possessed,
> and which the revolutionaries were usually careful to promote
> everywhere as universally available. This is the strategy
> which I think anarchists of the present must take. At least,
> I can't think of any other which is possible, much less better.
Hmm.
William McNeill ("Rise of the West") describes the following vision
as being common to secular ideologies since about 1850, and suggests
that it offers a powerful and universal appeal.
... The secularist hopes and theories of the West which have won
partial hold over men's minds all round the globe and remarkably
generous ones. Like the ideals of earlier religions, they may yet
demonstrate a staying power even in the face of repeated
disappointment and failure. At the least, it is clear that men of
nearly all nations, having once been exposed to the notions of
liberty, equality, and fraternity, in any of the versions and with
any of the accents which have been put upon these ideals, find
them hard to forget and impossible to neglect. The vision of a
free, well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, and well-educated human
being, member of a free and peaceable society, exerting his
proprtional share of influence to determine the mild and equable
policies of "his" government, and himself contributing to the
general welfare to the best of his abilities, holds a vast
attraction for almost everyone. It has the further advantage that
it may be vulgarized or specified in almost any manner to
prescribe almost any line of conduct and appeal to almost any
audience.
Persons who embrace the vision of future perfectibility of mankind
enthusiastically find themselves wrestling with the appalling gap
between ideal and reality. The gap is so wide that practical
action in the imperfect world of fact may appear simply hopeless
or else may seem to require such violent action against vested
interests as to turn the pursuit of good into the perpetration of
evil. Yet because it is not easily achieved, the secularized
vision of a future heaven upon earth does not lose vibrancy. On
the contrary, an ideal easily realized would soon lose its power
to inspire action, whereas an unrealizable aspiration for which
men must and will fight both asserts and in many cases reinforces
its power amid the brutalities of battle. In the heat of such
struggle, the standing discrepancy between ends and means will
trouble only the most critical minds; and even they can never be
sure that the end does not indeed justify what "has to be done."
Even a cursory consideration of the wars and revolutions, of the
political and social reform movements, and of the activities of
the great multitude of charitable, social service, welfare, and
missionary agencies during the century since 1850 will show that
many men have proved ready, even eager, to labor, to suffer, and
if need be, to die in the struggle to bring the heavenly city to
earth. Liberals, nationalists, socialists, and communists each
have pursued their own version of the ideal on the political
stage; and countless others each have have dedicated private
efforts to the task of remodeling one or another corner of the
social scene in the hope that, through the voluntary actions of
innumerable individuals, a better approximation to the free,
equal, and brotherly society of their dreams might in time be
achieved.
The end is not yet, and cannot be foretold. Eventually men will
no doubt turn away to pursue other visions; but in the meantime,
however imperfectly the secular ideal of social bliss has come or
ever will come to embodiment in human societies, it remains true
that the universality and power of this vision among men of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a leading
characteristic of the initial age of global cosmopolitanism. The
spread of industrialism and the effects of mechanical transport
and communication upon the ecumene were more palpable; yet the
change in men's ideas of what could and ought to be done with
industrialism's enhanced wealth and power were no less important.
It's a powerful vision, but it's pretty far away from reality. The
world we live in resembles Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep",
with vast inequalities. George Kennan, "Realities of American
Foreign Policy" (1954):
Let us begin by glancing at certain general conditions that mark
the world outside the Soviet orbit.
The first of these that strikes my eye is the utter lack of
uniformity in the degree to which the various component parts
of the free world have advanced along the path of civilization.
This non-communist area embraces the entire spectrum of the
development of man from a state of society scarcely distinguished
from that of the animals to the most highly technical and
complicated civilizations. Measured in terms of the time it has
usually taken for people to move from one to the other extreme
in these stages of develompent, we may say that parts of our
world are separated by many thousands of years from other parts.
David Graeber
nini...@yahoo.com (michael price) wrote:
Well, actually, at first they were rounded up to be
unpaid slaves. Later they were put in charge of
> >
> > > >
> > > > Not so. Haven't you seen the literature on "masterless
> > > > men" as they were called at the time? Some were beggars,
> > > > sure, some were doing odd jobs, but avoiding fixed employment,
> > > > many were traveling entertainers, musicians, or even, say
> > > > dentists (song-and-dance men at the time often also
> > > > pulled teeth), or engaged in minor trades or repair outside
> > > > of guilds
> > >
> > > Outside of guilds... so in other words the problem wasn't the
> > > that they weren't in wage labour it was that they didn't have a
> > > guild.
> >
> > None of the statutes even mention guilds. The putting-out
> > system for example wasn't organized through guilds at all.
> > The concern was as I said with "masterless men" - that is,
> > people who neither had property of their own, nor were established
> > as dependents (servants, somewhere half between what we'd call
> > wage laborers and servants) of someone who did have property.
>
> Which would specifically not include members of guilds. Guilds
> had masters remember?
Yes, I know perfectly well. I'm sorry. If you want to
just make things up according to the way you want to
imagine they might have worked, fine, do that - but it
seems awfully bizarre coming from someone who claimed that
_I_ was engaged in fantasies documenting things which in
fact I can document, and which you, in response, are unable
to document anything but simply respond with fantasies. Look.
The vast majority of work was at that point in agriculture,
where there were huge numbers of "servants in husbandry", but
zero guilds. Guilds were a restricted urban phenomenon and
the legislation in question HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH FORCING
PEOPLE INTO GUILDS. Okay. Get over it. You were wrong. Don't
embarrass yourself by clinging to your fantasy. I'm sorry to
be harsh but it's tiresome to deal with an arrogant person
who clearly knows nothing about the subject but continues
to insist he knows better than someone who actually has
some historical information.
>
> > The general feeling is that everyone without property should
> > be working for, and therefore established within the household
> > of, a propertied householder. They needed to have a boss,
> > discipline, control.
>
> But wage labour is not neccesary to do this. In any case there
> is no guarantee under this system that you would be protected by
> taking wage employment. If someone employed you at a wage and
> _they_ were not part of a guild etc. how would that help you?
BECAUSE GUILDS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, IDIOT. I'm
sorry - but this is ridiculous. Look: I already said,
the putting out system was not organized through guilds.
The agricultural sector was not organized through guilds.
Guilds are not mentioned in the laws. They are something
you added based only on your fantasies.
> >
> > No, it doesn't say that the person who brought them
> > in has to be their current employer. It says not having
> > an employer is a crime.
>
> Irrevelent. The fact is that it gives employers power to prevent
> you changing jobs. No matter how much you save up you cannot take a
> month off to
It's not irrelevant - it responds to what _you_ said.
You can't even remember what you said?
>
> > The statute states that if you
> > are convicted of being unemployed or avoiding work (living "idly
> > or loiteringly") - whether you had previously been someone's
> > employee or not - you can be enslaved for two years to whoever
> > reports you.
>
> Which gives your employer a lot of power over you.
Indeed!
>
> > If you try to escape from _him_, then you're reduced
> > to slavery for life. Read it again. That's what it says.
>
> What it says and the effect it has are two different things.
Yes, but you were addressing what it said.
>
> > That was in 1547 I believe.
>
> At which time the percentage of people involved in wage labour
> would not have been that high surely? Weren't most people still
> peasant farmers then?
Um, okay.
Look - we are talking about a period in which there was
a transition between a Medieval system where most people
went through their adolescence (a period which ranged from
as young as 12 to as old as 30) as "servants" for someone
else; this was in a lot of ways close to wage labor, but it
also involved other mutual responsibilities, especially since one
was resident with one's master, technically part of their
family, etc. For craftspeople this meant being an apprentice
or journeyman, and yes, much of this sector was organized
into guilds, but for peasants it meant being a servant in
husbandry (male or female - milkmaids for example were
such servants) and even young nobles were pages and the like...
But in the traditional system this is what you do before
you are a full social adult, at which point you can get
married, become a master or mistress of a household yourself,
which also meant, being economically independent, having
property and not depending on anyone else for your livelihood.
The question is how you pass from such a system to one in
which most people are _permanently_ working for some master,
in exchange for money but with no expectation of any other
obligations on the master's part, and thus, in traditional terms,
never really able to become full social adults. The question:
did this happen spontaneously, because people found it the
most satisfactory economic relation, or could it only
happen because of state coercion which tried to bring such
a situation about. The evidence makes it very clear that,
even when policies like enclosure denied marginal agricultural
types like cottagers their traditional modes of employment,
they tended to avoid entering into wage labor relations,
but instead preferred what we'd now call the "informal
economy", basically doing anything but becoming someone
else's paid worker. The state however had an explicit policy
of preventing them from doing this, and forcing them - either
directly, or through the threat of slavery, mutilation,
even death - to enter into the emerging wage labor sector.
>
> > The vagabondage laws changed
> > over time but they remained highly punitive. Throughout the
> > period in which wage labor became the predominant form of
> > labor relation (as former patron-client style relations of
> > service were increasingly redefined to look more and more
> > like wage labor contracts) there was a steady application of
> > state power to ensure that anyone who fled such arrangements,
> > and tried to make it on their own hook, through what we would
> > now call the "informal sector" - casual employment, petty
> > trading, entertainment, all that off-the-books sort of stuff -
> > could be arrested and forced into dependence on a "respectable",
> > propertied citizen.
> > DG
>
> That might mean that the state hated independent trading it
> doesn't mean it liked wage labour. The feudal state was based on
> patron-client relations, why would it want them to change?
Because it saw wage labor relations as basically the
same as patron-client relations: hierarchical, subordinating...
You perhaps see the freedom to make or break labor
contracts as central to the nature of wage labor but history
indicates this is not the case. Wage labor was seen as a form
of "service", not as a free contract between equals - that
justification was only developed much later. This is why at
the time it seemed natural that wage laborers should not be
allowed political rights because they weren't "their own man".
Wage labor involves someone being paid, on an ongoing basis,
for their work under the direction of someone else. It is
inherently hierarchical. It does not necessarily involve
freedom of contract or freedom to quit - at least, according
to any definitions I'm familiar with. And in fact at that point
no one was pretending it was a form of freedom. That line
came later.
DG
michael price
The point is that the law did not neccesarily force people into
wage labour at any point in their service.
The existence of the guilds is not a fantasy nor is their
purpose, to protect their members. The guilds could not have
survived if they allowed their members to become victims of this
law. They survived untill well after it was repealed or became
moot. QED they were not subject to it in any serious way.
> Look.
> The vast majority of work was at that point in agriculture,
> where there were huge numbers of "servants in husbandry", but
> zero guilds. Guilds were a restricted urban phenomenon and
> the legislation in question HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH FORCING
> PEOPLE INTO GUILDS. Okay. Get over it. You were wrong.
The guilds would have provided protection from this law. More
protection than working for wages would have. How can you claim
the law was about forcing people into wage labour and not conceded
it was about forcing them into guilds?
> Don't
> embarrass yourself by clinging to your fantasy. I'm sorry to
> be harsh but it's tiresome to deal with an arrogant person
> who clearly knows nothing about the subject but continues
> to insist he knows better than someone who actually has
> some historical information.
The information you provide does not support your (entire) case.
>
>
> >
> > > The general feeling is that everyone without property should
> > > be working for, and therefore established within the household
> > > of, a propertied householder. They needed to have a boss,
> > > discipline, control.
> >
> > But wage labour is not neccesary to do this. In any case there
> > is no guarantee under this system that you would be protected by
> > taking wage employment. If someone employed you at a wage and
> > _they_ were not part of a guild etc. how would that help you?
>
> BECAUSE GUILDS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, IDIOT.
So if your boss was not a guild member how does HE prevent
his own enslavement? Look the fact is that under this law you
are NOT protected by taking up wage labour. You are protected by
having a policitically acceptable person say "Yep, he works for me.".
If you have that then it doesn't really matter what your actual work
arrangement is. You could work for a pittance for say, 10 hours a
week for Lord X and then spend 50 hours a week in what you call the
"informal economy". I can't possibly be the only one to have thought
of this dodge.
> I'm sorry - but this is ridiculous. Look: I already said,
> the putting out system was not organized through guilds.
> The agricultural sector was not organized through guilds.
But since you brought up people being forced off their land
the agricultural sector obviously has nothing to do with it.
People still on their lands were obviously not subject to this
law. The people effected by it would have been those forced
to find work elsewhere including but not limited to the cities.
> Guilds are not mentioned in the laws. They are something
> you added based only on your fantasies.
They were something I added because I knew they existed and had
an effect on the situation. This is not a fantasy. They did exist
they did have an effect on the situation. Ignoring that is the
fantasy.
>
>
> > >
> > > No, it doesn't say that the person who brought them
> > > in has to be their current employer. It says not having
> > > an employer is a crime.
> >
> > Irrevelent. The fact is that it gives employers power to prevent
> > you changing jobs. No matter how much you save up you cannot take a
> > month off to
>
> It's not irrelevant - it responds to what _you_ said.
I don't think it does.
> You can't even remember what you said?
Ok, what proportion of the population actually managed this? I
mean "having property and not depending on anyone else for your
livelihood" implies quite a bit of saving. Are you saying that it
was usual to become indendent like this by 30? In the middle ages?
> The question is how you pass from such a system to one in
> which most people are _permanently_ working for some master,
> in exchange for money but with no expectation of any other
> obligations on the master's part, and thus, in traditional terms,
> never really able to become full social adults.
Ok, I'm confused here. How does this system differ from the other?
By "permanently" working for the master what do you mean? If the
person acquired sufficent savings then he would still be able to
buy land, a business (one that was officially recognised as a "real
job") etc. I mean what is it about the traditional system that makes
it easier to become an "economic adult"?
> The question:
> did this happen spontaneously, because people found it the
> most satisfactory economic relation, or could it only
> happen because of state coercion which tried to bring such
> a situation about. The evidence makes it very clear that,
> even when policies like enclosure denied marginal agricultural
> types like cottagers their traditional modes of employment,
> they tended to avoid entering into wage labor relations,
> but instead preferred what we'd now call the "informal
> economy", basically doing anything but becoming someone
> else's paid worker.
The evidence makes it clear that sufficent numbers prefered
it so that the state got worried or the state's buddies saw a
rich potential source of slaves. Whether this meant that most
people preferred it I have no idea.
> The state however had an explicit policy
> of preventing them from doing this, and forcing them - either
> directly, or through the threat of slavery, mutilation,
> even death - to enter into the emerging wage labor sector.
But the law you mention doesn't force people into wage labour,
it forces them to get a powerful person to stand up in court and
say "yep that's my employee". If someone employer is also someone
without a "real job" in the view of the state then they are
enslaved shortly after their employer. That is why I see this
law as partly for the benefit of the guilds. Being a guild
member is automatically a "real job" and guild members can employ
people.
In fact this law would not force anyone into a wage job who could
make a deal with a politically acceptable person. I can't be the
first person to think that saying "I'll work for you for 10 hours a
week at nominal rates and you let me work for myself".
>
>
> >
> > > The vagabondage laws changed
> > > over time but they remained highly punitive. Throughout the
> > > period in which wage labor became the predominant form of
> > > labor relation (as former patron-client style relations of
> > > service were increasingly redefined to look more and more
> > > like wage labor contracts) there was a steady application of
> > > state power to ensure that anyone who fled such arrangements,
> > > and tried to make it on their own hook, through what we would
> > > now call the "informal sector" - casual employment, petty
> > > trading, entertainment, all that off-the-books sort of stuff -
> > > could be arrested and forced into dependence on a "respectable",
> > > propertied citizen.
> > > DG
> >
> > That might mean that the state hated independent trading it
> > doesn't mean it liked wage labour. The feudal state was based on
> > patron-client relations, why would it want them to change?
>
> Because it saw wage labor relations as basically the
> same as patron-client relations: hierarchical, subordinating...
Well no it MADE them hierarchical and subordinating. That's a big
part of what this and other laws are about.
> You perhaps see the freedom to make or break labor
> contracts as central to the nature of wage labor
It is central to the nature of wage labour until the state
interfers. Remember laws against quitting your job preceded
this.
> but history
> indicates this is not the case. Wage labor was seen as a form
> of "service", not as a free contract between equals - that
> justification was only developed much later. This is why at
> the time it seemed natural that wage laborers should not be
> allowed political rights because they weren't "their own man".
> Wage labor involves someone being paid, on an ongoing basis,
> for their work under the direction of someone else.
But what consitutes an "ongoing basis"? If it means "untill
one of us gets a better offer" it is not inherently hierarchical.
Some of the "informal economy" would have consisted of wage labour
that was part-time or temporary. This is part of the arrangements
targeted by this law.
> It is inherently hierarchical. It does not necessarily involve
> freedom of contract or freedom to quit - at least, according
> to any definitions I'm familiar with. And in fact at that point
> no one was pretending it was a form of freedom. That line
> came later.
> DG
I find that hard to believe. I mean saying "I will work for you
for $X a week" does not imply "forever". Even under the law you
quote getting another job while working for your master is legal
(although I believe it was forbidden under others).
michael price
> In article <66dc0679.0303...@posting.google.com>,
> bk...@hotmail.com (brian turner) wrote:
>
> > dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber) wrote in message
> news:<dgraeber-080...@207-237-44-105.c3-0.nyw-ubr2.nyr-nyw.ny.cable.rcn.com>...
> >
> > > and in many places still do. People can get by without some
> > > bunch of thugs threatening to beat them all up if they don't
> > > do what they're told. Doesn't mean everybody's always
> > > happy. But people get by.
> >
> > It sounds like you think all states are destined to be Mussolini or
> > Ceaucescu. I don't see why that has to be.
>
> No, I think most states are very mild versions of same.
> A mild version of a bad thing is still a bad thing.
> DG
And in any case how does one prevent a Mussolini or Ceaucescu? Just
because it's "mild" today does not mean it won't get hot tommorow.
michael price
> dgra...@rcn.net (David Graeber):
> | > and in many places still do. People can get by without some
> | > bunch of thugs threatening to beat them all up if they don't
> | > do what they're told. Doesn't mean everybody's always
> | > happy. But people get by.
>
> | It sounds like you think all states are destined to be Mussolini or
> | Ceaucescu. I don't see why that has to be.
>
> on a Hobbesian view of history and human nature, which if
> true would logically require Mussolinis and Ceasescus to
> appear under certain conditions likely to be encountered
> sooner or later.
Actually if I understand the Hobbesian veiw correctly we are
all Mussolinis an Ceaucescus so it would have to be sooner. But
good point anyway.