A Donaldism for David Friedman
Dan Clore
check out, here is a recent claim made by James Donald:
> Chomsky made no comparison
> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
> "After the Cataclysm")
and from another recent post:
> Chomsky made no comparison
> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
> "After the Cataclysm")
and from a third recent post:
> Chomsky made no comparison
> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
> "After the Cataclysm")
and from a less recent post:
> Chomsky made no comparison
> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
> "After the Cataclysm")
and from another old post:
> Chomsky made no comparison
> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
> "After the Cataclysm")
and yet another:
> Chomsky made no comparison
> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. [No page numbers in this one. -- And you thought these would all be exactly the same!]
This claim is easily checked, and I know that David Friedman has a copy
of PEHR II (_After the Cataclysm_) handy to check it in. Perhaps I am
hallucinating, but it appears to me that no mention of East Timor
appears on pp. 137-38, but that p. 136 says: "The coverage of real and
fabricated atrocities in Cambodia also stands in dramatic contrast to
the silence with regard to atrocities comparable in scale within U.S.
domains -- Timor, for example." It should prove interesting to see the
results once David Friedman has checked this reference.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
Welcome to the Waughters....
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Because the true mysteries cannot be profaned....
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"
David Friedman
...
>and from another old post:
>
>> Chomsky made no comparison
>> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
>> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
>> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
>> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
>> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
>> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
>> "After the Cataclysm")
...
>This claim is easily checked, and I know that David Friedman has a copy
>of PEHR II (_After the Cataclysm_) handy to check it in. Perhaps I am
>hallucinating, but it appears to me that no mention of East Timor
>appears on pp. 137-38,
Correct in my copy--was there by any unlikely chance a paperback or a
second edition with different pagination? More likely James Donald was
referringto the discussion on page 139, which continues a part of the
argument that starts on p. 137.
>but that p. 136 says: "The coverage of real and
>fabricated atrocities in Cambodia also stands in dramatic contrast to
>the silence with regard to atrocities comparable in scale within U.S.
>domains -- Timor, for example." It should prove interesting to see the
>results once David Friedman has checked this reference.
You correctly quote the reference. The problem with your argument is that
the authors are comparing "real and fabricated atrocities" in Cambodia
with "the apparent massacre of something like one-sixth the population of
East Timor." The discussion on p. 139 pretty clearly suggests that the
scale of the atrocities in Cambodia is bogus and that on East Timor
real--look at the first two full sentences at the top of p. 139. They are
put as hypotheticals--but there would be no point to making them unless
the authors wanted to suggest that they were true.
So while it is true that James has the page numbers wrong, and also true
that Chomsky and Herman raise the question of why East Timor is relatively
underreported when its actual massacres are as bad as Cambodia's purported
massacres, it is also true that they imply that that what happened on East
Timor was much worse. It is not true that they "claim" that it was not
worse--to that extent, I agree that James has overstated the evidence.
--
David Friedman
DD...@Best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
Dan Clore
> >and from another old post:
> >
> >> Chomsky made no comparison
> >> with the Indonesian crimes in East Timor, then later, in his book
> >> "After the cataclysm", which embarrassingly appeared just a few weeks
> >> after Vietnamese invasion, and just a few days before the left
> >> orthodoxy on Cambodia changed abruptly, Chomsky did indeed make the
> >> comparison, claiming the that the crimes were not comparable, that the
> >> crimes of the Khmer Rouge were vastly less serious. (Page 137-138
> >> "After the Cataclysm")
> >This claim is easily checked, and I know that David Friedman has a copy
> >of PEHR II (_After the Cataclysm_) handy to check it in. Perhaps I am
> >hallucinating, but it appears to me that no mention of East Timor
> >appears on pp. 137-38,
>
> Correct in my copy--was there by any unlikely chance a paperback or a
> second edition with different pagination?
No.
> More likely James Donald was
> referringto the discussion on page 139, which continues a part of the
> argument that starts on p. 137.
Okay.
> >but that p. 136 says: "The coverage of real and
> >fabricated atrocities in Cambodia also stands in dramatic contrast to
> >the silence with regard to atrocities comparable in scale within U.S.
> >domains -- Timor, for example." It should prove interesting to see the
> >results once David Friedman has checked this reference.
>
> You correctly quote the reference. The problem with your argument is that
> the authors are comparing "real and fabricated atrocities" in Cambodia
> with "the apparent massacre of something like one-sixth the population of
> East Timor." The discussion on p. 139 pretty clearly suggests that the
> scale of the atrocities in Cambodia is bogus and that on East Timor
> real--look at the first two full sentences at the top of p. 139. They are
> put as hypotheticals--but there would be no point to making them unless
> the authors wanted to suggest that they were true.
I don't at all see this alleged implication. Cambodia was alleged to
have over 2 million (perhaps 2.5 million), while East Timor "apparently"
had at least 100,000 killed, and throwing doubt on the first denies that
they are on the same scale and somehow implies that those in Cambodia
were "vastly less serious"? (Oh, and BTW, most estimates for *total
deaths* in Cambodia during Khmer Rouge rule are around 1.2 million.) I
suppose on a very strict reading of that one passage you could make the
case, since the grammar is ambiguous, but if you take it in the context
of the work it is clear what the authors have in mind. PEHR I, p. 22,
for example: "Even today, as regards East Timor, where our corrupt and
brutal Indonesian satellite (authors of the 1965-1966 butcheries) have
very possibly killed as many people as did the Khmer Rouge, there is a
virtually complete blackout of information in the Free Press." As far as
I can see, what they suggested was that the real atrocities were
comparable, since those in Cambodia were (with the fabrications etc)
claimed to be vastly higher. As for the hypotheticals, the reason to
make them is that they are suggesting that the evidence wasn't yet good
enough to know what was true.
But perhaps you can answer another question. Herman and Chomsky go with
the figure 100,000 for East Timor, which probably understates the number
of deaths by half and possibly even more (judging by population figures
compiled by Indonesia and the Catholic church). And yet, Chomsky is
never demonized for attempting to minimize Indonesian atrocities. Now,
why would that be?
David Friedman
>David Friedman wrote:
>> You correctly quote the reference. The problem with your argument is that
>> the authors are comparing "real and fabricated atrocities" in Cambodia
>> with "the apparent massacre of something like one-sixth the population of
>> East Timor." The discussion on p. 139 pretty clearly suggests that the
>> scale of the atrocities in Cambodia is bogus and that on East Timor
>> real--look at the first two full sentences at the top of p. 139. They are
>> put as hypotheticals--but there would be no point to making them unless
>> the authors wanted to suggest that they were true.
>
>I don't at all see this alleged implication. Cambodia was alleged to
>have over 2 million (perhaps 2.5 million), while East Timor "apparently"
>had at least 100,000 killed, and throwing doubt on the first denies that
>they are on the same scale and somehow implies that those in Cambodia
>were "vastly less serious"?
It looked to me as though the authors were taking fraction of the
population as the relevant measure of seriousness. Various people alleged
over a million Cambodians killed, which would be about the same fraction
of the population as the authors gave for East tmor.
The authors don't just throw doubt about 2 million killed; the relevant
sentence is "We presume that he would not have made this proposal if the
figure of those killed were, say, ... 25,000 people." They don't say that
is the figure, but in context I think that is what they are suggesting.
They go on to similarly suggest that most of the killings were not the
fault of the Khmer Rouge--or at worst were the result of indiscipline
rather than deliberate policy.
>PEHR I, p. 22,
>for example: "Even today, as regards East Timor, where our corrupt and
>brutal Indonesian satellite (authors of the 1965-1966 butcheries) have
>very possibly killed as many people as did the Khmer Rouge, there is a
>virtually complete blackout of information in the Free Press." As far as
>I can see, what they suggested was that the real atrocities were
>comparable, since those in Cambodia were (with the fabrications etc)
>claimed to be vastly higher.
That is what they appear to be saying; I don't have that book (the library
might) to figure out the context.
...
>But perhaps you can answer another question. Herman and Chomsky go with
>the figure 100,000 for East Timor, which probably understates the number
>of deaths by half and possibly even more (judging by population figures
>compiled by Indonesia and the Catholic church). And yet, Chomsky is
>never demonized for attempting to minimize Indonesian atrocities. Now,
>why would that be?
There are several possibilities.
1. What is special about the Cambodian case, in the view of Chomsky's
critics, is that the eventual Vietnamese invasion caused him to reverse
his position, thus exposing his dishonesty. The obvious analogy is to the
effect of first the Hitler-Stalin pact and then Hitler's invasion of
Russia, which demonstrated to many people the dishonesty of communists.
Vietnam has not yet gone into alliance with Indonesia.
2. The figure Chomsky offers for East Timor, although conservative, is
large enough for the shared purpose of Chomsky and other opponents of the
invasion--to get people abroad to realize that something horrible is going
on.
3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
government in a very unfriendly fashion. So it is natural to suspect him
of bias towards the former and against the latter. The equivalent is not
true in the case of East Timor.
Let me put to you an analogous question:
Lots of people on the left have passionately attacked my father because he
made one trip to Chile under private auspices, gave a public lecture, and
(I think) had a conversation with Pinochet in which he gave Pinochet his
views on economic policy. So far as I know, nobody on the left has
attacked him for having done essentially the same thing in China and a
variety of Eastern European countries--gone into a dictatorship, given as
public a talk as he was able, and talked to any government officials who
were interested in hearing his views. Why would that be?
Michael Jubb
vote to the
'james donald is pathological' side. Having read some of your fathers work
and reading *of* you
i'm surprised that you won't distance yourself from James. You seemed like a
sensible man,
all i can reccommend is that you lie low and spend some time reading James
posts.
I gave up on usenet about a year ago and returned in the last few weeks. I
was amazed to see James and Dan 'back on the wagon' as it were. Can you
realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
Even if you don't agree with Chomsky's socialist/anarchist beliefs there is
NO EVIDENCE to back up James claims. James has been hammering the same
paragraphs for years and, i beleive, is making as little impact as ever. I
am continually surprised that Clore continues to go over the same ground, he
seems resigned to the fact that the person who throws the mud always wins,
but won't let James posts go unchallenged.
<snip>
>1. What is special about the Cambodian case, in the view of Chomsky's
>critics, is that the eventual Vietnamese invasion caused him to reverse
>his position, thus exposing his dishonesty. The obvious analogy is to the
>effect of first the Hitler-Stalin pact and then Hitler's invasion of
>Russia, which demonstrated to many people the dishonesty of communists.
>Vietnam has not yet gone into alliance with Indonesia.
>
Of course, at any one time it is unquestionable that Chomsky is supporting
some
totalitarian regime, he is just so slippery that he never actually says he
does. It is left to James to correctly interpret Chomsky's world view, and
which evil regime Chomsky supports this week.
ho hum.
>3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
>Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
>government in a very unfriendly fashion. So it is natural to suspect him
>of bias towards the former and against the latter. The equivalent is not
>true in the case of East Timor.
>
So one of Chomsky's main faults is that he doesn't adequately criticize a
regime he doesn't beleive he has the evidence too criticise. Whilst at the
same
time he criticises a government (US) where he beleives he has extensive
evidence
to prove their wrongdoings. How diabolical.
>Let me put to you an analogous question:
>
>Lots of people on the left have passionately attacked my father because he
>made one trip to Chile under private auspices, gave a public lecture, and
>(I think) had a conversation with Pinochet in which he gave Pinochet his
>views on economic policy. So far as I know, nobody on the left has
>attacked him for having done essentially the same thing in China and a
>variety of Eastern European countries--gone into a dictatorship, given as
>public a talk as he was able, and talked to any government officials who
>were interested in hearing his views. Why would that be?
Then let us do a Donald on you. Your father has been to meet Pinochet and
Chinese leaders
he is thus unquestionably in favor of totalitarian governments. It matters
not what he writes,
it is up to ME to determine his true political allegiances. He is a fascist
and all his talk of freedom
is just an evil smokescreen to instigate fascist rule both here and abroad.
If you repeat this paragraph ad nauseum you will have some idea of what it
is like to debate with James.
pls start a thread totally unrelated to these posts, or point to such a
thread and i will gladly join you in
some serious discussion. This is a waste of time. You are giving James a far
more leniant hearing than he deserves, if the shoe was on the other foot....
mike
David Friedman
<mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
>Can you
>realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
>the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
Not that I have so far seen, but I haven't read much of it. I think there
is enough to make a persuadive case that he argues dishonestly,
however--whether a correct case I'm not yet certain.
>>3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
>>Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
>>government in a very unfriendly fashion. So it is natural to suspect him
>>of bias towards the former and against the latter. The equivalent is not
>>true in the case of East Timor.
>>
>
>
>So one of Chomsky's main faults is that he doesn't adequately criticize a
>regime he doesn't beleive he has the evidence too criticise. Whilst at the
>same
>time he criticises a government (US) where he beleives he has extensive
>evidence
>to prove their wrongdoings. How diabolical.
I said nothing about being diabolical. I was answering the question of why
response to his comments on Cambodia would be different from response to
his comments on E. Timor.
Obviously, the criticism of his comments on Cambodia depends on the claim
that he did have enough evidence to know that the Khmer Rouge were engaged
in deliberate, large scale killing, and chose to ignore that evidence, and
try to persuade other people it didn't exist. But my response was not on
whether the criticism of his writing was correct, but on why it centered
on Cambodia not E. Timor.
>pls start a thread totally unrelated to these posts, or point to such a
>thread and i will gladly join you in
>some serious discussion.
I tried to start one with Djarun on what p and np anarchists can learn
from each other; he plans to respond but hasn't done so yet.
Dan Clore
> In article <3648C6...@columbia-center.org>, cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> >David Friedman wrote:
> The authors don't just throw doubt about 2 million killed; the relevant
> sentence is "We presume that he would not have made this proposal if the
> figure of those killed were, say, ... 25,000 people." They don't say that
> is the figure, but in context I think that is what they are suggesting.
And they give an endnote where they explain how they chose that figure:
"We choose a factor of a hundred for illustration because of Jean
Lacouture's observation, to which we return, that it is a question of
secondary importance whether the number of people killed was in the
thousands or hundreds of thousands."
> >But perhaps you can answer another question. Herman and Chomsky go with
> >the figure 100,000 for East Timor, which probably understates the number
> >of deaths by half and possibly even more (judging by population figures
> >compiled by Indonesia and the Catholic church). And yet, Chomsky is
> >never demonized for attempting to minimize Indonesian atrocities. Now,
> >why would that be?
>
> There are several possibilities.
>
> 1. What is special about the Cambodian case, in the view of Chomsky's
> critics, is that the eventual Vietnamese invasion caused him to reverse
> his position, thus exposing his dishonesty. The obvious analogy is to the
> effect of first the Hitler-Stalin pact and then Hitler's invasion of
> Russia, which demonstrated to many people the dishonesty of communists.
> Vietnam has not yet gone into alliance with Indonesia.
I have never managed to discover any evidence that Chomsky "reversed his
position", despite James' constant claims that this is the case. All of
his later work appears to me to be consistent (assuming that the fact
that more information came to light later on is taken into account, of
course), and Chomsky continues to refer readers to PEHR I & II to this
day on the subject. _Manufacturing Consent_, published in 1988 (nine
years after the alleged flip-flop) refers to PEHR II a large number of
times. It also explains that some information on the period 1977-1978
was unavailable when they were writing it.
Now, if Chomsky had written something that caused him a great deal of
embarrassment, as James claims, I think his behavior would be somewhat
different than it actually is. He would most likely not refer readers to
this "embarrassing" material; he would probably allow it to go out of
print or try to prevent its publication in the first place (PEHR II was
published *after* the alleged flip-flop and remains in print to this
day), and so on and so forth. For every expectation aroused the opposite
has occurred.
There is more evidence that this is fiction. The alleged flip-flop
occurred in January, 1979. In an interview from June, 1979 we can find
Chomsky saying: "For example, to take just Cambodia, my own feeling is
that the effect of the Vietnamese invasion will be serious disaster, if
not catastrophe, for Cambodia, which is already suffering enormously."
(Language and Politics, p. 562) -- And we're supposed to believe that
Chomsky is now fabricating evidence to demonize Pol Pot in order to
support the Vietnamese invasion? It makes no sense.
> 2. The figure Chomsky offers for East Timor, although conservative, is
> large enough for the shared purpose of Chomsky and other opponents of the
> invasion--to get people abroad to realize that something horrible is going
> on.
And tens of thousands of executions in Cambodia wouldn't be? My point is
that he is equally cautious in both cases, but only attacked for one of
the two, while the other is routinely ignored.
> 3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
> Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
> government in a very unfriendly fashion.
It is only "obvious" if you discount what the book actually says. For
example: "It is a common error, as we have pointed out several times, to
interpret opposition to U.S. intervention and aggression as support for
the programs of its victims, a useful device for state propagandists but
one that often has no basis in fact" (p. 256). It's fallacious to
interpret the book that way and that is pointed out in the book itself.
Perhaps my litcrit background has influenced me to read differently than
everyone else on these newsgroups, but I am not satisfied with vague
"impressions" mysteriously appearing in the cloudy consciousness of the
reader as he gazes in the general direction of the text. I'm used to
reading closely, paying strict attention to the exact wording and
structure of the text and all the while attempting to understand *why*
it is worded in that exact fashion rather than another. So when I see
someone claiming that Chomsky's actual words don't matter because they
see a purple haze instead, it looks to me like an attempt to avoid
dealing with the actual matter at hand. The things these people always
either miss or claim don't matter usually pop out at me like red flags,
deserving especial attention.
But anyway....
The fact is that I could make analogies similar to the one above almost
ad infinitum. Chomsky treats Cambodian refugees with the same caution he
treats Laotian refugees from American bombs and Timorese refugees from
US-supported aggression, but is only criticized for the former. He
considers the drug-war as currently taking over (at least partially) the
function of anti-communism in the Propaganda Model, and has written on
the subject debunking some of the myths promulgated in the mass media
about drugs, but no one accuses him of being a "drug advocate", while
similar debunking of myths about the Khmer Rouge can only be explained
by his ardent support for them (regardless of how much he says he
opposes them). One major example in support of the Propaganda Model is a
comparison of Watergate against COINTELPRO, which came to light around
the same time. If we follow the treatment meeted out in the East Timor
vs Cambodia case, this should make Chomsky an ardent defender of Richard
Nixon. It goes on and on and on. Taken together, I think all this
clearly reveals an agenda on the part of his critics.
> Let me put to you an analogous question:
>
> Lots of people on the left have passionately attacked my father because he
> made one trip to Chile under private auspices, gave a public lecture, and
> (I think) had a conversation with Pinochet in which he gave Pinochet his
> views on economic policy. So far as I know, nobody on the left has
> attacked him for having done essentially the same thing in China and a
> variety of Eastern European countries--gone into a dictatorship, given as
> public a talk as he was able, and talked to any government officials who
> were interested in hearing his views. Why would that be?
As far as I understand the events, what occurred in the case of Chile is
somewhat different than you suggest. Friedman had a nomenklatura of
followers in power in Chile (the Chicago Boys), his visit was part of a
publicity campaign to support their favored policies, in which he gave
"numerous public appearances and television interviews". And somehow he
failed to condemn the gruesome human rights abuses being committed in
the name of the economic policies he favored until he had been
repeatedly criticized for this failure. He said, for example, that his
"only concern" with the "shock treatment" plan was "whether it would be
pushed long enough and hard enough" -- considering the means used to
carry out that plan, that is a rather sinister concern. Perhaps I am
mistaken about his role, but it looks rather different to me than merely
visiting a country and giving a lecture or two.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
Michael A. Clem
David Friedman wrote:
> .
>
> >pls start a thread totally unrelated to these posts, or point to such a
> >thread and i will gladly join you in
> >some serious discussion.
>
> I tried to start one with Djarun on what p and np anarchists can learn
> from each other; he plans to respond but hasn't done so yet.
> --
> David Friedman
> DD...@Best.com
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
I responded, though. Not a direct response, true, but I thought it would
lead into the kind of discussion you were looking for. But nobody followed up.
The variety of anarchist views is quite interesting to me. But I like
playing comparison/contrast. While some anarchists hold that we need to do
away with capitalism, "property", and money, others are not quite so extreme.
At least one has suggested that if we did away with wage labor, then capitalism
wouldn't be capitalism anymore. Clearly, we're not all using the same
definition of capitalism. But I've tried get past the definitional conflicts
and sort out the real differences.
Some left anarchists have agreed with my purely libertarian idea that there's
no problem with money if it were not government-issued or controlled, i.e.
private currency. Fascinating.
I also find the anarchist appeal for self-liberation to be an interesting
twist, especially concerning wage labor. If we do away with or at least
minimize the government, how would left-anarchists prevent people from entering
into wage-labor agreements? They basically seem to think that their socialist
equality would be so desirable that no one would want to go back to wage
labor. Possibly, but it sounds more like wishful thinking to me. I do think
they might be right to consider wage-labor as oppressive, or stifling to
individual development, I just don't agree that it's really coercion.
I also think that some economists have clearly shown us the value of free
markets in allocating limited resources, including the part that interest rates
play, and am puzzled as to how a non-propertarian system would allocate
resources and ensure incentives for new developments.
Granted that nobody has quite come up with a fully adequate theory on
claiming unowned property, I don't agree that the original holdings of the
feudal period have had an overwhelmingly lasting effect on the economy and
class structure. I think the economy is more fluid than that. "A fool and his
money are soon parted," even if they inherited a huge fortune from their
parents. And there are clearly people who started with nothing and made
fortunes, another indication of the fluidity of the economy. Left anarchists
might argue that such self-made people benefited from exploitative wage labor
or usury, but they can't argue (in these cases) that it was a continuation of
force from feudal times.
Perhaps you have some ideas on what n/p anarchists could learn from p's? Or
vice-versa?
--Mike Clem
James A. Donald
[Dan Clore, Chomsky, and others, lied about their past position on the
Khmer Rouge, claiming that from the beginning Chomsky agreed with the
mainstream on the terror in Cambodia, and claimed that from the
beginning Chomsky suggested that the massacres in Cambodia were
approximately proportional to the massacres in East Timor as a
proportion of population]
On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 15:04:32 -0800, Dan Clore
<cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
>I don't at all see this alleged implication. Cambodia was
>alleged to have over 2 million (perhaps 2.5 million), while
>East Timor "apparently" had at least 100,000 killed, and
>throwing doubt on the first denies that they are on the same
>scale and somehow implies that those in Cambodia were
>"vastly less serious"?
The usual cheerful lie by Dan Clore: The figure proposed by Chomsky
was 25000, not 2.5 million.
Chomsky led the reader to believe that the massacres in Cambodia were
substantially smaller in absolute numbers than the massacres in East
Timor.
And had he claimed that they were similar in proportion as Clore
dishonestly implies, Chomsky would still have been whitewashing the
Khmer Rouge, since the appropriate comparison would have been Cambodia
as a whole with Indonesia as a whole, or a particular rebellious
province of Cambodia with East Timor as a whole.
Note that almost immediately after this book appeared, claiming that
the Khmer Rouge were unjustly maligned from the beginning, Chomsky
abruptly reversed himself and claimed that the Khmer Rouge were
totally monstrous from the beginning, and that from the beginning the
benevolent Vietnamese troops had been generously seeking to protect
the oppressed masses of Cambodia from Pol Pot, a US terrorist.
In "After the Cataclysm", Chomsky presents the Khmer Rouge in a way
qualitatively similar to the way he presents the Sandinistas, a few
minor regrettable excesses, understandable because of inadequate
training, and US aggression, a little bit of racial chauvinism, an
understandable holdover from the days of US domination that they will
soon recover from.
Almost immediately after the book appeared, Chomsky presents the Pol
Pot faction of the Khmer Rouge in a way qualitatively similar to the
way he presents the Contras, as totally evil, monstrous, and murderous
from the beginning, savagely attacking the benevolent North Vietnamese
big brother who is earnestly trying to generously protect Cambodian
little brother.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
VTyCKnNBhBVriClyB+0XoN58u/PuygK2tJgZDM18
4Xfq+zljQ5nH46qGJ3jgVEogu16P2iw44WZKEOwck
------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
David Graeber
<mac....@juno.com> wrote:
> I also find the anarchist appeal for self-liberation to be an interesting
> twist, especially concerning wage labor. If we do away with or at least
> minimize the government, how would left-anarchists prevent people from
entering
> into wage-labor agreements? They basically seem to think that their
socialist
> equality would be so desirable that no one would want to go back to wage
> labor. Possibly, but it sounds more like wishful thinking to me. I do think
> they might be right to consider wage-labor as oppressive, or stifling to
> individual development, I just don't agree that it's really coercion.
Actually, I don't think left anarchists are arguing
it is itself coercion; simply that it is an effect of
coercion. If you grow up in a society based on wage
labor, it of course appears like a natural, spontaneous
thing, which would inevitably arise whenever people
are left to their own devices. If you look at history,
however, it's quite amazing how rare it is. Even in
highly monetarized economies like in the classical
Mediteranean, commercial centers in the Middle Ages,
China or the Middle East, you just never find anywhere
where wage labor was the dominant mode of labor
relation - almost everywhere it was either marginal
or simply not present at all. For example, in ancient
Greece and Rome, almost all of the examples of what
seem like wage labor turn out to be people renting
each other's slaves.
Then when you look at the history of how wage
labor first arose as a major factor in the economy,
you pretty much always see the same picture: intentional
policies on the part of the state meant to create a
class of people with no access to any resources
which could enable them to survive on their own.
I'm not just talking about the enclosures in England,
but about colonial policies in just about every part
of what's now the 3rd World, where European powers
invaded and basically set about saying 'how can we
force these people to sell their labor?' It was all
totally self-conscious (just read the stuff they
talk about in colonial archives; it's all about
creating a market in labor) and very, very coercive.
We simply conclude that since people have,
historically, always tended to shun ongoing
relations of wage labor when they have the
freedom to do so, they will continue to act that
way in the future. Maybe we're wrong. In that case,
I guess we'll be surprised.
> I also think that some economists have clearly shown us the value of free
> markets in allocating limited resources, including the part that
interest rates
> play, and am puzzled as to how a non-propertarian system would allocate
> resources and ensure incentives for new developments.
You might want to take a look at the Parecon
literature (that's short for "Participatory
Economics"), developed by left economists like
Michael Albert and others. Anyone got a url?
> Granted that nobody has quite come up with a fully adequate theory on
> claiming unowned property, I don't agree that the original holdings of the
> feudal period have had an overwhelmingly lasting effect on the economy and
> class structure. I think the economy is more fluid than that. "A fool
and his
> money are soon parted," even if they inherited a huge fortune from their
> parents. And there are clearly people who started with nothing and made
> fortunes, another indication of the fluidity of the economy. Left anarchists
> might argue that such self-made people benefited from exploitative wage labor
> or usury, but they can't argue (in these cases) that it was a continuation of
> force from feudal times.
I have a friend who is a Rockefeller. He was once
explaining Marxist class analysis to his sister; she
said, 'that might well be true, but what difference
does it make in a society like ours where poor people
are always getting rich, rich people always getting
poor...' This coming from someone in a family
descended from a guy who made his millions well over
a century ago, and who now has a couple hundred descendants,
absolutely none of which can be considered even
remotely poor. I don't think the system is really as
fluid as you think. Even in the US, which is far, far
more fluid than anyplace in Europe.
Anyway there are much simpler arguments one can
make about the injustice of a system like ours. Even
if everyone did start with equal opportunities,
society shouldn't be set up as a great contest which
most people are going to lose.
DG
G*rd*n
| ...
| You might want to take a look at the Parecon
| literature (that's short for "Participatory
| Economics"), developed by left economists like
| Michael Albert and others. Anyone got a url?
It's on the ZNet web site, which is at
http://www.lbbs.org/
and some other URLs. Besides descriptive essays, there are
at least two discussion forums about Parecon on the site.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 11/5 <-adv't
David Friedman
David....@yale.edu (David Graeber) wrote:
>I'm not just talking about the enclosures in England,
>but about colonial policies in just about every part
>of what's now the 3rd World, where European powers
>invaded and basically set about saying 'how can we
>force these people to sell their labor?' It was all
>totally self-conscious (just read the stuff they
>talk about in colonial archives; it's all about
>creating a market in labor) and very, very coercive.
Can you point us at an easily accessible source for such archives? In
part, I am wondering how you distinguish between "force these people to
sell their labor" and "make it possible for these people to sell their
labor?" A 19th c. liberal, after all, would be in favor of making wage
labor possible in order to end exploitation-for example of adult children
who have to work for their parents because their parents own the land, and
there is no labor market to provide the children an alternative.
Michael A. Clem
David Graeber wrote:
> In article <364AB90B...@juno.com>, "Michael A. Clem"
> <mac....@juno.com> wrote:
>
> > I also find the anarchist appeal for self-liberation to be an interesting
> > twist, especially concerning wage labor. If we do away with or at least
> > minimize the government, how would left-anarchists prevent people from
> entering
> > into wage-labor agreements? They basically seem to think that their
> socialist
> > equality would be so desirable that no one would want to go back to wage
> > labor. Possibly, but it sounds more like wishful thinking to me. I do think
> > they might be right to consider wage-labor as oppressive, or stifling to
> > individual development, I just don't agree that it's really coercion.
>
> Actually, I don't think left anarchists are arguing
> it is itself coercion; simply that it is an effect of
> coercion.
I'll try to keep that distinction in mind.
> > I also think that some economists have clearly shown us the value of free
> > markets in allocating limited resources, including the part that
> interest rates
> > play, and am puzzled as to how a non-propertarian system would allocate
> > resources and ensure incentives for new developments.
>
> You might want to take a look at the Parecon
> literature (that's short for "Participatory
> Economics"), developed by left economists like
> Michael Albert and others. Anyone got a url?
>
>
I'll check it out.
> > Granted that nobody has quite come up with a fully adequate theory on
> > claiming unowned property, I don't agree that the original holdings of the
> > feudal period have had an overwhelmingly lasting effect on the economy and
> > class structure. I think the economy is more fluid than that. "A fool
> and his
> > money are soon parted," even if they inherited a huge fortune from their
> > parents. And there are clearly people who started with nothing and made
> > fortunes, another indication of the fluidity of the economy. Left anarchists
> > might argue that such self-made people benefited from exploitative wage labor
> > or usury, but they can't argue (in these cases) that it was a continuation of
> > force from feudal times.
>
> I have a friend who is a Rockefeller. He was once
> explaining Marxist class analysis to his sister; she
> said, 'that might well be true, but what difference
> does it make in a society like ours where poor people
> are always getting rich, rich people always getting
> poor...' This coming from someone in a family
> descended from a guy who made his millions well over
> a century ago, and who now has a couple hundred descendants,
> absolutely none of which can be considered even
> remotely poor. I don't think the system is really as
> fluid as you think. Even in the US, which is far, far
> more fluid than anyplace in Europe.
>
Anecdotal evidence. Do the descendants do nothing to maintain their wealth? Do
they engage in things even libertarians would consider wrong, like government
subsidies, tax shelters, etc.? Some of them might well be doing worthwhile and
productive things to maintain their wealth. And if we removed the things that even
libertarians consider wrong, the rest of them may well be "forced" to be productive
or else lose their wealth.
> Anyway there are much simpler arguments one can
> make about the injustice of a system like ours. Even
> if everyone did start with equal opportunities,
> society shouldn't be set up as a great contest which
> most people are going to lose.
> DG
And that was my point, to clarify the limits of the original holdings argument. We
can then consider the other arguments separately.
--Mike Clem
tims...@my-dejanews.com
Cowardly hit-and-run poster.
[snip]
>I gave up on usenet about a year ago and returned in the last few weeks. I
>was amazed to see James and Dan 'back on the wagon' as it were. Can you
>realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
>the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
Yes. His speech in Hanoi in 1970 cheering the Viet Cong on to victory, for
instance. Or his coverup of the Khmer Rouge democide.
>Even if you don't agree with Chomsky's socialist/anarchist beliefs there is
>NO EVIDENCE to back up James claims.
Sure there is. James has some of it up on his web page: Chomsky's 1977 book
review in The Nation, & Sophal Ear's paper. Those clearly show Chomsky
covering up for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.
There's also the testimony of a former anti-(Vietnam)war activist who went on
to try to mobilize public opinion against the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.
I forgot his name, but Peter Collier & David Horowitz quote him in
DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION, in their the chapter "Radical Innocence, Radical
Guilt". He says that Chomsky & his fellow cover-up artists succeeded in
delaying the mobilization of opinion against the Khmer Rouge.
[snip]
>>Let me put to you an analogous question:
>>
>>Lots of people on the left have passionately attacked my father because he
>>made one trip to Chile under private auspices, gave a public lecture, and
>>(I think) had a conversation with Pinochet in which he gave Pinochet his
>>views on economic policy. So far as I know, nobody on the left has
>>attacked him for having done essentially the same thing in China and a
>>variety of Eastern European countries--gone into a dictatorship, given as
>>public a talk as he was able, and talked to any government officials who
>>were interested in hearing his views. Why would that be?
>
>Then let us do a Donald on you. Your father has been to meet Pinochet and
>Chinese leaders he is thus unquestionably in favor of totalitarian governments.
>It matters not what he writes, it is up to ME to determine his true political
>allegiances. He is a fascist and all his talk of freedom is just an evil
>smokescreen to instigate fascist rule both here and abroad. If you repeat this
>paragraph ad nauseum you will have some idea of what it is like to debate with
>James.
If Milton Friedman had gone to Chile & given a speech in which he praised
Pinochet, cheered him on to victory, & said that Pinochet's cause was the
cause of justice & humanity, then you could make an analogy between his
relationship with Pinochet & Chomsky's relationship with North Vietnam.
Tim Starr
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
David Friedman
> In article <36497...@bn.ar.com.au>,
> "Michael Jubb" <mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
> >I gave up on usenet about a year ago and returned in the last few weeks. I
> >was amazed to see James and Dan 'back on the wagon' as it were.
I think you mean off the wagon, don't you? The analogy is to alcoholics
who have started drinking again.
>>Can you
> >realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
> >the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
>
> Yes. His speech in Hanoi in 1970 cheering the Viet Cong on to victory, for
> instance. Or his coverup of the Khmer Rouge democide.
>
> >Even if you don't agree with Chomsky's socialist/anarchist beliefs there is
> >NO EVIDENCE to back up James claims.
>
> Sure there is. James has some of it up on his web page: Chomsky's 1977 book
> review in The Nation, & Sophal Ear's paper. Those clearly show Chomsky
> covering up for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.
Sophal Ear et. al. offer evidence that Chomsky argued dishonestly in an
attempt to persuade people that there was no good reason to think the
Khmer Rouge were doing the horrible things they were accused of doing.
Even if they are right, I don't think it follows that Chomsky was a
totalitarian--any more than Churchill or Roosevelt would have had to be a
communist in order to try to cover up some of Stalin's crimes. He could
easily enough be an opponent of U.S. policy--perhaps the sort of inverse
patriot that Orwell described--who favored the Khmer Rouge because the
U.S. opposed them, and acted accordingly.
--
David Friedman
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
G*rd*n
| ... Socialism without
| murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
| lords.
We know from the many successful examples of communes and
cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
and control of the means of production by the working class
or the people generally -- is possible. We have an
existence proof.
What we do not see in the world is an example of capitalism
without a bourgeoisie or ruling class and State power. For
all the talk, that is what remains to be proved.
All the raving about Khmer Rouge does nothing to advance
this proof. In fact, it suggests embarrassment at the lack
of such a proof.
David Friedman
>In article <ddfr-12119...@129.210.77.17>,
> dd...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
>> In article <72fmns$maj$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tims...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>> > In article <36497...@bn.ar.com.au>,
>> > "Michael Jubb" <mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
>> >>Can you
>> > >realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
>> > >the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
>> > Yes. His speech in Hanoi in 1970 cheering the Viet Cong on to victory, for
>> > instance. Or his coverup of the Khmer Rouge democide.
>
>You didn't comment on this, David. Is it covered in the rest of your comments
>below?
No. I've read a good deal of Sophal Ear and of _After the Cataclysm_, so
have some opinions on that episode; I don't know anything about what
Chomsky did or did not say in Hanoi in 1970, or the evidence that he did
or did not say it.
David Friedman
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>| ... Socialism without
>| murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
>| lords.
>
>We know from the many successful examples of communes and
>cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
>and control of the means of production by the working class
>or the people generally -- is possible.
At what scale? My impression is that socialism works up to a scale of a
few hundred people, provided that there is a strong common ideology
unifying them--medieval monesteries, the Oneida commune, etc. Do we have
examples much larger than that?
tims...@my-dejanews.com
dd...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <72fmns$maj$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tims...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> > In article <36497...@bn.ar.com.au>,
> > "Michael Jubb" <mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
>
> > >was amazed to see James and Dan 'back on the wagon' as it were.
>
> I think you mean off the wagon, don't you? The analogy is to alcoholics
> who have started drinking again.
>
> > >realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
> > >the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
> >
> > Yes. His speech in Hanoi in 1970 cheering the Viet Cong on to victory, for
> > instance. Or his coverup of the Khmer Rouge democide.
You didn't comment on this, David. Is it covered in the rest of your comments
below?
> > >Even if you don't agree with Chomsky's socialist/anarchist beliefs there is
> > >NO EVIDENCE to back up James claims.
> >
> > Sure there is. James has some of it up on his web page: Chomsky's 1977 book
> > review in The Nation, & Sophal Ear's paper. Those clearly show Chomsky
> > covering up for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.
>
> Sophal Ear et. al. offer evidence that Chomsky argued dishonestly in an
> attempt to persuade people that there was no good reason to think the
> Khmer Rouge were doing the horrible things they were accused of doing.
> Even if they are right, I don't think it follows that Chomsky was a
> totalitarian--any more than Churchill or Roosevelt would have had to be a
> communist in order to try to cover up some of Stalin's crimes.
In Churchill's case, we have other evidence against his being a communist. In
FDR's case, we have evidence of him being a commie-sympathizer. In Chomsky's
case, we have him giving a speech in Hanoi in 1970, cheering the Vietnamese
communists on to victory, saying that theirs is "the cause of humanity." You
may not have seen the full quote yet, & I don't have it handy, but I posted it
a few days ago.
>He could easily enough be an opponent of U.S. policy--perhaps the sort of
>inverse patriot that Orwell described--who favored the Khmer Rouge because
>the U.S. opposed them, and acted accordingly.
By their fruits ye shall know them. All during the Cold War, Chomsky opposed
U.S. anti-communist foreign policy. That, combined with his double-standards
which gave preference to the Khmer Rouge, & his cheering on the Viet Cong to
victory, calling their "the cause of humanity", makes it pretty clear in my
mind that his sympathies were with the sort of naive Romantic idea of
socialism that he & many other commie-sympathizers seem to have gotten
confused with the totalitarian reality this century. Socialism without
murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
lords.
Tim Starr
James A. Donald
On Wed, 11 Nov 1998 23:53:43 +1100, "Michael Jubb"
<mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
> Can you
> realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
> the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
He describes North Vietnam as a democracy, and the USA as a
dictatorship. Therefore he intends a society similar to that of North
Vietnam, and unlike that of the USA.
For example page 276 "At war with Asia", describing North Vietnam
Although there appears to be a high level of
democratic participation at the village and regional levels
[...]
page 277, describing North Vietnam:
These plans are implemented by government bodies
selected by the National assembly, which also drafts
specific plans. The ministries are responsible to the
Assembly, which is chosen by direct election from local
districts. [...] Each factory has a congress once a
year of all workers, to which the manager reports.
Now you may well ask how can he speak such stuff? To those of us who
are well read on our Lenin and Stalin, the answer becomes
unambiguously clear when he favorably quotes Le Duan starting on page
277, (the juicy bits are on page 278, but you need to know your Stalin
to understand how juicy they are.)
Le Duan uses language that references "Stalin's foundations of
Leninism". Translated from euphemisms into normal speech, using
"Foundation's of Leninism" as a guide to totalitarian euphemisms, what
Le Duan is actually saying is "Regrettably we have to keep the masses
subdued by savage terror, because due to the situation we must work
them hard, and feed them little". Chomsky is surely sufficiently
familiar with Marxist documents to understand what Le Duan is saying,
and since he quotes him favorably, and equates what he says to the
truth, then Chomsky is using words in the same meaning as Le Duan is
using them.
In the context of Le Duan's statement "assuring to the popular masses
the direct exercise of their right to rule", Chomsky is clearly
telling us, or rather taking for granted, that Le Duan speaks the
truth about participatory democracy, direct popular rule, as indeed he
is when these words are used in the senses that Le Duan is clearly
employing them, the senses defined by Stalin.
Clearly therefore, Chomsky shares these definitions, so when Chomsky
talks about direct participation, direct rule, what those studious
commies who have studied their Lenin and Stalin hear him say is an
echo of Stalin's famous clarification on the nationalities policy,
what they hear Chomsky say is that "Come the revolution, if any
workers get uppity and give us any cheek we will tear their flesh off
with hooks and burn them with red hot irons."
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
IWaGYKUpAhadptBtWPpJX67kWsZ2HibTIqVFho4v
4ptbwxp64w1AMMfkupLYGDPJfEIapn4nukc4FRm+T
Michael A. Clem
David Friedman wrote:
> In article <72fmns$maj$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tims...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> > In article <36497...@bn.ar.com.au>,
> > "Michael Jubb" <mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
>
> > >I gave up on usenet about a year ago and returned in the last few weeks. I
> > >was amazed to see James and Dan 'back on the wagon' as it were.
>
> I think you mean off the wagon, don't you? The analogy is to alcoholics
> who have started drinking again.
>
>
I think he means "back on the bandwagon," the cheering section, not alcoholism.
--Mike Clem
G*rd*n
| >| ... Socialism without
| >| murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
| >| lords.
gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
| >We know from the many successful examples of communes and
| >cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
| >and control of the means of production by the working class
| >or the people generally -- is possible.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| At what scale? My impression is that socialism works up to a scale of a
| few hundred people, provided that there is a strong common ideology
| unifying them--medieval monesteries, the Oneida commune, etc. Do we have
| examples much larger than that?
I was simply pointing out that Tim Starr's (unquantified)
assertion about socialism was incorrect. Once we agree
that socialism is possible without murderous dictatorship,
we can talk about such questions as scale, efficiency,
practicality, and so forth. Tim's remarks, like James
Donald's, attempt to force all political discussions back
into a Cold-War paradigm; it's obvious that they're more
comfortable with a 50s-style conservative-totalitarian
approach to political questions than one in which opinions
have become variegated and dispersed over ideological
space. I find this approach boring most of the time,
although some of James's remarks have a surreal quality
reminiscent of science-fiction comics which can be
amusing.
brian_n...@yahoo.com
According to Webster's Dictionary there's only one definition of capitalism:
"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital
goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices,
production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by
competition in a free market"
-- http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=capitalism
That is, capitalism is based on private property and competition (which
necessarily creates winners and losers). I was tought that cooperation is
more productive than competition. Capitalism entails the belief that capital
can generate income just as labor can. So a pure capitalist is someone who
does no labor and only manages his wealth. Of course managing wealth can be
laborious, so the distinction between labor and capital are at times blurred.
One thing's for sure: today's capital can't be created or maintained
without labor. So labor is the wellspring of all wealth, and as such, it
deserves respect. But automation (a form of capital) increasingly replaces
labor, so in the future capital may no longer need labor. When that happens,
welfare will be the only thing that could preserve people with insufficient
capital, just as welfare supports those who can't labor today. In that
future, saying, "Get some capital!" will be even more nonsensical than
saying, "Get a job!" is today. As the value of labor diminishes, a
redistributive economy which offers welfare will have less suffering than a
laizes faire economy. Compassionate people consider the minimization of
suffering a goal.
> Some left anarchists have agreed with my purely libertarian idea that
> there's no problem with money if it were not government-issued or controlled,
> i.e. private currency.
The notion is flawed. The ruinous complications of money occur regardless of
who prints it. What difference could it make who issues money?
> How would left-anarchists prevent people from entering
> into wage-labor agreements?
Anarchists can't prevent anyone from pursuing their will. That's what
Anarchy is!
> It sounds more like wishful thinking to me.
All anarchism is wishful thinking.
> Nobody has quite come up with a fully adequate theory on
> claiming unowned property.
My property is those materials which I immediately control. When I park
my car and walk away, I no longer control it, so the car is no longer my
property. That's how an anarchist like me thinks. If you don't share my
view, I doubt you're an anarchist. I'm not claiming Anarchy is viable. I'm
simply declaring my view of life.
David Friedman
>"Michael A. Clem" <mac....@juno.com> wrote:
>>
>> We're not all using the same definition of capitalism.
>
>According to Webster's Dictionary there's only one definition of capitalism:
>
>"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital
>goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices,
>production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by
>competition in a free market"
>-- http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=capitalism
>
>That is, capitalism is based on private property and competition (which
>necessarily creates winners and losers).
Not necessarily. You are confusing competition in the sense of a race with
competition in the usual economic sense. There is nothing in the
definition or logic of capitalism inconsistent with an equilibrium in
which there are lots of firms or roughly comparable size, and most firms
retain about the same size, income, etc. over a long period of time.
Whether that happens depends on things like the size of the market, how
far economies of scale go, how rapidly the economic environment is
changing, etc., but it isn't a matter of the definition of competition.
>I was tought that cooperation is
>more productive than competition. Capitalism entails the belief that capital
>can generate income just as labor can. So a pure capitalist is someone who
>does no labor and only manages his wealth. Of course managing wealth can be
>laborious, so the distinction between labor and capital are at times blurred.
A pure capitalist is someone who neither labors nor manages his wealth,
but simply lends it out and lives on the revenue. Someone who manages
wealth--his own or other people's (borrowed), sounds more like an
entrepreneur, which is not the same thing.
> One thing's for sure: today's capital can't be created or maintained
>without labor. So labor is the wellspring of all wealth, and as such, it
>deserves respect.
I don't follow that. Today's labor can't be created or maintained without
capital--in a society where everyone was working with his bare hands and
nothing else, almost everyone would starve in the first year or so. So why
is it labor and not capital that is the "wellspring of all wealth,"
whatever that metaphor is supposed to mean?
>My property is those materials which I immediately control. When I park
>my car and walk away, I no longer control it, so the car is no longer my
>property.
Suppose your car is equipped with a small bomb, that can only be disarmed
by a key you possess--and,not being totally insane, you post a notice of
those facts on the car. By your definition, is your car still your
property after you walk away? You still control it--inasmuch as nobody
else can use it without your permission without getting blown up?
If your answer is yes, are you pleased with the idea of a set of legal and
social institutions which make it in the interest of people to create and
maintain their ownership of things in ways like that?
Paul gate
David Friedman wrote in message ...
>I don't follow that. Today's labor can't be created or maintained without
>capital--in a society where everyone was working with his bare hands and
>nothing else, almost everyone would starve in the first year or so. So why
>is it labor and not capital that is the "wellspring of all wealth,"
>whatever that metaphor is supposed to mean?
>
I think the problem is, if as you say these forms of labour exist in symbiosis
there is no reason why one should be valued more than the other.
They are both vitaly important.....so what gives?
why do THE VAST MAJORITY of the rewards of activity settle
on one side of this divide.
Who`s interest does this serve?
Ps i do not beleive that they do really exist in symbiosis
I think it`s a con! :-)
tims...@my-dejanews.com
DD...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <72g7ce$4j2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tims...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
>>In article <ddfr-12119...@129.210.77.17>,
>>>In article <72fmns$maj$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tims...@my-dejanews.com
wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <36497...@bn.ar.com.au>,
>>>> "Michael Jubb" <mic...@intersol.com.au> wrote:
>
>>>>>realistically say that there is anything in Chomsky's work to justify
>>>>>the claims he is a totalitarian/nazi?
>
>>>>for instance. Or his coverup of the Khmer Rouge democide.
>>
>>You didn't comment on this, David. Is it covered in the rest of your
>>comments below?
>
>have some opinions on that episode; I don't know anything about what
>Chomsky did or did not say in Hanoi in 1970, or the evidence that he did
>or did not say it.
Fair enough. You might want to read my source for it, which is a chapter
of the book DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION, by Peter Collier & David Horowitz. It's
the chapter titled "Radical Innocence, Radical Guilt".
Tim Starr
tims...@my-dejanews.com
> | ... Socialism without
> | murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
> | lords.
>
>cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
>and control of the means of production by the working class
>existence proof.
Only on a very small scale. We have no successful examples of attempts to
organize entire communities the size of even the smallest nation-states in
the world, or the major cities of any of the industrialized countries, along
socialist lines. All we have are much smaller organizations which interact
with each other in a capitalist manner, buying & selling goods & services
from each other.
All this "existence proof" has proven is that it's possible to have small
islands of socialism in an ocean of capitalism. This is because those small
islands of socialism are able to use the price signals generated by the
capitalist ocean to co-ordinate the allocation of resources rationally. Every
attempt to implement socialism on a wider scale, to abolish the market which
generates those price signals, has resulted in democide.
David Friedman
<ga...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>I think the problem is, if as you say these forms of labour exist in symbiosis
>there is no reason why one should be valued more than the other.
>They are both vitaly important.....so what gives?
>why do THE VAST MAJORITY of the rewards of activity settle
>on one side of this divide.
The vast majority of the income from productive activity ends up with
labor, broadly defined (i.e. to include human capital in the form of the
skills of skilled labor). I don't have a statistical abstract ready to
hand, but roughly speaking, as best I recall, labor income is about 80% of
all income, return on capital about 10%.
>Who`s interest does this serve?
Obviously, workers are much better off than if the numbers were the other
way around.
tims...@my-dejanews.com
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
> tims...@my-dejanews.com:
> | >| ... Socialism without
> | >| murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
> | >| lords.
>
> | >We know from the many successful examples of communes and
> | >cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
> | >and control of the means of production by the working class
> | >or the people generally -- is possible.
>
> | At what scale? My impression is that socialism works up to a scale of a
> | few hundred people, provided that there is a strong common ideology
> | unifying them--medieval monesteries, the Oneida commune, etc. Do we have
> | examples much larger than that?
>
> I was simply pointing out that Tim Starr's (unquantified) assertion about
> socialism was incorrect.
If you mean "unqualified," then yes, socialism's possible without murderous
dictators on an extremely small scale within a capitalist society. Happy?
>Once we agree that socialism is possible without murderous dictatorship...
Not even on the scale of a major city in an industrialized country.
>we can talk about such questions as scale, efficiency, practicality, and so
>forth. Tim's remarks, like James Donald's, attempt to force all political
>discussions back into a Cold-War paradigm; it's obvious that they're more
>comfortable with a 50s-style conservative-totalitarian approach to political
>questions...
"Conservative-totalitarian"? What's that supposed to mean?
> than one in which opinions have become variegated and dispersed over
> ideological space.
That is, obfuscated by commies, commie-sympathizers, & their dupes.
G*rd*n
| > | ... Socialism without
| > | murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
| > | lords.
gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
| >We know from the many successful examples of communes and
| >cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
| >and control of the means of production by the working class
| >or the people generally -- is possible. We have an
| >existence proof.
| Only on a very small scale. We have no successful examples of attempts to
| organize entire communities the size of even the smallest nation-states in
| the world, or the major cities of any of the industrialized countries, along
| socialist lines. All we have are much smaller organizations which interact
| with each other in a capitalist manner, buying & selling goods & services
| from each other.
|
| All this "existence proof" has proven is that it's possible to have small
| islands of socialism in an ocean of capitalism. This is because those small
| islands of socialism are able to use the price signals generated by the
| capitalist ocean to co-ordinate the allocation of resources rationally. Every
| attempt to implement socialism on a wider scale, to abolish the market which
| generates those price signals, has resulted in democide.
I'm glad you've revised your opinion so quickly, and now
agree that socialism can exist successfully in some forms
without the intervention of murderous dictators. In fact,
I believe the intervention of a murderous dictator would
preclude the existence of socialism, as defined above.
The extent to which socialism could be scaled up is an
open question at this point. As a test case we'd need a
sizeable community which did not already have a bourgeoisie
in charge and whose liberal neighbors would leave it alone
(contrary to custom). Otherwise the attempt to establish
socialism would lead to violence and, probably, murderous
dictators. And it might take some time to evolve -- after
all, rapid and revolutionary as capitalism has been, it
took centuries for it to get off the ground on a national
scale. The rapidity of current change in the technology of
production may make the capitalism / socialism dichotomy
irrelevant before that can happen.
I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
private charge of the means of production to send price
signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
G*rd*n
DD...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
| >No. I've read a good deal of Sophal Ear and of _After the Cataclysm_, so
| >have some opinions on that episode; I don't know anything about what
| >Chomsky did or did not say in Hanoi in 1970, or the evidence that he did
| >or did not say it.
| Fair enough. You might want to read my source for it, which is a chapter
| of the book DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION, by Peter Collier & David Horowitz. It's
| the chapter titled "Radical Innocence, Radical Guilt".
One might also want to check with Chomsky on the matter.
He's available through the ZNet forums ( http://www.lbbs.org
or http://www.zmag.org ). If you have trouble getting
through their forum system, let me know. It would be
interesting to know if he had actually ranted off as
described; but Horowitz has been known to be less than
infallible at times.
Paul gate
David Friedman wrote in message ...
Sorry i was unclear :-(
If your figures are correct i have made a mistake
by implying that the majority of the wealth goes to one activity
I can see why you interpreted my words the way you did
But what i really meant to say was.....:-)
One type of activity is rewarded as if it were VASTLY
more important than another.....however in reality this is not the case.
David Friedman
> All this "existence proof" has proven is that it's possible to have small
> islands of socialism in an ocean of capitalism. This is because those small
> islands of socialism are able to use the price signals generated by the
> capitalist ocean to co-ordinate the allocation of resources rationally.
I don't think that is quite right; my impression is that early
monasteries, while not literally self-sufficient, were close enough so
that most of their coordination was by internal planning, not market
generated price signals.
I would have said that, without private property and markets, the
coordination problem becomes unworkably difficult when the number of
people involved becomes large. One solution is a small commune embedded in
a large market, as you suggest--the family being the most obvious example.
Another solution is a small commune that is essentially
self-sufficient--and poor. In a society where high transport costs,
insecure property, rights, etc. limit the range of market activities for
everybody, such a commune is not necessarily poorer than its neighbors.
David Friedman
> I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
> private charge of the means of production to send price
> signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
> you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
It isn't necessary--price signals and markets could work fine in a society
in which almost everyone was a sole proprietor, working for himself and
trading with his neighbors. I suspect most right libertarians would regard
that as a fairly attractive outcome to a libertarian society, although
they may not regard it as the most likely outcome.
But if you are using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one
implication is that a particularly able or lucky or hard working
individual may end up with substantially more resources than his neighbor,
so there is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
of production than other people do, won't emerge.
G*rd*n
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
|> ... Tim's remarks, like James Donald's, attempt to force all political
|>discussions back into a Cold-War paradigm; it's obvious that they're more
|>comfortable with a 50s-style conservative-totalitarian approach to political
|>questions...
| "Conservative-totalitarian"? What's that supposed to mean?
In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion of
enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red and
otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be conserved
with as little change as possible -- even racial equality
was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian in that no
deviation of the line went unpunished, because times were
held to be desperate and the risks of debate and criticism
unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of course, but many
people believed in it. Some still do....
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
|> than one in which opinions have become variegated and dispersed over
|> ideological space.
| That is, obfuscated by commies, commie-sympathizers, & their dupes.
.... as we can see without too much trouble.
G*rd*n
| > I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
| > private charge of the means of production to send price
| > signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
| > you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
dd...@best.com (David Friedman):
| It isn't necessary--price signals and markets could work fine in a society
| in which almost everyone was a sole proprietor, working for himself and
| trading with his neighbors. I suspect most right libertarians would regard
| that as a fairly attractive outcome to a libertarian society, although
| they may not regard it as the most likely outcome.
|
| But if you are using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one
| implication is that a particularly able or lucky or hard working
| individual may end up with substantially more resources than his neighbor,
| so there is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
| of production than other people do, won't emerge.
The emergence and success of an elite would depend
on public consent; if people didn't like others to
take power over them, they could easily boycott or
ostracize the power-takers (assuming everyone's
playing by liberal rules here and there's no direct
violence, and that all resources have not already
been sequestered by the elite). For any kind of
anarchism or socialism to succeed, an anarchist or
socialist consciousness and culture is required.
Otherwise -- in a situation where people still want
to subordinate themselves to authorities -- any
structure, however nominally free, democratic, or
egalitarian, is likely to degenerate into a sort of
quasi-feudalism, as we see with contemporary and
recent capitalism. I would say with a number of
_soi-disants_ socialist regimes as well, except I
don't think they got very far towards socialism.
tims...@my-dejanews.com
> >
> > We're not all using the same definition of capitalism.
>
> According to Webster's Dictionary there's only one definition of capitalism:
>
> "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital
> goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices,
> production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by
> competition in a free market"
> -- http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=capitalism
>
>That is, capitalism is based on private property and competition (which
>necessarily creates winners and losers).
See: "THE FIXED QUANTITY OF WEALTH FALLACY: HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF MISERABLE
ABOUT THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF MANKIND":
http://www.digiweb.com/igeldard/LA/economic/wealth.txt
>I was tought that cooperation is more productive than competition.
By whom? If it was an economics professor, I hope you got a money-back
guarantee on your tuition.
[Rest of commie claptrap snipped - let's take just one economic fallacy at a
time, shall we?]
tims...@my-dejanews.com
>|>| ... Socialism without
>|>|murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
>|>|lords.
>
>gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>|>We know from the many successful examples of communes and
>|>cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
>|>and control of the means of production by the working class
>|>or the people generally -- is possible. We have an
>|>existence proof.
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|Only on a very small scale. We have no successful examples of attempts to
>|organize entire communities the size of even the smallest nation-states in
>|the world, or the major cities of any of the industrialized countries, along
>|socialist lines. All we have are much smaller organizations which interact
>|with each other in a capitalist manner, buying & selling goods & services
>|from each other.
>|
>|islands of socialism in an ocean of capitalism. This is because those small
>|islands of socialism are able to use the price signals generated by the
>|attempt to implement socialism on a wider scale, to abolish the market which
>|generates those price signals, has resulted in democide.
>
>I'm glad you've revised your opinion so quickly, and now agree that socialism
>can exist successfully in some forms without the intervention of murderous
>dictators.
I haven't really "revised" my opinion, just qualified my claim about it a bit.
All I've really said is that socialism still hasn't ever been proven to work
as a social system encompassing an entire society, only as tiny subdivisions
of otherwise capitalist societies. Your claim is really special pleading,
since you're not really talking about socialism as a societal system, but just
as a form of co-operation amongst small groups. Even traditional primitive
societies rarely extended such co-operation beyond the level of the immediate
family. See George Ayittey's work on just how capitalist traditional African
society really was, for example.
>In fact, I believe the intervention of a murderous dictator would preclude the
>existence of socialism, as defined above.
Not necessarily. Such murderous dictators could easily wage war against the
capitalist elements of the society, while protecting the socialist elements.
>The extent to which socialism could be scaled up is an open question at this
>point.
No, it most certainly is not. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the
level of the Maoist China. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the
level of India. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the level of the
Soviet Union. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the level of North
Korea, Cuba, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Nicaragua, etc., etc., etc.
>As a test case we'd need a sizeable community which did not already have a
>bourgeoisie in charge and whose liberal neighbors would leave it alone
>(contrary to custom). Otherwise the attempt to establish socialism would lead
>to violence and, probably, murderous dictators.
Why? Capitalism flourished in spite of the fact that it originated in a world
in which feudalism was already in charge. Capitalist enclaves had to fight
for their independence, to liberate themselves from feudal encirclement. And
the result wasn't murderous dictatorships, but the freest, most tolerant,
most peaceful, & most prosperous societies the world has ever seen.
Why should socialism have to meet any less of a challenge than capitalism did?
[snip]
>I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in private charge of the
>means of production to send price signals around, assuming these signals are a
>necessary as you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
The very way you frame this question shows how profoundly you misunderstand
the very nature of the problem of rational economic calculation, which can't
possibly be solved by socialism. Price signals aren't sent around by an
"elite in private charge of the means of production." They're sent by
consumers who choose what & what not to buy with their hard-earned wealth.
For a longer paper on this, see "Why Real Socialism Wouldn't Work, Either", by
Kevin MacFarlane:
http://www.digiweb.com/igeldard/LA/economic/realsoci.txt
tims...@netcom.com
dd...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <72i2ff$msn$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tims...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
>>islands of socialism in an ocean of capitalism. This is because those small
>>islands of socialism are able to use the price signals generated by the
>>capitalist ocean to co-ordinate the allocation of resources rationally.
>
>monasteries, while not literally self-sufficient, were close enough so
>that most of their coordination was by internal planning, not market
>generated price signals.
I don't know enough about "early monasteries" to comment. How early? Where?
For instance, the 14th-century Greek Orthodox monasteries at Meteora are
obviously not self-sufficient in the least to anyone that's ever seen them -
they're built way up on top of high sandstone rocks which don't have enough
space on top of them to grow enough food to support the monks & nuns.
I also know that some of the technological development that happened during
the Middle Ages was done in the monasteries, which thus acted similarly to the
early medeival cities of the time, or modern corporations.
>I would have said that, without private property and markets, the coordination
>problem becomes unworkably difficult when the number of people involved becomes
>large. One solution is a small commune embedded in a large market, as you
>suggest--the family being the most obvious example. Another solution is a
>small commune that is essentially self-sufficient--and poor. In a society where
>high transport costs, insecure property, rights, etc. limit the range of market
>activities for everybody, such a commune is not necessarily poorer than its
>neighbors.
I'll go along with that.
David Friedman
>The emergence and success of an elite would depend
>on public consent; if people didn't like others to
>take power over them, they could easily boycott or
>ostracize the power-takers (assuming everyone's
>playing by liberal rules here and there's no direct
>violence, and that all resources have not already
>been sequestered by the elite).
I don't think it is that easy--you assume that the people in question have
somehow solved the sort of free rider problems that make boycotts and the
like so difficult. But in any case, I don't see any reason to think that
everyone, or even most people, in such a society would disapprove of
accumulations of wealth.
I also don't think that "take power over them" is a very accurate
description of the process. Suppose I am a self-employed forester, cutting
lumber (for simplicity, there are lots of unowned forrests). Another
forester, who happens to very good at his job, accumulates a fair amount
of money. He offers to employ me--and because he can provide better tools,
and is better than I am at figuring out which trees will sell as lumber
for the highest amount, and ... the salary he offers me is somewhat more
than I can make on my own.
Do you really want to say that he has "taken power" over me? It is true
that, if I accept his offer, he rather than I will be deciding what trees
I cut, and perhaps setting hours of work and the like. But if I didn't
prefer that to the alternative of working for myself, I wouldn't take the
job.
>For any kind of
>anarchism or socialism to succeed, an anarchist or
>socialist consciousness and culture is required.
There you and Ayn Rand agree (although she is arguing for something a
little short of anarchy), and I disagree. It is one of my occasional
arguments with the Objectivists on h.p.o.
David Friedman
>| ...
>
>g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>|> ... Tim's remarks, like James Donald's, attempt to force all political
>|>discussions back into a Cold-War paradigm; it's obvious that they're more
>|>comfortable with a 50s-style conservative-totalitarian approach to political
>|>questions...
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>| "Conservative-totalitarian"? What's that supposed to mean?
>
>In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
>the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion of
>enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red and
>otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be conserved
>with as little change as possible -- even racial equality
>was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian in that no
>deviation of the line went unpunished, because times were
>held to be desperate and the risks of debate and criticism
>unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of course, but many
>people believed in it. Some still do....
You are describing fantasy, not history. The 1950s were, in some important
ways, less tolerant than the present--but by historical standards, the
U.S. (and I presume western European societies as well) were very far from
totalitarian.
For example, you write "even racial equality was suspect." Are you arguing
that virtually all developed societies over the past few thousand years
were totalitarian? Few had as few restrictions on rights as western
societies in the 1950's. No slavery, women in almost all respects the
legal equals of men, ... .
I think you debase the meaning of totalitarian when you describe such
societies in those terms. McCarthy, as you may recall, didn't succeed in
getting a single person executed--by the standards of any serious
totalitarian society his activities were trivial.
Michael A. Clem
brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
> "Michael A. Clem" <mac....@juno.com> wrote:
> >
> > We're not all using the same definition of capitalism.
>
> According to Webster's Dictionary there's only one definition of capitalism:
>
> "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital
> goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices,
> production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by
> competition in a free market"
> -- http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=capitalism
>
>
The dictionary is a static and not necessarily accurate collection of words.
Language is fluid, and meanings change over time. If you want, we can look up
capitalism in half a dozen different dictionaries, and have half a dozen slightly
different definitions. It doesn't matter as much as what most people think
capitalism means. To most people, capitalism means private ownership and voluntary
exchanges. Wage labor is not considered the *defining* characteristic of
capitalism to most people.
> That is, capitalism is based on private property and competition (which
> necessarily creates winners and losers). I was tought that cooperation is
> more productive than competition.
Free markets produce cooperation as well as competition. Winners vastly outnumber
the losers. Why can you go to the store and see dozens of brand names, instead of
just one brand? The very existence of niche marketing not only shows how
cooperation is possible, but that there can be numerous "winners" in the system.
Both cooperation and competition can be productive or unproductive, depending
upon the circumstances.
> Capitalism entails the belief that capital
> can generate income just as labor can. So a pure capitalist is someone who
> does no labor and only manages his wealth. Of course managing wealth can be
> laborious, so the distinction between labor and capital are at times blurred.
> One thing's for sure: today's capital can't be created or maintained
> without labor. So labor is the wellspring of all wealth, and as such, it
> deserves respect.
Capital and labor necessarily go hand-in-hand. Neither is worth anything without
the other.
> But automation (a form of capital) increasingly replaces
> labor, so in the future capital may no longer need labor.
I doubt that automation will be able to eliminate all labor, but automation seems
good to me, because that frees people from having to do mind-numbing work, so that
they can exercize their mind, and further their own potential. And unless you want
to create other categories, it seems that "labor" must necessarily include arts,
sciences, service jobs, computer programming, and other white-collar jobs.
>
>
> > Some left anarchists have agreed with my purely libertarian idea that
> > there's no problem with money if it were not government-issued or controlled,
> > i.e. private currency.
>
> The notion is flawed. The ruinous complications of money occur regardless of
> who prints it. What difference could it make who issues money?
>
A pretty big difference, especially if the money supply, credit, and interest rates
aren't controlled by a centralized agency. The notion may or may not be flawed,
but that hasn't stopped *some* anarchists from agreeing with me on the point.
> > How would left-anarchists prevent people from entering
> > into wage-labor agreements?
>
> Anarchists can't prevent anyone from pursuing their will. That's what
> Anarchy is!
>
Exactly my point. Anarchists will have to show that what they are offering is much
more desirable, not just equal to, or slightly better than wage labor in order to
effectively discourage all people from pursuing wage labor. They cannot simply
assert that it is better.
> > It sounds more like wishful thinking to me.
>
> All anarchism is wishful thinking.
>
I like to engage in wishful thinking now and then, too. ;-)
> > Nobody has quite come up with a fully adequate theory on
> > claiming unowned property.
>
> My property is those materials which I immediately control. When I park
> my car and walk away, I no longer control it, so the car is no longer my
> property.
Where did the car come from? Why was it made? Would they actually make *enough*
cars under anarchism, and what factors would influence that? Would cars improve or
remain relatively unchanged for long periods of time? How would an anarchist
society deal with someone who vandalized cars? Or someone who tried to control a
car that he no longer "possessed"?
> That's how an anarchist like me thinks. If you don't share my
> view, I doubt you're an anarchist. I'm not claiming Anarchy is viable. I'm
> simply declaring my view of life.
>
I'm not claiming that I'm an anarchist, and I'm not trying to attack your view of
life. At this point, I'm still just trying to understand it, to clarify the
distinctions that are (or are not) being made.
--Mike Clem
Michael A. Clem
Paul gate wrote:
> David Friedman wrote in message ...
> >In article <72hpsf$etg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >I don't follow that. Today's labor can't be created or maintained without
> >capital--in a society where everyone was working with his bare hands and
> >nothing else, almost everyone would starve in the first year or so. So why
> >is it labor and not capital that is the "wellspring of all wealth,"
> >whatever that metaphor is supposed to mean?
> >
>
> I think the problem is, if as you say these forms of labour exist in symbiosis
> there is no reason why one should be valued more than the other.
> They are both vitaly important.....so what gives?
> why do THE VAST MAJORITY of the rewards of activity settle
> on one side of this divide.
> Who`s interest does this serve?
> Ps i do not beleive that they do really exist in symbiosis
> I think it`s a con! :-)
I *would* say that capital and labor are equally important. I'm against corporate
welfare as much as I'm against any other kind of welfare. "Market discipline"
must apply to all or none.
But if capital and labor are not sybiotic, then what do you see as being the
proper relationship?
--Mike Clem
Michael A. Clem
David Friedman wrote:
> >For any kind of
> >anarchism or socialism to succeed, an anarchist or
> >socialist consciousness and culture is required.
>
> There you and Ayn Rand agree (although she is arguing for something a
> little short of anarchy), and I disagree. It is one of my occasional
> arguments with the Objectivists on h.p.o.
> --
> David Friedman
> DD...@Best.com
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
I'm having trouble seeing the alternative to cultural influence, myself,
especially given that so many people seem quite willing to live under
government controls. Can you give a brief outline of why you disagree?
--Mike Clem
cb...@my-dejanews.com
> | But if you are using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one
> | implication is that a particularly able or lucky or hard working
> | individual may end up with substantially more resources than his neighbor,
> | so there is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
> | of production than other people do, won't emerge.
>
> on public consent; if people didn't like others to
> take power over them, they could easily boycott or
> ostracize the power-takers (assuming everyone's
> playing by liberal rules here and there's no direct
Suppose I create some popular widget and sell it, and become wealthy as a
result. Is that "taking power"? What if I use the wealth to build a factory?
What if nobody knew who I was, and therefore couldn't boycott me? More
importantly, why would anyone *want* to boycott me?
> Otherwise -- in a situation where people still want
> to subordinate themselves to authorities -- any
> structure, however nominally free, democratic, or
> egalitarian, is likely to degenerate into a sort of
> quasi-feudalism, as we see with contemporary and
> recent capitalism. I would say with a number of
People want a lot of things. Maybe you only want one thing, and don't care
about the price, but I don't think that's typical.
G*rd*n
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
|>|> ... Tim's remarks, like James Donald's, attempt to force all political
|>|>discussions back into a Cold-War paradigm; it's obvious that they're more
|>|>comfortable with a 50s-style conservative-totalitarian approach to political
|>|>questions...
tims...@my-dejanews.com:
| >| "Conservative-totalitarian"? What's that supposed to mean?
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
| >In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
| >the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion of
| >enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red and
| >otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be conserved
| >with as little change as possible -- even racial equality
| >was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian in that no
| >deviation of the line went unpunished, because times were
| >held to be desperate and the risks of debate and criticism
| >unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of course, but many
| >people believed in it. Some still do....
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| You are describing fantasy, not history. The 1950s were, in some important
| ways, less tolerant than the present--but by historical standards, the
| U.S. (and I presume western European societies as well) were very far from
| totalitarian.
I said its spirit was totalitarian. It was not easy to
implement totalitarianism in the United States, because of
its Constitution and traditions. Nevertheless, great reams
of propaganda were produced, purges were conducted, secret
police were sent forth, and dissidents were punished. As
I lived through the period, I'm pretty familiar with it.
And it's well-recorded for those who want to look into it.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| For example, you write "even racial equality was suspect." Are you arguing
| that virtually all developed societies over the past few thousand years
| were totalitarian? Few had as few restrictions on rights as western
| societies in the 1950's. No slavery, women in almost all respects the
| legal equals of men, ... .
I said racial equality was suspect, not that efforts to
achieve it were suppressed outright. In the 1950s people
often criticized Civil Rights activists as "Communists" or
"helping the Communists." This was a particular phase of
the long-term national struggle over race. Cold Warriors,
even liberal ones, often (not always) took the position
that dealing with racial problems, like everything else,
should be subordinated to the effort to make the world safe
for Capital. The desire that everything be subordinated
was the totalitarianism; there was not enough State power
available to actually implement it, so activists were able
to continue to make trouble about it.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| I think you debase the meaning of totalitarian when you describe such
| societies in those terms. McCarthy, as you may recall, didn't succeed in
| getting a single person executed--by the standards of any serious
| totalitarian society his activities were trivial.
You'd have less of a problem with my language if you'd read
it more carefully. I'm talking about what people wanted to
do, not what they did.
G*rd*n
| >The emergence and success of an elite would depend
| >on public consent; if people didn't like others to
| >take power over them, they could easily boycott or
| >ostracize the power-takers (assuming everyone's
| >playing by liberal rules here and there's no direct
| >been sequestered by the elite).
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| I don't think it is that easy--you assume that the people in question have
| somehow solved the sort of free rider problems that make boycotts and the
| like so difficult. But in any case, I don't see any reason to think that
| everyone, or even most people, in such a society would disapprove of
| accumulations of wealth.
If certain differences of wealth are politically
significant, and if people in general want to be free
rather than subordinated to the will of others, then they
have to deal with the political problems caused by those
differences. That much seems almost tautological. If such
problems seem to recur, they might also want to deal with
the social formations which cause or support the problems,
but they might choose not to, and handle individual
problems as they arose.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| I also don't think that "take power over them" is a very accurate
| description of the process. Suppose I am a self-employed forester, cutting
| lumber (for simplicity, there are lots of unowned forrests). Another
| forester, who happens to very good at his job, accumulates a fair amount
| of money. He offers to employ me--and because he can provide better tools,
| and is better than I am at figuring out which trees will sell as lumber
| for the highest amount, and ... the salary he offers me is somewhat more
| than I can make on my own.
|
| Do you really want to say that he has "taken power" over me? It is true
| that, if I accept his offer, he rather than I will be deciding what trees
| I cut, and perhaps setting hours of work and the like. But if I didn't
| prefer that to the alternative of working for myself, I wouldn't take the
| job.
In this case, you could always go back to the unowned
forests, and your employer would know it, so both you and he
are free. If he uses his profits to buy up all the woods
and the tool factories, though, you might be in trouble.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
| >For any kind of
| >anarchism or socialism to succeed, an anarchist or
| >socialist consciousness and culture is required.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| There you and Ayn Rand agree (although she is arguing for something a
| little short of anarchy), and I disagree. It is one of my occasional
| arguments with the Objectivists on h.p.o.
Well, Ayn Rand and I might agree on a number of things, like
the color of the sky on a clear summer day. My doubt that
social structures absent (other) cultural support can
provide freedom comes partly from my meditations about the
course of events in the Russian Empire / Soviet Union,
where a change in the social structure was supposed to
produce the "New Soviet Man" and didn't -- twenty years
after the Revolution, Stalin was reenacting tsardom with a
vengeance in a way which would have been impossible if it
had not met with broad acceptance, if not enthusiasm. It
might be that these events were also on Ms. Rand's mind.
One might argue that the changes were not the right ones --
certainly social and material conditions affect culture and
consciousness even if they don't determine them. But here
my anarchist prejudices come into play, and discourage me
from thinking the good life can be forced on people from
above, and I point again to history as a witness for my
intuition.
G*rd*n
| I haven't really "revised" my opinion, just qualified my claim about it a bit.
| All I've really said is that socialism still hasn't ever been proven to work
| as a social system encompassing an entire society, only as tiny subdivisions
| of otherwise capitalist societies. Your claim is really special pleading,
| since you're not really talking about socialism as a societal system, but just
| as a form of co-operation amongst small groups. Even traditional primitive
| societies rarely extended such co-operation beyond the level of the immediate
| family. See George Ayittey's work on just how capitalist traditional African
| society really was, for example.
I'm aware that one can interpret life on Earth back
to the prokaryotes as "capitalism", given a loose enough
definition of capitalism. But by capitalism I mean
something much more specific, the domination of a community
through private control of the means of industrial
production by an elite class -- the common arrangement in
Western Europe and North America for the last couple of
centuries.
Such socialism and communism as exist show that human beings
don't need to be controlled by elites, and don't need their
means of production to be contrlled by elites. That's the
entirety of my point.
G*rd*n:
|>In fact, I believe the intervention of a murderous dictator would preclude the
|>existence of socialism, as defined above.
| Not necessarily. Such murderous dictators could easily wage war against the
| capitalist elements of the society, while protecting the socialist elements.
I don't see how the working class or the people generally
can control the means of production if they themselves are
under the control of a dictator.
G*rd*n:
| >The extent to which socialism could be scaled up is an open question at this
| >point.
| No, it most certainly is not. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the
| level of the Maoist China. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the
| level of India. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the level of the
| Soviet Union. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the level of North
| Korea, Cuba, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Vietnam,
| Cambodia, Nicaragua, etc., etc., etc.
No, we don't. Every large-scale attempt at constructing a
socialist polity that I know about has been met with
violence or came out of a violent situation (by which I
mean the static violence of the State as well as warfare).
The military organization necessary to participate
successfully in public violence necessitates military
commanders, that is, dictators. Clearly, if the
constituents of a community are going to own and control
its means of production, they need to start locally and
construct larger structures out of local ones. I see no
reason to believe that it would be impossible for them to
do so.
Here, I'm referring to liberal polities like that of the
United States. In places where unions and cooperatives are
suppressed by force, like Central America or Indonesia,
some kind of warfare may be necessary just to establish
rudimentary liberalism, although other means should be
tried first.
G*rd*n:
|>As a test case we'd need a sizeable community which did not already have a
|>bourgeoisie in charge and whose liberal neighbors would leave it alone
|>(contrary to custom). Otherwise the attempt to establish socialism would lead
|>to violence and, probably, murderous dictators.
| Why? Capitalism flourished in spite of the fact that it originated in a world
| in which feudalism was already in charge. Capitalist enclaves had to fight
| for their independence, to liberate themselves from feudal encirclement. And
| the result wasn't murderous dictatorships, but the freest, most tolerant,
| most peaceful, & most prosperous societies the world has ever seen.
|
| Why should socialism have to meet any less of a challenge than capitalism did?
I don't know what your question means -- we're not running
an athletic contest here. Capitalism succeeded by starting
small, staying out of the way, and cooperating with the
authorities when possible. Most of the fighting took place
much later, when the balance of power had already shifted
to the capitalist side.
G*rd*n:
|>I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in private charge of the
|>means of production to send price signals around, assuming these signals are a
|>necessary as you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
| The very way you frame this question shows how profoundly you misunderstand
| the very nature of the problem of rational economic calculation, which can't
| possibly be solved by socialism. Price signals aren't sent around by an
| "elite in private charge of the means of production." They're sent by
| consumers who choose what & what not to buy with their hard-earned wealth.
That's exactly my point. The entities receiving price
signals don't have to be elites any more than the senders
do. The bourgeoisie are superfluous, just as the kings
and princes of feudalism were. Their upkeep is the price
of superstition, not necessity.
G*rd*n
|>| But if you are using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one
|>| implication is that a particularly able or lucky or hard working
|>| individual may end up with substantially more resources than his neighbor,
|>| so there is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
|>| of production than other people do, won't emerge.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
| > The emergence and success of an elite would depend
| > on public consent; if people didn't like others to
| > take power over them, they could easily boycott or
| > ostracize the power-takers (assuming everyone's
| > playing by liberal rules here and there's no direct
| Suppose I create some popular widget and sell it, and become wealthy as a
| result. Is that "taking power"? What if I use the wealth to build a factory?
| What if nobody knew who I was, and therefore couldn't boycott me? More
| importantly, why would anyone *want* to boycott me? ...
I think I answered the part about wanting to boycott before.
But to reiterate briefly, if people want to be free, they
have to assert and defend their freedom. If someone or
something impinges on their freedom, they have to deal with
it in some way. The bourgeoisie know this; that's why
their dogs are presently baying at Bill Gates.
The problem of "knowing who [someone] is" can be a major
one. I used to have a book on methods of direct action
which included a rather lengthy chapter on the research
necessary to discover who really possesses power in a
community. Often enough, political officials or business
managers turn out to be figureheads, and agencies and
organizations turn out to be fronts. Finding out who's
doing what is a primary task for any kind of radical or
reformer, just as it is for a businessman or a politician.
James A. Donald
On Thu, 12 Nov 1998 15:10:42 -0800, dd...@best.com (David Friedman)
wrote:
> Sophal Ear et. al. offer evidence that Chomsky argued
> dishonestly in an attempt to persuade people that there was
> no good reason to think the Khmer Rouge were doing the
> horrible things they were accused of doing. Even if they
> are right, I don't think it follows that Chomsky was a
> totalitarian--any more than Churchill or Roosevelt would
> have had to be a communist in order to try to cover up some
> of Stalin's crimes. He could easily enough be an opponent
> of U.S. policy--perhaps the sort of inverse patriot that
> Orwell described--who favored the Khmer Rouge because the
> U.S. opposed them, and acted accordingly.
The problem with this hypothesis is that Chomsky does not extend the
same charity to enemies of the US that did not engage in mass murder
and were not aligned to the Soviet Union. With Adid, it was "a plague
on both your houses", whereas the North Vietnamese supposedly
represented participatory democracy. (On pages 276-280 of "at war
with Asia" he strangely neglects to mention that every single vote in
this participatory democracy was completely unanimous.)
My reading of Chomsky is that evil US imperialism is not his real
target but merely an explanation for the failures of socialism. The
devil made them do it.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
f2tyPoBzel91Y2hZz8E92qlZT6sxAZ/c4Mr2nV39
4TfDgoZEw9onFPVGwDC5lPepOj+hMvvf9nvFBw9uJ
------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
James A. Donald
On 12 Nov 1998 23:46:59 -0500, gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
> We know from the many successful examples of communes and
> cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
> and control of the means of production by the working class
> or the people generally -- is possible. We have an
> existence proof.
That is not socialism: Worker owned businesses act like other
businesses, which is why socialists find it necessary to exterminate
them. There is no significant difference between United Airlines and
other airlines. If most businesses were like United Airlines, most
people would not notice a thing, and socialists would be just as
indignant about exploitation and oppression.
The objective of socialism is not "worker ownership" but elimination
of the market place, a project given the highly euphemistic name
"worker ownership", when it should be called "ownership of the
workers".
Lots of brokerages and law firms are worker owned, a few software
company are worker owned. I do not see socialists having orgasms
about these enterprises.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Vasf+lWiYvlxXlmshDKpa9cUkS4OlMXFXyioM38a
4dY6L+Ir/+rHrNfFBK/CGMGXt7c+xK5lFCLYTG+hI
brian_n...@yahoo.com
>
> > The ruinous complications of money occur regardless of
> > who prints it. What difference could it make who issues money?
>
> A pretty big difference, especially if the money supply, credit, and
> interest rates aren't controlled by a centralized agency.
Money enables our present laizes faire economy. This economy unconditionally
favors expansion, destroys the ecosystem, imposes class hardship, penalizes
traditional tribal culture, and distracts us with idolized bean counting.
Without money the unlubricated gears of our shameful economy would grind to a
halt. Please explain how these ruinous effects of money can be alleviated
with privately issued money. To me money is always bad. Obviously I'm not
alone, since the saying, "Money is the root of all evil" was likely coined
long ago, and a quick search finds 25 web pages with that exact phrase:
http://www.metacrawler.com/crawler?general=money+is+the+root+of+all+evil&meth
od= 2&target=®ion=0&rpp=20&timeout=20&hpe=10
> Anarchists will have to show...
Anarchists don't have to show anything. They're anarchists; they do what
they want!
> How would an anarchist society deal with someone who vandalized cars?
As a compassionate socialist anarchist, I would seek to cure the
frustration for which vandalism is only a symptom. Or, if I'm too busy,
I just adjust to life with vandalism. Graffiti is beautiful.
I define anarchism as optimistic nihilism, though that may be an oxymoron
(which is why I feel Anarchy is but a dream).
> I'm not trying to attack your view of life.
Feel free to blast it all you want folks. Most feel threatened by
anarchists.
brian_n...@yahoo.com
>
> brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >Capitalism is based on private property and competition (which
> >necessarily creates winners and losers).
>
I realize the free market isn't a zero-sum game. Please don't insult
me. The free market creates losers, hence personal bankruptcy which is
at a record high in the USA (US Congress is pursuing tightening personal
bankruptcy law which would mask the rising tide of personal failures).
You libertarians can bury your heads in the sand, but we liberals know
that only welfare can alleviate the suffering caused by this. I advocate
a Euro-style re-distributive free market. In first world Europe, the
ambitious are free to get rich through private enterprise. In first
world Europe, the poor losers are guaranteed lodging, food, and medicine.
Lord help me if I seriously hurt myself outdoors without my wallet;
without my insurance card I'm fucked in the USA if injured!
Euro-style harmony of enterprise and welfare is superior. American
winner-take-all competition is inferior. That the USA has more violence
and infant mortality than first world Europe is all the proof I need to
back my claim. An infant is better off in first world Europe than in the
USA; that's one heck of a referendum on the relative merit of the two
systems.
David Friedman
>In this case, you could always go back to the unowned
>forests, and your employer would know it, so both you and he
>are free. If he uses his profits to buy up all the woods
>and the tool factories, though, you might be in trouble.
I agree--but I think that is a very unlikely situation, and does not
describe what has happened in real capitalist societies, to say nothing of
what would happen in more completely capitalist (i.e. anarcho-capitalist)
societies.
Most income in the US goes to workers. Companies making machine tools are
perfectly happy to sell them to any one who wants to buy them. If
ordinary, reasonably skilled, workers--auto workers, or computer
programmers, or restaurant cooks--wanted to start their own firms, were
willing to make some sacrifices, considerably short of the sacrifices
required for a revolution, to do it, and were competent to do it, they
could. Indeed, restaurant cooks sometimes do start their own restaurants,
and programmers sometimes start their own firms.
David Friedman
<mac....@juno.com> wrote:
>David Friedman wrote:
>
>> >For any kind of
>> >anarchism or socialism to succeed, an anarchist or
>> >socialist consciousness and culture is required.
>>
>> There you and Ayn Rand agree (although she is arguing for something a
>> little short of anarchy), and I disagree. It is one of my occasional
>> arguments with the Objectivists on h.p.o.
>> --
>> David Friedman
>> DD...@Best.com
>> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
>
>I'm having trouble seeing the alternative to cultural influence, myself,
>especially given that so many people seem quite willing to live under
>government controls. Can you give a brief outline of why you disagree?
I think institutions get determined by lots of things other than cultural
influence--historical accident, changes in the technology of enforcing or
evading laws, etc. I also think that most people are inherently
conservative, in the sense of taking for granted the institutions around
them. So if exogenous factors change the institutions, and the new
institutions are at least workable--don't produce results strikingly worse
than alternatives that the population knows about--the population is
likely to adjust. I think that is true for anarchist institutions as for
others.
For one possibility along those lines, take a look at the Strong Privacy
article on my web page, where I argue that technological developments
associated with computers may produce a world where a significant part of
our lives is lived in a version of anarcho-capitalism.
David Friedman
>> 2. The figure Chomsky offers for East Timor, although conservative, is
>> large enough for the shared purpose of Chomsky and other opponents of the
>> invasion--to get people abroad to realize that something horrible is going
>> on.
>
>And tens of thousands of executions in Cambodia wouldn't be?
I don't think so--given the amount of killing that had been happening in
Southeast asia, by various people, the U.S. included.
>> 3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
>> Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
>> government in a very unfriendly fashion.
>
>It is only "obvious" if you discount what the book actually says. For
>example: "It is a common error, as we have pointed out several times, to
>interpret opposition to U.S. intervention and aggression as support for
>the programs of its victims, a useful device for state propagandists but
>one that often has no basis in fact" (p. 256).
The context of that particular quote is the opposite of what you are
discussing. The authors' point there is that the fact that Lacouture
opposed U.S. foreign policy doesn't imply that he was friendly to the
Khmer Rouge--and therefor one shouldn't trust his denunciations of the
Khmer Rouge on the grounds that he is making admissions against his
beliefs.
But there are lots of passages in the book in which it is clear that the
authors take pro-Khmer Rouge reports seriously without much critical
examination, while they dissect at great length the people who make the
anti-Khmer Rouge reports.
>So when I see
>someone claiming that Chomsky's actual words don't matter because they
>see a purple haze instead, it looks to me like an attempt to avoid
>dealing with the actual matter at hand.
If that is your view, and if you believe in the obligation to denounce
one's allies for their misdeeds, why haven't you denounced David Graeber
for saying that my actual words don't matter because he knows I'm trying
to insult him? He did say precisely that on the question of whether or not
I had accused him of being a mad dog.
>He
>considers the drug-war as currently taking over (at least partially) the
>function of anti-communism in the Propaganda Model, and has written on
>the subject debunking some of the myths promulgated in the mass media
>about drugs, but no one accuses him of being a "drug advocate",
Don't they? The Wall Street Journal came pretty close to accusing my
father and others who opposed the drug war of being drug advocates--and
drug users.
>As far as I understand the events, what occurred in the case of Chile is
>somewhat different than you suggest. Friedman had a nomenklatura of
>followers in power in Chile (the Chicago Boys), his visit was part of a
>publicity campaign to support their favored policies, in which he gave
>"numerous public appearances and television interviews".
You are inaccurately informed--and I don't know who you are quoting. The
"followers" in question were Chileans who had studied economics at
Chicago--and presumably taken one course from him.
>He said, for example, that his
>"only concern" with the "shock treatment" plan was "whether it would be
>pushed long enough and hard enough" -- considering the means used to
>carry out that plan, that is a rather sinister concern.
Except that the term "shock treatment" in the economic context doesn't
mean killing people, it means taking extreme economic policies instead of
compromises. The famous example would be Ludwig Erhard in West
Germany--who simply abolished all price and wage controls overnight.
Dan Clore
> > I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
> > private charge of the means of production to send price
> > signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
> > you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
>
> It isn't necessary--price signals and markets could work fine in a society
> in which almost everyone was a sole proprietor, working for himself and
> trading with his neighbors. I suspect most right libertarians would regard
> that as a fairly attractive outcome to a libertarian society, although
> they may not regard it as the most likely outcome.
This is essentially the system proposed by the American
anarcho-individualists in the nineteenth century. They considered
themselves socialists and so did everyone else, and they were explicitly
anti-capitalist. Cf. James J. Martin's _Men Against the State_.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
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G*rd*n
| > We know from the many successful examples of communes and
| > cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
| > and control of the means of production by the working class
| > or the people generally -- is possible. We have an
| > existence proof.
jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald):
| That is not socialism....
When I say "socialism", I mean ownership or control of the
means of production by the working class, or by the people
generally. To me, a worker-owned business is precisely the
means of production owned by the working class.
You're free to mean whatever you want by "socialism", but
that doesn't change what I mean by it.
David Friedman
>| >In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
>| >the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion of
>| >enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red and
>| >otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be conserved
>| >with as little change as possible -- even racial equality
>| >was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian in that no
>| >deviation of the line went unpunished, because times were
>| >held to be desperate and the risks of debate and criticism
>| >unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of course, but many
>| >people believed in it. Some still do....
>
>DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
>| You are describing fantasy, not history.
>You'd have less of a problem with my language if you'd read
>it more carefully. I'm talking about what people wanted to
>do, not what they did.
You said that "no deviation of the line went unpunished," which is simply
false--lots of people in the 1950s held unorthodox positions of one sort
or another and didn't get punished. I don't think any significant number
of people argued that "the risks of debate and criticism (were)
unaffordable luxuries"--perhaps you can offer examples?
McCarthy's claim wasn't that debate and criticism were unaffordable
luxuries but that lots of people in powerful positions were engaged in an
actual conspiracy, which is not at all the same thing. That argument was
made more plausible by the fact that Alger Hiss probably had engaged in an
actual conspiracy, although there is still some argument on the
subject--photographing state department documents and turning them over to
an agent of a foreign power doesn't classify as "debate and criticism."
If the general attitude had been that debate and criticism were
unaffordable luxuries, McCarthy would not have had to allege membership in
the CP, and would not have ultimately failed, since there were lots of
people he could accurately accuse of engaging in debate and criticism. It
was a little harder to prove they were members of a conspiracy, since lots
of them weren't.
David Friedman
>David Friedman wrote:
>> In article <72i56g$7...@panix2.panix.com>, g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>
>> > I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
>> > private charge of the means of production to send price
>> > signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
>> > you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
>>
>> It isn't necessary--price signals and markets could work fine in a society
>> in which almost everyone was a sole proprietor, working for himself and
>> trading with his neighbors. I suspect most right libertarians would regard
>> that as a fairly attractive outcome to a libertarian society, although
>> they may not regard it as the most likely outcome.
>
>This is essentially the system proposed by the American
>anarcho-individualists in the nineteenth century. They considered
>themselves socialists and so did everyone else, and they were explicitly
>anti-capitalist. Cf. James J. Martin's _Men Against the State_.
But that is not an outcome which modern American libertarians consider
socialist.
The following is the end of Chapter 23 of my book _The Machinery of
Freedom_, written in the early 1970s.
"If most things are controlled by individuals, individually or in
voluntary association, a society is capitalist. If such control is spread
fairly evenly among a large number of people, the society approximates
competitive free enterprise--better than ours does. If its members call it
socialists, why should I object?
Socialism is dead. Long live socialism."
G*rd*n
| >In this case, you could always go back to the unowned
| >forests, and your employer would know it, so both you and he
| >are free. If he uses his profits to buy up all the woods
| >and the tool factories, though, you might be in trouble.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| I agree--but I think that is a very unlikely situation, and does not
| describe what has happened in real capitalist societies, to say nothing of
| what would happen in more completely capitalist (i.e. anarcho-capitalist)
| societies. ...
Of course. The actual situation in our contemporary
society is much more complex, and involves classes and
other groupings as well as individuals. However, the
central question (as I see it, anyway) is simple: the
question of freedom versus authority. Those who are
satisfied with submission to authority as a way of
life will accept what they're told to accept: in our
case, the plutocracy of the liberal bourgeois capitalist
state. (There could be worse choices.) The others will
try to contest, compete with, transform, or subvert this
authority in some way. As I don't think capitalism is
the pinnacle of human possibility, or even viable in the
long term, I go into the second general category. Note
that only the first category is a team.
Which category Cold-Warriors fall into is left as an
exercise for the reader.
Dan Clore
> >> 3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
> >> Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
> >> government in a very unfriendly fashion.
> >
> >It is only "obvious" if you discount what the book actually says. For
> >example: "It is a common error, as we have pointed out several times, to
> >interpret opposition to U.S. intervention and aggression as support for
> >the programs of its victims, a useful device for state propagandists but
> >one that often has no basis in fact" (p. 256).
>
> The context of that particular quote is the opposite of what you are
> discussing. The authors' point there is that the fact that Lacouture
> opposed U.S. foreign policy doesn't imply that he was friendly to the
> Khmer Rouge--and therefor one shouldn't trust his denunciations of the
> Khmer Rouge on the grounds that he is making admissions against his
> beliefs.
Chomsky, responding to a piece by Walter Goodman claiming that a Chomsky
article in Dissent ("The Cynical Farce About Cambodia") "recalls"
support in the peace movement "for a Communist victory", says:
"Documentation of the susceptibility of intellectuals to fabricated
stories of 'Hun atrocities' in World War I does not 'recall' support for
the Kaiser. Documentation of the many falsehoods that have appeared with
regard to Cambodia does not entail or 'recall' support for its present
regime, though it does give some insight into Western propaganda. Only
someone engaged in apologetics for his favored state in just the manner
I described in the response will be so irrational as to interpret
opposition to its depredations and documentation of the falsehoods that
appear in its media as support for its enemies and victims." (_Radical
Priorities_, p. 82)
And BTW, "therefor" means "in exchange for that" -- the word you want is
"therefore".
> But there are lots of passages in the book in which it is clear that the
> authors take pro-Khmer Rouge reports seriously without much critical
> examination, while they dissect at great length the people who make the
> anti-Khmer Rouge reports.
They give them as much critical examination as they need to for their
argument (which you still don't seem to be aware of). Most of these
alleged "pro-Khmer Rouge" accounts are anti-Khmer Rouge, another fact
you somehow failed to notice.
> >So when I see
> >someone claiming that Chomsky's actual words don't matter because they
> >see a purple haze instead, it looks to me like an attempt to avoid
> >dealing with the actual matter at hand.
>
> If that is your view, and if you believe in the obligation to denounce
> one's allies for their misdeeds, why haven't you denounced David Graeber
> for saying that my actual words don't matter because he knows I'm trying
> to insult him? He did say precisely that on the question of whether or not
> I had accused him of being a mad dog.
I haven't denounced him because you reveal yourself as a hypocrite every
time you whine about Graeber's mistakenly misquoting you. The "average
reader" will get the "general impression" that you called Graeber a mad
dog. You say you didn't, and your words show that you didn't? Why should
I care, when your own standard is to invent an arbitrary "impression"
and then claim the actual words on the page are irrelevant?
To put it another way, James has had his misrepresentations of Chomsky's
work pointed out repeatedly to him over a period of at least six or
seven years. He continues to misrepresent, knowing full well that he is
misrepresenting it: there is no question but that he is lying. This is
not the case with David Graeber. Once again you are trying to put a
maniacal nutcase and the reasonable person being attacked by him on the
same level. Keep pretending you don't know who started it, and who's
getting back a tenth part of what he'd been dishing out. By now it's
become quite clear that you and Jimi are just playing some kind of sick
good cop / bad cop routine. I have to say it's pretty sad that someone
who seems reasonable would lend himself to this sort of thing.
> >He
> >considers the drug-war as currently taking over (at least partially) the
> >function of anti-communism in the Propaganda Model, and has written on
> >the subject debunking some of the myths promulgated in the mass media
> >about drugs, but no one accuses him of being a "drug advocate",
>
> Don't they?
I haven't seen anyone do so.
> The Wall Street Journal came pretty close to accusing my
> father and others who opposed the drug war of being drug advocates--and
> drug users.
And in that case you can see the fallacy involved, so you have little
excuse for failing to perceive it in analogous cases.
> >As far as I understand the events, what occurred in the case of Chile is
> >somewhat different than you suggest. Friedman had a nomenklatura of
> >followers in power in Chile (the Chicago Boys), his visit was part of a
> >publicity campaign to support their favored policies, in which he gave
> >"numerous public appearances and television interviews".
>
> You are inaccurately informed--and I don't know who you are quoting. The
> "followers" in question were Chileans who had studied economics at
> Chicago--and presumably taken one course from him.
Who were supposedly applying his theory. (My quote is from _Chile's Free
Market Miracle: A Second Look_ by Collins & Lear, which cites _Fortune_
magazine on these matters.)
> >He said, for example, that his
> >"only concern" with the "shock treatment" plan was "whether it would be
> >pushed long enough and hard enough" -- considering the means used to
> >carry out that plan, that is a rather sinister concern.
>
> Except that the term "shock treatment" in the economic context doesn't
> mean killing people, it means taking extreme economic policies instead of
> compromises.
I'm aware of the meaning of the term "shock treatment". The point is
that the economic plan was being pushed by terror, torture, and murder,
and your father's "only concern" was "whether it would be pushed long
enough and hard enough" -- some of us would feel concerned about other
matters as well, like, for example, the means being used to implement
the plan your father favored.
brian_n...@yahoo.com
>
> Using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one implication
> is that a ... hard working individual may end up with ... more.
> There is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
> of production than other people do, won't emerge.
You understate. That wealth won't be evenly distributed in a free
market is guaranteed. Only public works or charity can alleviate that.
James A. Donald
In article <72gdk3$g...@panix2.panix.com>, gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n)
wrote:
> > We know from the many successful examples of communes and
> > cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
> > and control of the means of production by the working class
> > or the people generally -- is possible.
On Thu, 12 Nov 1998 23:01:27 -0800, DD...@best.com (David Friedman)
wrote:
> At what scale? My impression is that socialism works up to a scale of a
> few hundred people, provided that there is a strong common ideology
> unifying them--medieval monesteries, the Oneida commune, etc. Do we have
> examples much larger than that?
Gordon is playing games with definitions, as usual: Worker owned
companies, for example United Airlines, are often much larger than
that, sometimes very much larger than that, but United Airlines is
certainly not what Gordon means by socialism.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
NklXrD9iAdTrapl71hrKHVM5hdnLamEVOFnEk5qN
4++wIaUXikxMGXzVwoQ4JIYdNY0FYyMRGdYaLZ95b
David Friedman
>> But there are lots of passages in the book in which it is clear that the
>> authors take pro-Khmer Rouge reports seriously without much critical
>> examination, while they dissect at great length the people who make the
>> anti-Khmer Rouge reports.
>
>They give them as much critical examination as they need to for their
>argument (which you still don't seem to be aware of).
I am aware that their argument is an attack on the western media. But the
truth or falsity of pro-Khmer Rouge reports is still relevant, for two
reasons.
1. The stronger the evidence is that things are really going well in
Cambodia, the more irresponsible the media are for claiming that they are
clearly going very badly. That is part of the reason that the authors
include favorable reports--to argue that the media should have given such
reports more attention and the unfavorable ones less.
2. The book also implies conclusions about what was going in Cambodia, and
even though those conclusions are used for a further purpose, they are
important in their own rights.
>Most of these
>alleged "pro-Khmer Rouge" accounts are anti-Khmer Rouge, another fact
>you somehow failed to notice.
For example the glowing descriptions on pp. 192-3 from four Yugoslav
journalists? 8 1/2-9 hour work day, no food shortages, student workers
"carried away by enthusiasm for their work," "the absence, even in mild
form, of political indoctrination?"
Do you really think that was, in retrospect, anything other than blatantly
dishonest propaganda? Do the authors subject it to the sort of critical
coment the apply to Ponchaud--whose self-description as initially
sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge they question, partly on the grounds that
he didn't write any books attacking the American bombing?
>> >So when I see
>> >someone claiming that Chomsky's actual words don't matter because they
>> >see a purple haze instead, it looks to me like an attempt to avoid
>> >dealing with the actual matter at hand.
I think everyone believes that Chomsky's words matter--but that doesn't
mean agreeing that anything he says about himself is true. In particular,
if he both paints a favorable picture of the state of Cambodia--there was
some killing, similar to what happened when France was liberated from the
Nazis, and some unpleasant aftereffects of U.S. bombing, but basically
everything is now fine--and asserts that the only reason he is discussing
the subject is to make an argument about the media, and he doesn't really
know for sure what happened, readers are entitled to view the
qualifications sceptically.
>> If that is your view, and if you believe in the obligation to denounce
>> one's allies for their misdeeds, why haven't you denounced David Graeber
>> for saying that my actual words don't matter because he knows I'm trying
>> to insult him? He did say precisely that on the question of whether or not
>> I had accused him of being a mad dog.
>I haven't denounced him because you reveal yourself as a hypocrite every
>time you whine about Graeber's mistakenly misquoting you. The "average
>reader" will get the "general impression" that you called Graeber a mad
>dog.
He may get that impression from what Graeber wrote; he won't get it from
what I wrote.
>You say you didn't, and your words show that you didn't? Why should
>I care, when your own standard is to invent an arbitrary "impression"
>and then claim the actual words on the page are irrelevant?
I have made no such claim, as you should know if you have been paying
attention. The words on the page are where my impression came from.
So you are now joining Graeber in taking the position that whether what he
says is true is irrelevant--as long as he is misrepresenting a wicked
person who deserves to be misrepresented, dishonesty is just fine. It
looks as though James is winning our argument at the moment.
>To put it another way, James has had his misrepresentations of Chomsky's
>work pointed out repeatedly to him over a period of at least six or
>seven years. He continues to misrepresent, knowing full well that he is
>misrepresenting it: there is no question but that he is lying.
You think James is deliberately misrepresenting Chomsky's work; he thinks
you are. So far I can find no clear evidence of deliberate dishonesty on
either side of that argument--simply the interpretation of the same data
with two different sets of biases.
>This is
>not the case with David Graeber. Once again you are trying to put a
>maniacal nutcase and the reasonable person being attacked by him on the
>same level.
No--that is what you are doing, save that "maniacal nutcase" is a
considerable overstatement of how unreasonable Graeber is being, and
"reasonable person" neglects James' penchant for trying to offend people
who disagree with him.
>Keep pretending you don't know who started it, and who's
>getting back a tenth part of what he'd been dishing out. By now it's
>become quite clear that you and Jimi are just playing some kind of sick
>good cop / bad cop routine. I have to say it's pretty sad that someone
>who seems reasonable would lend himself to this sort of thing.
Much my reaction to the post I am responding to.
cb...@my-dejanews.com
gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
> dd...@best.com (David Friedman):
> |>| But if you are using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one
> |>| implication is that a particularly able or lucky or hard working
> |>| individual may end up with substantially more resources than his neighbor,
> |>| of production than other people do, won't emerge.
>
> | > The emergence and success of an elite would depend
> | > on public consent; if people didn't like others to
> | > take power over them, they could easily boycott or
> | > ostracize the power-takers (assuming everyone's
> | > playing by liberal rules here and there's no direct
>
> cb...@my-dejanews.com:
> | Suppose I create some popular widget and sell it, and become wealthy as a
> | result. Is that "taking power"? What if I use the wealth to build a factory?
> | What if nobody knew who I was, and therefore couldn't boycott me? More
> | importantly, why would anyone *want* to boycott me? ...
>
> I think I answered the part about wanting to boycott before.
> But to reiterate briefly, if people want to be free, they
> have to assert and defend their freedom. If someone or
> something impinges on their freedom, they have to deal with
> it in some way.
But they don't - I don't know anyone who perceives the scenario above as a
loss of freedom. Further, even if people really did believe this, there's no
reason to expect them to boycott. It's a "public goods" problem.
> The bourgeoisie know this; that's why
> their dogs are presently baying at Bill Gates.
The bourgeoisie has no problem with gross inequalities; but they want to know
that the game is "fair", according to some definition of fair. If the
government presses its case too far, the public will side with Gates - much
as they would side with a lottery winner who was denied his winnings.
Dan Clore
> In article <364DEE...@columbia-center.org>, cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> >David Friedman wrote:
> >> > I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
> >> > private charge of the means of production to send price
> >> > signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
> >> > you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
> >>
> >> It isn't necessary--price signals and markets could work fine in a society
> >> in which almost everyone was a sole proprietor, working for himself and
> >> trading with his neighbors. I suspect most right libertarians would regard
> >> that as a fairly attractive outcome to a libertarian society, although
> >> they may not regard it as the most likely outcome.
> >
> >This is essentially the system proposed by the American
> >anarcho-individualists in the nineteenth century. They considered
> >themselves socialists and so did everyone else, and they were explicitly
> >anti-capitalist. Cf. James J. Martin's _Men Against the State_.
>
> But that is not an outcome which modern American libertarians consider
> socialist.
No, of course they don't: they'd have to know something about the
subject to do so. Instead they prefer to employ Stalinist Newspeak and
want to demonize anyone who points out that it is Stalinist Newspeak.
Dan Clore
> >> But there are lots of passages in the book in which it is clear that the
> >> authors take pro-Khmer Rouge reports seriously without much critical
> >> examination, while they dissect at great length the people who make the
> >> anti-Khmer Rouge reports.
> >
> >They give them as much critical examination as they need to for their
> >argument (which you still don't seem to be aware of).
>
> I am aware that their argument is an attack on the western media. But the
> truth or falsity of pro-Khmer Rouge reports is still relevant, for two
> reasons.
I already said that they deal with this issue as much as they need to.
Is there something unclear in that statement?
> >Most of these
> >alleged "pro-Khmer Rouge" accounts are anti-Khmer Rouge, another fact
> >you somehow failed to notice.
>
> For example the glowing descriptions on pp. 192-3 from four Yugoslav
> journalists? 8 1/2-9 hour work day, no food shortages, student workers
> "carried away by enthusiasm for their work," "the absence, even in mild
> form, of political indoctrination?"
They describe the problems with visitors on guided tours throughout the
section on them. I doubt that anyone needs to read that they "can only
present a partial and perhaps misleading picture" (p. 187), that they
will only be shown what the regime wants them to see (reiterated several
times throughout the section), and so forth, but they do in fact include
those qualifications and reservations.
What I had in mind in fact are accounts like W.J. Sampson's, who was an
economist and statistician who worked for the Lon Nol regime and who
literally fled Cambodia because he feared the Khmer Rouge would execute
him when they took power. James has repeatedly claimed that Sampson is a
"communist" defender of the Khmer Rouge. How dishonest can you get?
> >> >So when I see
> >> >someone claiming that Chomsky's actual words don't matter because they
> >> >see a purple haze instead, it looks to me like an attempt to avoid
> >> >dealing with the actual matter at hand.
>
> I think everyone believes that Chomsky's words matter--but that doesn't
> mean agreeing that anything he says about himself is true.
Now you're trying to change the subject. We're dealing with cases where
Chomsky says A, his critics claim he says Z, and when the fact is
pointed out to them, they go on to say that well yes, he actually said Z
and not A, but Z gives the "general impression to the average reader" of
X, and X can look sort of like A if you squint just right, so that he
really said A after all. I've given you plenty of examples now where
James' literally claims that black is white, and you're response is to
say that well yes, James says black is white, but black is just a little
darker than a very dark grey, and grey is made up of both black and
white, so James was merely exaggerating. It's gotten quite tiresome
already: why don't you apply to same critical spirit to James that you
would to, say, David Graeber?
> >> If that is your view, and if you believe in the obligation to denounce
> >> one's allies for their misdeeds, why haven't you denounced David Graeber
> >> for saying that my actual words don't matter because he knows I'm trying
> >> to insult him? He did say precisely that on the question of whether or not
> >> I had accused him of being a mad dog.
>
> >I haven't denounced him because you reveal yourself as a hypocrite every
> >time you whine about Graeber's mistakenly misquoting you. The "average
> >reader" will get the "general impression" that you called Graeber a mad
> >dog.
>
> He may get that impression from what Graeber wrote; he won't get it from
> what I wrote.
Liar, liar, pants on fire!!!
You seem to be a bit slow on the uptake: I was applying James' (and now
apparently your own) argument about Chomsky to you. If you guys get to
make up ludicrous "impressions" that directly conflict with the text you
pretend your interpreting, then so do I. You think the actual words in
the text should override this "impression" I invented?
> >You say you didn't, and your words show that you didn't? Why should
> >I care, when your own standard is to invent an arbitrary "impression"
> >and then claim the actual words on the page are irrelevant?
>
> I have made no such claim, as you should know if you have been paying
> attention. The words on the page are where my impression came from.
And oddly enough the "impression" those words give you is radically
different from what they say. But we are still to go with this alleged
impression despite that fact, and even to discard what the words
actually say. Meanwhile we are to take every statement made by James
Donald and try to find some way, *any* way, to make it a mere
"exaggeration" or "overstatement". The double standard you're applying
is all too apparent.
> So you are now joining Graeber in taking the position that whether what he
> says is true is irrelevant--as long as he is misrepresenting a wicked
> person who deserves to be misrepresented, dishonesty is just fine.
I'm saying that you're a hypocrite who wants to force one standard on
David Graeber, and a radically different standard on scum like Jimi &
Timi. I've seen Graeber make an occasional mistake, usually when he's
gotten a bit overemotional, but I've never seen him engage in the sort
of disgusting dishonesty that Jimi & Timi make their stock in trade. For
that matter, you just committed exactly the sort of dishonest
misrepresentation that you accuse Graeber of committing. I suppose I
should rake you over the coals for it, but it lacks sport.
> >To put it another way, James has had his misrepresentations of Chomsky's
> >work pointed out repeatedly to him over a period of at least six or
> >seven years. He continues to misrepresent, knowing full well that he is
> >misrepresenting it: there is no question but that he is lying.
>
> You think James is deliberately misrepresenting Chomsky's work; he thinks
> you are. So far I can find no clear evidence of deliberate dishonesty on
> either side of that argument--simply the interpretation of the same data
> with two different sets of biases.
Now that's really impressive: James presents readings radically
inconsistent with the texts he pretends to be discussing, often opposite
to them; I present readings based on analysis of the words on the page,
readings that are consistent with the actual words in the text. Just
"two different sets of biases". I think that says it all about how
seriously your arguments can be taken.
G*rd*n
|>|>In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
|>|>the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion of
|>|>enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red and
|>|>otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be conserved
|>|>with as little change as possible -- even racial equality
|>|>was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian in that no
|>|>deviation of the line went unpunished, because times were
|>|>held to be desperate and the risks of debate and criticism
|>|>unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of course, but many
|>|>people believed in it. Some still do....
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
|>| You are describing fantasy, not history.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
|>You'd have less of a problem with my language if you'd read
|>it more carefully. I'm talking about what people wanted to
|>do, not what they did.
DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
| You said that "no deviation of the line went unpunished," which is simply
| false--lots of people in the 1950s held unorthodox positions of one sort
| or another and didn't get punished. I don't think any significant number
| of people argued that "the risks of debate and criticism (were)
| unaffordable luxuries"--perhaps you can offer examples?
I suppose in a nation of -- what was it, 150 millions? --
there were some examples of almost everything. I'm talking
about my experiences. I got roughed up for _suggesting_
that Senator McCarthy's enterprise might not have been the
best thing for the country, not from a Communist point of
view but from my rather right-wing-liberal teenage point of
view. Grown-ups lost their jobs for such things. As
leftists had been purged from the unions, unions wouldn't
protect the jobs of people who voiced dissident opinions.
One had to swear that one was not a Communist, for a very,
very broad interpretation of the term "Communist" which
included any group which the Federal government asserted was
"Communist", in order to get or hold any government job or
become a member of a union (as I did in 1960 -- it was the
only qualification, in fact). I probably don't need to
remind people of the blacklists. We were all pissing in
ideological bottles. One wasn't always punished by law --
sometimes the instruments were social pressure or informal
actions of authorities.
| McCarthy's claim wasn't that debate and criticism were unaffordable
| luxuries but that lots of people in powerful positions were engaged in an
| actual conspiracy, which is not at all the same thing. That argument was
| made more plausible by the fact that Alger Hiss probably had engaged in an
| actual conspiracy, although there is still some argument on the
| subject--photographing state department documents and turning them over to
| an agent of a foreign power doesn't classify as "debate and criticism."
|
| If the general attitude had been that debate and criticism were
| unaffordable luxuries, McCarthy would not have had to allege membership in
| the CP, and would not have ultimately failed, since there were lots of
| people he could accurately accuse of engaging in debate and criticism. It
| was a little harder to prove they were members of a conspiracy, since lots
| of them weren't.
McCarthy's literal claims were of little account -- his
main project was one of personal ambition. The Truman
administration and its totalitarian allies in business,
labor, and elsewhere had already purged most Communists and
other suspects from the government and public life, so
McCarthy had very little to work with. Hence, he began to
attack conservative bodies like the Army, and the
Establishment, weary of his antics, got rid of him. He was
a vulgar caricature of the totalitarian spirit, a lowly
pawn who tried to play in the big time and was destroyed.
I don't see much point in mentioning him -- although I
suppose we might say the Usenet Cold-Warriors are vulgar
caricatures of totalitarianism as well. Everyone who
disagrees with _them_ is a Communist murderer, too. It
would be funny if it weren't so boring.
G*rd*n
|>|>| But if you are using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one
|>|>| implication is that a particularly able or lucky or hard working
|>|>| individual may end up with substantially more resources than his neighbor,
|>|>| so there is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
|>|>| of production than other people do, won't emerge.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
|>|> The emergence and success of an elite would depend
|>|> on public consent; if people didn't like others to
|>|> take power over them, they could easily boycott or
|>|> ostracize the power-takers....
cb...@my-dejanews.com:
|>| Suppose I create some popular widget and sell it, and become wealthy as a
|>| result. Is that "taking power"? What if I use the wealth to build a factory?
|>| What if nobody knew who I was, and therefore couldn't boycott me? More
|>| importantly, why would anyone *want* to boycott me? ...
gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
|> I think I answered the part about wanting to boycott before.
|> But to reiterate briefly, if people want to be free, they
|> have to assert and defend their freedom. If someone or
|> something impinges on their freedom, they have to deal with
|> it in some way.
| But they don't - I don't know anyone who perceives the scenario above as a
| loss of freedom. Further, even if people really did believe this, there's no
| reason to expect them to boycott. It's a "public goods" problem.
I'm reading and posting from a.s.anarchy at the moment,
where a number of people complain about the oppressive
nature of Capital. I don't have much to say to those who
think everything's pretty much okay, which may be true of
the inmates of some of the other newsgroups this is going
to. Not that I couldn't argue the point, but I got tired
of doing so a long time ago. My experience is that great
differences of wealth are politically oppressive, and I
have theories which go along with that experience, but if
you don't have some corresponding experiences you'll
probably never agree with the theories. Maybe you'll have
them in the future, in which case my writing may serve as
a little subversion and mind poison. But I can't _prove_
that sort of thing to anyone. You have to live it.
G*rd*n:
|> The bourgeoisie know this; that's why
|> their dogs are presently baying at Bill Gates.
| The bourgeoisie has no problem with gross inequalities; but they want to know
| that the game is "fair", according to some definition of fair. If the
| government presses its case too far, the public will side with Gates - much
| as they would side with a lottery winner who was denied his winnings.
The public already favors Gates, according to the polls I've
seen. Even computer folk who hate his person, his company,
and its products generally think the government should leave
him alone. But I don't think that will matter -- this is
bourgeois business, not public business. And there is no
way big operators like banks, insurance companies, state
governments, media, and so on are going to let Bill take
them over by monopolizing their information processing.
That's what they mean by "fair." Gates may be able to
negotiate a peace with them, but he's playing with a much
different arena then the bought columnists in the trade
press and the suckers they put on in the old days.
David Friedman
I had written:
>> If that is your view, and if you believe in the obligation to denounce
>> one's allies for their misdeeds, why haven't you denounced David Graeber
>> for saying that my actual words don't matter because he knows I'm trying
>> to insult him? He did say precisely that on the question of whether or not
>> I had accused him of being a mad dog.
He responded:
>>I haven't denounced him because you reveal yourself as a hypocrite every
>>time you whine about Graeber's mistakenly misquoting you. The "average
>>reader" will get the "general impression" that you called Graeber a mad
>>dog. You say you didn't, and your words show that you didn't? Why should
>>I care, when your own standard is to invent an arbitrary "impression"
>>and then claim the actual words on the page are irrelevant?
You are confusing, deliberately or otherwise, two very different things. I
didn't say "Chomsky says that he is sure the Khmer Rouge did not
deliberately engage in large scale mass murder." That would have been
false, since he doesn't say that. What I said was that the book gave the
impression that Chomsky believed that the Khmer Rouge did not deliberately
engage in large scale mass murder and wanted the reader to share that
belief, even though he took care to say that he did not know for certain
that they had not--and I went into some detail about why it gave that
impression.
The analogous case would have been for David Graeber to initially say that
even though I didn't call him a mad dog, I wanted the reader to think he
was. He would have been wrong--but he would not have been misstating what
I had said, merely expressing an incorrect opinion about it.
If you prefer, a still closer analogy would have been if I had written:
"Chomsky says that the Khmer Rouge didn't kill large numbers of people."
You had replied pointing out that he didn't say that.
And I had responded:
"Maybe he doesn't exactly say that, but why should I care whether or not
he actually said it, he obviously means it?"
That would correspond quite closely to Graeber's reply when I pointed out
that I hadn't called him a mad dog. If I had responded in that way, you
would properly have concluded that I didn't care whether what I said was
true, as long as I believed that the conclusions that followed from any
false statements were themselves true. That is the conclusion I have
reached about Graeber.
James A. Donald
In article <72ierk$h...@panix2.panix.com>, g...@panix.com (G*rd*n)
wrote:
> > In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
> > the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion
> > of enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red
> > and otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be
> > conserved with as little change as possible -- even
> > racial equality was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian
> > in that no deviation of the line went unpunished, because
> > times were held to be desperate and the risks of debate
> > and criticism unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of
> > course, but many people believed in it. Some still
> > do....
On Sat, 14 Nov 1998 00:17:28 -0800, DD...@best.com (David Friedman)
wrote:
> You are describing fantasy, not history. The 1950s were, in
> some important ways, less tolerant than the present--but by
> historical standards, the U.S. (and I presume western
> European societies as well) were very far from
> totalitarian.
Gordon is using non standard language, Marxist language, as he almost
invariably does, language where words mean almost the opposite of what
they are normally understood to mean. Gordon was and is oppressed by
the fact that people were and are able to disagree with him without
having hot irons applied to their testicles, whereas in other
countries he would have been free from this terrible oppression. In
the 1950s, people could not only disagree with him, they could
disapprove without being thought impolite and politically incorrect,
so oppression was even more extreme back in those days.
Gordon uses the same perverse and corrupt language as Marx did, though
unlike Chomsky and Graeber he generally does not use the same perverse
language that Stalin did: Here is Marx explaining what he means by
liberty (Which is pretty much the same thing as Gordon means by
liberty.)
Critique of the Gotha Program:
Bourgeois 'freedom of conscience' is nothing but
the toleration of all possible kinds of religious
freedom of conscience, and that for its part
[socialism] endeavors rather to liberate the
conscience from the witchery of religion."
On the Jewish Question
None of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go
beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a
member of civil society; that is, an individual
separated from the community, withdrawn into
himself, wholly preoccupied with his private
interest and acting in accordance with his
private caprice [...] Thus man was not liberated
from religion; he received religious liberty. He
was not liberated from property; he received the
liberty to own property. He was not liberated
from the egoism of business; he received the
liberty to engage in business.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply,
to our intended abolition of bourgeois property,
the standard of your bourgeois notions of
freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are
but the outgrowth of the conditions of your
bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just
as your jurisprudence is but the will of your
class made into a law for all, a will, whose
essential character and direction are determined
by the economical conditions of existence of your
class.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
ETWtYxIp07ltUqxykuNyhkyagOQSNEsZDXDjT2HF
44A/kQWjqGjzRZExtnbCgnDxs+/Jf1kt32oXofj2F
G*rd*n
| Gordon is using non standard language, Marxist language....
No, James, _Zoroastrian_ language. Where's your code ring?
djarum
<jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> In article <72l7k9$6sd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > dd...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> > >
> > > Using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one implication
> > > is that a ... hard working individual may end up with ... more.
> > > There is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
> > > of production than other people do, won't emerge.
> >
> > You understate. That wealth won't be evenly distributed in a free
> > market is guaranteed. Only public works or charity can alleviate that.
>
> Of course it won't be evenly distributed - but what's to alleviate here?
> Uneven disttribution of *misery* certainly needs alleviation thorugh
> charity or other means; but uneven distribution of *wealth* does not.
There might, however, be a correlation between the uneven
distributions of wealth and misery. If we had an
arrangement in which there was a relatively even
distribution of wealth, maybe there would also be a more
even distribution of misery, obviating the need for charity
or "other means" (i.e. government spending). Of course, now
we have to define "misery."
> Rather, it is a form of diversity, and as such a Good Thing.
By that logic we could implement feudalism or the Indian
caste system, and it would be a Good Thing as well. You
latch onto a buzzword--diversity--and substitute it for
something else--gross inequality.
"Gross inequality" doesn't have the same politically correct
connotations "diversity" does. Yet that is what you mean.
Would you call the former slave system in the American South
"multicultural," and as such also a Good Thing?
--
Protons Electrons Always Cause Explosions
Matt (djarum98 @ usa.net)
Just Wondering
brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
> dd...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> >
> > Using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one implication
> > is that a ... hard working individual may end up with ... more.
> > There is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
> > of production than other people do, won't emerge.
>
> You understate. That wealth won't be evenly distributed in a free
> market is guaranteed. Only public works or charity can alleviate that.
Of course it won't be evenly distributed - but what's to alleviate here?
Uneven disttribution of *misery* certainly needs alleviation thorugh
charity or other means; but uneven distribution of *wealth* does not.
Rather, it is a form of diversity, and as such a Good Thing.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
David Graeber
> In article <72l7k9$6sd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > dd...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> > >
> > > Using price signals and markets to allocate resources, one implication
> > > is that a ... hard working individual may end up with ... more.
> > > There is no guarantee that an elite, whose members control more means
> > > of production than other people do, won't emerge.
> >
> > You understate. That wealth won't be evenly distributed in a free
> > market is guaranteed. Only public works or charity can alleviate that.
>
> Of course it won't be evenly distributed - but what's to alleviate here?
> Uneven disttribution of *misery* certainly needs alleviation thorugh
> charity or other means; but uneven distribution of *wealth* does not.
>
> Rather, it is a form of diversity, and as such a Good Thing.
Well, leaving aside the "charity" issue, allow
me to remark that in a weird way I agree with this.
It would be nice to have a society in which this
could be true. But it seems to me it could only be
one in which economics was not the organizing
principle of society. As long as there is a system
where all values are measured along a uniform
scale, so one can talk about people's "total worth",
or judge success in terms of income, and money is
what ultimately gives them power and influence in
society, then you really can't. "Diversity" isn't
a matter of where you stand along a single
measure of success. "Diversity", to me means
there are _different_ scales of value, and people
can pursue those sorts of value they prefer,
and don't have to think about any of the others
unless they feel like it - rather than there being
just one single game everybody has to play, in
order to even have the power to pursue those other
sorts of value.
It seems to me that in a truly diverse - indeed,
a truly free - society people would not be able
to talk about _either_ equality or inequality because
the sort of possessions people had would be simply
incommensurable.
DG
Just Wondering
DD...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <72gdk3$g...@panix2.panix.com>, gor...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>
> >| ... Socialism without
> >| murderous dictators, an idea about as silly as feudalism without feudal
> >| lords.
> >
> >We know from the many successful examples of communes and
> >cooperatives in the world that socialism -- the ownership
> >and control of the means of production by the working class
> >or the people generally -- is possible.
>
> few hundred people, provided that there is a strong common ideology
> unifying them--medieval monesteries, the Oneida commune, etc. Do we have
> examples much larger than that?
Paraguay under the Jesuits?
|| "Their government is a most admirable thing. [...]
|| *Los Padres* have everything and the people nothing;
|| 'tis the masterpiece of reason and justice."
|| (_Candide_, chapter XIV).
> --
> David Friedman
> DD...@Best.com
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
G*rd*n
|>>>> I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in
|>>>> private charge of the means of production to send price
|>>>> signals around, assuming these signals are a necessary as
|>>>> you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
David Friedman wrote:
|>>> It isn't necessary--price signals and markets could work fine in a society
|>>> in which almost everyone was a sole proprietor, working for himself and
|>>> trading with his neighbors. I suspect most right libertarians would regard
|>>> that as a fairly attractive outcome to a libertarian society, although
|>>> they may not regard it as the most likely outcome.
cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
|>>This is essentially the system proposed by the American
|>>anarcho-individualists in the nineteenth century. They considered
|>>themselves socialists and so did everyone else, and they were explicitly
|>>anti-capitalist. Cf. James J. Martin's _Men Against the State_.
David Friedman wrote:
| > But that is not an outcome which modern American libertarians consider
| > socialist.
| No, of course they don't: they'd have to know something about the
| subject to do so. Instead they prefer to employ Stalinist Newspeak and
| want to demonize anyone who points out that it is Stalinist Newspeak.
I was just looking through my files, and I see the last
excursion into the contradictions between capitalism and
individualism that I participated in occurred last May, so
it may be time for another one, unless the last is too fresh
in everyone's memory, or the heavy breathing of the Cold
Warriors is still too heavy. Things seem quiet at the
moment....
djarum
> I was just looking through my files, and I see the last
> excursion into the contradictions between capitalism and
> individualism that I participated in occurred last May, so
> it may be time for another one, unless the last is too fresh
> in everyone's memory, or the heavy breathing of the Cold
> Warriors is still too heavy. Things seem quiet at the
> moment....
Contradictions between capitalism and individualism? Heresy! Someone call
John Parker.*
The first contradiction that comes to my mind is that in capitalism, the
individual is necessarily defined by his capital. The "individual" is an
abstraction I would use to find out how much autonomy people have--if the
individual is defined solely by himself or herself, then you have perfect
individualism. If there are other factors that determine how a person
will experience life in a society, such as race, sex, or class, then you
have something less than individualism. Of course, no society will ever
be perfectly individualistic, but some are more so than others.
A capitalist society favors those who own and control capital; therefore,
in capitalism the individual is partly defined by whether he or she owns
and controls capital. This is contrary to individualism.
The individualist anarchists proposed a system in which people are not
defined by their capital, but by their own personal activity. This is
much closer to individualism.
*Just kidding. No one call John Parker.
Dan Clore
> If you prefer, a still closer analogy would have been if I had written:
>
> "Chomsky says that the Khmer Rouge didn't kill large numbers of people."
>
> You had replied pointing out that he didn't say that.
>
> And I had responded:
>
> "Maybe he doesn't exactly say that, but why should I care whether or not
> he actually said it, he obviously means it?"
>
> That would correspond quite closely to Graeber's reply when I pointed out
> that I hadn't called him a mad dog. If I had responded in that way, you
> would properly have concluded that I didn't care whether what I said was
> true, as long as I believed that the conclusions that followed from any
> false statements were themselves true. That is the conclusion I have
> reached about Graeber.
Isn't your argument above just a weaker form of James' arguments about
Chomsky?
David Friedman
dja...@127.0.0.1 (djarum) wrote:
>A capitalist society favors those who own and control capital; therefore,
>in capitalism the individual is partly defined by whether he or she owns
>and controls capital. This is contrary to individualism.
Putting aside other issues, why is it ownership and control of capital
that you think of as the essential distinction? I would have said that a
capitalist society favors those who own something that provides services
other people value. That includes capital, it includes land, and it
includes his own labor.
In the particular capitalist society I live in, most income goes to labor,
so unless you include human capital in capital, differences in ability to
get what one wants via the market depend mainly on differences in the
value to other people of the services provided by your labor. And if you
do include human capital, your distinction between the individual and the
capital he owns becomes fuzzy, since how much human capital I have is a
description of me--what I know, how skilled I am at my profession, etc.
David Friedman
David....@yale.edu (David Graeber) wrote:
In modern day America, there are multiple scales of value that matter.
Consider a moderately successful science fiction author. From the
standpoint of most of his neighbors, he is just one more neighbor--neither
much richer nor much poorer than the others. From the standpoint of his
fans, he is a "great man" (perhaps more likely a "great woman" at the
moment). SF fandom in part gets its energy from, as it were, arbitraging
this inconsistency--creating institutions that put the author together
with his fans, thus creating a situation where it is the scale of value in
which the author is important that matters.
There are lots of other examples. Not long ago, one of the most famous
mathematicians in the world was a man who was, I gather, literally
houseless-by choice. He didn't like material possessions, so went from one
place to another--I'm not sure if staying in hotels or with friends.
Modern day America is full of intersecting subcultures with different
standards of value.
It is true, of course, that for most of us money is useful--although how
much money it takes to get the things that are important to you varies a
lot. And it is true that, unless you happen to have inherited enough to
live on, you have to earn enough money to provide you with food and
housing. But I don't see anything objectionable about that--since the
alternative is for other people to be obliged to do the work that provides
you with food and housing and get nothing in exchange. But there are lots
of people who either do what they wish in order to achieve non-income
goals, and make enough money doing it to provide food and
housing--authors, for example--or work at some reasonably easy job to get
enough income and then put their time and energy and thought into
something else that matters to them.
> It seems to me that in a truly diverse - indeed,
>a truly free - society people would not be able
>to talk about _either_ equality or inequality because
>the sort of possessions people had would be simply
>incommensurable.
> DG
cb...@my-dejanews.com
> John Parker.*
There are some tensions, but I don't think you've indentified them.
> The first contradiction that comes to my mind is that in capitalism, the
> individual is necessarily defined by his capital. The "individual" is an
> abstraction I would use to find out how much autonomy people have--if the
> individual is defined solely by himself or herself, then you have perfect
> individualism.
Your statements appear to apply to property in general, so you might as well
say "property" rather than "capital". In fact, a lack of property would not
enhance my autonomy - it would destroy it. Nor would stripping my neighbors
of property enhance my autonomy.
> If there are other factors that determine how a person
> will experience life in a society,
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
tims...@my-dejanews.com
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
> | ...
>
> tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|I haven't really "revised" my opinion, just qualified my claim about it a
>|bit. All I've really said is that socialism still hasn't ever been proven to
>|work as a social system encompassing an entire society, only as tiny
>|subdivisions of otherwise capitalist societies. Your claim is really special
>|pleading, since you're not really talking about socialism as a societal
>|system, but just as a form of co-operation amongst small groups. Even
>|traditional primitive societies rarely extended such co-operation beyond the
>|level of the immediate family. See George Ayittey's work on just how
>|capitalist traditional African society really was, for example.
>
>I'm aware that one can interpret life on Earth back to the prokaryotes as
>"capitalism", given a loose enough definition of capitalism.
Like the one Gorbachev used: a free market in commodities.
>But by capitalism I mean something much more specific, the domination of a
>community through private control of the means of industrial production by
>an elite class -- the common arrangement in Western Europe and North America
>for the last couple of centuries.
A most unusual definition, which doesn't fit very well with the way that the
term has been used historically. By that definition, late 19th-century
Germany was more "capitalist" than Britain at the same time, because
industrial production was more under the "private control" of "an elite
class" in Germany than it was in Britain back then. Yet Bismarck's Second
Reich was where State Socialism was invented, not making it to Britain until
Lloyd George's rule just before WWI.
This definition is also inconsistent with the use of such terms as "free
enterprise" or "free market" as synonyms for "capitalism." I can only
conclude that you define "capitalism" the way you do for obfuscatory
purposes, to protect your own little mystery cult of one. I won't be using
it.
>Such socialism and communism as exist show that human beings don't need to be
>controlled by elites, and don't need their means of production to be contrlled
>by elites. That's the entirety of my point.
I could say the same thing about the "capitalism" of 18th & 19th-century
Britain & America, where there was far less control of the means of production
by elites than in the rest of Europe back then, or in those countries today.
>G*rd*n:
>|>In fact, I believe the intervention of a murderous dictator would preclude
>|>the existence of socialism, as defined above.
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|Not necessarily. Such murderous dictators could easily wage war against the
>|capitalist elements of the society, while protecting the socialist elements.
>
>I don't see how the working class or the people generally can control the
>means of production if they themselves are under the control of a dictator.
I can: Benign neglect.
>G*rd*n:
>|>The extent to which socialism could be scaled up is an open question at
>|>this point.
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|No, it most certainly is not. We know for certain that it doesn't work at
>|the level of the Maoist China. We know for certain that it doesn't work at
>|the level of India. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the level
>|of the Soviet Union. We know for certain that it doesn't work at the level
>|of North Korea, Cuba, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland,
>|Hungary, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, etc., etc., etc.
>
>No, we don't. Every large-scale attempt at constructing a socialist polity
>that I know about has been met with violence or came out of a violent
>situation (by which I mean the static violence of the State as well as
>warfare).
Special pleading. Capitalism was able to succeed in spite of the fact that
it went up against the same obstacles. Why can't Socialism?
>The military organization necessary to participate successfully in public
>violence necessitates military commanders, that is, dictators.
Commanders, yes, dictators, no. For instance, the Chechens recent beat the
Russians with an entirely volunteer force of guerillas that followed their
commanders (or didn't) of their own free will. The Somalis recently did the
same in their battle with the U.S. Rangers in Mogadishu, again with an all-
volunteer force of urban guerillas.
>Clearly, if the constituents of a community are going to own and control its
>means of production, they need to start locally and construct larger structures
>out of local ones. I see no reason to believe that it would be impossible for
>them to do so.
Because you don't understand the role of price signals, because you've never
read your Hayek.
[snip]
>G*rd*n:
>|>As a test case we'd need a sizeable community which did not already have a
>|>bourgeoisie in charge and whose liberal neighbors would leave it alone
>|>(contrary to custom). Otherwise the attempt to establish socialism would
>|>lead to violence and, probably, murderous dictators.
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|Why? Capitalism flourished in spite of the fact that it originated in a
>world in which feudalism was already in charge. Capitalist enclaves had to
>fight for their independence, to liberate themselves from feudal encirclement.
>|The result wasn't murderous dictatorships, but the freest, most tolerant,
>|most peaceful, & most prosperous societies the world has ever seen.
>|
>|Why should socialism have to meet any less of a challenge than capitalism
>|did?
>
>I don't know what your question means -- we're not running an athletic contest
>here.
You have a double standard. You blame certain obstacles for the failure of
socialism - the same obstacles which capitalism has already successfully
overcome. Why should anyone believe in socialism, if it can't do what
capitalism did?
>Capitalism succeeded by starting small, staying out of the way, and cooperating
>with the authorities when possible. Most of the fighting took place much
>later, when the balance of power had already shifted to the capitalist side.
No. Actually, Capitalism succeeded by playing off different feudal powers
against each other. That enabled it to become strong enough to be able to
field its own military forces & liberate itself from feudal rule, notably in
the case of the Dutch Republic.
>G*rd*n:
>|>I don't really see why it's necessary to have a elite in private charge of
>|>the means of production to send price signals around, assuming these signals
>|>are a necessary as you seem to believe. I'm not sure why that was included.
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|The very way you frame this question shows how profoundly you misunderstand
>|the very nature of the problem of rational economic calculation, which can't
>|possibly be solved by socialism. Price signals aren't sent around by an
>|"elite in private charge of the means of production." They're sent by
>|consumers who choose what & what not to buy with their hard-earned wealth.
>
>That's exactly my point. The entities receiving price signals don't have to
>be elites any more than the senders do.
"Elites" have nothing to do with this, except as your obfuscatory "definition"
of capitalism has it.
>The bourgeoisie are superfluous, just as the kings and princes of feudalism
>were.
Feudal rulers weren't "superfluous". They were parasitic, to some extent,
but they served some legitimate purposes, especially in the early feudal era.
They became less functional & more parasitic over time, but that doesn't
mean that they could be simply done away with.
There is no such thing as the "rule of the bourgeoisie" equivalent to the rule
of kings & princes under feudalism.
>Their upkeep is the price of superstition, not necessity.
Not proven by you, that's for sure. Nor will it ever be proven, until you
prove what they can be replaced with. Which won't be likely until you can
come up with an accurate account of the current regime.
Tim Starr
djarum
Friedman) wrote:
> In article <djarum-1611...@beac610-0b03-095.bu.edu>,
> dja...@127.0.0.1 (djarum) wrote:
>
> >A capitalist society favors those who own and control capital; therefore,
> >in capitalism the individual is partly defined by whether he or she owns
> >and controls capital. This is contrary to individualism.
>
> Putting aside other issues, why is it ownership and control of capital
> that you think of as the essential distinction? I would have said that a
> capitalist society favors those who own something that provides services
> other people value. That includes capital, it includes land, and it
> includes his own labor.
That is too generalized for me. You can call any worker with a 401K plan
a capitalist, or for that matter, you can call any worker at all a
capitalist (he is, after all, "investing" his labor). But then you lose
the ability to make useful distinctions. A capitalist society is a
stratified society; it is one in which some groups have distinct amounts
of wealth and power, amounts which correlate with the capital (the money
and property) that they own.
> In the particular capitalist society I live in, most income goes to labor,
> so unless you include human capital....
There is no such thing as human capital. To ask me to accept that is to
ask me to accept that human beings can be treated as commodities, and want
to be treated that way, even in the absence of coercion. It so happens
that I think the opposite; I think that, given freedom, people are
generally inclined not to think of their time and energy as capital to be
invested, but as their life, as a brief chance to pursue what makes them
happy. Economic considerations must certainly play a role in this, but
under capitalism, for many people, economic considerations subsume all
others.
The degree to which economic considerations dominate a person depends on
the degree to which he is a capitalist. A pure capitalist, who does no
labor at all, has almost perfect liberty (absent State meddling). A pure
proletariat, who has no capital to live off of, is a de facto slave.
Today the distinctions are not usually so clear, but they are still worth
making, because the overall nature of capitalist society has not changed.
The distinctions can be clarified, however, if we include Third World
laborers in the capitalist system.
Under capitalism, individuals will experience life in different ways,
depending on their capital. I think in this case you may define "capital"
however you wish, including "human capital." I could say that under
capitalism, individuals will experience life in different ways, depending
on what they own that provides services other people value. Again, it
depends on what they own, not who they are. The distinction remains clear
even if we include "human capital": the self becomes commodified, its
value determined by its material worth to others.
I don't mean to say economic considerations should be irrelevant--I don't
think they can be. Nevertheless, I don't think a libertarian social
system should revolve around them, as capitalism does. Capitalism defines
the individual according to his capital, which, I think, is unnecessary,
just as it is unnecessary to define him according to his color, his class,
or his origin.
brian_n...@yahoo.com
> DD...@best.com (David Friedman) wrote:
>
> > Socialism works up to a scale of a
> > few hundred people, provided that there is a strong common ideology
> > unifying them--medieval monesteries, the Oneida commune, etc. Do we have
> > examples much larger than that?
The French, German, and British have proven that socialized medicine works
for entire nations. My point is that socialism has successful and beneficial
nation-wide applications. The USA's admission-free national forests are
an example of a successfully socialized resourc. The USA's largely
toll-free interstate highway system is another successfully socialized
resource. The USA's tuition-free public schools are socialized at the state
or county level. Socialism clearly works on a grand scale when supported by
taxes from a profitable free market.
jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald) wrote:
>
> United Airlines is certainly not what Gordon means by socialism.
Socialism is about equality, or more specifically, equal access to resources.
Just because a company is employee-owned does not mean that it is socialized.
Even employee-owned companies typically retain gaping discrepancies in pay,
stock ownership, command, priviledge, and benefits. Socialism is about
equality. Corporations generally espouse no such goal.
tims...@my-dejanews.com
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>|>| ...
>
>g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>|>|> ... Tim's remarks, like James Donald's, attempt to force all political
>|>|>discussions back into a Cold-War paradigm; it's obvious that they're more
>|>|>comfortable with a 50s-style conservative-totalitarian approach to
>|>|>political questions...
>
>tims...@my-dejanews.com:
>|>|"Conservative-totalitarian"? What's that supposed to mean?
>
>g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>|>In the 1950s, at the ideological height of the Cold War,
>|>the liberal bourgeois states were promoted as a bastion of
>|>enlightenment and humanity surrounded by hostile Red and
>|>otherwise-colored hordes. The bastion had to be conserved
>|>with as little change as possible -- even racial equality
>|>was suspect. Its spirit was totalitarian in that no
>|>deviation of the line went unpunished, because times were
>|>held to be desperate and the risks of debate and criticism
>|>unaffordable luxuries. Mostly hogwash, of course, but many
>|>people believed in it. Some still do....
>
>|You are describing fantasy, not history. The 1950s were, in some important
>|ways, less tolerant than the present--but by historical standards, the
>|U.S. (and I presume western European societies as well) were very far from
>|totalitarian.
>
>implement totalitarianism in the United States, because of
>its Constitution and traditions. Nevertheless, great reams
>of propaganda were produced, purges were conducted, secret
>police were sent forth, and dissidents were punished.
Propaganda, purges, & secret police are insufficient to prove something
totalitarian. Totalitarianism means that no area of human life is considered
beyond the scope of State control. A few centuries ago, it was known as
"despotism".
>As I lived through the period, I'm pretty familiar with it. And it's
>well-recorded for those who want to look into it.
>
>DD...@best.com (David Friedman):
>|For example, you write "even racial equality was suspect." Are you arguing
>|that virtually all developed societies over the past few thousand years
>|were totalitarian? Few had as few restrictions on rights as western
>|societies in the 1950's. No slavery, women in almost all respects the
>|legal equals of men, ... .
>
>I said racial equality was suspect, not that efforts to achieve it were
>suppressed outright. In the 1950s people often criticized Civil Rights
>activists as "Communists" or "helping the Communists."
That's because back then civil rights activists often WERE commies. Paul
Robeson, for example, was an open Stalinist. The CPUSA thought of blacks as
America's proletariat & applied all of their techniques of revolutionary
propaganda & agitation to the cause of racial equality. Luckily, most blacks
didn't fall for communism back then. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers were
an openly communist "civil rights" movement.
[snip]
>Cold Warriors, even liberal ones, often (not always) took the position that
>dealing with racial problems, like everything else, should be subordinated to
>the effort to make the world safe for Capital.
No. Actually, their position was that it ought to be subordinated to the
effort to make the world safe from communist aggression. That you would
describe this as making "the world safe for Capital" shows your bias in favor
of communism & against the free world.
>The desire that everything be subordinated was the totalitarianism...
No, it was false. They didn't, for example, want religion subordinated. They
militantly defended freedom of religion. They didn't want academic freedom
subordinated - lots of commie academics remained safely entrenched in their
ivory towers, busily cranking out the texts with which they indoctrinated the
next generation of commies.
Tim Starr
tims...@my-dejanews.com
brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
>tims...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>>brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>>Capitalism is based on private property and competition (which
>>>necessarily creates winners and losers).
>>
>>See: "THE FIXED QUANTITY OF WEALTH FALLACY..."
>
>I realize the free market isn't a zero-sum game.
Sure you don't. You just say things that imply that it is.
>Please don't insult me.
Don't say stupid things, & I won't call you stupid.
>The free market creates losers...
Nope. There's that zero-sum mentality again.
>...hence personal bankruptcy which is at a record high in the USA (US
>Congress is pursuing tightening personal bankruptcy law which would mask
>the rising tide of personal failures). You libertarians can bury your heads
>in the sand, but we liberals know that only welfare can alleviate the
>suffering caused by this.
Funny, how personal bankruptcy is only at a record high in the USA after about
3 decades of liberal policies.
>I advocate a Euro-style re-distributive free market.
Great! Double-digit unemployment, here we come!
>In first world Europe, the ambitious are free to get rich through private
>enterprise. In first world Europe, the poor losers are guaranteed lodging,
>food, and medicine.
There's a lot more of 'em, too.
>Lord help me if I seriously hurt myself outdoors without my wallet; without
>my insurance card I'm fucked in the USA if injured!
Bullshit. Indigent patients must be treated at any county hospital in the
USA, by Federal law. It's against Federal law for any hospital to turn away
patients for inability to pay.
>Euro-style harmony of enterprise and welfare is superior.
Except when it comes to little things like unemployment rates & standards of
living.
>American winner-take-all competition is inferior. That the USA has more
>violence and infant mortality than first world Europe is all the proof I
>need to back my claim.
Americans of non-Hispanic West European descent have just as little violence &
infant mortality as West Europeans do. America has more violence & infant
mortality than Europe because we have more violent people & people who don't
take care of their babies than Western Europe does.
tims...@my-dejanews.com
brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
>"Michael A. Clem" <mac....@juno.com> wrote:
>>
>>brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>>The ruinous complications of money occur regardless of
>>>who prints it. What difference could it make who issues money?
>>
>> A pretty big difference, especially if the money supply, credit, and
>>interest rates aren't controlled by a centralized agency.
>
>Money enables our present laizes faire economy.
Good!
>This economy unconditionally favors expansion...
Nonsense. Overexpansion is economically penalized, ruthlessly. Just ask the
people of Thailand, Japan, or the rest of Southeast Asia who've been suffering
from the Asian Flu. If your claim were correct, then the Japanese stock
market wouldn't have crashed from just under 40,000 to less than 18,000 since
1989. There wouldn't be any such thing as the business cycle.
>destroys the ecosystem...
Only where property rights are inadequately defined & enforced.
>imposes class hardship...
Nonsense.
>penalizes traditional tribal culture...
By replacing it with upward mobility in one's standards of living.
>and distracts us with idolized bean counting.
You don't seem capable of counting very many beans.
>Without money the unlubricated gears of our shameful economy would grind to a
>halt.
Right. That makes it a good thing.
>Please explain how these ruinous effects of money can be alleviated with
>privately issued money.
Easy: they're not the effects of money, nor are all of them ruinous.
>To me money is always bad.
Then send all of yours to me.
>Obviously I'm not alone, since the saying, "Money is the root of all evil" was
>likely coined long ago...
What's the root of money? You need to go read Francisco D'Anconia's "Money"
speech in "Atlas Shrugged".
Just Wondering
dja...@127.0.0.1 (djarum) wrote:
> In article <72o2ei$cka$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Just Wondering
> <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > > That wealth won't be evenly distributed in a free
> > > market is guaranteed. Only public works or charity can alleviate that.
> >
> > Of course it won't be evenly distributed - but what's to alleviate here?
> > charity or other means; but uneven distribution of *wealth* does not.
>
> distributions of wealth and misery. If we had an
> arrangement in which there was a relatively even
> distribution of wealth, maybe there would also be a more
> even distribution of misery, obviating the need for charity
> or "other means" (i.e. government spending).
Such arrangements invariably have the opposite effect:
they fail in making wealth distribution more even -
but they reduce the amount of wealth. Because of
that, there is more misery to be unevenly distributed.
The best way to have no uneven distribution of misery
is to have no misery. And then there's no harm at all in
uneven distribution of wealth. Elimination of misery is
quite achievable in conditions of economic freedom:
"a rising tide lifts all boats". It is almost achieved in
all wealthy countries, even now.
>Of course, now we have to define "misery."
I mean by it severe physiological discomfort caused by poverty:
lack of sustaining food (at least such as potatoes or rice or
bread); lack of warmth, so that one shivers through the night;
less than eight hours of sleep - that kind of thing.
I mean the same privations that would make one pity an animal.
I *don't* mean by misery, in this context, pangs of envy
caused by failing to keep up with the Joneses. There's no
need, or possibility, to alleviate these by charity...
> > Rather, it is a form of diversity, and as such a Good Thing.
> By that logic we could implement feudalism or the Indian
> caste system, and it would be a Good Thing as well.
By that *one* criterion, it *would* - but it lacks other
and more important virtues: opportunity, social mobility -
and more basic than that, personal *freedom*.
Under a caste system, people are beaten or killed if they
do things not allowed to their caste.
That's what is wrong in a caste system - coercion, unfreedom - and
*not* the inequality.
As for wealth, a brahmin is often poorer than a low-caste person.
>You latch onto a buzzword--diversity--and substitute it for
> something else--gross inequality.
You use the loaded term "gross" to disparage a valuable form
of diversity. Give a dog a bad name and hang it.
So, whenever I say "equality", I'll add "drab" or
"dreary", OK?
Inequality *is* a form a diversity: the more levels of wealth,
the more mutually enriching lifestyles.
E.g., many new comforts and pleasures of
civilization are at first not affordable to all. Under
a system of material equality, they would never *become*
affordable. But pioneered first by the rich, they
soon become affordable to most people. This is not
a conjecture, but a historical pattern.
Also, the existence of many levels of
wealth is an incentive for people to be productive
and enterprising - because they can better themselves.
(This assumes, of course, social mobility).
But quite aside from this economic argument, I would
rather see *unequal* distribution of wealth, even
by lottery - than drab equality.
> "Gross inequality" doesn't have the same politically correct
> connotations "diversity" does. Yet that is what you mean.
No, I don't.
Say: "great inequality" - and I'll agree that I mean it.
But I see nothing "gross" about it! It is beautiful.
It enriches the life of all, not just the rich.
The outside, at least, of any palace
belongs to everybody - and I'd rather see a palace from
my window than another house just like mine.
> Would you call the former slave system in the American South
> "multicultural,"
Actually, not: the slaves were gradually acculturated
into the master culture, the diversity was decreasing.
But that is really beside the point, see below.
>and as such also a Good Thing?
Slavery is an absolute evil. Freedom is an absolute right.
It is not negotiable.
Diversity, including material inequality,
is merely a social desideratum, one of many.
Sordid equality of lifestyles is neither.
brian_n...@yahoo.com
>
> Capitalism succeeded by playing off different feudal powers
> against each other. That enabled it to become strong enough to be able to
> field its own military forces & liberate itself from feudal rule, notably in
> the case of the Dutch Republic.
I'm unfamiliar with Dutch history. What happened?
> There is no such thing as the "rule of the bourgeoisie" equivalent to the
> rule of kings & princes under feudalism.
Sure there is: corporatism. That's what we have here in the USA.
Companies typically out-bribe other constituents in federal politics.
In today's Republican Congress sometimes entire bills are written by industry
and then rubber-stamped by the politicians.
David Friedman
>David Friedman wrote:
>
>> If you prefer, a still closer analogy would have been if I had written:
>>
>> "Chomsky says that the Khmer Rouge didn't kill large numbers of people."
>>
>> You had replied pointing out that he didn't say that.
>>
>> And I had responded:
>>
>> "Maybe he doesn't exactly say that, but why should I care whether or not
>> he actually said it, he obviously means it?"
>>
>> That would correspond quite closely to Graeber's reply when I pointed out
>> that I hadn't called him a mad dog. If I had responded in that way, you
>> would properly have concluded that I didn't care whether what I said was
>> true, as long as I believed that the conclusions that followed from any
>> false statements were themselves true. That is the conclusion I have
>> reached about Graeber.
>
>Isn't your argument above just a weaker form of James' arguments about
>Chomsky?
I don't think James misstates what Chomsky said--he merely adds to what
Chomsky said his interpretation of why. One of the points James makes
repeatedly, in posts and I think on his web page, is that Chomsky
deliberately writes in a way that lets him claim not to have actually said
the things he imples.
So James' position is consistent with starting out with the statement "why
should I care whether or not he actually said it, he obviously means it."
But it isn't consistent with first lying about what he said, then
defending the lie with "why should I care ... ." That is what Graeber
did--putting aside the question of whether it was a lie or an error. There
is a big difference between saying "it doesn't matter what he said" and
saying "it doesn't matter whether I tell the truth about what he said."
If someone I am arguing with states facts correctly, but also says what
conclusions he draws from them, it is a whole lot easier to proceed than
if he states facts incorrectly because he doesn't care. The latter appears
to be Graeber's position, and I can see no evidence that it is
James'--despite your apparent opinion to the contrary.
Note that when I objected that something on James' page was, although not
literally false, misleading, his response was that he didn't think it was
very misleading, but would change it. When I point out to Graeber that he
has attributed things to me that I didn't say, in two different cases, his
response was not "oops, I was wrong. But my mistake didn't make much
difference because ... ." Not even close.
David Friedman
>That is too generalized for me. You can call any worker with a 401K plan
>a capitalist, or for that matter, you can call any worker at all a
>capitalist (he is, after all, "investing" his labor). But then you lose
>the ability to make useful distinctions. A capitalist society is a
>stratified society; it is one in which some groups have distinct amounts
>of wealth and power, amounts which correlate with the capital (the money
>and property) that they own.
But it doesn't correlate very well. A retired person who is living on
capital that generates an income of $40,000/year has less economic power
than a skilled computer programmer earning $80,000/year.
We may be talking at cross purposes with regard to power. One way in which
you might think a capitalist has power is that he decides what gets
produced. But that is, for the most part, an illusion--if he doesn't
produce what the customers want to buy, he is likely to end up without
much capital. Indeed, a pure capitalist--someone who lives on the return
from his capital, as opposed to someone who lives in part on the return
from his labor managing his capital--has essentially no control over what
that capital is used to produce. He simply invests it wherever he thinks
he can get the highest expected return.
A different sense in which you might think a capitalist has power, and the
sense I was responding to, is that he has an income, which he can
spend--hence he has some control, as a consumer, over what gets produced,
and has the ability to make sure that he ends up with the goods he wants
(within the limit of his income). But in that sense, what is special is
not being a capitalist but having a high income. There are lots of people
with high incomes who are not capitalists, and some capitalists who do not
have high incomes. So the natural distinction is by income, not capital.
>
>> In the particular capitalist society I live in, most income goes to labor,
>> so unless you include human capital....
>
>There is no such thing as human capital. To ask me to accept that is to
>ask me to accept that human beings can be treated as commodities, and want
>to be treated that way, even in the absence of coercion.
This is like getting upset because someone is in favor of
discrimination--without realizing that he is talking about pattern
recognition software that can or cannot discriminate between an M and an
N. Human capital is a useful concept in economics, and has nothing to do
with treating human beings as commodities.
>The degree to which economic considerations dominate a person depends on
>the degree to which he is a capitalist. A pure capitalist, who does no
>labor at all, has almost perfect liberty (absent State meddling). A pure
>proletariat, who has no capital to live off of, is a de facto slave.
That is wrong for the reason I just pointed out. Compare a pure capitalist
whose capital generates an income of $20,000/year with a skilled worker,
doing the kind of work he enjoys, and being paid five times that.
tims...@my-dejanews.com
wrote:
>
> > >> 3. It is obvious from _After the Cataclysm_ that Chomsky regarded the
> > >> Khmer Rouge government, on the whole, in a friendly fashion, and the U.S.
> > >> government in a very unfriendly fashion.
> > >
> > >It is only "obvious" if you discount what the book actually says. For
> > >example: "It is a common error, as we have pointed out several times, to
> > >interpret opposition to U.S. intervention and aggression as support for
> > >the programs of its victims, a useful device for state propagandists but
> > >one that often has no basis in fact" (p. 256).
> >
> > The context of that particular quote is the opposite of what you are
> > discussing. The authors' point there is that the fact that Lacouture
> > opposed U.S. foreign policy doesn't imply that he was friendly to the
> > Khmer Rouge--and therefor one shouldn't trust his denunciations of the
> > Khmer Rouge on the grounds that he is making admissions against his
> > beliefs.
>
> Chomsky, responding to a piece by Walter Goodman claiming that a Chomsky
> article in Dissent ("The Cynical Farce About Cambodia") "recalls"
> support in the peace movement "for a Communist victory", says:
> "Documentation of the susceptibility of intellectuals to fabricated
> stories of 'Hun atrocities' in World War I does not 'recall' support for
> the Kaiser. Documentation of the many falsehoods that have appeared with
> regard to Cambodia does not entail or 'recall' support for its present
> regime...
Disanalogy. The "Hun atrocities" of WWI were mostly fabricated, & were not
discovered to be fabricated until after the war. The Khmer Rouge democide
was not fabricated, & was discovered to not have been fabricated while it was
still going on.
Again, the proper analogy to Chomsky's cover-up of the Khmer Rouge democide is
not to the discovery of fabricated atrocity stories about "Huns" in WWI, after
the war was over, but to the refugee testimony of Jews who managed to escape
the Holocaust. If Chomsky had been alive during WWII & done the same thing
for the Nazis that he did for the Khmer Rouge, he would've been casting doubt
on the Jews for being biased, lambasting the "Jewish media" for exagerrating
the crimes of the Nazis, & he would've given a speech in Berlin during the
Spanish Civil War, cheering the Fascists on to victory, calling theirs "the
cause of humanity & justice".
Clearly, anyone that did that would be a Nazi sympathizer & apologist. Just
as clearly, the fact that Chomsky did that for the Khmer Rouge makes him a
commie sympathizer & apologist.
Tim Starr
Just Wondering
David....@yale.edu (David Graeber) wrote:
> In article <72o2ei$cka$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Just Wondering
> <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <72l7k9$6sd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> > brian_n...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > [...] That wealth won't be evenly distributed in a free
> > > market is guaranteed. Only public works or charity can alleviate that.
> >
> > Of course it won't be evenly distributed - but what's to alleviate here?
> > charity or other means; but uneven distribution of *wealth* does not.
> >
>
> me to remark that in a weird way I agree with this.
> It would be nice to have a society in which this
> could be true. But it seems to me it could only be
> one in which economics was not the organizing
> principle of society.
I suspect that I more or less agree with the underlying
thought here. But economics is not the *sole* organizing
principle of society, even now. There are many others.
It is, of course, an important organizing principle, and
must remain important for the foreseeable future.
Not only does economics keep us alive, but it is a vital
form of human contact with reality.
But that does not mean that it has to occupy all our
attention. As long as one's stomach is
functioning well, one does not need to think of
one's stomach.
>As long as there is a system
> where all values are measured along a uniform
> scale, so one can talk about people's "total worth",
One *can* talk that way, as long as
there's freedom of speech. I don't think I have
ever used that expression, and I can't recall hearing
it, though I must have.
This locution is far from representing a cultural
norm. Of course wealth *is* respected in our society -
but not as much as that. Probably Elvis Presley was rich,
but surely his cult is out of proportion to his riches.
Probably not even the most ardent admirer of wealth
thinks that Bill Gates is worth a hundred
billion times more respect than Mother Teresa.
But if someone does think that, he is welcome to
that opinion - why should I care?
There's no need to redistribute wealth merely to deprive
the occasional wealth-worshipper of a chance to practice
his religion. One can say more: because economics *is*
important, those of us who prefer to think of other
things must appreciate the existence of those who
specialize in money to the extent of worshipping it.
> or judge success in terms of income, and money is
> what ultimately gives them power and influence in
> society, then you really can't. "Diversity" isn't
> a matter of where you stand along a single
> measure of success.
Yes, wealth is merely one axis in the multidimensional
space of social diversity. Still, it is *an* axis, and
the space would be flattened if that axis were to
collapse into a point.
Even more importantly, any attempt to collapse it tends
to collapse all other dimensions, mobilizing all society into
an army marching towards that one unreachable,
uninteresting, and undesirable goal, equality of wealth.
>"Diversity", to me means
> there are _different_ scales of value, and people
> can pursue those sorts of value they prefer,
> and don't have to think about any of the others
> unless they feel like it - rather than there being
> just one single game everybody has to play, in
> order to even have the power to pursue those other
> sorts of value.
I *almost* agree. I have only one qualification: while
playing these other games, one must still
contribute enough socially useful work to pay for
one's upkeep: a modest but necessary requirement.
And "socially useful work" can, in this
context, be defined as "activity that other people are
willing to pay for". That's where economics comes in.
It is, however, an easy requirement, for a person of
modest needs, in an affluent society (and making society
affluent is another point where economics comes in).
Otherwise, I agree with your "must" - and it seems to
me that we are almost there, even in our terribly imperfect
world: e.g., here we are, on Usenet, playing one of those
alternative games you are speaking of.
> It seems to me that in a truly diverse - indeed,
> a truly free - society people would not be able
> to talk about _either_ equality or inequality because
> the sort of possessions people had would be simply
> incommensurable.
This is very, very well put! Thank you, I've learned
something.
But again, it seems to me that this issue of equality
is *already* becoming anachronistic.
djarum
> In article <djarum-1611...@beac610-0b03-095.bu.edu>,
> dja...@127.0.0.1 (djarum) wrote:
> > Contradictions between capitalism and individualism? Heresy! Someone call
> > John Parker.*
>
> There are some tensions, but I don't think you've indentified them.
I remember another line of reasoning Gorson used in May. Forgive me for
trying something new.
> > The first contradiction that comes to my mind is that in capitalism, the
> > individual is necessarily defined by his capital. The "individual" is an
> > abstraction I would use to find out how much autonomy people have--if the
> > individual is defined solely by himself or herself, then you have perfect
> > individualism.
>
> Your statements appear to apply to property in general, so you might as well
> say "property" rather than "capital". In fact, a lack of property would not
> enhance my autonomy - it would destroy it. Nor would stripping my neighbors
> of property enhance my autonomy.
I say "capital" because it refers to things that may not be physically
tangible--liquid assets, capital stock, etc. I think you could call them
property as well. I want to use "capital," however, because I'm
specifically addressing capitalism, a system that defines individuals
according to their capital. "Property" may mean different things in
different societies, so I'm not using it here.
If someone took away your capital right now, it wouldn't do wonders for
your autonomy. I'm not saying people should be deprived of their stuff.
I'm describing a social relation, in which ownership of capital is an
important factor in determining how certain people live in comparison to
others.
For example, if you lived in the kind of community Proudhon advocated, you
would likely enjoy small-scale private property. Yet you would not own or
control large, collective enterprises--those would be managed by mutual
assosiations. In mutualism, the individual defines his property through
voluntary exchange; in capitalism, the individual is defined by his
capital. His occupation, his social status, where he lives--all these
will be influenced by his relationship to Capital.
djarum
<jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Slavery is an absolute evil. Freedom is an absolute right.
> It is not negotiable.
Oh really? My impression is that slavery is permissible in
"anarcho"-capitalism. I read that Murray Rothbard condones child slavery,
but I don't know if that's correct.
> Diversity, including material inequality,
> is merely a social desideratum, one of many.
>
> Sordid equality of lifestyles is neither.
That's certainly not what I want. I'm only opposed to gross
inequality--not gross as in "disgusting," but as in "tremendous."
Diversity is great, variances in equality are great; gross inequality,
what we see in capitalism, is not. Because inequality on this scale
translates into power.
G*rd*n
| >I said its spirit was totalitarian. It was not easy to
| >implement totalitarianism in the United States, because of
| >its Constitution and traditions. Nevertheless, great reams
| >of propaganda were produced, purges were conducted, secret
| >police were sent forth, and dissidents were punished.
| Propaganda, purges, & secret police are insufficient to prove something
| totalitarian. Totalitarianism means that no area of human life is considered
| beyond the scope of State control. A few centuries ago, it was known as
| "despotism".
I'm not trying to prove anything. One thing I've learned
on the Net is that you can't prove anything to anyone,
especially in the area of politics. I'm describing my
experiences and saying how I understand them. Some people
will be able to relate to them, others won't. To reiterate,
I don't think totalitarianism was successfully implemented
in America, but I think a lot of people wanted it and that
they influenced people's lives quite a bit, mostly for the
worse. One effect of the desire for totalitarianism was the
near impossiblity of discussing anything without casting it
into an us-versus-them binary contest, where "us" was the
liberal bourgeois capitalist state, and everything said was
propaganda -- such as the rest of your article, which I
won't comment on except to contradict one thing:
| ... They didn't, for example, want religion subordinated. They
| militantly defended freedom of religion. ....
As it happens I personally witnessed a drive to oust "Red"
clerics from churches, supposedly emanating from just
down-home ordinary folks, but later found to be funded by
rich people. You also mentioned academics; there was quite
a bit of action around driving wrongthinkers out of the
schools. In New York State one had to take a "loyalty
oath" (to Capital) to be a teacher, as I already
mentioned.
You should read up on the period sometime.
djarum
> In article <djarum-1611...@beac610-0b03-095.bu.edu>,
> dja...@127.0.0.1 (djarum) wrote:
>
> [cut]
>
> > A pure
> > proletariat, who has no capital to live off of, is a de facto slave.
>
> A person who has just finished graduate school in, say, law, busines, or
> medicine, may have no capital in your sense. Indeed, she may owe a great
> deal of money in student loans. Is such a person a "de facto" slave? It
> would seem that something else, besides a lack of capital, is necessary for
> that.
She has a degree, however. As I implied before, the distinctions are
rarely as clear as Marx would have them. Somehow that got snipped.
G*rd*n
| >But by capitalism I mean something much more specific, the domination of a
| >community through private control of the means of industrial production by
| >an elite class -- the common arrangement in Western Europe and North America
| >for the last couple of centuries.
| A most unusual definition, which doesn't fit very well with the way that the
| term has been used historically. By that definition, late 19th-century
| Germany was more "capitalist" than Britain at the same time, because
| industrial production was more under the "private control" of "an elite
| class" in Germany than it was in Britain back then. Yet Bismarck's Second
| Reich was where State Socialism was invented, not making it to Britain until
| Lloyd George's rule just before WWI.
|
| This definition is also inconsistent with the use of such terms as "free
| enterprise" or "free market" as synonyms for "capitalism." I can only
| conclude that you define "capitalism" the way you do for obfuscatory
| purposes, to protect your own little mystery cult of one. I won't be using
| it.
| ...
As a matter of fact I don't see any reason to consider
capitalism (as I define it, of course -- the domination
of a community by Capital) with free enterprise or free
markets, although there has been a certain amount of
intersection. In the United States, many of the
bourgeoisie regard government intervention (that is, the
anti-trust laws) necessary to keep them together.
I don't regard Bismarck's German Empire as socialistic in
any way -- neither the people nor the working class had any
control or ownership of the means of production. The main
objection to calling it "capitalist" would be its hangover
of feudalistic traditions and institutions. While
capitalist organizations usually possess some feudal
remnants -- the organization chart of a typical corporation
has the same form as the order of battle of a medieval army
-- their prevalence in Germany in the form of the Kaiser
and a powerful aristocratic military class was atypical.
If these views are the cult of one, so be it. You could
call it "individualism."