Context for the Bailout - Confessions of a Monopolist

[jaqeboy]

Except with capitalism it was the other way around: The word originally referred to a non-free system—not mercantilism, but the feudalistic factory system created in the 1800s. Then the capitalists themselves conflated the term with the free market in order to hide their true nature and gain support among free marketeers.

Another term for "true" capitalism might be industrial feudalism or industrial manorialism.

References I can read up on you and Jack's original meaning of capitalism?

Another usage from outside the modern libertarian movement, but an important input into our understanding of the state and it's US implementation: From excerpt of C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite; The Higher Circles, Oxford Press, 1956:

As each of these domains becomes enlarged and centralized, the consequences of its activities become greater, and its traffic with the others increases. The decisions of a handful of corporations bear upon military and political as well as upon economic developments around the world. The decisions of the military establishment rest upon and grievously affect political life as well as the very level of economic activity. The decisions made within the political domain determine economic activities and military programs. There is no longer, on the one hand, an economy, and, on the other hand, a political order containing a military establishment unimportant to politics and to money-making. There is a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions and decisions. On each side of the world-split running through central Europe and around the Asiatic rimlands, there is an ever-increasing interlocking of economic, military, and political structures. If there is government intervention in the corporate economy, so is there corporate intervention in the governmental process. In the structural sense, this triangle of power is the source of the interlocking directorate that is most important for the historical structure of the present.

The fact of the interlocking is clearly revealed at each of the points of crisis of modern capitalist society-slump, war, and boom. In each, men of decision are led to an awareness of the interdependence of the major institutional orders. In the nineteenth century, when the scale of all institutions was smaller, their liberal integration was achieved in the automatic economy, by an autonomous play of market forces, and in the automatic political domain, by the bargain and the vote. It was then assumed that out of the imbalance and friction that followed the limited decisions then possible a new equilibrium would in due course emerge. That can no longer be assumed, and it is not assumed by the men at the top of each of the three dominant hierarchies.

For given the scope of their consequences, decisions-and indecisions-in any one of these ramify into the others, and hence top decisions tend either to become coordinated or to lead to a commanding indecision. It has not always been like this. When numerous small entrepreneurs made up the economy, for example, many of them could fail and the consequences still remain local; political and military authorities did not intervene. But now, given political expectations and military commitments, can they afford to allow key units of the private corporate economy to break down in slump? Increasingly, they do intervene in economic affairs, and as they do so, the controlling decisions in each order are inspected by agents of the other two, and economic, military, and political structures are interlocked.

*He's definitely not talking about a free-market, eh?

[jaqeboy]

I breathe in the air, use the oxygen in it and replace it with carbon dioxide. That doesn't sound like I'm leaving "as good as."

  Then again, if you expelled the same air, there wouldn't be much point to taking it in in the first place.

I don't get all worked up about the locke's proviso. Grennon is in love with Locke's proviso. But for me, it's your simple need that defines what you will and must do.  You breathe because you must.

It sounds like Locke's Proviso (though I haven't read it in context) is a very pivotal concept re fairness - I appreciate Bill drilling it into our heads - Thanks!

[jaqeboy]

I breathe in the air, use the oxygen in it and replace it with carbon dioxide. That doesn't sound like I'm leaving "as good as."

  Then again, if you expelled the same air, there wouldn't be much point to taking it in in the first place.

I don't get all worked up about the locke's proviso. Grennon is in love with Locke's proviso. But for me, it's your simple need that defines what you will and must do.  You breathe because you must.

Got a link to a page where we can read Locke on this?

It sounds like Locke's Proviso (though I haven't read it in context) is a very pivotal concept re fairness - I appreciate Bill drilling it into our heads - Thanks!

Got a link to a page where we can read Locke on this?

[jaqeboy]

References I can read up on you and Jack's original meaning of capitalism?

Another C. Wright Mills usage, found on another site:

The earlier and middle Roosevelt administrations can best be understood as a desperate search for ways and means, within the existing capitalist system, of reducing the staggering and ominous army of the unemployed. In these years, the New Deal as a system of power was essentially a balance of pressure groups and interest blocs. The political top adjusted many conflicts, gave way to this demand, sidetracked that one, was the unilateral servant of none, and so evened it all out into such going policy line as prevailed from one minor crisis to another. Policies were the result of a political act of balance at the top. Of course, the balancing act that Roosevelt performed did not affect the fundamental institutions of capitalism as a type of economy. By his policies, he subsidized the defaults of the capitalist economy, which had simply broken down; and by his rhetoric, he balanced its political disgrace, putting 'economic royalists' in the political doghouse.

[jaqeboy]

References I can read up on you and Jack's original meaning of capitalism?

From Libertarian Class Analysis, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, September 20, 2006:

This is important to the issue of class, the purpose of which is to identify the exploiters and exploited. As everyone knows, Marx, at least in some of his writings, thought only workers were industrious, with owners of capital belonging to the exploiting class (with the state as its "executive committee"). He placed owners of capital among the exploiters because of his labor theory of value (inherited from Adam Smith and David Ricardo): since the value of goods was equivalent to the socially necessary labor required to produce them, the profit and interest collected by "capitalists" must be extracted from workers' just rewards — hence their exploitation. If the labor theory of value fails and if exchange is fully voluntary, void of state privilege, then no exploitation occurs. (Marx's exploitation theory was later systematically refuted by the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.)

Thus it is crucial to see that the thinkers from whom Marx apparently learned about class analysis put in the productive class all who create utility through voluntary exchange. The "capitalist" (meaning in this context the owner of capital goods who is unconnected to the state) belongs in the industrious class along with workers.

Who were the exploiters? All who lived forcibly off of the industrious classes. "The conclusions drawn from this by Comte and Dunoyer (and Thierry) is that there existed an expanded class of 'industrials' (which included manual labourers and the above mentioned entrepreneurs and savants) who struggled against others who wished to hinder their activity or live unproductively off it," Hart writes.

    The theorists of industrialism concluded from their theory of production that it was the state and the privileged classes allied to or making up the state, rather than all non-agricultural activity, which were essentially nonproductive. They also believed that throughout history there had been conflict between these two antagonistic classes which could only be brought to end with the radical separation of peaceful and productive civil society from the inefficiencies and privileges of the state and its favourites.

Thus political and economic history is the record of conflict between producers, no matter their station, and the parasitic political classes, both inside and outside the formal state. Or to use terms of a later subscriber to this view, John Bright, it was a clash between the tax-payers and tax-eaters.

[jaqeboy]

References I can read up on you and Jack's original meaning of capitalism?

From Wally Conger's Agorist Class Theory (adapted from the work of SEK3):

This class unity is not that of a workers' class (though workers are heavily involved) nor of a capitalist class (though capitalists are involved) nor even of a ruling class — this class is based on the commonality of risk, arising from a common source (the State).

And risk is not proletarian (or particularly capitalist); it is purely entrepreneurial. "Again, to make it clear, if the 'entrepreneuriat' are tossed into the capitalist class, then the Marxist must face the contradiction of 'capitalists' at war with the capitalist-controlled State.

"At this point, Marx's class analysis is in shreds. Clearly, oppression exists, but another model is needed to explain how it works."

This is a teaser to get you to read this pamphlet, either online or print out the pdf.

[jaqeboy]

Later in Agorist Class Theory:

Historian [Gabriel] Kolko's Triumph of Conservatism detailed how "capitalists" thwarted the relatively free marketplace of the late 19th century and conspired with the State to become "robber barons" and monopolists. Rothbard's adoption of the Kolko viewpoint severed the alliance between radical libertarians and free-market apologists for conservatism.

I'll have to dig a little to get more to quote from Kolko and date him [1977], but not tonight, eh?

Hint: Chapter 9: Woodrow Wilson and the Triumph of Political Capitalism: Banking

Hope you're not sorry you asked for references 

[Caleb]

Got a link to a page where we can read Locke on this?

It's Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government.  The relevant chapter is chapter 5. http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm  The famous "proviso" is section 33 of chapter 5.

Here's the thing about Locke, you can call it "a pivotal concept re fairness" if you like, but that is only in a capitalist society where exclusion becomes a means of creating value. In a society that had "laborism" there would be no economic incentive to exclusion. To the contrary, you would have an economic incentive operating against exclusion; so Locke is irrelevant in a mutualist society. He can only speak to a capitalist society.

[John Edward Mercier]

I breathe in the air, use the oxygen in it and replace it with carbon dioxide. That doesn't sound like I'm leaving "as good as."

You breathed in O2 and exhaled CO2... sounds more like you added to the equation than subtracted from it.

[John Edward Mercier]

Here's another current usage of "capitalism" and note that he always writes "state capitalism." Not many are going to agree with Chomsky on all points - that's a given, but it's his usage I'm noting:

Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed, by Noam Chomsky, The Irish Times, 10 October 2008.

Note also the John Dewey quote: "Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business." - could be interpreted as "the capitalists", since most big businesses of Dewey's era were owned by "the capitalists."

Then Chomsky's remark: "The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats." ... and when Chomsky refers to the "business party", I'm assuming he's referring to "big business", being the "capitalists" in the "state capitalism" he refers to by usage.

Democracy with a small 'd' is anti-libertarian. Its holds that a majority may oppress the individual.

In Dewey's era this would be correct. Capitalism was bound by the belief that gold was the only representation of labor. It would mean the ownership of all the world's gold would equate with the ownership of all the world's labor.
The truth is no finite source can represent the elasticity of labor.

[John Edward Mercier]

Jack's claiming that the words "capitalist" and "capitalism" originally meant the same as "corporatist" and "corporatism" remember? I'd still like to see evidence to this effect. Even if it did originally mean that I don't think it is as confusing to everyone as he is making it out to be.
Folk who are against "capitalism" most of the times are against a real free market (I know because I've asked them) so it works out the same.

Sorry for the delay in the research and response department - that effort had to be put on hold for some other business to get done.

Here's an example of one of Konkin's (Samuel Edward Konkin III, RIP: February 23, 2004) attempts to clarify the issue to libertarians:

Paradoxically, as with various populist movements in the United States, I suspect the success of the Social Crediters in Canada actually reflects the ingrained anti-statism of the populace. They rightly perceive corporate capitalism as a system of power; and they likewise see that the banking system is a big part of the power of organized capital. But they fail to fully perceive the role of state capitalist intervention in this power, and are distracted by statist remedies. It's much as is the case with Georgists: they rightly perceive the political appropriation of land (a la Oppenheimer and Nock) as central to exploitation – they just go off track in the proposed remedy. [emphasis mine]

Sorry, Bill K, just quoting, eh?

This is from Jeff Riggenbach's obituary for Konkin on the ISIL site. I know this doesn't go back far enough historically, but I'll be digging it up from the archives for ya.

I think Konkin made the same mistake as anthropologist studying native peoples do...
Broad assumptions outside our cultural background. Canadian's tend to an enclave type culture that is more conducive to mutualism. Americans perceive it to be a socialism... by mistaking it with the programs out of Ottawa.

[BillKauffman]

Again, the force used is defensive in nature - to uphold individual rights of self-ownership of those being excluded. The original force is the exclusion which forces those being excluded to be economically harmed.

So me homesteading a piece of land is force on others just by simply being there and declaring it is mine? Sorry, how is that force on someone else? It sounds like you're coming from the assumption that if there is land out there that is not privately owned it is automatically owned in common so my homesteading a piece of the land is stealing it.

Homesteading is force when exclusive use of what starts out owned in common as an individual equal access right, forces economic harm upon others beyond Locke's proviso.

[Kevin Bean]

AND YOU ALL THOUGHT YOU HAD HEARD THE LAST OF ME!!!

[John Edward Mercier]

Still representing capitalism and corporatism to be the same thing.

Marx was incorrect in his assumption because he placed value only in current labor and not stored labor. Had he realized capital as being stored labor than he would have devised that in all conditions only non-contribution of labor can be exploitation.

Hence coercion-derived payments (taxation) and regulations are the exploitation of labor...
something libertarians already knew.

[Caleb]

Still representing capitalism and corporatism to be the same thing.

Marx was incorrect in his assumption because he placed value only in current labor and not stored labor. Had he realized capital as being stored labor than he would have devised that in all conditions only non-contribution of labor can be exploitation.

Hence coercion-derived payments (taxation) and regulations are the exploitation of labor...
something libertarians already knew.

Are you talking to me?

I'm by no means a Marxist. But I don't think you are understanding Marx very well. Marx certainly understood the role that capital played as stored labor. And yet he didn't come to the conclusion that "in all conditions only non-contribution of labor" was debasing.

The ultimate question is "Who owns the stored labor?"  Under capitalism it is owned by a person, with the accruing benefits. Under communism that stored labor is owned by those who have produced it.

You run into a little bit of an absurdity here, mercier, because you have to transition from thinking about capital as a small thing (a shovel, for instance) to being a large thing (say, $700 billion).  You're having trouble making the transition to seeing these as two separate things, but with communism there is no such problem because a worker can appropriate property owned in common for his need. Which means that I could "own" a shovel, since I could make the case that I had need for a shovel. But I can't appropriate $700 billion because there is no conceivable need to appropriate that level of capital.