com/cap/com debate - laboring under delusions

[GePap]

Originally posted by Flubber


This doesn't make sense. If I work in a factory producing small private luxury jets or 50 foot luxury yatchs, I must be paid enough to purchase those items?? Thats silly. Are you saying the person building the compact car can be paid less than the one building the luxury car? OR are you saying that EVERYONE must be paid enough to purchase the most luxurious item produced by that society

I am explaining the underlying notion-not saying I believe it. The idea being, if an individual owned the means of production, they could make their own Yatch-why should they, to be able to live, have to make luxuries for someone else instead of just being able to work for their own comfort and survival? That is the moral question.

The idea being that there are really no capital owners since the owners are the state which will provide for all. Sorry but thats not my idea of fair. perhaps I am too individualist but I want the benefit of my own labors and I am comfortable negotiating with the "capitalist" to get my share. I don't wnat my labors pooled with everyone else and then have the state provide me with some standard of living based on average societal output. I LIKE the striving and the trying to succeed

In ideal communism you ARE the state, so this dichodomy you create of a "state" providing you is not real, since you and the state are the same thing.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

It's a gift. It was owned by the person who created it through labor, and he's giving all rights to it to someone else.

By dying- hence everything that is done with that capital after that day will in no way benefit is creator through labor-and hence you are wrong.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


If there's no capital involved, why is he working for someone else?

So that he can survive silly. Say the worker assembles the widgets at his house. That other guy hires him. Is the guy who hires the laborer entiled to anything?

[Kuciwalker]

WHOEVER gets the capital will benefit from stuff that isn't the result of their own labor. What's wrong with that?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Spiffor

If you answered Yes-NO Yes-No to these questions, you adhere to the idea that "their are things that are offensive and wrong if done by the private sector but which are acceptable if done by the state."

Since the private company is UNABLE to pass a law givining it police or taxation powers, your examples fall a little flat.

As I thought should have been obvious, I was talking about things that are currently legal for private entities to do but which some communists see as offensive or immoral. Two examples

1. Charge a usage fee/ rent for use of a tool/tractor
2. Take and appropriate some of the value of the production of the worker in a situation where a fair wage is paid for the work

[Flubber]

Originally posted by GePap

Given there is no moral basis for private ownership at all (so what if you took the apple? Who gave you permission to do so?) why do we need to undo it?

I had to read this 3 times.


So if you and I are on a deserted island (large with ample space but with no existing legal system) and I build a house, catch some fish and then smoke them to preserve them, you say I have no moral right to private ownership. I am claiming no more than my own labour produced.

If I have no moral right to ownership, does that mean you have the moral right to eat all the fish I collected ( and you are not starving and could catch fish yourself)

[Kidlicious]

I don't know if you can pound much sense into people who believe that a class of people can inherit capital and just maintain their rule over another class.

[GePap]

You don't have a moral right to any of those things. That is the point. You are confusing what morality is about.

In the condition you mention, if you and I don't agree on the set of rules, then there is no morality. In a siutation with one perosn morality does not exist. With two, it only exists if both people agree. I could kill you or you me and the only problem would be ones conscience. If you start getting a lot of people, then maybe you need a social convention.

So, no, saying private ownership is moral is simply saying social convention says privcate ownership is good. But what is the basis of said convention?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by GePap





In ideal communism you ARE the state, so this dichodomy you create of a "state" providing you is not real, since you and the state are the same thing.

Does anyone believe that this ever happens . . . that the bulk of the people see their self-interest and the state interest as one. I could see it working in in small communes perhaps but as the state gets larger and larger, people in various regions would see the state being more and more divorced from their interests. Take Canada, pretty much everyone outside Ontario sees a huge disconnect between the state and their own interest. Would communism somehow make this disappear.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by GePap


I am explaining the underlying notion-not saying I believe it. The idea being, if an individual owned the means of production, they could make their own Yatch-why should they, to be able to live, have to make luxuries for someone else instead of just being able to work for their own comfort and survival? That is the moral question.

Didn't say you believed it. It remains nonsensical.

[GePap]

So perhaps true communism only works on the commune level and not the state level.

You forget communism =/ marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, or Maoism. All those other -isms are subsects of the older communist notions.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


So that he can survive silly. Say the worker assembles the widgets at his house. That other guy hires him. Is the guy who hires the laborer entiled to anything?

yup-- obviously there is value in the work he did getting the widget contract and selling. The widget maker can make more widgets as he doesn't have to market or transport them

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Flubber
Since the private company is UNABLE to pass a law givining it police or taxation powers, your examples fall a little flat.

Anybody can try to rob or mug others. It sure is illegal everywhere, but many people do it nonetheless, as crime is a serious problem pretty much everywhere. I was not talking about the legality of it or not (because legality is something that is easy to change), but whether you agreed on the general principle that some things are ok if done by the State, but not if they're done by private actors.
You seem to agree with that general principle, which means you are among the 6 billion humans who are not David Floyd

As I thought should have been obvious, I was talking about things that are currently legal for private entities to do but which some communists see as offensive or immoral.

I spoke about the general principle only so that you can understand where a "yes" answer could come from. Now that I have the specifics you have in mind, I can reply to you.

1. Charge a usage fee/ rent for use of a tool/tractor

I agree this can be performed by the private market (because unlike Kid, I support a market socialist economy, which has a significant private market, where the main difference lies in the fact the intra-company power lies within te workers, and not within the owners).
I would actually consider it immoral if the State tried to make a profit from it, i.e. charge further than to recoup the losses. The activity in itself can be performed by the State, however.
This is also why I support a banking system, that provides extremely low interest investment loans (with a real interest rate of zero), and whose functioning costs are paid for by taxes.

2. Take and appropriate some of the value of the production of the worker in a situation where a fair wage is paid for the work

It is not this action that I would find immoral from the State. I would find it immoral if State-owned companies were in position to make a significant profit: because the State-owned businesses in my model are utilities, and profits would mean the business charges the consumer too much.
If there happens to be a small margin, I'm all for the letting employees of the State-owned company decide what to do with it.

[Kontiki]

Jumping ahead, because this is getting somewhat tedious, here's where I'm going:

Capital is always rewarded. It's practically a law of nature, and wholly independent of the economic structure at hand. If you need a factory to produce the widgets, then you need capital. It doesn't matter where it comes from - communism simply shifts the source from a private owner or investment consortium to the workers (the state, in principle, but the since in communism the workers = the state, it's the same thing). At the end of the day, the capital is as integral in creating value as the labour is. If the worker owns part of the capital, he gets part of the capital's reward.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Flubber


Didn't say you believed it. It remains nonsensical.

Its very simple: why should a human being, to survive and feed himself, have to work in a relationship where they are only partly compensated for their own labor? Is it not more moral for people to be able to use all their labor on themselves, or whatever they chose to work in that they decide they love?