From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun May 22 2005 - 20:39:13 BST
Sam, Mark and all MOQers:
msh said to Sam:
Capitalism is a socio-economic system in which the means of production of
essential goods and services are privately owned and managed by individuals
or small groups...
Sam replied:
Well, to nobody's surprise, we have different understandings of what
capitalism is. In my understanding of capitalism, all of the above
options are capitalist, in so far as there is a conceptual embodiment
of physical resources (ie an extension into the fourth level of the
MoQ, allowing the conceptual embodiments to go off on purposes of
their own). I note that you haven't tried to link in your
understanding of capitalism with the MoQ.
dmb says:
Conceptual embodiment of physical resources? I think Sam's position here
reflects Platt's view but not Pirsig's. Let's not forget that he has
explicitly described money as a measure of social value and has explicitly
described the conflict between capitalism and socialism and part of a wider
conflict between social and intellectual values. We can examine capitalistic
systems intellectually and ecomonics, econometrics and a number of other
academic disciplines are dedicated to doing just that, but that doesn't make
the marketplace intellectual nor does it necessarily mean that the economy
is intellectually guided. I mean, we could discuss the science of water
treatment plants, but that doesn't mean that sewage is intellectual.
Further, your pal de Soto seems to think that law and order is some fancy
new idea, as if contemporary economists just dreamed it up. But all he did
was point out the most obvious requirements for civilizaton itself. Heck,
ancient Babylon and Egypt had law and order and created great wealth out of
that organization. That's pretty much the definition of civilzation and
could be applied to Sparta and Amsterdam equally. But anyway...
sam said to Mark:
If so, it seems to me that the heart of the description rests with
the question of _control_, and is not an economic description as
such. In other words, it doesn't engage with economic questions, only
with political questions.
msh:
Well, political decisions can have direct effects on the economy, so
I wouldn't make such a sharp distinction. That's why I talk about a
socio-economic system, rather than just an economic one.
dmb says:
Right. The phrase "political economy" is a little like "timespace" and
"Judeo Christian". One can make the distinction for purposes of clarity, but
they are also inter-related in an almost organic sense. As I understand it,
there are very few cultures where wealth and power do not go hand in hand.
Its one of the most basic features of the great civilzations, the richest
guy was king, not least of all because that meant he could afford to keep
and army and such. Obviously, there are lots of differences between
corporate capitalism and a monarchy, but without intellectual guidence it
still means that the richest guys are running the show. The US congress in
coin-operated, baby. The laws are often literally written by vested
interests and passed by those who recieve large contributions from that same
vested interest. Its become a government by, for and of the corporations.
(There is a fabulous documentary called simply "The Corporation". Check it
out. Netflicks has it.)
msh asked Sam:
If De Soto really does have at heart the best interest of the poor, why
would he advocate a system that requires private rather than community
ownership of land and resources? The vast majority of people in so-called
third-world countries don't own land.
sam replied:
Well, as I said before, de Soto is NOT advocating a system that
requires private rather than community ownership. He is advocating a
system that transposes the enforcement of ownership from social
customs and physical power (levels 3 and 2 of the MoQ) onto the
conceptual level 4. So community ownership of the HEP and lake is
just as capitalist as private ownership of the HEP and lake,
according to de Soto's analysis.
dmb says:
Community ownership is just as capitalist as private ownership? Again, I'm
with Mark. I think it would be confusing to call that capitalism. And it
seems to me that its correct to say that, since the dawn of civilization,
economies have been guided by social customs/laws and have been protected by
cops and armies of some kind, have been enforced through physical coersion.
And that will never go away entirely, I suppose. But an intellectually
guided economy will, ideally, ensure that the laws are based on principle
rather than custom and the law enforcement officals are charged with
protecting those principles rather than just being thugs for the man. In
other words, money and power are not allowed to trump rights. We don't just
have laws. Moses had laws. We have laws ABOUT laws, see? Property rights, to
the extent that they only protect the rich guys ability to exploit the poor
guy, is unlike the other rights. I'm always suspicious of thinkers who
trumpet property rights as if it were the only right worth having. When the
rights of property owners is the only principle mentioned, I smell a rat. It
wasn't so long ago in the Western world and in my own country, that property
owners were the only ones with rights, which makes them priviledges and not
rights at all. Would anyone like some cheese?
msh said to Sam:
........To simply grant legal right to existing landholders without
consideration of how they acquired the land in the first place is not going
to work. That is, we first need to institute some idea of agrarian reform.
sam replied:
There is here, though, the issue about individual rights. Your analysis
seems to give all political control to the group. I'm not sure how that
allows any transcending of level 3 (leaving aside the wider questions).
dmb says:
Here you seem to be making the classical Randian distinction between
individuality and collectivism AND equating that with the intellectual and
social levels repectively. I think this is a huge mistake. Its a concept
that just doesn't work. Consider, for example, Jefferson's assertion in the
Declaration of Independence that governments are instituted "in order to
secure these rights". Then there is the interstate highway system, another
collective effort that allows individuals more freedom, not less. These
rights and freedoms, like the laws of any civilzation, depend upon
collective security. Now, its certainly true that individuality and
individual rights are a part of the rise of the intellectal level, but the
point is that even those principles have a collective feature. Everything
does. Think of contextualism and the idea that our language is a kind of
collective possession, a intersubjective space we all share. This is true at
the intellectual level too. Think of trying to do science or math without
such a collective structure. It would be impossible to even add 2 plus 2
with a common meaning for the terms. And in the Jeffersonian assertion, we
collectively form a government and collectively pass laws and collectively
pay for and train the police - to protect individuals rights, rights we all
have in common. You see my point? The rights of individuals cannot rightly
be secured except collectively and lose their meaning if they aren't
extended universally. I'm not denying the distinction, I'm just saying that
it can't be used to mark the difference between Pirsig's static levels.
sam said:
Or, governments in third world countries can copy the example of the
United States government during the nineteenth century and bring the
extra-legal economy within the bounds of the legal economy, thereby
enabling the transition from lower level economic relationships to
the level 4. It was those actions of the US government during the
nineteenth century which enabled the creation of wealth. This does - let me
hasten ;-) to add - ignore all the questions of destruction of the
indigenous American tribes etc.
msh replied:
Glad you added the wink above. The "liberation" of wealth in the US
up to the 1930's is neither an equitable nor a pretty picture. The
level 4 economic solutions embodied in The New Deal, along with the
massive injections of state cash due to WWII, had the positive effect
of preventing violent revolution, but at the same time saved the ass
of unrestricted capitalism, which, somewhat controlled during the
40's through the 70's, has come back with a vengeance since the
Reaganomic 80's.
dmb says:
Exactly. That's an excellect way to read it, Mark. The free-marketeers are
always too quick to portray capitalism as synonymous with freedom and
businessmen as heroic, to speak of it in terms of mom and pop's dignity, but
the actual history ain't a pretty picture. I think its safe to say that
America's wealth owes a great deal to slavery, genocide, to taking half of
Mexico, to being situated on a huge land mass rich in natural resources. Not
to mention the industrial revolution and the 19th century's explosion of
technology. But never mind all that, let's just give all the credit new-age
Ayn Randians as they conjure up and channel the spirits of Austrian
economists.
sam said:
But as I keep saying, that is the political issue that remains to be
resolved. My point is that without the conceptual transition from the
lower levels to level 4 then there is no 'capitalism'. There are
biological and social level behaviours, in all their complexity,
nothing more.
msh replied:
And I agree that the solution will come from moving to level 4, but
this does not mean that privitization of the means of production is
the best idea. That's what we need to decide in this thread, I
think.
dmb says:
Yea, I think the MOQ suggests a political economy that's guided by 4th level
principles, but in a way that'll keep the market dynamic. Corporations are
rigidly structured authoritarian pyramids. They funnel money to the top and
basically depend on exploitaton to function. But they don't have to be like
that. I think that if the capitalist model has any chance of becoming
sustainable and consistent with intellectual principles, it doesn't just
have to adjust with respect to the role of corporations within a democracy,
the corporations themselves have to become more democratic. Maybe if they
were employee-owned and directed, maybe if they were set up for purposes
other than creating bigger bank accounts. The documetary I mentined, among
many other things, points out that corporations have the same rights as
individuals under U.S. law. The problem is that corporations don't die and
they behave as a sociopathic criminal would. It would be funnier if it
weren't true. Its not that making a profit is inherently evil or anything.
Don't get me wrong. Everyone deserves to keep the fruit of their labor and
some people do such amazing work that I can be sincerely happy about their
well-deserved wealth. Robert Pirsig springs to mind. He created something
good without exploiting anyone and why shouldn't he be fairly compensated?
But this is the same principle by which we object to exploitation, which
deprives the worker of being fairly compensated. As Mark points out, profit
is generally generated by the difference between the value of the work done
and the wages paid for that work. Sure, the worker is not the only one who
adds value to the product and I'm not saying the worker should get more than
a fair share. I'm just pointing out that in the real world the corporate
mangers will often make many times more than other contributors, a disparity
not at all proportional to the actual contributions.
Here's a thought. American capitalism is tied up with the cultural and
historical development of the West. And one of the threads that may be worth
pointing out is the one that connects the protestant work ethic, a kind of
prosperity theology and social darwinism. Despite the switch from a religous
to a secular version, I think the latter is really just a mutated species of
the former. In either version there is an underlying idea that wealth and
poverty are produced by the character of the individual. The Victorians held
the view that the rich were rich because God loved them more. Pirsig
mentions of Veblen's "THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS", which shows how the
Victorian's "conspicuous consumption" was basically a way of saying, "Hey,
look at all my horses and the too big house. God loves me more than you."
And then when we get to the secular 20th century version of this, we get the
idea that the rich are rich because they're smarter and better able to adapt
to the economic enviroment. Survival of the fittest, baby, and the rich eat
the poor, who are just too stupid or lazy to get with the program. In both
versions, insult is added to injury. In both cases, the victims of injustice
are told that they deserve it and that's just how things are.
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