Does private property facilitate sexual harassment?

September 30, 2009 Db018 Comments

Walter Block’s defense of sexual harassment has made the rounds of the Anarcho-sphere and some have tried to exonerate private property from its part in this. This is not possible.

: Image via Wikipedia

It seems that the Walter Block quote on sexual harassment I posted a while back has been rediscovered by various libertarians online and lots of criticism, analysis and defenses (of PP not Block) have been written about it. It appears as even Walter Block himself appeared on the scene to distance himself from his own words.

However, the issue here is not as simple as merely saying that Block made a flawed logical reasoning, or that it was all a mistake or anything as simple as that. The quote above is simply a pointed example of the intellectual dead-end one reaches when his whole ethical framework resolves around respect for Private Property and fetishism of voluntarism.

The issue here is that what Block wrote, unfortunately is a logical conclusion of suggesting voluntarism and the non-aggression principle within a propertarian environment as the core of ethics. It is, unfortunately consistent with “Anarcho”-Capitalist principles.

Most defenses of Private property I’ve seen (for an example, see the No Third Solution argument) orbit around the concept that harassment is prevented by the Non-Aggression principle and the lack of an explicit contract to allow it to happen. In short they consider the problem to be simply one of a contractual nature. They miss the elephant in the room by looking at the murals.

You see, there’s basically two arguments put forth here. So lets look at them in turn

“The Problem is not that the boss is harassing the secretary, but that he is harassing her without having an explicit clause in their employment contract allowing him to do so.”

This argument in short suggests that there is nothing wrong with a boss who only hires secretaries as a personal semi-harem, as long as he makes that known from the start. It assumes then that any secretary which agrees to this contract cannot then consider the sexual advances she agreed to, to be harassment.

This argument, while on the surface seems legit, is not in fact any more different than Block’s. It simply moves the agreement of the secretary from the implicit to the explicit. Whereas block asserted that the secretary’s continuous acceptance of the sexual harassment (i.e. not quitting her job over it) was an implicit agreement to it and thus not “harassment”, the contractual argument simply desires to take the same exact situation and legitimize it via the legal stamp.

However this argument misses the point that in both cases, the implicit or explicit acceptance of the harassment from the secretary is not caused because she wants it but because of the lack of alternatives. Because the other choices that remain to her if she does not accept the harassment or sign the contract are worse (ex starvation of her and her family.) The same secretary which “volunteered” to be harassed without a contract in Block’s example will also “volunteer” to sign the contract. Does the nature of her harassment change because she signed a piece of paper? Does the moral condemnation the boss deserves for abusing his position disappear?

Of course not, because the moral condemnation does not spring from the “aggression” the boss performs against the secretary but from the fact that he is using his position of power, which stems from inequality of wealth, to passively coerce the secretary to accept behaviour she would not otherwise accept if she was on equal standing.

The second problem which logically follows from the propertarian system is this:

“The boss can initiate a sexual advance towards the secretary who is at all liberty to refuse. However the boss then is at all liberty to fire her and there is nothing at all wrong with this.”

I believe that this is even more tricky for propertarians to defend. If we assume that the boss would not go straight to pinching (which the right-“libertarians” can then jump to label as “aggression”) but would initially “test the waters” so to speak by starting with subtle advancement and then growing bolder the more such advancements are accepted we end up exactly in the original Blockean argument once more.

Let’s say that this Boss does a subtle sexual advancement which the Secretary refuses. The Boss then fires her (terminating their “voluntary contract”). Next secretary? Same thing. And so on until he finds one secretary which is in a desperate enough situation that she tolerates his initial advances. He then becomes bolder and bolder until we reach the phase of pinching. Can we call that “aggression”? No since the secretary did not show outright refusal to such an advance and for the boss it can look like a normal progression of human relationship (or some other similar phrasing of his excuse). After all, the secretary is free at any point to make it clear that she does not appreciate his advances…and get fired.

In fact, the prudent “libertarian” boss, would not offer a sexual contract upfront to his potential secretaries but would rather follow the above actions until he’s determined that she’s desperate enough, and before moving on to actual physical contact, he would simply request that his secretary sign a new job contract volunteering to his sexual advances so as to legally cover his arse…just in case, you know.

Is there any way for Voluntarism and the NAP to morally condemn the actions of the boss? I fear not. And this again points out the intellectual bankruptcy of this ideology which cannot be covered by shallow “I was wrong to say that” excuses. The problem is that Block was not inconsistent with his ideology. He simply took it to his natural conclusion as he’s done with his acceptance of slave contracts. It just so happened that his argument struck a chord in the feminist movement who saw through the bankruptcy of voluntarism and forced him to backtrack hurriedly, even if he can’t explain the reasoning behind this.

Unlike vulgar-libertarians, a boss firing a secretary because she would not accept such a debasement is immediately a cause for moral condemnation by egalitarians ((Of course I maintain that one cannot be a consistent libertarian without being egalitarian as well but that’s beside the point)) as we condemn all situations which passively coerce people to “volunteer” to such humiliation. It is the same reason why we condemn wage-slavery just as much as we condemn sexual harassment. The only difference between those two is that the latter has been taken out of the status of “normal” by the brave actions of the feminist movement while the former is still seen as something natural. But the underlying causes for one to “volunteer” to sexual harassment are exactly the same as what causes one to “volunteer” to wage slavery: Private Property.

The political path of a freethinker

September 29, 2009 Db021 Comments

Freethinkers tend to progress in 2 distinct political directions as a rule of thumb. Socialism and Libertarianism. But nobody notices how they are part of a bigger picture.

: Image by jimmedia via Flickr

I’ve written in the past on what the obvious trend for freethinker’s political orientation is but the more I talk and interact with libertarians online, the more I notice a second, more passive trend which seems to be present in the political history of those people. The Libertarian Socialist Pull.

This means the general tendency to move towards the left or, to put it a bit more practically, start giving more weight to concepts of justice, mutual aid and equality, as well as the tendency to move towards liberty which means to start demanding the right to manage all aspects of your own life without a higher authority and prioritize direct action. The first part then expresses the empathy all humans possess for others, while the second expresses the individualism which allows each human to naturally distinguish themselves.

It is no wonder then that the more someone experiences, the more they start to notice all the aspects of our current existence which limit those expressions and if this is coupled with thinking freely about them, that is, when someone does not have any irrational beliefs which would prevent them from looking at and judging the underlying causes, (eg “Goddidit”) then it is only natural that the truth will be found and lead to some uncomfortable conclusions about all the things we’ve considered normal until now.

This is by no means an easy process and can be as difficult as a deconversion if one is to start from a point of heavy indoctrination ((In fact, deconverting from a patriarchal or otherwise authoritarian religion would be rightly considered just one step in the greater process of the Libertarian Socialist Pull as the causes of such a deconversion are most likely the free thinking about the differences between the theory of faith and the experience of reality)). As such, it is a gradual progression, with people slowly discovering the puzzle pieces which just don’t seem to fit right, no matter how you turn them and then discarding them, only to discover that a whole chunk of the puzzle has now become disconnected and can be discarded as well.

From what I’ve observed, it seems that there are generally two paths towards Libertarian Socialism, one from Socialism and one from Libertarianism and which one people start walking depends on their upbringing and general circumstances and experiences. But in broad strokes, I would say that we can talk about two types of human personality which are more susceptible to either pull: Empathetic – which is positive towards Socialism and Individualist which prioritizes Libertarianism. Why? Because the personality one has will define which difficult questions the freethinker will choose to investigate first.

Where one starts in the current political spectrum is not so important but it generally also correlates to one’s personality as well (although of course irrational beliefs one has not yet discarded play a large role). However as one asks the pointed questions and discovers that the easy answers are unfulfilling or just do not stand the light of reason so do the answers one discovers pull them more towards the Libertarian or Socialist pathways. You’ll notice I’ve split these two for now because it may very well be the case that one may initially move away from the other side as the initial answers which make sense, feel like a breath of cool air among stagnating fumes, and as a result are accepted with less rigor as one strives to investigate the whole spectrum of thought these ideas originate. In fact, I would say it’s rare for one to move simultaneously towards socialism and libertarianism at the same time.

EDIT: I realize that there is something I probably should have mentioned ((h/t to redditr commernie)) as it is quite important: What is it that causes some people to be empathetic while others to be individualistic? The answer to this is the material conditions one lives in. For example, wage-workers are quite unlikely to be individualists as the constant interaction with fellow human workers and the actual experience of the dreadfulness of wage-slavery is sure to fan the flames of empathy and mutual aid as they seek to collectively improve their lot and resist against the bosses. On the other hand, those lucky few who get to be entrepreneurs have the uncommon chance to experience liberty of action and control of one’s own destiny which make all interventions by a state seem as a horrible violation of rights. For them then, individualism becomes the primary basis of ethics. It is in fact for this reason that the individualists are always so outnumbered compared to socialists as there’s far more wage-slaves than there’s entrepreneurs or rich people.

As a general observation, the Socialist path will usually lead one towards Social Democracy while the Libertarian path will lead someone towards Liberalism (“Liberalism” and “Libertarianism” respectively for all you Yanks) but sooner or later one will discover the inability of the state apparatus to perform the tasks one expects from it (Protect public interests or Protect private property respectively for each path) and will take anti-reformist turn to revolution or anti-statism.

Thus we end up with something like this (Where “|>” symbolizes the break with reformism) :

Empathetic: Apolitical > Social Democrat |> Socialist > Vulgar Marxist (eg Stalinist, Maoist etc).

Individualistic: Apolitical > Free Market Minarchist |> Liberal > Vulgar Libertarian (eg “Anarcho”-Capitalist).

Now it is very possible that someone will progress all the way to the far side of this path and stay there, or be brought up with such a ideology in the first place and just stay there ((Which I attribute to them investing too much of their life to accept that they might be wrong, or on groupthink)). But what I’ve noticed happening more often than not, is that after the break with reformism, freethinkers reach a dead-end and start noticing the impassable barrier posed by the following fact:

You can’t have equality without liberty and you can’t have liberty without equality.

The reasons for this have been explained many times by lots of anarchists so I won’t go into much detail other than to say that the practical implications of it make themselves known by the actual experience of everyone who has had their rights trampled by the state (even the “worker’s state) or their lives disrupted or ruined by the capitalist bosses.

Once this is noticed, then the second part of the freethinker’s journey begins as Libertarians and Socialists move towards their converging point. Anarchism.

My own experience of course has not been much different. I started profoundly apolitical but very empathetic. As soon as I linked the huge societal and environmental issues of our time to the economic system we live in I started moving towards a State Socialist direction, taking a break with reformism once I read the arguments against the failure of the parliamentary process and finally rejecting the need for a state in socialism as something counter-productive.

On the other side, I’ve seen and heard of many examples of Individualists, even at the extreme end of “Anarcho”-Capitalism coming to reject that ideology and start espousing more leftist concepts to the point of passing into the anti-capitalist camp altogether. The best historical example of this is of course Voltairine de Cleyre while in own online circles I’ve noticed (among others) Francois Tremblay and just yesterday Sean from the Skeptical Eye, both of which started from Objectivism no less.

In fact, the latter was what triggered me to write this post as it’s something that I seem to notice almost monthly lately. This was because we had quite clash a while back when both of us were more in our respective polar ends so when he explained that he’s almost abandoned his pro-capitalist ideas, it was just a very powerful real-world example of what I was thinking already.

None of this of course is meant to imply that one is not a freethinker unless the progress towards Libertarian Socialism anymore than one can expect a freethinker is always right. Of course I think people who have not yet embraced Anarchism are wrong but this is only logical, this does not mean that they are close minded. However I do have the impression, backed by experience, that the Libertarian Socialist Pull is in fact real for freethought.

And that is a cause for hope.

The Kudos economy and some criticism.

September 29, 2009 Db0

A market anarchist proposes a system which might bridge the gap between a market-based economy and the problems that disparity of wealth creates. Here’s my LibCom citicism.

: Image by daftgirly via Flickr

William Gillis writes an interesting post about the differences between Capitalist and Communistic ownership rights and gives a different perspective of how market theorists misunderstand the criticisms Anarcho-communists are directing at Private Property. It’s a bit thick to parse but I think it’s worth a read especially on how he takes the distinction between property and possession to a different dimension and the 2 pointed critiques of Private Property.

Of course there are some parts I have to disagree, for one:

Obviously however, just because such differing economic approaches might make better software for a fraction of the energy Microsoft spends doesn’t mean that it can do things like move goods between locations to satisfy demand efficiently or signal all the costs of one consumption versus another. Without the capacity to assign value to spatial/physical relationships (as with the realm of actors and objects) one can’t concretely mediate between those relationships

This particular part is, I believe, making the mistake merging two different concepts of a capitalist economy. Production and distribution. William accepts that socialized production seems to be much more efficient than the capitalist mode of production but he then proceeds to criticize the former for not achieving efficient distribution. But this is something unrelated to the productive process so I assume he’s attempting to criticize an explicitly Communist (or moneyless) way of distribution (as opposed to collectivist or syndicalist which might still retain money).

The problem is here again some of the assumptions of free market theory. The assumption that free markets satisfy demands and the assumption that the price mechanism passes along the correct signals. Unfortunately none of these assumptions are right as the markets can only satisfy effective demand and the signals ignore externalized costs and don’t provide enough information. By not basing transactions on prices, but simply on pure supply & demand (as would be the case in a communist society) both of these issues are avoided for demand is based on people’s needs and the productive process and democratic control of it ensure that the supply is analogous to the costs.

The second criticism I have is directed towards this sentence

Anti-capitalists often disingenuously blur the distinction between wealth and coercive power — wealth and/or disequilibria in wealth do not inherently have to grant any capacity for social control — but it’s certainly true that direct pursuits of power and wealth share the same form.

I don’t think it’s disingenuous at all as anti-capitalists are criticizing actually existing capitalism and not theoretical market constructs with wildly different parameters on production and money. In actually existing capitalism as well as in any market based system where money is arbitrary (ie not tied to labour-hours or something as solid) and private property the dominant form of property, the accumulation of wealth is very much a measure of coercive power as it directly limits the options of those who do not get to have any. But no anti-capitalists will consider that wealth is power when in a system which has been specifically setup so as to ensure that wealth is not power. The only problem is that all conceptions of a propertarian economy have not managed to avoid this problem.

Which brings us to the interesting part of Williams conception of a market economy. It looks like something taken out of the Algebraist to tell the truth and I can’t but worry that it’s as much of a fictional concept. You see the idea looks workable, in a theoretically constructed society around the concept of a reputation market, and I do think that if we did get such a system then I (or most communists I assume) really wouldn’t have any issue with it. Nevertheless my main criticism would again lead to ask: How do we get there?

If a labour-time-tied money system is already a difficult concept to grasp and put into practice or even move towards a situation where it can be put into practice, an even more extravagant concept based on reputation just strikes me as half-way impossible. I would be far more interested to see a viable process by which such a system might become a reality until which point, I cannot consider the actual criticisms made by William against anti-capitalists to hold much water, as they were based on comparing them to a utopian construct. Unfortunately I believe such a practice ends up diverging attention from practical issues and solutions (ie criticism of capitalism and ways to fix things) and gives some ammo for market theorists who would twist and grasp any concept in order to prove that “Free Market (Capitalism) works!”

Quote of the Day: The "Free Market" Recipe

September 28, 2009 Db02 Comments

Kevin Carson adequately explains how the “free market” of vulgar-libertarians really works.

Quoth Kevin Carson

The time-honored “free market” recipe, among the ruling classes, goes like this: 1) rob the producing classes of their traditional property rights in the land, and turn them into tenants at-will of the plutocracy; 2) through coercive controls on the population, like the Combination Laws and Law of Settlement, make it impossible for the producing classes to bargain effectively in the wage market; 3) when the process is complete, talk a lot about how great the free market works, and justify the existing concentration of capital ownership as a result of the superior efficiency of those who came out on top.

So yeah, I’ve been reading his vulgar-libertarianism watch series which is excellent as a general rule, but I just couldn’t avoid quoting this particular part.

Go and read the rest of the pwnage.

IT: A modern window into the historical dislike of bosses against expertise.

September 28, 2009 Db013 Comments

Experise is toxic towards business as it disrupts the effects of “scientific management”. We have now the rare opportunity to witness such a stuggle first hand.

: Image via Wikipedia

I was sent via email an interesting article by computerworld looking into the gap between management’s impression of IT professionals and what is actually happening. What struck me as I was reading it, was how very much the same arguments could be used against any possible professional who likes what they are doing and take pride in their work. This is pretty much the impression any manager or boss will have:

[Geeks] are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business-challenged, victim-prone, bullheaded and credit-whoring. To overcome these intractable behavioral deficits you must do X, Y and Z.

One can easily replace “Geeks” with “Engineers”, “Mechanics”, “Artisans” or whatever else an profession might be that retains any amount of skill. As much as I’d like to toot my own horn as a geek, I can’t in good conscience accept it as a fact that there’s simply something special about geeks that causes this. Or rather, there is something special related to geeks, but it’s in fact something external. It’s the environment they work in.

You see, what makes geeks maintain such a behaviour is the fact that their profession has not yet been deskilled. The job of an IT Geek thus still retains a very large amount of necessary creativity in order to get done. One needs to know their craft in order to get the respect of one’s peers, very much like the article explains. And this expertise, this witholding of respect for those who are not skilled is part of management’s dislike for them. The other part is the fact that the skilled worker maintains power over the executive.

And they hate that.

How does the IT Geek maintain power? By being the only one who can get the job done. No matter how much management is pissed by their attitude, if that person or group are the only ones keeping the machines running, there’s not a lot they can do. There’s even less they can do if they ever decide to band together to resist (which fortunately for the bosses, the Geeks are not prone in doing…yet). This feeling of not having absolute power over your employees, over your subordinates is not something easily tolerated, therefore the whining you see above.

You see, there is nothing special about geekdom. We’re nothing special as far as humans go, no matter how much your parents praise your intelligence and your high income make you believe your superior skills are being accurately rewarded by the free market. Any human, working on any skill can achieve a similar level of expertise. Any human allowed similar amount of freedom can be as creative in their chosen area. And anyone who’s job involved similar amounts of talent evolves a similar take on respect. That is respect for thos who know what they are doing.

Take an experienced car mechanic and see how he treats fellow car mechanics as opposed to people who think they know about cars or a corporate boss. You’re likely to find the same kind of attitude as IT geeks express. Take a fisherman, a lumberjack ((OK, note that I’m not absolutely certain all the jobs here are as skillful but I’m speaking mostly from common knowledge and common sense. Perhaps I am missing some better examples or used some bad ones)) or as the Computerworld article mentioned – doctors. Any job that still requires skill will create the same kind of mentality of mutual respect for the worker, and resentment from the management.

Thus the drive to deskill.

Why? Because a skillful worker means a worker with more power, and therefore a worker that can demand higher wages for the increased production and quality they can deliver. However the capitalist mode of production has always been firstly about domination and then about profits. If your workers cannot be dominated, then profits will be sacrificed to find methods that they will. Thus the introduction of machinery which replace skilled labour with unskilled labour. The primary role being to replace skilled employees with power with unskilled ones who can be easily threatened with layoffs (as they are easy to replace) and thus can have their wages managed to the benefits of the capitalist.

And this is not a random thought but actual historical reality. From the early times of the capitalist production, bosses have been always looking for ways to deskill labour. And this unfortunately has become a reality in all areas of human labour, from textile workers, to car makers, to fishermen. And slowly but surely it’s happening in IT.

You can already see it in many sectors of the profession already. Programming has become a codified structured task which can be followed methodically, and thus outsourced to cheap but uncreative workers in third world nations such as India. Telephone support has followed the same path, with formulated responses and scripts replacing actual troubleshooting and thus making call-centers a horrible workplace of call-quotas and Orwellian monitoring. Hardware setup and replacement has become so simple, one can now do it with an IKEA manual. And System Administration and Networking, the final bastions of IT skill are slowly being eroded by the mediocrity of Microsoft products whose purpose is not so much to improve productivity (they’re notoriously bad at that) but rather to make the task so easy that one can easily do it with the minimum of effort. It’s no wonder that for one to become a Microsoft “Engineer” it takes at most a few months of study, while actual engineering requires years.

All of these have the same cumulative effect for IT that automated looms and huge fishing barges had for textile workers and fishermen respectively. The average skill a workers requires drops and the power moves further and further from the worker to the owner of the capital.

So what we see still in management whining about the “bullheadedness” and “business-challenged” attitude of IT Geeks now, are the obvious symptoms of the hated equality in power between skilled workers and managing bosses. Such a situation cannot of course last but since the IT sector is still young, we have the rare opportunity to witness the actual effects skilled requirements have on wages and worker-boss relations, as well as the undeniable progress towards deskilling.

Impressions from the Anti-Capitalist demonstration in Mannheim Sep 2009

September 27, 2009 Db01 Comment

We’ve visited the Anti-Capitalist demonstration in Mannheim in 26 Sep. 2009 and these are our impressions.

One of my latest attempts to figure out the Anarchist circles in my current place of residence, as an expat without a good grasp of the language, was to visit the anti-capitalist demonstration that happened yesterday noon in Mannheim. This was the first time I’ve seen such a demonstration in Germany so I wasn’t exactly certain what to expect, as my experience with it is mostly from Greece. A contact informed me to “expect repression and german demo laws” so the start was a bit ominous.

Unfortunately on the way there, we were a bit lost in finding our way around Mannheim so we ended up coming a bit late to the fun (about 20 mins) but hopefully the shouts and slogans of the demonstrators led us to the place everything was happening.

By far, the very first thing one notices is the very strong police presence. There were about 150-200 Anarchists in the middle, surrounded with banners and all around them where at least 50-100 policemen. The way the police had formed a wall around them was making it painfully obvious that this was a group of people “normal citizens” shouldn’t be interacting with. The feeling of domination by the police was painfully obvious as they were trying to contain the protesters.

It’s difficult to explain how much implied threat such a police presence registered. For all non-Anarchist onlookers, the police block gave all the “right signals” the state wanted to pass, that the people contained therein where dangerous elements you must be protected from. Furthermore, the heavy use of cameras all around the protestors and also towards onlookers made it even more obvious that your presence there was being noted, even if you were simply curious as to what the whole thing was all about. “Nothing to see here, move along. If you don’t then perhaps you need to be watched” was the feeling I was receiving.

Proof of such sentiments was further provided by Liriel, as an outsider looking in and with experience in previous German protests, she informed me that she’s never felt so threated before in her life for simply being in a public location, watching the proceedings. The police’s implied “You shouldn’t be here” attitude was very hard to ignore to such an extend that you’ll probably be reading soon another post in the Division by Zer0 written by Liriel about the whole thing.

If that wasn’t enough, the police made it painfully clear who is supposed to be watching whom here. As soon as I tried to take some pictures of the police presence, an officer walked over to me and in no uncertain terms made it clear to me that if I was to take one more picture of the police, he was going to take my camera and smash it. His hostility was unmistakable and during the protest, I saw him do the same thing to other onlookers 2-3 more times. Needless to say that didn’t stop us from taking pictures but only made us do it less obviously.

Soon more Anarchists gathered and we ended up with a large-ish group of people chanting and clapping on the outside of the enclosed group (including me). Needless to say, this didn’t make the police very happy as people could talk to onlookers now and spread leaflets freely. More than once the police tried to enclose the outside groups as well, especially if they became too loud but always people would disperse and reconverge a bit later to chant from the outside once more.

Once the demonstration started moving, the same situation kept occurring again and again, many people would follow the march from outside the police enclosure and chant along with the protesters. As the outsiders became more and more loud, the police would attempt to enclose them as well, on occasion running in front of us in order to block our way and redirect us within the main procession. People would then run backwards or split in side streets and meet up the process 100 meters later. No less than three times did I see the police taking to chase protestors who were trying to avoid being kennelled in like some danger to society.

By far the most humorous part of the demonstration was when the protest was passing in front of a bank. The police had already made a human wall in front of the bank, one assumes to prevent any random people rioting in that general direction. As we were passing it, I made a comment like “Now we can plainly see what the police are here for” which made a few people around me laugh out loud. But this is in fact the truth. Even though during the process the police never felt the need to protect anything else, as soon as the banks were involved, they sprang to preventative measures, showing their true duty as the gendarme of the plutocracy.

The rest of the march was uneventful, if humorous at times as one looked at the police’s desperate attempts to control the Anarchists. Eventually we reached the main train station where the whole thing halted and soon after the Anarchists within dispersed just as quickly as they had gathered. In fact it was quite strange the way it happened. I half expected it to be a break among Anarchists and Police so that each side could go grab some drinks and food before continuing. We milled around for a bit until we were certain nothing more was going to happen and then left.

In the end, I believe there must have been around 300 anarchists present and about 100 police, which is quite a big presence if one thinks about it. Unfortunately the whole demonstration was still quite small which further reinforces my belief that Germany (as well as most of the first world) has not yet felt the real effects of the looming crisis. I think that once the shit hits the fan, there will be far a bigger civilian presence and police repression. Future will tell.

Of course, just because in Germany things are not bad enough to make for big protests, doesn’t mean that the same applies everywhere…

[youtube]PtCt4eaXHTk[/youtube]

PS: Comic event of the day: As we were walking past a small market area parallel to the bigger march, we were shouting various anti-capitalist slogans. People weren’t really afraid of us and many were joking around. One stall-keeper asked us what this was about and when we explained she exclaimed: “Pirate Party Woooo!”, which was amusing to say the least. Not just because she confused our politics, but also because it showed how popular the Pirate Party in Germany has already become.

Quote of the Day: Gender Equality

September 26, 2009 Db02 Comments

A Quote about Equality between genders and how twisted it is in the eyes of sexists

Quoth Lucy Gillam

The first is that true gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.

And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.” My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.

Ayeap. This is what the shrill cries of males about “feminazis” are all about.

Quote of the Day: Criticism of Capitalism

September 25, 2009 Db0

A redditor points out a classic fallacy people make against anti-capitalists.

Quoth davex0rz

If someone criticizes capitalism and is rich, they’re accused of being “hypocritical” in some way, “limousine socialists,” elitists, etc.

If someone criticizes capitalism and is not rich, they’re accused of simply being envious, justifying their personal failure, resentful, etc.

It’s very convenient that, no matter who you are, you’re automatically discredited by who you are. That way, we never have to address anyone’s ideas.

Accurate. It is sad that most people are so eager to jump to ad hominem attacks rather than address the issues. Of course such tactics are not restricted only against anti-capitalists so every party should beware of falling into this easy fallacy.

Quote of the Day: Oh Human Nature

September 24, 2009 Db01 Comment

A Red Emma Quote about human nature

Quoth Emma Goldman

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.

Just goes to show how the same nonsense was eagerly used throughout the ages. “Human Nature” is the easy excuse for all oppression, from the State to Savery and from Patriarchy to Capitalism.

What role does Capital play during production?

September 23, 2009 Db016 Comments

Steve Keen makes a detailed argument against Marx’s inconsistencies in the explanation of the Labour Theory of Value. I present an alternative explanation.

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I’m a cautious fan of Steve Keen’s post-Keynesian economics ever since I was introduced to him via the AFAQ. A fan because he takes an empirical criticism to contemporary economics and cautious because he still supports the capitalist system and dismisses the LTV. So when I stumbled upon his reasoning for this dismissal [pdf] I felt that there are some flaws in the logic that I should point out.

The basic argument that Keen pursues in his refutation of the LTV is to concentrate on Marx’s own arguments on why Capital does not add any surplus value during the productive process, point out logical contradictions and use this as a proof that capital does add part of the surplus value created in production. First of all, I want to point out that I find this reasoning fallacious. The flaws in Marx’s reasoning might invalidate the proof of the LTV as Marx argued for it, but it just leaves us back in a situation where we again need to figure out what adds the surplus value in production. What it doesn’t do, is constitute a proof for the validity of the STV or even proof that labour isn’t the only thing that adds to the surplus value created in production. But this is the non-sequitur that Keen does as soon as he has pointed out the Marxian inconsistencies.

Of course I can imagine that for Keen, this follows from other theories of value such as Sraffa’s, but still this criticism makes it appear that all those other theories cannot stand unless Marx’s theory of value is countered and labour is shown not to be the only source of surplus value. However I believe that even though Marxian theory might be flawed, there are other argumentation paths that can point out the truth of the LTV, and I’m going to posit one now. I’m going to try and show what the actual purpose of Capital is.

A Primal Example

Lets take a tool-less society of humans (I know, completely unrealistic but stick with me). No tools (and thus capital at all) exists in the current society but nevertheless people can still create some basic commodities (trinkets to exchange, food to eat etc). Now lets take a person in this society which manages to discover the way to make a stone hammer from raw material. Lets say it takes him 20 hours to build it once he’s figured out how (Obviously he will have to do in in his free time, which assumes looking for food does not take up all of his productive life.)

If we assume a market economy in this society and that person wanted to trade the hammer for something else, the would obviously do so for something of equal value, ie something which took approximately the same amount of time to create. Why? Because if either party tried to get more, then a better option would be to build whatever it is you’re looking for, yourself.

For the same of simplicity, lets assume that this corresponds to 20$. Now at this point, we can’t realistically talk about any productivity of capital since none was used in this process. The whole 20$ of exchange value is a result of the surplus value created by only by labour.

Now lets assume that with a stone hammer available, someone can build another stone hammer in 15 hours only. The hammer is now being used as a mean of production, Capital. Does this prove that the capital contributes value to the surplus value created? To see if this is the case, we need to look at two different examples.

1. Let’s assume that the first hammer is not sold while the second hammer is created in order to be traded, seeing as there would be a demand for it. We can safely assume that the second hammer will be sold at the price of 20$ again, for the same reason as before. If it wasn’t, then someone would simply build his own. At 20$ though, a hammer that was made in 15 hours gives a 5$ profit (seeing as in those extra 5 hours, one can work on building more hammers to sell.) Does this show that the hammer provides 5$ of to the final surplus value created? We’ve already seen that the same hammer, and thus the same value can be created with no capital at all, and thus its “contribution” is not actually necessary at all. The only evidence of capital’s contribution is the price difference between the hours worked and the fair price requested for it.

But there is one simple problem. The price of the hammer will not stay at 20$ for long. As soon as the second and third hammer has been sold, others will figure out that there is a profit to be made in selling hammers and will use their new hammers to build them within 15 hours as well. A price war will occur until the price now stabilizes at around 15$, which will correspond to the time required to build it. So what has just happened? Where has Capital’s contribution disappeared to?

What happened is that once new novel capital was created, there was an immediate disequilibrium between the Socially Necessary Labour Time (SNLT), that is, the average time required to build the commodity with the new technology level, and the current price which still corresponds to the old SNLT. So what was the role of Capital in this case? Reducing the SNLT. It doesn’t provide surplus value, it doesn’t contribute anything, it simply makes the productive process faster.

But one would ask: What about the initial profit that the first builder made between making the first hammer and until the price stabilized to 15$? To jump to the conclusion that this was capital’s contribution is wrong. Not only because the capital’s contribution was in fact the original worker’s in the first place, as the hammer was nothing more than crystallized labour-power, but also because there are far more fitting explanations for the initial profit, the most simple one being: Reward for the intellectual labour required to build novel capital, ie a return for innovation. It’s only natural to assume that the first prototype of the hammer took far more effort to build than any subsequent copies. But this labour lost can never be captured simply through selling, for once it’s been designed, it’s not difficult for others to copy the idea anymore, so that’s basically labour-time lost. However, the time between the creation of novel capital and the reset of the SNLT is exactly which provides the opportunity for the creative labour investment to be returned.

So it all ties perfectly together in showing how labour is the only thing that created the surplus value (realized via the exchange value) while capital’s purpose was simply to reduce the SNLT and allow humans to produce more stuff in less time. However this does not change the fact that the average exchange value of whatever is produced is tied directly and only to the labour-time extended to replicate a commodity. This is in fact the process by which human production achieves an exponential rate since each new piece of capital frees up more time and thus allows more commodities and new capital to be built, and so on.

But now, lets take the second example, in which I’ll try to take a society that approaches our a bit more.

2. Let’s now assume that we have a similar situation of creating novel capital, but in this case, within a society which is wildly unequal. Some people have hoarded all the land for themselves, which means that there are a lot of people who do not have the capability of feeding themselves without working for others. Let’s also assume that the same hammer was created by one of those who own the land. Again, the hammer’s fair price is once more the same 20$ since anyone with free 20 hours would be able to make it. However now there’s a problem: Most don’t have the capacity to extend these 20 hours as their whole productive power is spent in the time they need to work for others. If they took this time off, they would starve ((OK, this might sound silly when used about something that needs 20 hours to create but the same principle applies to larger scale capital which requires hundreds of hours to build. However this is simply a hypothetical example where one full days work as a wage-labouring farmer provides enough food live and be productive for one day. Please bear with me.)) and thus even though the capital is as costly as before to make, it is external circumstances which make it unfeasible for others to trade for it in a fair price.

Now our wannabe-capitalist knows that most people can’t afford it and thus there is a market only for other capitalists (ie, those who make stone idols or other stone commodities). He knows that those will build in in 20 hours themselves if he tries to sell it at a higher price, so his max is 20$ again. However, now he has another way to make more money. Rather than use the hammer himself to make new hammers to sell as in example 1, he now hires one of those people who don’t have another choice (remember, everything is hoarded already by the few, much like the current system) to use his hammer and make new hammers. He gives them a wage of 10$ per hammer created (which is enough money to live and be productive for one day and something extra to give incentive for people to work for him) which means that he starts with a profit of 10$ which eventually drops to 5$ once the hammers have become distributed and the SNLT has dropped to 15 hours.

Now according to opponents of LTV, the 5$ of profit is now considered the productivity of capital and thus belongs to the person who created and owns the capital that the worker’s use. But there is a problem as we’ve seen in example 1: The only way that the productivity of capital can even exist when the SNLT has moved to 15 hours is if the new hammers are being produced via wage-labour. And this can only exist in a situation where all other resources have been hoarded and people are being passively coerced (ie starvation, homelessness) into wage-labour.

As such, the “productivity of capital” is in fact completely indistinguishable from the rate of exploitation caused by an unfair distribution of resources. The flaw in this logic in short, is that it assumes an unfair distribution of resources (ie hoarding) as a normal and appropriate situation which evolved naturally and from this starting point tries to understand capital’s relation to the production. But the hoarding of resources is not something that can happen naturally, both in theory and the history of humanity can point to this as it took very extended state and private violence in order to allow some to control most of the land.

The role of Capital then, has always been simply to reduce the SNLT required to produce any commodity. It’s role is not to contribute to surplus value, but simply to allow humans to produce the same amount of surplus value in lesser time than they would need without it. The surplus value is still created by the actual human labour and as such, all the conclusions that follow from this point still stand. To claim that capital contributes to production and therefore its owner needs to be “rewarded” for such production (even though the owner did nothing other than claim ownership) is simple apologetics for wage-slavery and exploitation.

A Division by Zer0

A bug in the code of the universe

Author: Db0