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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Happy International Workers Day!

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
And happy 10 years of Blair.

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
and pick up a copy of "The Wealth of Nations" preferably in hardback with leather binding.

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
If everyone owned their own business, there would be no workers, only owners.

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Yes, but I would have thought that a business would need more than one person in it. Or at least, several your self-employed people would have to band together to do certain tasks. Which in practice is not much different from a workers' collective (i.e. where all the workers are also shareholders).

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But to address your hirer’s market crisis, if it is a hirers market, what would you do to correct it? Take more from the hirers? Notice the “take”.

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Retraining schemes. But I'll come back to this.

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As for ”Creaming off too high a percentage”;, the problem I have with that is, Who gets to decide “Too High”;.

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It should be possible to calculate, in a reasonably objective way, the discrepancy between the pay-per-drop-of-sweat of the various members of a company. (And I think I should acknowledge here that it doesn't have to be the senior management who are being paid a sum disproportionate to the amount of work they put in. Look at Premiership footballers...)

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”Reasonably Objective” Again, by who’s standard?

Yes, let’s look at high paid athletes. They are a singularly talented business person. They are the 1% of the 1%. They have trained their entire lives to do ONE thing better than anyone else not at their level. Entire corporations and tens of thousands of people have jobs because of them. From janitors to the coaches to the shareholders in the corporation to the CEO. All of them rely on that athlete to do his job. So they pay him well so he stays there instead of moving somewhere where the pay is better.

Let’s assume that you penalize that footballer with redistributive taxation. He leaves for say America. Then the next guy, then the next until we have all of your team and you are left with middling players. Nobody comes to see the games, they watch the American team because they are properly paid and broadcast in HDTV worldwide. They have to lay off the janitor, then the coach leaves for America too, thousands of jobs are lost.

I again simplify, of course. But here’s an interesting thought….

Los Angeles doesn’t have a football (American) team and hasn’t for a long time. I’m sure the reasons for that are legion, on the other hand, if I was an owner I wouldn’t put a team here either because it is a pain in the ass to do business in Los Angeles. All those jobs are in other cities all over the US. Point to ponder.

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Some businesses spend say 30% of their money on say, marketing, some 70%. If the socialists take 30% of their money, one business can cut its marketing budget for the financial molestation it just got from the socialists. The other business goes bankrupt. This is a simple example, of course, but it does show the problem with the socialist approach.

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This is not really relevant. I was not talking about company taxes but about redistributive taxation to redress the discrepancy between earnings and workrate.

As far as company taxes go you may well be right. Ségolène Royal was recently accused of wanting to impose so many charges patronales on small businesses that they would no longer be able to hire anyone. She didn't have an answer to that...

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I love that. You just accused someone of wrongdoing and then tried to take it back. The bias shows up in the rather sneaky word “all”;.

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No sneakiness was intended. I made what could be read as a blanket condemnation of businessmen and then qualified it. I don't think it is in doubt that there are unethical businessmen around, or that plenty of businessmen aren't.

But the existence of evil businessmen is not quite the point.

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You have done exactly what I said socialists shouldn’t do. You are looking for the needle in the haystack and think it is relevant in order to justify the socialist “take”. Many, if not most businesspeople are like you and me. Small groups of people trying to get by as ethically and humanely as they can.

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As I have said, it is a question of redressing the discrepancy between workrate and earnings. I don't think the management has to be evil for there to be a discrepancy.

If the senior management's earnings are disproportionately high relative to the salaries of the employees, then there is still a "take" happening, by the senior management, from the employees, whatever the employees' actual quality of life.

You, I think, are arguing that this is OK as long as the employees still earn enough to live decently, which is what happens in most businesses. If this is correct, though, then it should be equally OK to tax the employers provided they are left with a decent residue.

You seem to be arguing that it is OK to take from the employees, without any real justification beyond "because I can", but not from the employers even when the tax is to be used for social improvement.

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It is again telling that the assumption is that employers are bad. That they would “Do what they like?”;. As if employees had no choice in the matter, no possibility of leaving ever. No power to decide. Poor employees, they are just babes in the woods. How disempowered they are.

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Sweatshops.

I have already said that I think the real underclass these days is mostly found in the developing world, rather than the West.

That said, even in the West I don't believe employees are as empowered as you claim:

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I had not seen your comment on the developing world. In that we can agree. I actually favor unions in places that are less developed. Amazing isn’t it?

I have said before (not on this thread) that Unions have a time and place. That time and place is very very narrow IMO. If for no other reason than Unions (at least in America) are so corrupt that they make Enron look like a bunch of angels. But in some places, the government is so corrupt that they can make Unions look like angels. Unions fuck the employees worse than any bad businessman can (again, in America) that is one of many reasons I hate them here.

The west’s employees are plenty empowered, thus my sarcasm of how disempowered Socialistas want to make us think they are so as to justify the take.

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Employees can go back to school, start a business, change jobs, work on the side, get a second job, whatever. In short, they are limited only by their own imagination and hard work for themselves.

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They are limited by their financial resources. Also by the unemployment rate. In a hirers' market, unless retraining schemes are offered cheaply or free of charge, it is far easier to retrain if you have money - and it has already been established that money is not proportionate to amount of hard work.

And I don't see how this discrimination is in the employers' interests either, because it gives them a much smaller pool of possible employees to choose from.

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True socialists...

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Yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

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What…

...ever.

Interesting colloquialism though.

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I was trying to accuse you of the No True Scotsman Fallacy in a humorous manner - the clue was in clicking the link. It didn't really work though ...

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I clicked the link and figured it out. I just didn’t buy the accusation. Thus the “whatever” .



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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
”Reasonably Objective” Again, by who’s standard?

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Let’s assume that you penalize that footballer with redistributive taxation. He leaves for say America. Then the next guy, then the next until we have all of your team and you are left with middling players. Nobody comes to see the games, they watch the American team because they are properly paid and broadcast in HDTV worldwide. They have to lay off the janitor, then the coach leaves for America too, thousands of jobs are lost.

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He had a whole list of other things like that, but the short was, it was HELL to do business in France and I guarantee it affects their economy, not too mention their disgruntled unemployed youth that riot in the streets.

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Actually I think it was relevant. If there are more ethical businessmen around than not, why even bring it up?

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That whole process is voluntary. The consumer wants their stuff, the employee wants a job, and the employer wants to provide her with a job. It’s all accepting the terms of a contract.

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Only the socialist is interfering by taking money from anyone by force, justified by a contorted assumption that something bad is happening when people willingly do business with each other.

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Unions fuck the employees worse than any bad businessman can (again, in America) that is one of many reasons I hate them here.

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Thus the statement I said “Hard work for themselves”. I paid for my early education through private school by doing laundry, picking raspberries and zucchini squash (Horrible work), and by cleaning toilets. Excuse me if I have little sympathy for “limited financial resources” when it comes to getting ahead.

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It's a difficult one, but there is certainly an argument for allowing socialists to have a certain primacy in defining the word 'socialism'. And therein lies the rub: some of you just don't seem to realise what utter extremists some of us are.

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Well, I realise it which is why you give me the heebie jeebies.

But I'd very much appreciate hearing your definition: as I mentioned before I know very little about it and am open to learn.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Socialism, like God, is best defined negatively.

Socialism is the type of society which would be brought about by the appropriation of the means of production by working people, and (therefore) through the abolition of class society. Given that most of us our socialists not least because we believe that people should be in control of their own conditions of existence, it seems a little counterproductive to provide too detailed a blueprint. Although, inevitably, there needs to be a balance. One has to believe enough about what socialism might be like, to make it worth struggling for.

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To whom is an injustice being done? Presumably to the capitalists who own the machine and construction industries. Well, no doubt, in terms of a theory of justice which is compatible with capitalism. But given that socialists, by defintion, reject such a theory of justice, we might be forgiven for not caring very much.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
I'm not entirely sure how that follows. (Leaving aside that I don't think socialism has ever been tried, and so is not a dismal failure.)

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Your point seems to be that things like machines and factories are themselves produced. The socialist claim is that they are indeed and, under capitalism, they are produced by alienated labour in the class interests of capital. And that workers in the machine-building and construction industries ought to take control of their own productive activity, as well.

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To whom is an injustice being done? Presumably to the capitalists who own the machine and construction industries.

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Originally posted by Papio:
What about the view that an injustice is being perpetrated by the capitalists upon the workers, and that the employers don't actually have any moral right to their wealth and never did have any such right, and got it by fraud and immorality?

If you except such a view then socialism is by no means an injustice upon the capitalists.

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What about the view that an injustice is being perpetrated by the capitalists upon the workers, and that the employers don't actually have any moral right to their wealth and never did have any such right, and got it by fraud and immorality?

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Reasonably Objective Again, by who’s standard?

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Hours worked, stress, risks entailed (physical or financial) all seem capable of objective measurement to me. A crude measurement, granted, but better than simply assuming the market value is the correct one.

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Let’s assume that you penalize that footballer with redistributive taxation. He leaves for say America. Then the next guy, then the next until we have all of your team and you are left with middling players. Nobody comes to see the games, they watch the American team because they are properly paid and broadcast in HDTV worldwide. They have to lay off the janitor, then the coach leaves for America too, thousands of jobs are lost.

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That is indeed the flaw of socialism...

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He had a whole list of other things like that, but the short was, it was HELL to do business in France and I guarantee it affects their economy, not too mention their disgruntled unemployed youth that riot in the streets.

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Again, you're quite right.

However, at the risk of releasing a few true Scotsmen myself, I think it's a case of bad socialism rather than socialism per se. High company taxes, like social security contributions, are regressive - big corporations can handle them, but small businesses are crippled. If businesses are to be taxed at all it should, under a socialist model, be the other way round.

Making your workers unsackable (or virtually) is contrary to Karl Marx' aphorism "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Also, the power given to the unions is wholly destructive. The French have not done anything to engage the workers in the decision-making process - they have merely entrenched both sides in a permanent conflict and given the employees more armaments.

A proper "empowerment" of the workers would be something like this scheme set up by O2, where the lower-level employees get the right to sit at board meetings. The reason being, that they might be crap at things like risk management and market analysis, but they do have a better immediate knowledge of the problems customers have with their products and the difficulties the workers may have implementing their programmes.

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Actually I think it was relevant. If there are more ethical businessmen around than not, why even bring it up?

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I didn't bring it up - you did. You seemed to be using "judge not lest ye be judged" in order to rule out any discussion of business ethics. My point was that, by that argument, we can't have any ethical discussion at all.

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That whole process is voluntary. The consumer wants their stuff, the employee wants a job, and the employer wants to provide her with a job. It’s all accepting the terms of a contract.

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Yes, but the terms of the contract are dictated to a large extent by the conditions of the market, which are out of the control of the participants. So it's voluntary in that as all parties are happy with the result, but involuntary in that they didn't individually have much control over it.

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Only the socialist is interfering by taking money from anyone by force, justified by a contorted assumption that something bad is happening when people willingly do business with each other.

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Not quite. I'm saying that the government "take" in the form of taxation is morally equivalent to the "take" of the worker who gets a disproportionate share of the pot.

In both cases the conditions are mostly out of the hands of the participants. The workers are limited by the conditions of the market, of which they nonetheless form a small part. The taxpayers are limited by the law, over which they nonetheless have a small amount of power by virtue of being voters. In both cases, however, no real harm is done as long as the worker or the taxpayer get a decent residue.

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Unions fuck the employees worse than any bad businessman can (again, in America) that is one of many reasons I hate them here.

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That's the workers' fault for electing stupid people.

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Thus the statement I said “Hard work for themselves”. I paid for my early education through private school by doing laundry, picking raspberries and zucchini squash (Horrible work), and by cleaning toilets. Excuse me if I have little sympathy for “limited financial resources” when it comes to getting ahead.

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Yes, but the point is that if you came from a richer background you wouldn't have to do all this. And that assumes that the fruit-picking and toilet-cleaning jobs are available in the first place.

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Your not serious…..

Fruit picking and toilet cleaning will always be with us. Those jobs are not fungible, they cannot be shipped out of the area that they are done like say telemarketing.

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You're not complaining, I admire you for it and I'm not going to indulge in vicarious outrage on your behalf. But I don't see how the situation is in anyone's favour. If you're retraining as a discombobulator, and all the discombobulator colleges demand huge fees, then most of the successful graduates will be those who have been able to give full attention to their studies because they're not holding down part-time jobs on the side. So that when the discombulation plant goes on a recruitment drive for workers to carry on its vital economic activity, the graduate pool will be skewed towards the rich rather than towards those who have a real innate talent for discombobulation.

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Originally posted by Stars:
. Another way to ask the same question is if the workers produce the means of production, why do they keep hiring capitalists to provide them with the means of production?

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Originally posted by Stars:
I don't go about simply accepting things for no reason.

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Originally posted by 206:
I have to admit my participation in this discussion has been made more difficult by someone insinuating I'm 'greedy' and applying the 'puke' emoticon to my motives.

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I think you'd be forgiven if you were perfectly OK with someone coming and taking your stuff.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

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Originally posted by Stars:
. Another way to ask the same question is if the workers produce the means of production, why do they keep hiring capitalists to provide them with the means of production?

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What a bizarre question, but one which focuses the (from my point of view) mistake the rest of your post is premised on. You seem to equate economic causation with monetary causation: producing things with providing money so that things may be produced. These are not the same thing. One of Marx's greatest insights was to give an account of how, under capitalism, relations between people (and between people and non-human nature) are viewed as supervening upon monetary relations (the paradigm case of so-called 'commodity fetishism').

When I say that workers produce the means of production I mean 'produce' in the ordinary everyday sense of 'build', 'make through their work'. I do not mean 'put up the money for' - that they cannot do this answers, in part, your question as to why workers can't just get under with socialism in a market system (although there are other ideological and organisational issues as well). Logically, at least, one can produce something in the former sense without 'producing' in a fashion mediated by the money nexus. Socialism might be thought of as the realisation of this logical possibility.

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Originally posted by Papio:

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Originally posted by Stars:
I don't go about simply accepting things for no reason.

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Me neither.

That's why I have some difficulty with capitalism.

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I think DOD is already doing a good job of answering your question to me, and my post really was just instead as a subsidury (sp?).

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
I feel I've already answered the points in that post, in my previous post.

In essence, you seem to miss the point that socialists typically make an ethical claim and a subjunctive claim about market exchange: (a.) it would be better were human productive relationships not to be mediated by the money nexus, and (b.) it is possible for human productive relationships not to be mediated by the money nexus. You might disagree with either. But demanding, of socialists, that they justify their beliefs as if they didn't hold both, misses the target somewhat.

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I don't think capitalism is necessarily fraudulent. I think capitalist ideology frequently is.

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Here's an opportunity for common ground: do you think socialist ideology could be fraudulent?

Even infrequently? Or is it somehow as pure as the driven snow compared to capitalism?

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I think most socialists would say that some forms of socialist ideology are fraudulent. Those that legitimate state capitalism, for example.

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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton

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I think most socialists would say that some forms of socialist ideology are fraudulent. Those that legitimate state capitalism, for example.

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Fair enough.

But you know I have been asking for more precise definitions.

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Originally posted by Stars:
You can’t reply, ’oh, it’s because of the money nexus’, because I am showing you that it is the existence of that very 'money nexus'

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Originally posted by 206:

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I don't think capitalism is necessarily fraudulent. I think capitalist ideology frequently is.

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Here's an opportunity for common ground: do you think socialist ideology could be fraudulent?

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The way I'm using the word 'ideology' is, I think, probably slightly different from yours.

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But, if you mean, do I think that some 'socialist' ideas are bad, then, yes.

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Originally posted by Papio:
Stars - I'm going to be ignoring you from now on, make of that what you will. I don't really care.

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Originally posted by 206:
Exactly: that's why (again) I'm asking, as humbly as I can, for more precise definitions about all of this.

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The way I'm using the word 'ideology' is, I think, probably slightly different from yours.

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But, if you mean, do I think that some 'socialist' ideas are bad, then, yes.

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Socialism, I think, would enable us to be imperfect more safely.

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Callan - do you think a true belief can serve to perpetrate an unjust social order? Think about the way the reality of crime is used to crush civil liberties.

I'm not, of course, saying we shouldn't believe the truth. I'm just saying that society might be such that we might need to turn our attention to Eagleton's later work - on tragedy.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Given that most of us our socialists not least because we believe that people should be in control of their own conditions of existence,

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Hey, now there's something I can get behind .

I choose for my conditions of existence to be lying by a pool eating steak and drinking G&T all day. Here's hoping there are enough people who choose hard work, graft and productivity to enable me to do so . OK I jest, but I hope to make a serious point thereby. If the "money nexus"*, as you call it, is removed, what is there to motivate any given individual to actually do anything?

As I see it there are two remaining options: relying on their innate goodness or coercion. But one is clearly never going to happen, and the other is abhorrent - especially to Christianity. All that remains is the profit motive...

[ 02. May 2007, 20:33: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If the "money nexus"*, as you call it, is removed, what is there to motivate any given individual to actually do anything?

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Ideology in its original sense means "an untrue belief which legitimises and sustains an unjust social order".

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Well, even under capitalism we are motivated to do all sorts of worthy things without monetary incentive.

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And I wager, you'd get bored of sitting by the pool with the G&Ts!

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But it seems reasonable to me to think that a significant component of human behaviour is socially conditioned. So, in a capitalist society, there will be a tendency for people to seek a monetary incentive for work (albeit a non-absolute tendency, as I said above). We need not suppose this would be present in a non-capitalist society. It is worth a try.

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I certainly think there is an innate human capacity to find fulfilment in creative work. I suppose that makes my position an optimistic one: albeit not abstractly optimistic. I think that this capacity is more or less easilty fulfilled in different social circumstances.

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