Production has immensely surpassed that of Franklin's time--why would you think that by working less, all of the sudden life would become miserable and boring? My point was that people could work significantly less and still live comfortably. Consumption would change, no doubt. But there's no reason to think that meat would no longer be an option and crowded dormitories would be the only living option. Nothing like this happened when working time was cut in half by labor movements in the early 20th century. Leisure becomes a welcomed part of life, where people do not need to spend half of their life making profits for somebody else.
Sure - I was taking an extreme scenario of working (at minimum wage) for only 3 hours a week. If you work as a skilled worker for, say, 20 hours a week, you can earn more money than most Americans did in the early 20th century. You can have your own apartment and eat meat every day (except Friday).
No--that would be producing solely for the sake of a particular need, not to earn a profit. Money, within the capitalist economy, is not just a medium. It is also the end and purpose of production. Selling goods for the sake of profit becomes an end in itself. Hence the constantly increasing advertising in capitalist economies, and the need for new markets. We do not just produce what is needed. Production occurs within an effort to persuade people to buy certain goods. The motivation for this is accumulation of capital. Money is king in capitalism, not the consumer.
Producers produce to make money. But producers wouldn't make money if consumers didn't buy their products. And consumers do not buy products so that producers make a profit. Consumers buy products because they value those products. The goal of the producer is, at best, only half the picture.
As for efforts to persuade consumers to consume - those certainly take place, just as, in a democracy, efforts take place to persuade citizens to vote. Ultimately, either you treat members of your society is autonomous beings capable of making their minds up about what's in their best interest, or you throw away democratic participation as well as the market process and institute a benign dictatorship.
Consumers purchase because they are convinced they need something or want something. Yes, consumers actually put money on the table without a gun to their head. But it would be misleading to then say that consumers rule, just like it would be misleading to suggest that voters rule in a democracy like the US. Capitalism stimulates want, even meaningless and wasteful want. That is why billions are pumped into advertising and seeking to find new ways to manipulate potential consumers. Capitalism creates a passive consumer society. This is quite different from the notion that goods are simply produced to satisfy wants. Producers don't just wait for community and consumer suggestions. They quite deliberately create and try to create consumer wants.
Why would the desires of workers and community members in your society be more accurately reflected in their voting choices than those of American voters or consumers today?
Your depiction of consumers is insulting and patronising.
You know that what they want is "meaningless and wasteful". Why should your choices (or that of any other person) supersede those of sovereign adults? How would
you know what is or isn't meaningful to different people?
True, producers don't just wait for community or consumer suggestions. And that is great. Because it means innovative producers can come up with products nobody has thought of before them.
However, they don't "create" consumer wants. The failure of most products and businesses is evidence for that. Rather, they try (at their own risk) to predict what consumers would appreciate, once offered.
How is it "incredibly efficient by historic terms"? It seems to me there is an incredible amount of waste in the capitalist economy. The massive market of advertising, for an example, is a complete waste. The fact that goods can be consumed en masse and dumped in mass in certain places while others live on next to nothing is a complete waste. Moving an industry to another part of the world for cheaper labor only to sell those goods back in the home country is a complete waste, and done solely for profits, not efficiency.
Efficiency is the ratio between product value produced and resources consumed. System A is more efficient than system B if it produces the same (or more) using fewer resources. The wealth of modern society is precisely the result of the great efficiency in resource use. Automation means that human resources are used more efficiently. But we also made huge gains in the efficient use of physical resources.
Advertising isn't wasteful. If it were, producers would have saved the money by avoiding it. Rather, advertising is the means to get your product, name brand and associated good feeling to consumers. As a result of advertising, consumers are made aware of the products available, and feel good about consuming them.
Moving an industry to another part of the world is incredibly efficient, if production costs are lower in that part of the world. Efficiency and profit are closely related, and in the drive to maximise profits, improving efficiency is a major tool.
If you even take a cursory look at the history of labor you really notice that it is the other way around. Violence against workers has been hugely on the side of owners and employers not the other way around.
Can you give me a single example in which violence was initiated by employers rather than by workers? Please note that occupying the owner's property is a form of violence, and using force to evict trespassers is perfectly legitimate.
In every single labour dispute, the workers can always simply walk away. But strikes are never only about the workers refusing to work. Strikes invariably include using force to try and block strike breakers.
The theory is that as production increases so do wages--particularly if wage earners have an equal amount of say over production. If owners of stock and CEOs are making more money as production increases, shouldn't I as the actual producer? Well if the exact opposite is actually happening--and often happens--it stands to reason that one group (those running away with the actual profits) has a sizable advantage over the other.
That isn't the theory. The output of the production process go to the suppliers of different factors of production, including labour, management, land and capital. The proportions depend on the incremental value of each factor, or, equivalently, on its price in the market. Let's say a worker continues to do the same job year after year, but the capitalist owners invest in expensive machinery that makes the same work produce a larger amount. Why should the worker rather than those who actually made a difference benefit?
To be clear, automation usually does result in higher marginal productivity by worker, and total worker compensation went up significantly over the past few decades. Unfortunately, government-induced health-care inflation has absorbed much of those compensation increases in the US.
However, one thing coeval with the rise of capitalism is the privatization of work life (in other words it becomes my personal salary in relation to an employer as opposed to it being communal pay, as in democratic workplaces, or communal work).
Actually, work used to be much more private before capitalism, when people worked their own land or, as artisans, in one-person or small-scale production. Small-scale or private production is the natural and traditional human condition.
Further, nothing stops workers from forming unions, mutual support organisations, friendly societies, etc. All of those flourished during the 19th century's rampant capitalism. Rather than capitalism, the atomisation of society is the result of government policies. In the past, people relied on each other - family, neighbours, co-workers, society members, etc. for help and support. Today, people expect faceless and bureaucratic government to provide them with support.
So in both production and consumption individuals are structurally geared to look toward their own personal immediate concerns.
Again, there is nothing inherent in the capitalist (not to mention voluntaryist) system that mandates or even pushes in that direction. People may form partnerships, syndicates or labour unions, consumer groups or communes. The huge success of social media (including, btw, this very site) is evidence that people do appreciate social relations.
Which parts of their lives (work, consumption, entertainment, play, etc.) they wish to socialise and which they wish to engage in privately is up to them, not to you.
Private taste trumps public interest
True public interest is nothing but the combination of private interests. What is typically referred to as "public interest" is actually the private interest of people deeming themselves "leaders".
Perhaps, as I said, this is the case more specialized and professional occupations, but I don't think it is accurate that this is historically the case for average workers within capitalist society.
Yet average workers today earn many times more than average workers did decades ago. And the vast majority of them earn well over minimum wage, and are not unionised. So it isn't either government action or union negotiations responsible for the huge increase in wages.
Rather workers are often forced to compete against other workers--this seems more so to be the case than employers having to compete against other employers for workers.
What makes you say that? Of course workers compete against each other. But then so do employers. All the time. Don't be misled by the fact that it is typically the employer who makes an offer for a given job and salary, and workers decide whether to accept it or not. Supermarkets determine the food of their products, and consumers have "no bargaining power". Yet supermarkets, in their mutual competition, push prices down.
Take, once again, democracy in advanced capitalist nations. Ideally, the true masters are the voters. But it does not really work out this way.
I agree. But there is a huge difference between voting and consuming. First, when you vote, you are required to condense all your preferences into a single choice. As a consumer, you make hundreds or thousands of consumption decisions each year. Second, when you vote, you know your vote isn't likely to make any difference in your life. Consequently, you vote based on your emotions, based on which vote makes you feel good, usually due to affiliation with a particular party or candidate. When you consume, you know you (and you alone) will bear the consequences of your choice.
People act much more rationally as consumers than they do as voters.
But those in power, those who control both the political and economic market place (often the same groups) are masters of preventing that from happening. A fragmented, individualized, consumer society becomes a very impotent society.
What power do "those in power" have to prevent consumers (or workers, for that matter) from forming voluntary unions?
As for the so called "legal preference" of unions--again, I don't know what you are talking about. Unions grew significantly during the Great Depression and were then curtailed by the Taft-Hartely act. Since the late 1970s they have increasingly been on the demise, and during the most important conflicts between labor and business, the government consistently has sided with big business.
The most important form of legal preference is that while workers can quit at any time and for any reason, employers aren't similarly allowed to terminate their relation with employees.
To be clear, I opposed many of the provisions of Taft-Hartly which limit the ability of unions to strike. In my opinion, the right of workers to strike can only be limited by whatever contractual obligations to the contrary they voluntarily sign. However, and by the same token, employers should be free to fire employees subject only to mutually-agreed terms.
Well I'm not so sure that it is. There are a number of cooperatives in the US and Europe—however, it’s no surprise that the dominant mode of production in capitalism is actually the opposite (i.e. top-down, wage labor), particularly if what I have been saying is true: capitalism is based on a fundamental conflict between labor and capital, and within the capitalist economy capital holds the significant advantage.
Actually, it is very much a surprise. Capital is not static. New firms are created all the time, often starting at a small scale. Given what you characterise as the "fundamental conflict between labour and capital", you would think that many firms would be started by labour (which has access to capital either through savings or through temporary borrowing). Such firms would find it much easier to recruit workers, and thereby gain an advantage over capitalist firms. Neither banks nor consumers really care about the nature of the firm, so worker-owned firms will suffer no disadvantage relative to capitalist firms.
We live in a world of corporatized giants, this is both coeval financial and wealth inequality. There is, actually--and has often historically been--significant pockets of capital concentration.
We live in a large world. There is plenty of room for corporate giants without any owning significant fraction of wealth. The wealthiest people in the world own less than $100bn each. Global GDP, by contrast, is over $70,000bn. World wealth is $223,000bn. So no person in the world owns more than about 0.03% of the world's wealth. That doesn't seem like much concentration, does it?
Well--because it hasn't! I mean the highway system in the US did not come about the invisible hand. Neither did much of the computerized technological advancements and others, which came from highly planned investments in the military. Many of the actual comforts of modern society have come from very deliberate planning, not the "invisible hand of the market".
True. The "invisible hand" can only work where it is allowed to. In the 19th century there have been numerous private roads in the US. But government took over those roads, providing roads for "free". As for computerised technological advances, the US government was behind early computer communication protocols, but the industry has made huge advances since then. To suggest that we owe the modern Internet to the US government is like the famous joke that if it weren't for Edison, we would have been watching TV to candle-light.
The invisible hand isn't about lack of planning - it is about lack of
central planning. I thought you and I agreed that central planning isn't required for a modern economy.
After all capital is shared in common, and communities can decide to very deliberately invest in things that would be in the interest of all.
I thought capital is owned by individual communities, rather than by society at large. Sure - communities can decide to very deliberately invest in things that would be in the interest of all. But then so can firms or individuals. The capitalist system includes several means for individuals to pool their resources towards achieving larger goals.
As for inequality, I think it is OK so long as it is also based on a certain amount of equality: equality in basic goods and in opportunity. As for unemployment, I have already stated that a socialist economy would necessarily be based on full employment.
You stated that, but you have not articulated a mechanism whereby that would happen. Who would force wealthy communities to support poorer ones? Who would be forced to provide employment to unemployed people? Since you claim to be an anarchist, there can be no central body with such powers. Hence it could only be done through the voluntary cooperation of communities, right?
But if you assume that you can rely on communities to voluntarily cooperate, and since communities are democratic, and their choices reflect the preferences of their members, why assume that individuals couldn't also be relied upon to voluntarily cooperate?
And what's to stop syndicates and communities to flourish side-by-side with capitalist production firms? If things go well, wouldn't workers be eager to work for a syndicate rather than a capitalist? Wouldn't people prefer living in a mutually-supportive community over atomised neighbourhoods?
What are you worried about?
First of all, many of the command socialisms had a great many success--the Soviet economy grew substantially, and its collapse had to do largely because of its competition with Western capitalism. Other command economies have found similar types of success such as China, Cuba, and Venezuala.
Surely you are joking. The Soviet economy grew substantially when measured from the starting line of post WW I Russia. But relative to any capitalist or semi-capitalist economy, the Soviet production system
sucked. Those of China, Cuba and Venezuela similarly failed. They failed, btw, by the only relevant standard, namely the attitude of their citizens. All communist countries forcibly limited emigration, while no capitalist country ever did. Why?
Mises explained that socialist economies operating in a mixed-economy world can rely on price signals from market economies to guide their prices. It is an autonomous socialist economy that he proved to be an impossibility.
There have also been other modes of economic planning within capitalist states that have been greatly effective, for instance the national highway system, or the Marshal Plan which reconstructed Europe.
The effectiveness of the national highway system is hard to assess, since we don't know how much more efficient a private alternative may have been. Regardless, and as stated above, the system was put in place in the context of a market economy. Thus prices for the various factors of production (including capital) were known. In your system there is no market in capital, and thus no mechanism for determining its price, either in monetary form (i.e. interest rates) or in physical form (e.g. price of land, as land isn't sold or bought).
The Marshal Plan wasn't a central plan. Money was transferred to European governments who used it to buy American goods. Once the money was transferred, it was used in the context of a market economy.
Third, I have been proposing a model of decentralized market socialism (Some would propose centralized market socialism). So in my model goods and services are priced largely by demand.
Goods and services - yes. But not capital.
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free.
Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.