A question

Much of socialist opposition to capitalism (as I perceive it, anyhow) revolves around the following proposition; under a capitalist system, a minority of the population earns profit from the labour of the majority of the population that labour for them to produce their profit.

If we put everything else to the side (ie, the emotional indignation inherent in living a life of servitude to the objectives of the wealthy, capitalist class), my question is this; is it possible for this proposition to be falsified? Can a capitalist system sustain itself under conditions where-by a majority - indeed, where-by (under the most ideal conditions possible) every member - of the population are the manufacturers/marketers of goods? This is surely, under the doctine of economic rationalism, the most sensible and self-serving goal of the individual who lives in a capitalist system; to produce marketable goods from which they may profit from, in competition with other self-serving individuals whom they must overcome if they are to provide the best service available, and thus make the optimum profit that is within their capacity to attain. However, to repeat myself, is this actually possible? Can every individual be 'the best that they can be', while in-so-forth sustaining the very framework that allows them to do fulfil such an aspiration?

In plainer terms, if a person aspires to make the most wealth that they possibly can, they must be a manufacturer/marketer of goods (as opposed to being a labourer, who produces goods that they do not own), which they sell at a price that is calculated to reap a profit that must exceed the expenditure required to produce such goods. Is it possible for every person in a society - or even a majority of people in society - to be the manufactuers/marketers of goods, and thus achieve the economically rational goal of making the most wealth that they possible can over the course of their life?

To pose this question a final time, is it possible for the majority of people within a capitalist society to be manufactuers rather than workers? Is it possible for the tables to turn, and for a numerical MINORITY of people in a capitalist system to be workers, producing goods for the numerical MAJORITY of wealthy manufacturers?

My answer is that this is not possible; "too many Chiefs and not enough Indians", "too many manufactuers and not enough workers". If my answer to this question is valid, then there are hefty implications upon the capacity of a capitalist system to sustain it's central claim; the claim that "under capitalism, every person may be whatever they want to be", especially under the consideration that it is economically most rational for every person to be a manufactuer rather than a worker. The only situation that I could perceive this working out in is one where-by the workers are paid an amount that makes it economically rational for them to work for manufacturers, rather than to simply produce goods of their own... which doesn't seem economically rational for the manufacturers! For if the workers are being paid a wage that makes it feasible to work for a manufacturer/marketer of goods rather than simply manufacture/market the goods themselves, then they must be getting paid a wage that is worth more than the amount of wealth that the workers could make through manufacturing/marketing the goods themselves... which both seems utterly impossible, and makes my brain hurt!

So... discuss! Is it possible for every person - acting in their own selfish interest - to be a manufacturer of goods, rather than a mere worker who produces the goods that the manufacturer sells? If this is not possible, does this invalidate the claim that capitalism allows every person to achieve the goals that they set in life, assuming that it is economically rational for these goals to be centred around producing the maximum amount of wealth that is within their capacity to produce? I'm very interested to hear the responses that capitalist blades out here have got to this question!

As a final note, I won't be able to answer any responses to this thread for a day or two - I've got an essay due on the 19th that I've done less than half of, so all my efforts are going to be concentrating on getting the essay done before the deadline, rather than responding to posts here. In the meantime, please post your thoughts on this question! Let the discussion begin!

 

Cheers!

I agree.

You could really never argue one way or the other as to whether the majority of people want or do not want to be manufacturers, but I'd put the idea forward that striving to become a manufacturer is more economically rational than striving to be a worker, giving exception to the increased risk factors that would make being a manufacturer less attractive than being a worker. Still, manufacturers earn more money than the workers that they employ, so why would you not want to be a manufacturer if you work for the purpose of earning money?

Your third point neatly explains that last question - a majority of people probably don't have what it takes to be a manufacturer in their own right. I think this fact is what grounds the question that I pose as being much more theoretical than practical, the fact that most us wouldn't be able to be manufacturers even if it WAS our chief ambition in life. Still, could we not assume that the market can work to serve this deficiency of skills - as it does at the moment - through the provision of such services as 'business management seminars', or even through private, one-on-one coaching for how to succeed as being a manufacturer in your chosen field? All the coaching in the world won't help a person who has been born with a brain that isn't 'geared up right' to be a businessman, but I'd suggest (with no evidence to back me up ) that most people are born with brains that, with a lot hard work, training and perseverance, have what it takes to lead a business.

If this actually was the case, we could say that it would be economically rational for every worker to want to be a manufacturer, and that it is within the capabilities of most people to be manufacturers, provided that they have undergone enough training on the matter to hone this capability to a sufficient standard. If this is so, the first point that you raise surely stands in the way of these other two points - that there simply would not be enough workers to support this rising class of people who have extensively trained to be manufacturers because it is in their economic interest to do so.

Too true, I agree with all of what you've said here... free-market capitalism I can stomach quite easily, so long as the 'social contract' that it rests upon is one that individuals voluntarily engage with and are free to leave at any time for a non-capitalist societal/economic alternative. If you're the sort of person who likes to compete and likes to use their talents to make as much money as possible, what better system could possibly satisfy your wants and needs than that of free-market capitailsm? Therefore, though I'm socialist, I absolutely and entirely believe in the fundamental necessity of a capitalist system that operates alongside a socialist system, so that people in a socialist system who are not happy with this arrangement can transfer to capitalist society, and vice versa. Capitalism and socialism not simply tolerating each-others existence, but working in partnership so as to provide the maximum range of freedom and liberty for the individuals within their respective systems to choose the lifestyle/political system/society that best suits their personal sensibilities. But crony-capitalism, the capitalism of America, Britain, Australia etc I cannot stand, it's everything that you've labelled it and worse still... here's to hoping that a non-violent revolution takes place soon to drive the beast of corporatism down to the ground, that freedom and liberty may finally reign supreme as we all deserve.

I agree with all of this, especially the second paragraph - if everybody was to run their own business then there'd be a shortage of workers, resulting in the owners of these businesses having to do much more of the work themselves due to not being able to hire anybody to help them, which defeats one of the chief purposes of owning a business; making more money out of doing less work! Very salient point

After reading through this it certainly strikes me as being a very nicely thought-out concept, and is all the more impressive for having been written by a former slave - my objection to this, though, is that the self-made man must 'make' himself within conditions that he has not chosen; his 'self' is formed through a reactionary process of interacting with a system that he must essentially define his objectives within if he is to achieve them. For example, a man (or woman ) wants to become a vetenarian. To achieve this aim and thereby 'make' themselves, "she or he" (you'll probably get a laugh out of this - my lecturer for Politics ALWAYS says 'she or he' rather than 'he or she', and will actually correct himself if he slips up and says 'he or she'... apparently this is to instil into us an awareness of inherent sexism by challenging the societal and linguistic norm of saying 'he or she' ) must achieve a certain percentage in high school to enable them to go to university, must study the explicit material that is laid out in the coursework for their degree, and furthermore must operate as a vetenarian under conditions that are shaped out for her or him by the forces of the market. Now, I'm not for one second saying that there's anything WRONG with all of this, I just don't consider such a person as being a 'self made man' merely by virtue of the fact that they've achieved their objective of being a vetenarian; it is true, but they've become only the manner of vetenarian that is possible for them to become under the societal and economic conditions that they live in. In plainer terms, they are a veterarian, but they are not a vetenarian on their own terms... this is stating the obvious perhaps, making a mountain out of a mole-hill maybe, but nether-the-less it seems self-evident to me that the 'self-made man' can only 'make' himself in-so-far as his surroundings permit, and thus it might be more succinct to describe him (or her ) as being a 'person who has made themself according to the choices that are available to them in the society within which they live'... or, if you want to confuse the hell out of people with this handy little abbreviation, a P.W.H.M.T.A.T.T.C.T.A.A.T.T.I.T.S.W.W.T.L

Cheers! I'd agree with everything you've said here, with the constantly progressing march of technology the capacity to be a manufacturer in your own right without actually employing any workers will become more and more feasible, though it seems to me too like we'll always still need workers for some jobs, surely. I can't help wonder whether this kind of future is a sensible or even ethical one though, in terms of the environmental costs that must be exacted to build all this machinery that will take over jobs. I guess we must have faith in what our good fellow blade Kylesa says, that the free market will work towards environmentally friendly solutions to sourcing materials/work towards using less space to produce goods within and all the like because it is marketable for such solutions to arise

True, true... especially in consideration of what SouthernSmoke said, that if more and more manufacturers to spring up they'd have to do more of the work themselves to compensate for the lack of workers available to them for hire - therefore, why would you want to work AND run the risk of being a manufacturer rather than just getting instructions from a boss, fulfilling them and getting your pay-slip easy as that? My only defence would be that if we assume that manufacturers make more money than their workers (a fair assumption, methinks...), it would be economically rational for these workers to aspire to be manufacturers, so as to utilise their capacity for work in a way that brings to them the most profit possible.

To a certain extent I reckon you COULD measure how much a person can make, within the capacity of their chosen occupation anyhow. If I am a worker at a fruit-farm picking fruit, I'll make $9 an hour - incidentally, this is how much I've been getting paid, picking tomatoes out at an old Italian couples tomato plantation. I pick an average of 200 tomatoes an hour; a 10 pack of tomatoes sells for $3. If I was to be a manufacturer (ie, the bloke who owns the tomato farm), I would be making $60 for these 200 tomatoes - as it stands, however, I make $9 for the 200 tomatoes that I have picked. Thus, I would objectively stand to make more money as a 'manufacturer' of tomatoes than I would as being the worker who picks the tomatoes;thus we can say that working as a tomato-picker is making less money than it is in my 'capacity' to make, provided that I do indeed have the skill and resources available to me to start up a tomato plantation of my own. Ya dig it?

I like your second point too, strikes me as being a great example of the deployment of the Socratic method! I'd say that if owning the entirity of Rhode Island is within the law so far as property rights are concerned, then what's stopping you from doing so? It was you who taught me that so long as you have the choice to take a course of action and are not being coerced against taking such a course of action, then you have the freedom to do whatever it is that you wish to do. If you wish to own Rhode Island, and are not being coerced in-so-far as your wish to do so being interfered with by government/any other agency, then why should you not be free to achieve your wish? That you would not be able to own Rhode Island perhaps says something about the difficulty of capitalism in securing the ability for its citizens to obtain overly ambitious objectives, or that'd be my conclusion on the matter anyhow

I dig it man, my own thoughts ran along these lines too... if you're into chickens and like eating eggs, you can fairly easily keep chickens/take in the eggs that they lay to eat yourself, and if this hobby proves to be something that you'd like to expand upon then you can indeed buy more chickens, 'produce' (it's not you who is actually PRODUCING the eggs, but I digress ) more eggs, sell these eggs and thus be a 'manufacturer', in additonal to being a standard old worker at your day-job. In this sense, it's very much possible for every person to be a manufacturer of that which is in line with their hobby, providing that their hobby is one that facilitates the creation of items for sale in a marketplace and is sufficiently inexpensive/ not too time intensive as to allow them to do so. This would strike me as being the best possible 'majority of society as manufacturers' scenario, as everybody is engaging in something that they enjoy and have a passion for, and are simply taking their passion to the next level of producing that which their hobby is foundationed upon, rather than merely consuming what is required to engage in their hobby.

Finally... Altman's Path, I'm loading up the video now, should make for some mint baking-and-viewing material for tonight I recently saw a great documentary that, as a fellow socialist, you'd probably dig; it's called 'The Bottom Line; Privatizing The World'. Give it a whirl h'yar, if you feel so inclined (this goes out to you too smokinp - cheers for the rep too man ) - Watch Videos Online | The Bottom Line - Privatizing The World | Veoh.com

 

I sometimes have to doubt this man, I've spoken to all-too-many people who hold opinions and harbour preferences that are in no way, shape or form 'rational'. For example, a friend of mine, who owns an iPhone 4, tells me that she can't wait for the iPhone 5 to come out so that she can buy it - if it doesn't look 'ugly' anyhow. I asked her, "Why?" She said, word for word, "I dunno, it's just cool." I told her that this seemed irrational to me in the extreme, and all she did was laugh! My mother buys those bloody 'celebrity magazines', where they write all about what Tom and Kate are up to, or whether Brittany has had luposuction - you know the utter shit that I mean, though I know that you believe that the value of these magazines (indeed, the value of anything) is subjective and such. I asked her the same thing, "Why do you read that stuff?" She had much the same answer, something along the lines of "Oh, it just kills time, and it's funny seeing how they all live." My younger sister believes that "libraries are for nerds", and that 'cool kids' don't go to libraries. I ask her to explain this, and she doesn't have too many words besides consolidating to me that 'all the kids in the library are nerds'. Tell me, where is the rational decision-making process going on behind such incidences of consumption as my friend wanting an iPhone 5, or my younger sister believing that 'library' equates with 'nerd'? These are things are naturally very hard to objectively or scientifically investigate, and even if you could source a half-decent rationalisation for these courses of action it's not like there is a 'rationality quota' that declares an action 'irrational' or 'rational'; it is, as you say, ultimately subjective.

However, what strikes me is that these beliefs are not actually those of the individual in question; they are culturally and socially constructed desires and perceptions of things that, if they were objectively viewed by the individual in question, would very possibly hold different interpretations on their value. For example, stretch your imagination into deeply hypothetical-territory and consider that the friend that I spoke of before has not been raised in any kind of culture whatsoever - she exists in a kind of 'bubble', with walls that she can't see out of and don't let any sights past them. What she has inside the bubble are the immediate things that she uses to survive; for instance, a river that she drinks from, a field of tomato plants that she eats from/a forest beyond this that she hunts in for food, and other such things that are integral to her survival but are unrelated in any way to culture. She lives in her 'natural state', if you will. Now, show her an iPhone 5; what value will she attach to it? We can obviously never say, but I'm absolutely totally and unequivocally positive that she would not attach a value to that iPhone of 'coolness' - 'pretty', yes, 'useful', yes, 'highly unusual', yes, 'possibly of divine origin', yes, but 'cool'? No, 'cool' is a cultural construction, one that goes above and beyond the intrinsic character of the object itself so as to attach to it an 'image' that is largely (if not totally) unrelated to the practical usages and facts of the object in question. My friend, in her 'natural state', could rationalise her assertion that the phone holds value because it is 'different', or 'pretty', or 'useful', but attaching value to the iPhone as being 'cool' would make no rational sense to her.

It's by this line of thought that I view 'coolness' and other such things as being fundamentally irrational, the product of social, cultural and economic forces that we have little choice in receiving and even less choice in dealing with in the course of our daily lives over and over and over again. This makes me doubt that individuals truly do live lives that are founded on their own 'rational choices' - they have not 'decided what is rational for themselves', they have simply absorbed cultural messages that, more-often-than-not, have been constructed so as to promote consumption of goods as a means of attaining happiness.

This is true, wealth can be anything you want it to be. I will be a very wealthy man if I one day legitimately occupy a large stretch of land that I completely and entirely live off of, consuming only that which I produce - yet I will not have earned a single dollar of 'wealth' for having done so, and nor will need a single dollar to live this life of 'wealth'; money simply would hold no value in this particular state of existence.

Still, why would I be happy working bloody 5 hours picking tomatoes and coming away with 45 bucks when I know that I could hire somebody to do it for me and make more money in one hour than I did in my entire 5 hour shift, for not doing anything whatsoever! Admittedly there are many times that I get a fair bit of enjoyment out of the work, out of using my body for something rather than just sitting at a computer, and out of being out in nature, watching the kestrels hunt for field-mice and listening to the birds calling to each-other. But I similarly know just-as-well that I could do this just as much as I wanted and still be a 'manufacturer' of tomatoes, making far more than 9 dollars an hour and being happy in the knowledge that every hour that I work (and enjoy working!) is money that I've saved in hiring somebody to work for me, and thus is more money that I've made through doing something that I find fairly enjoyable... everything seriously does seem to point towards being a 'tomato manufacturer' rather than a mere worker on a tomato plantation, besides the potential risk of a down-turn in the market anyhow.

'Nearly always' seems relative to me. If you're a multi-billionare, your desires will 'nearly always' be WITHIN your means; you want a big yacht, you've got it; you want a private jet, you've got it' you want a trip around the world, you've got it. Your spiritual and emotional desires may never be able to be satiated with money, but this isn't from a lack of means to fulfilling these desires, under a materialist interpretation of the concept of 'means' anyhow. Most of us don't have such big desires as owning Rhode Island (or even as owning a private jet), and the 'smaller' the scope of the desire the more accessible our desires are to being achievable through our means. If our desire is to be a manufacturer and to employ workers (the specifics don't matter, all we are troubled with is that the person in question has a desire to be a manufacturer of SOMETHING, and similarly to hire workers to assist them in manufacturing their goods), and if our means permit us to do so, then our desires will not 'nearly always' exceed our means, not by any means at all

Anyhow, if our desire to be a manufacturer/employ workers is indeed within our means, we'd better not hope that too many other people get the same idea, otherwise we'll be competing with them for workers and, through our own individualist greed in enacting our desires to employer workers, will have caused a shortage of the workers that we so require to achieve our desires. That's probably my big point to draw from that paragraph above.

 

With you all the way on the first paragraph, and probably the second too; I didn't even know that such a thing as an 'inheritance tax' existed until wikipedia'ing the term as a result of your post. Funnily enough, it ended up being a tax on inheritance... bizaare, though I guess stranger things have happened! I'd agree, it does seem like a bit of a pissweak way of trying to tackle income disparity - you've got to track the issue to the source, not simply confiscate an inheritance that is a RESULT of making an income. The source is a disparity of opportunity available to people; if we can succeed in making the opportunity to succeed in a person's chosen direction for life as accessible to them and as broad-in-scope as is possible, then I'm sure that it will be much more feasible for people to become as close to being 'self-made women and men' () as the limitations of society and nature permit.

On this train of thought, one thing which really saddens me is how little choice many Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Sudanese and other such students over here have in pursuing what they actually want to do in life, due to their parents pushing them to study whatever course will get them the highest paid job that they possibly can get. To the parents, it's very sensible - they never had the opportunity to get an education, and have worked very hard for many many years to give their child the chance to go to school, so when the child finally goes to school, the heat is on to study study study, so they can become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or some other very highly paid job. But what about the dreams of the child? If they're passionate about art, or playing sport, or animals and wildlife (or anything else, for that matter), the only consolation for them - or so I imagine, anyhow - is that they can engage in their interests when they're working at their job, a job which they probably have no real, personal interest in besides the money that they make by doing this job. If anyone needs 'equality of opportunity', it's these children; otherwise they'll be bound into a life of more-or-less being a cash-cow, and probably will even end up passing this mentality down to their children because after so many years they simply don't know any different. A Korean friend (who has given me some insights into the education system over there/the mentality that people have towards education that have been alternatively shocking and heart-warming) recommended I watch a recently released Indian film called '3 Idiots', and it was quite seriously one of the best pieces of advice that anyone has ever given me... it's utterly hilarious, and has some really deep themes about 'following your dream' rather than 'following the money'; "Pursue excellence and success will chase you, pants down" If you have the time and can find it in a video shop, I'd implore you to check it out, it's been a long time since I've seen a film as poignant (yet as funny) as this one

On the topic of films, I rented Michael Moore Hates America once again last week - I got stoned, started watching it, and after about 5 minutes had the compelling urge to just sit there and analyse this film (from a socialist perspective ) in meticulous detail. As such, I only ended up watching about 5 minutes of it after 3 hours or so of sitting there (wrote out a whole shit-ton of words though), before going to bed and not having the time to watch it again after this. However, all the pressure from assignments has blown over for the next 5 weeks, so I'm going to get it out AGAIN sometime this week, watch it all the way through and then start up with the analysing after that... I'll get back to you after I've done so

Struck me as being a bit of over-the-top when I first heard it, but I've gotten so used to it now that I say it myself most of the time... spread it around man, maybe it'll rub off on other people around you

'I' am more-or-less entirely irrelevant man, so long as they can rationally state their reason/purpose to any person whatsoever then that indicates that they've thought about it enough to voice their reasoning/purpose on such a matter... Christ, they don't even have to explain their rationalisation to another person, so long as they can justify their preferences and opinions to themselves (through a process of logic and reasoning) then they've done all that could possibly be expected of any person with a brain between their ears. But to think something, to believe something without even understanding why you think it/believe it, is quite shameful. Imagine if somebody told you "I believe that horses are small animals", you said "Why do you think that, explain how you justify this statement?", and they say "I don't know, I just DO". You'd say "But look at the bloody thing, it's taller than you and twice as heavy!" "Perhaps, but I think it's small, OK?"

You can't falsify this person's assertion, and their answer is not even necessarily or objectively wrong (after all, what IS 'small', or 'big'), but if they can't explain this opinion beyond saying that "I think it is so", or "I believe this to be the case... Why? Well, I just do" then can you still say that they have a reason/purpose for believing what they do? Or is the mere fact that somebody holds value in an opinion enough to validate it as such under the subjective theory of value?

Edit; I thought of two other quibbles that I have with subjective value theory that you might be interested in...

Firstly, while nothing can have an intrinsic value in-and-of-itself, can things be said to have an objective value in relation to other, similar objects? For example, a ten dollar note may have a different value to different people as according to their subjective evaluations on how much value they place in a ten dollar note, but can we objectively say that, in the setting of a marketplace, a ten dollar note is objectively more valuable than a five dollar note? Or that a hand-full of water/alfalfa sprouts/sugar/anything that a human being is able to consume has a value that is objectively greater than the value of a hand-full of soot/dirt/anything that a human being is unable to either consume or use as a resource? Can we say that an intact bottle of beer has more value than a smashed beer bottle? Can we say that a healthy and vigorous tomato plant has more value than a blackened, dead stump that once was a tomato plant? As I understand it, you may say "Well, I personally and subjectively value this shrivelled up dead tomato plant over the healthy, fruit-bearing tomato plant", and even if you have no rationalisation to back up your assertion then it doesn't really matter; it's still your opinion and your subjective evaluation, and it is no more right or wrong than a person who says that the living plant is more valuable than the dead one. But I'd be of the mind that we can quantify certain conditions that constitute what makes an object valuable, which would usually be centred around the objects usefulness... a hand-full of rice is more useful than a hand-full of vomit because you can eat the rice and you can't eat the vomit/use it for anything whatsoever. The living tomato plant is useful for the fruit it produces and the insects/spiders that it attracts - a dead tomato plant produces no fruit, and attracts no insects/spiders.

On a related train of thought, I thought of this question; is the life of a human being more valuable than an ice-cream? Clearly the value of an ice-cream is subjective, as is the value of a human life, but surely we'd say that their subjectivity in relation to the value that each respective 'objects' holds as weighted against the other is purely theoretical; a human life IS worth more than an ice-cream. This isn't even an emotional assertion either, for a human being can make an ice-cream; an ice-cream cannot make a human being.

My second quibble with the subjective theory of value is kind of related to this last point; that is, if value is subjective, then what is the basis for criminal justice? Why should the law be able to objectively state that the act of cold-blooded murder will get you a life sentence, when the 'negative value' attached to the act of murder is one that is subjective? How is it that murder is objectively valued as being wrong, and furthermore that we can standardise this 'objective' value for murder by translating it into terms of criminal justice. This applies to any crime you can think of. Assault; 2 years in prison, for example. Why should this be the 'value' of an assault charge? Arson; 10 years in prison, yet why should a judge be able to pass down this sentence when the 'value' of an act of arson is subjective? Does the judge's subjectivity somehow trump the subjective value accrued to this crime by any old Joe Blow on the street? How can any one individual (ie, the judge) have a legitimate claim to laying down a penalty based upon their own personal evaluation of an act that is subjective in terms of its morality? Indeed, even if we say that it isn't really the judge passing this decision and that they are simply enforcing the law, what is 'the law' but a means of giving value to that which is ultimately subjective?

Too true... what's even worse is that the more you have then the more that you want, and the less satisfied you feel with what you've actually got, or so it is for some people anyhow. I envy birds like the dove and the finch - what more can they possibly want in life than enough food to eat, a nice tree to set themselves up in, and plenty of room around them to spend their days milling about in? It'd be a very interesting experiment to see if one could guage whether small birds like this actually have 'greed', or whether the conditions that they've evolved under are those that grant them such limitless expanses of resources that there's no selection pressure or stimulus that would drive 'greed' to develop amongst them... I mean, you'd have to define 'greed', and furthermore there'd be several types of 'greed' to define (food, mates, nesting material), and formulating the experiment would be a pretty bloody in-depth process, but it still would be interesting to see whether scarcity is linked with greed, or whether greed is an intrinsic part of all life-forms, regardless of whether they live in conditions of scarcity or not. Anyhow, enough rambling off on a tangent for now methinks...