tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post7029227586313827536..comments2024-03-28T06:07:03.667-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: A REPLY TO CHRISTOPHER WALSHRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-69024723070589622792014-03-08T17:38:12.335-05:002014-03-08T17:38:12.335-05:00I'm not sure how to take the term "imposs...I'm not sure how to take the term "impossible." Logically impossible? Of course not. Impossible even to imagine? Of course not, one can imagine anything that is consistent. Possible in the familasir historical sense? I would say capitalism is impossible without capital accumulation. Is that proved by a little story? Of course not. I was responding to a uestion about Nozick. But realistically, historically, how would you expect the vast majority of a population to be permanently separated from their historical ownership or access to the means of production and hence be forced to work for wages?Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-31580225798700912342014-03-08T17:05:09.157-05:002014-03-08T17:05:09.157-05:00Well, I'm of the view that that emergence was ...Well, I'm of the view that that emergence was many phenomena and not one. But for now I think the point is that the counter-Robinsonade is also not a serious explanation. Thought experiments and simplifications and hypotheticals have their uses if one is *very* careful with them, but if the point of this was to show the impossibility of capitalism without primitive accumulation, I don't think it succeeds. <br />Jacob T. Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02575549001627195334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-56985075302544591322014-03-06T17:27:49.267-05:002014-03-06T17:27:49.267-05:00You are quite right that there is a great deal mor...You are quite right that there is a great deal more to be said, but remember that I was answering a question about how capitalism gets started, and I do not think any of these kinds of considerations explain the vast and rapid accumulation of capital and concommitant separation of the workers from ownership of the means of production that are involved.<br /><br />We actually have a good test case in America. At the end of the Civil War, the planters were desperate to retain the labor of their former slaves, since without it their land was worthless. But it turned out that the freedmen and freedwomen did not want to work on the admittedly more efficient plantations even as wage laborers. Hence the Black Codes and convict labor that forced them back onto the plantations.<br /><br />What made the plantations so efficient was a kind of organized gang labor overseen by "slave drivers" and the freedpeople wanted none of it.<br /><br />These "Robinsonades" as Marx called them [after Robinson crusoe] are ideological rationalizations of capitalism, not serious explanations of its emergence out of feudalism.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-47388975322892405842014-03-06T15:46:32.772-05:002014-03-06T15:46:32.772-05:00Doesn't this just assume that there are no eco...Doesn't this just assume that there are no economies of scale or returns to specialization?<br /><br />'The land should yield a thousand bushels of wheat a year, he says, and he is prepared to give the ten farmers he seeks to hire fifty bushels of wheat a piece for their labor... Everyone looks at him as though he had lost his senses. "Why on earth should we give you half of the crop we raise with the sweat of our brows and the pain of our backs?" '<br /><br />If the answer is "because by the sweat of your brow and the pain of your back each of you will only generate twenty-five bushels," it is not clear to me that they will laugh. <br /><br />If ten working together and dividing their labor are four times as productive as ten working individually, each trying to do everything, then there is room for organizational innovation. This might take the form of the ten pooling their efforts in an egalitarian co-op-- but organization is its own difficult and complicated work, and the moreso as the numbers increase. So that gives the would-be capitalist something with which to bid: "OK, 75% of the product, plus I do all the organizational work." Or if, as in your example, the would-be capitalist has some accumulated surplus to spend: "75% of the *expected value* of the product, with you insured against the year-to-year fluctuations. Or 60% of the expected value, plus 40% of the surplus if we exceed expectations."<br /><br />The division of labor, organizational innovation, and insurance functions can do a lot of work (in practice and in theory). Maybe they can't do enough; maybe the co-op will always be able to outbid the capitalist. But nothing in he present parable shows that. Wage labor purports to offer an *increase* in *absolute* compensation, at the price of the *decrease* you note in the share of product retained. Is it a necessary truth that that's a laughable offer?Jacob T. Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02575549001627195334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-23705929940696078722014-03-05T17:10:07.712-05:002014-03-05T17:10:07.712-05:00(Free transfer in the sense of "freely agreed...(Free transfer in the sense of "freely agreed" not free of charge. LOL)GTChristiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14390368105725901371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-40948744175045819612014-03-05T17:07:38.638-05:002014-03-05T17:07:38.638-05:00I have always avoided arguing from thought experim...I have always avoided arguing from thought experiments because it's difficult to avoid simplification-to-null (ie, does the setup refer to a complete and concrete situation aka resemble reality, and how much?) So I'm inclined to ask what's missing in the exercise. Almost any writer is cannon fodder for this type of objection, partly because the experiment is usually conceived in an ideal framework, purged of impurities, so to speak, and if one can find discrepancies from "the real world," then the experiment is already running on only one leg. But I digress.<br /><br />In your allegory above, I wonder how it would change the discussion to point out that Mr Capitalist Wannabe could have found a different strategy, which seems to me more like the actual history we're after (though I'm almost sure you'll disagree). And that strategy is to pay some of his fellow farmers for their land first, and then for their labor, in exchange not only for a (diminished) share of the product, but also to relieve them of risk in case of failure (drought, for instance). In other words, what seems to be missing in the tale is how Mr Cap assumes control of the means of production (besides the labor). And if this is accounted for, then the free transfer of both land/means and risk to Mr Cap establishes some dominion over the product, does it not?GTChristiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14390368105725901371noreply@blogger.com