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The slaveowner relies on social institutions which enforce slavery. If you escape, a man with a stick will enforce the slaveowner's property relations over you.

The slaveowner relies on social institutions which enforce slavery. If you escape, a man with a stick will enforce the slaveowner's property relations over you. Capitalism also relies on the man with a stick. (To bizarre extremes: even if you're just innovative in a way which is supposedly someone's "intellectual property", or fileshare bytes representing a movie, then a man with a stick is supposed to come after you if you try to ignore their threats.) Capitalists control a society which causes people to starve and be homeless if they can't rent themselves out to one of them. Only in an Orwellian society could economics be considered separate from politics. (In more decent societies, those who try to act like slaveowners — and capitalists for that matter — would merely be considered psychotic criminals. You couldn't be a slaveowner, because taking people as property is kidnapping. You couldn't be a capitalist, because "owning" scarce means of production is theft; witholding food/shelter to force people to obey is assault.)

logicchains 12y ago
Again, it's not society which "causes people to starve and be homeless". Hunting and gathering cannot support seven billion people; it is the accumulation of capital in forms such as advanced agriculture that allows the food production that currently sustains the world population. If all capitalists and corporations ceased to exist, a huge proportion of the world population would starve due to the collapse in the global structure of production. The means of production have to be produced by someone. How is it theft for capitalists to own the means of production when they produced it? And if you say well the workers produced it, the workers only agreed to work for pay, not for a stake in it (else they'd be investors/partners, not just workers). Here's the thing: even with just two people interacting without any society around them whatsoever, it's possible for one to agree to work for the other for payment of some sort but without claiming an ownership stake in whatever's produced (i.e. common employment contract). To make such a thing illegal, you must necessarily introduce violence into the system, to prevent these two people from carrying out a mutually agreeable exchange.
- jahaja 12y ago
  It's of course possible that two people on a "level playing field" agree to an employmeent like agreement - fair enough, one is providing the other with a service - but could do without it, as such he or she can make sure that the compensation is fair. However this "level playing field" doesn't exist today. As such this agreement is not based on a rational choice, but a coerced one, where the one person got the capital and the other person needs the capital. As such the power is with the capital and the compensation is much less determined by the worker. Furthermore the person without the capital can only choose between different people offering compensation against labor. This person can't just do without it.
  - logicchains 12y ago
    When you speak of a 'coerced' choice, it's not coerced in the normal sense (coerced by a person), it's coerced by nature. If the person doesn't get work, doesn't find some means of acquiring goods produced by other people, they'll starve; this is not the result of anybody threatening to starve them, it's simply the result of there not being enough food lying around to eat. To state or imply that the starving person has some form of right to the food produced by others, one must make a moral judgement. It hence becomes an issue of moral philosophy as to whether the fact that a person "just can't do without" the job has any bearing on the situation. If one assumes people owe others things by virtue of having those things (or by virtue of the others not having those things), then one can say it's coercion to refuse to give someone food one owns unless they perform work. If however one assumes that people owe others nothing apart from what they've specifically agreed to give them, then there's no coercion taking place. The pro-market position is that assuming people owe others things they haven't promised them necessarily entails coercion. If society things Joe Rich owes something to Bob Poor, but Joe Rich doesn't want to give it, then making him give it anyway necessarily requires violence or the threat thereof against Joe Rich. Through this lens, if Bob Poor starves then this doesn't necessarily imply anyone's committed violence or coercion against him, instead it's a simple result of the combination of nature's scarcity and his inability or unwillingness to do something for others in exchange for food or the purchasing power to acquire it.

logicchains 12y ago

Again, it's not society which "causes people to starve and be homeless". Hunting and gathering cannot support seven billion people; it is the accumulation of capital in forms such as advanced agriculture that allows the food production that currently sustains the world population. If all capitalists and corporations ceased to exist, a huge proportion of the world population would starve due to the collapse in the global structure of production. The means of production have to be produced by someone. How is it theft for capitalists to own the means of production when they produced it? And if you say well the workers produced it, the workers only agreed to work for pay, not for a stake in it (else they'd be investors/partners, not just workers). Here's the thing: even with just two people interacting without any society around them whatsoever, it's possible for one to agree to work for the other for payment of some sort but without claiming an ownership stake in whatever's produced (i.e. common employment contract). To make such a thing illegal, you must necessarily introduce violence into the system, to prevent these two people from carrying out a mutually agreeable exchange.

jahaja 12y ago
It's of course possible that two people on a "level playing field" agree to an employmeent like agreement - fair enough, one is providing the other with a service - but could do without it, as such he or she can make sure that the compensation is fair. However this "level playing field" doesn't exist today. As such this agreement is not based on a rational choice, but a coerced one, where the one person got the capital and the other person needs the capital. As such the power is with the capital and the compensation is much less determined by the worker. Furthermore the person without the capital can only choose between different people offering compensation against labor. This person can't just do without it.
- logicchains 12y ago
  When you speak of a 'coerced' choice, it's not coerced in the normal sense (coerced by a person), it's coerced by nature. If the person doesn't get work, doesn't find some means of acquiring goods produced by other people, they'll starve; this is not the result of anybody threatening to starve them, it's simply the result of there not being enough food lying around to eat. To state or imply that the starving person has some form of right to the food produced by others, one must make a moral judgement. It hence becomes an issue of moral philosophy as to whether the fact that a person "just can't do without" the job has any bearing on the situation. If one assumes people owe others things by virtue of having those things (or by virtue of the others not having those things), then one can say it's coercion to refuse to give someone food one owns unless they perform work. If however one assumes that people owe others nothing apart from what they've specifically agreed to give them, then there's no coercion taking place. The pro-market position is that assuming people owe others things they haven't promised them necessarily entails coercion. If society things Joe Rich owes something to Bob Poor, but Joe Rich doesn't want to give it, then making him give it anyway necessarily requires violence or the threat thereof against Joe Rich. Through this lens, if Bob Poor starves then this doesn't necessarily imply anyone's committed violence or coercion against him, instead it's a simple result of the combination of nature's scarcity and his inability or unwillingness to do something for others in exchange for food or the purchasing power to acquire it.