Re: [ox-en] Re: No-trade society (was: Re: herrschaft)
- From: "Per I. Mathisen" <per leftist.net>
- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:48:12 +0000 (GMT)
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Robin Green wrote:
It's a good question, but I think a better question is, how are you going to
have no exchange in the first place? My aunt is a sculptor and she makes
very nice minature 3D caricatures. Let's assume that I would like to commission
a particular piece, and let's further say that she is willing to produce works
to order. Maybe I am also an artist, and she would like for me to do a piece
for her in return. That's trade, is it not? How can you call it anything other
than a trade? In what kind of society would such arrangements never arise?
Let me tell you a fable.
Once upon a time, before there was private property, all land, all natural
resources and all knowledge was owned by all in common. You could say they
were unowned, but that is merely stating the same thing.
One day, some people started taking land and resources out of the commons
and claiming it all for themselves. The more philosophical of them said
(these were the infamous Lockeans): 'Look, when we mix our labour with
what was owned by all, it becomes ours, because while you may own a tiny
part of it by virtue of being one of the multitude, my contribution
overshadows yours, and my labour is only mine."
Thus the commons shrunk with every appropriation, and those who did not
stake out a claim of their own, perhaps because they had no means to
defend it, or because all had already been claimed, became only poorer and
poorer until one day they could no longer feed themselves because all the
sources of food had been appropriated and become private property.
Then the new owners said to those who owned nothing: 'You do not need to
starve. You can work for us, make us even richer, and we will give you a
portion of the richers that you create for us." And so they did, since
they did not really want to starve.
One other day, one of the have-nots of a more philosophical bent pondered
over this, and said: 'There is something not quite right about this. Why
should we be impoverished so that a few might be rich? Are not all wealth
derived from we all once owned in common? Why is it that when we mix our
labour with the property of our master, we lose our labour, but when our
master mixed his labour with that which was owned by all in common, he got
to own what was once ours?"
The have-nots, who vastly outnumbered the haves, considered this a fair
argument, and said to their masters: 'When you pour a tomato juice you own
into the ocean, which you do not own, you do not come to own the ocean,
you merely spill your tomato juice. So it is with the wealth of this
world. We have created it in common from what we once all owned in common,
and we no longer accept that it should be owned by a few."
So from that day on, all that was derived from land, natural resources and
common knowledge was said to be held in common ownership, and would be
appropriated by no-one.
The moral of this fable - we really should protect our commons with a GPL.
But if you create something isolation without the use of our commons,
then, even in a GPL society, it will be fair to trade it in exchance for
other things created in a similar manner, since it is really only your
own.
I would go further and say that in any case where money is "abolished" it
would be quickly reinvented (through barter, if money were in some way
actively repressed).
You cannot separate the current social institution known as "money" from
the state infrastructure that actively supports it. Sure, you can print
your own money, but its social significance will be rather small without a
state to back it up with laws, courts, central banks, economic crime
units, etc.. 'Private money' is as much an oxymoron as a 'private
language'.
a. Nobody finds working in a sewage farm fulfulling. Then people will have
to get together and find alternative ways of dealing with sewage that
don't require sewage farms. But maybe in some cases there are no
alternative ways?
If we were to institute a sort of 'GPL society' tomorrow, there would be a
whole class of tasks nobody really wanted to do. There would also be a
whole class of luxurious scarcity goods that a lot of people would want to
have. Connect the dots.
Failing that, you can always pool all such work and share it equally on
everyone. At least this way, it will be in everyone's interest that such
work is automatized and effectivized away as quickly as possible.
The opposite is happening now, as the shortage of such work is seen as a
fundamental social problem (unemployment due to lack of low wage jobs),
and "reforms" are instituted to stimulate an increase in the amount of
such work (lower social benefits, lower minimum wages, more competition,
etc).
- Per
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