[ox-en] Re: Role of markets
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:58:32 +0200
My main point is: markets are not always the same ones over history.
On 2008-08-12 09:58, Michel Bauwens wrote:
Why would markets be indistinguishable from capitalism, since they
have existed outside of it, much longer than within it.
Yes, but before (non-capitalists) C-M-C-markets have only existed
without capitalism. This was the pre-condition. A turn-back is thus not
possible at all. Today, all market-approaches, independent from what
moral premises they start, must integrate and thus accept the global
rules of the global capitalist market as long as they want survive
using these conditions. It's a "law".
Until we have a better way that is proven, I think most people
will choose market approaches, and I do not have, nor wish for, to
have the coercive power to impeach them to do this.
You may be right with this assumption. Nevertheless, by choosing markets
those people are on the wrong track. And we are responsible to told
them instead simply accepting what they are doing. It is not a question
of coersive power, but of truth.
By the way, fair trade exists and is growing steadily, and it is a
non-capitalist market form; similarly other approaches like
social-enterpreneurship are growing, and they are distinguishable
from capitalist corparations. In both cases, the profit motive is not
primary, and subsumed to a social goal.
I don't see that, these approachs are not different, at least over time.
Maybe they faithfully want to be different and often leaders behind
those projects are really nice persons. But being a nice person and
carrying moral values doesn't play any role. All trials I saw modified
themselves over time to be more and more market-conform. This immanent
logic can not be bypassed at will. Markets behave like a second nature,
and we must not underestimate their power.
So, given that it is possible, the question is not, can they exist,
but can they become stronger than the existing capitalist logic?
They are not outside this logic, because they live from it.
My approach is actually, not to say that these non-capitalist forms
will become dominant, but that capitalism will have to disappear as
the meta-system, for the sake of the survival of the planet and
humanity, and that these non-capitalist forms will be subsumed to the
peer to peer logic. As a matter of fact, I think that the genuine
forms of fair trade, social enterpreneurship, and even BOP, are
already doing so, on a small scale.
Ok. In my view this is an illusion.
A market in a peer to peer society would of course have to be
beneficial first of all to the peer producers themselves.
(...)
This is wishful thinking, in my view. I put a comment to your blog
post:
I'm not sure on what aspect the wishful thinking refers to, but the
Linux economy would prove its possiblitity, of course in this case,
they are capitalist market forms which sustain peer production.
There is no such thing as a "linux economy". There is economic
activities around linux, but linux itself is not an economy. Thus linux
proves the contrary, that there must be a separation between the core
principles of free software and market- and money based activities
around it.
This is a crucial passage, just below here, the type of way is
indeed crucial ...
It seems much more difficult to close such cycles on a large
scale; so maybe for a long time external markets coexist with
"local communisms". The productivity disadvantage that made such
"local communisms" obsolete in earlier times is gradually
disappearing.
This is a different question and worth to evaluate: The coexistence
of markets and local communisms/commonisms. There, the local
communities do not reproduce via market relations, but they
interact with outside markets in some way. The type of "way" is
essential.
we agree on that, and do you agree that the answer that we have so
far, is not satisfactory?
Yes.
Ciao,
Stefan
--
Start here: www.meretz.de
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