Re: [ox-en] Re: Raoul Victor * Money and Peer Production
- From: Diego Saravia <diego.saravia gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 18:00:22 -0300
Hi Diego , hi all,
hi
Raoul: I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean. Your telegraphic
style is some times too... telegraphic.
yes, I always try to speak less and go directly to the point.
In spanish is hard to do, the idea is to say exactly what you want, in
a precise fashion, no more, no less, but in english is an impossible
task for me. I ll try to do my best.
But you deal with an important
question: is it possible to have "no commercial injustice"?
you could have injustice outside exchanges, you could have injustice
outside money exchanges
so exchange is not "the source" of injustice in the world, at least
not the only one, money is not "the source" of injustice, you can have
other kinds of injust exchanges
also, you can have fair exchanges with or without money.
so, money is not the problem, nor exchanges
ok, there are problems specific of money, there are specific exchange problems
but you could have fair exchange societies, and fair money societies.
the central problem of capitalism is not with money, not in exchange,
in fact marx began the capital assuming fair exchanges.
as you told, the problem is in explotation. You could pay a worker
what their works "costs", but you could explote him. Thats the central
point of marxism. As in slavery people could east, survive and even
reproduce himself. But capitalist manage to get the "surpluss" /
"plusvalue", how? ok, thats what marx explains.
People that have capital do not need to work, nor to exchange
anything, they receive rent, only for having property titles. They
have, and they receive without giving anything.
In knowledge societies, people could also receive without giving
anything. I could put in my server a text, and millions of people
could download it, without any work by myself
but I can receive a lot of money from publicity that people reads.
I could develop a software and became famous, I could receive
continuos fame-rewarding with a fixed work.
Its like capital, it produces without work. nor exchange.
Diego: "Societies grow, so not all human actions are equal value exchange,
in fact if all exchanges are of equal value (no commercial injustice) (if
value could be defined without doubts), there are other acts that are not
exchange."
The problem is that the main source of "injustice" is commerce, trade
itself. For two fundamental reasons: the first is general and concerns any
symmetric exchange; the second is more specific to capitalism.
1 - At a general level, as soon as you are in a logic of exchange (I give
you the "equivalent" of what you give to me), the relation is biased. By
definition, if you are a good "exchanger", your logic in the transaction has
to be: "I give you as little as I can, and I try to get from you as much as
I can". If not, you are a bad exchanger, a sorry trader. That is why
Aristotle, more than two thousands years ago, condemned already "exchange"
as being "a mode by which men gain from one another".
The idea that money, the instrument of exchange, corrupts human relations is
as old as money itself.
One may imagine traders trying to exchange with a "fair" spirit: "I give you
as much as I can, I take from you as little as I can". They will be quickly
ruined... by other traders.
It is not the nastiness of traders which makes exchange a source of
"injustice", it is the logic of trade which make traders inevitably nasty
and grasping.
2 - With capitalism (and this is one of its most specific characteristics)
market relations extend to the whole economic social life and more crucially
to the relation between the owner of the means of production and the worker.
Before capitalism, market relations remained secondary, some times marginal
in the economic life of societies. The ancient slave was fed by his owner as
a draft animal, the serf could keep for him a share of the harvest. In
capitalism the worker gets from his employer the price/value of his labor
force, the wage. His labor force has been transformed into a commodity which
is "exchanged", treated as any other good in a market. The quantity, the
share of the production which returns to the worker (when he has the chance
to have a job) is measured by the price of that commodity in the "labor
market". In capitalism, the main object of exchange is labor force.
Capitalists have many ways to put that price down, mainly making the offer
of labor-force greater than demand. Since the 80s, for example, western
economic managers calculate the NAIRU, "an acronym for Non-Accelerating
Inflation Rate of Unemployment, and refers to a level of unemployment below
which inflation rises." (Wikipedia in English) In fact, below which *wages*
rise. Governments entertain not only a level on unemployment which feds the
new needs of labor-force due to the growth of production, but also, in
addition, a level of unemployment which creates a relation of force in the
market permanently disadvantageous to the workers.
But even when the labor-force is paid at its value it remains an
exploitation, an injustice. Injustice comes from the market itself, from the
fact that a human being cannot eat if he does not find an exploiter
disposable to buy his labor-force, from the fact that what he will be paid
depends not of the value he creates but on the price of his labor force.
What is the price of a marginal farmer's or a farm-worker's labor-force in
some places of Latin America or Africa? In regions of the world where
unemployment is endemic and massive, where the education standards are
extremely low, the market price of human effort is close to physiological
minimum. That is the logic, the "justice", of the market.
Initiatives like "Fair trade", may try to push a little up the value on
human effort, of course within the limits of profitability, when they are
not a sheer advertising argument to transform the generosity of (feeling
gilt) consumers in Northern countries into greater profits for corporations.
But the result can only be the equivalent of alms at the gate of a church.
Some may say: alms are better than nothing, but alms have never been a
solution to injustice.
Raoul
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Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de
--
Diego Saravia
Diego.Saravia gmail.com
NO FUNCIONA->dsa unsa.edu.ar
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de