Tresy Kilbourn wrote:
>You, Bill Bartlett, wrote:
>
>>Laws against theft are designed to deter people from taking things they
>>don't own, taking things you haven't worked for is not illegal as such
>>(quite the opposite). So it is not considered wrong to take things you
>>haven't worked for even under our current social structure, unless someone
>>else has taken it first. I don't see how you can justify the argument that
>>taking something first is more virtuous than taking it second.
>
>I have NO idea what you are talking about here.
I was responding to your questions:
"Do we have laws against theft? Why is that, do you suppose?
Might it be because humans take things they haven't worked for?"
The implication of these questions was that the legal definition of theft
is taking things you haven't worked for. Of course taking things you
haven't worked for is the basis of capitalist society.
PS You forgot to answer my question here - too hard?
You wrote:
>90% was a fligure plucked out of a hat. I think there would be
serious social problems if the figure [voluntary unemployment] were
even 10%.
I asked:
Why? Western society has that many INVOLUNTARY unemployed now,
it doesn't seem to be causing a shortage of food on the supermarket
shelves.
>>
>>This is too easy! Are you REALLY suggesting that the only possible
>>incentive to work is the threat of hunger?
>Under your system there would be a strong threat of hunger because it
>wouldn't produce enough to feed people, but let that pass for the moment.
No, you keep saying that so I think I'll respond to the assertion this
time. I assume you're reasoning is based on the assumption that without
coercion nobody will produce any food. Your logic, I assume, is that
therefor we NEED SOME bludgers (the capitalists), simply to keep cracking
the whip over us (for our own good of course) and naturally they are
entitled, as reward for this great service to humanity, to keep everything
we produce.
>If there are all these other wonderful incentives to work, how are they
>unavailable to workers RIGHT NOW? Answer: they aren't. That's how you >and
>I know they exist.
Some other incentives do exist for people now. Inherent human nature which
makes us WANT to create and WANT to be recognised as a useful member of our
society, cannot be entirely extinguished, even by the dehumanising process
of turning everything human we do into a commodity to be bought and sold.
So this basic human nature is probably enough incentive, even within the
context of the capitalist system, to keep us working for them. But this is
not enough for our rulers. The want security of being able to CONTROL their
subjects, their workers, they want them to obey without question. It is
obvious why.
>My wife loves her line of work (putting criminals in
>jail) for its own sake, and so do many others.
I've always wondered if the judiciary was an occupation which might tend to
attract psychopaths. As occupations working close to children tend to
attract paedophiles.
>But let's not kid
>ourselves, Bill. Most work is done for the money, and it always will be.
No. Most PAID work is done primarily for the money, most work is still done
outside the recognised GDP altogether. It is done in the home and in the
community because we recognise that it needs to be done.
>Even work that people find intrinsically rewarding is still ALSO done for
>money (ask my spouse). Or are you saying that under your wonderful
>system, where everyone can do whatever they want from the moment they
>wake up, I would practice blues guitar all day, you would paint, and
>others would do backbreaking work in the fields growing food, or (at the
>other end of the consumption chain) picking up the trash?
Well lets hope not too many decide to go in for blues guitar, I hadn't
expected you to come up with an axample activity quite so useless as that,
but its a matter of taste I suppose. Working in the field doesn't HAVE to
be unpleasant you know. (You mustn't think that the capitalist mode of work
is the only one.)
You might have to pick up your own trash.
>Chomsky never
>addresses THAT little detail: who picks up the trash in his society based
>on "classically liberal principles"?
What gives you the right to produce trash anyway? I admit I do too - but
only since I have had a rubbish collection service, when I lived out of the
township and didn't have such a service I produced little rubbish, I
learned not to buy things entailing excessive packaging (tins, etc.) and
composted and recycled nearly everything. And when I did go to the tip, in
the days when the tip was uncontrolled, I often brought more home than I
took there.
Production of rubbish results largely from the commodity-based economic
system, it is not necessary or desirable. It is wasteful, environmentally
destructive and unhealthy. I think it would be a damn good thing if no-one
picked up other people's rubbish - it would encourage people to be more
responsible.
>An argument that doesn't even
>address the most obvious objections to it hardly merits my respect--even
>if it comes from an otherwise brilliant man.
Thanks, but flattery will get you nowhere!
>>You can see WHAT across the border in Canada? What supposed abuse of the
>>"social safety net" are you talking about? You'll have to spell it out for
>>me, your description of their unemployment benefit system doesn't sound
>>very generous to me, and I have no idea what you think these unspecified
>>failures of the Canadian welfare system are meant to prove.
>When I can readily have conversations with people whose "ambition" is to
>take a job for two months, quit it, then take 10 months of unemployment
>benefits to "party" on, I'd say that's an abuse of the system. It's also
>an instant refutation of your notion that, freed from the burdens of wage
>slavery, people will spontaneously turn into Stakhanovite workers.
I'm expected to accept that claim without any substantiation? Even if you
could demonstrate a few isolated instances (which you haven't) it no more
demonstrates a fundamental flaw that a few isolated instances of bankrupt
capitalist business ventures prove a flaw in capitalism. I know nothing of
Canada, but Canadians are not aliens from another planet, so I would expect
them to be little different from Australians.
In Australia unemployment benefits are not limited in duration, an
unemployed person can remain on the dole continuously for as long as they
are qualified. Despite an apparantly more generous system (although I don't
know how much is paid in Canada, the base rate in Aust. is only about $170
PW for a single person) there is no indication that employers have any
trouble filling job vacancies. There are still more people looking for work
than there are jobs available.
Of course we occassionally see media beat-ups about people "rorting the
system" and "living lives of luxury" on the dole, but no-one with any
intelligence take such stories seriously.
>Notice
>what it's called: "unemployment insurance"--not "10-month's vacation
>courtesy of the taxpayer." As for the problems this kind of overgenerous
>safety net generates, ask a typical Canadian.
I don't know any "typical" Canadians, I'm asking you. You are making the
assertion that the system is "overgenerous", substantiate the claim or
admit you are wrong.
>Their currency is in steady decline, their deficit is bulging,
>and taxes are punitively high. I am
>not saying these problems are entirely attributable to UI abuse,
Big of you.
>but it's
>manifestly the case that this kind of abuse operates as a drag on
>productivity, and Canadians of all stripes recognize it.
How is it a drag on productivity? Or do you mean a drag on PROFITability?
The only sense in which it could be a drag on productivity is that, given a
"safety net" workers might be less likely to be driven by fear of the sack
to work harder. There are many things I could say about that sort of
slave-master logic, but frankly I can't be bothered. You condemn yourself
out of your own mouth. Suffice it to say that, in a time of massive and
growing unemployment, it is YOU that is implying that those who have jobs
must work harder and longer to produce more, while millions sit on their
backsides without any paid work at all.
But are you sure the unemployed are not responsible for Canada's (trade?)
deficit as well? Perhaps it is they who have been borrowing wildly on
overseas currency markets, speculating in commodity futures and shifting
production facillities to low wage countries?
>Where they sensibly differ from many Americans is that they don't
>>conclude the safety net itself is the problem.
>>How does the capitalist system discourage the "selfishness existing ... in
>>human nature"? How does wage slavery encourage the altruism? Your
>>>>arguments are quite unconvincing
>They are unconvincing when you put words in my mouth, Bill. I didn't say
>anything about capitalism. But just as Chomsky says that a system based
>on greed will reward greedy behavior, so does your system, based on the
>lack of obligation to contribute to society, reward shiftlessness. QED.
No, you don't say anything about capitalism, do you? I accept your
criticism to the extent that I may have implied that socialism is based on
lack of obligation to contribute to society. However I cannot recall
anything I might have said that could be taken to imply a REWARDING of
"shiftlessness". All I said was that the basic means of life are a human
RIGHT. I don't regard the provision of basic human needs as a reward, that
is your conception. Man does not live by bread alone, and it seems to me
that a society where bread alone was regarded as a "reward", is a mean
spirited society indeed. It is surely a society where bare survival is the
most a person can hope for and there is nothing else left to take away from
him. I accept that that is your vision of socialism, or at least the way
you would like to portray it. But It is not what I had in mind, believe me.
>>does prostitution encourage the altruism in
>>human nature? I think not, but it is a perfectly valid example of work for
>>wages, when you do any job simply because it is remunerated, rather than
>>because it is worth doing you are no different than a prostitute.
>
>I have certainly felt like a prostitute at some jobs I've had, Bill, but
>that had to do with the nature of the work, rather than the motives for
>doing it. But you socialists really need to get your party line
>straightened out. I was over at another "progressive" discussion group
>yesterday where a person was censured for using "prostitute"
>perjoratively, as you just did. He was lectured that "prostitution" is a
>fine, upstanding line of work that only capitalists look down upon.
Well, in the sense that the "line of work" is one that most people are
happy to perform on an entirely voluntary basis in their own time, sure.
But my point was that it is just as fine and upstanding as any other job
performed merely for money. I am not defaming prostitutes in saying that,
any more than I am defaming members of the working class with whom I
compare prostitutes. I am attacking the system where the majority of people
are dependant on and at the beck and call of a small minority, who dictate
how we may live and what services we must perform for them.
>I'm
>beginning to think that having it both ways is part of your argument.
>When capitalists live off the labor of the workers that's wage slavery,
>but when the workers live off the labor of [whoever is foolish enough to
>remain at work under your system], that's liberation. Meet the new boss,
>same as the old boss.
The funny thing is that I detect no similar criticism from you of the right
to be lazy currently enjoyed by the capitalist class in a capitalist
society. You seem to have no equivalent trepidation that the lack of
incentive permits the capitalist to bludge on those "foolish enough to
remain at work".
I could retort, equally foolishly, "oh but what if EVERYONE decides to
become a capitalist? Then there would be nobody to do any work and we would
all starve!" Of course that is silly - it is impossible for everyone to be
unproductive in any society. But I am arguing that threat of starvation
for those who don't directly produce at all times is not a civilised way of
behaving. You are not permitted by law to withhold food from your dog and
you should not do it to your fellow man just to get him to do the dirty
work you don't want to do yourself.
>
>Seems I recall reading somewhere in the socialist literature, "From each
>according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." I take it
>the first half of this slogan was just a come-on?
I don't accept your premise, "from each according to his ability" does not
have to be extracted by coercion, you might as well argue that some
sanction would be necessary to force everyone to benefit "each according to
his needs". We have a fundamentally different conception of human nature.
Bill Bartlett
--------------------------------------------------------
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
views, and conceptions- in one word, man's consciousness-
changes with every change in the conditions of his material
existence, in his social relations and in his social life?"
- The
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
---------------------------------------------------------
|
