: Stoller: Rock on indeed.: : ...he said, with a smug smile at the camera. And, for years afterward, it became the custom to end an argument with the words "Rock on indeed!" No one knew what it meant, but they thought it sounded cool, so it stuck.
: What 'rock on' means is clearly stated (By Fred) here.
Yes, and one glance at a picture of either of the most prominent anarcho-capitalists, Murray Rothbard and David Friedman, should prove that "rock on" means nothing in this context. Which part of Murray Rothbard says "heavy metal" to you? Is it the bow tie or the horn-rimmed glasses?
: : But, for the sake of argument, what is your definition of "government"?
: Government, AKA the state, is the means of one class to impose its will upon another. Therefore when I say that a business (even one wage-employee) is a government, that means: the employer (capitalist) has the power to impose his / her will upon the worker (proletariat). It only requires two people to reproduce the class division and antagonism of present society.
The employer only has the power to impose his/her will in relation to his/her property. To say that this is a government is to say that you refusing to let me use your shovel is a government, you representing the class of shovel-owners and me representing the class of shovel-wanters.
: Marx: 'The existence of a class which possesses nothing but the ability to work is a necessary presupposition for capital' (Wage-Labor and Capital, International 1933, p. 30).
And nowhere is there such a class. I have never seen or heard of anyone in this country who possesses NOTHING but the ability to work. At the very least, one must assume that they possess clothes as most workplaces don't allow nudity.
: : But, out of curiosity, who is Morgan and which of his works should I see?
: Lewis H. Morgan, anthropologist; Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, Macmillan 1877.
Thanks.
: Stoller: Property is a way of saying that one class produces its survival PLUS another class' survival.
: : I'll assume you don't mean quite this. If you believed that one class was producing the survival of two classes, why on earth would you object to that, unless you're just mean?
: If one class (the proletariat) was producing commodities for its own survival PLUS producing commodities for the survival of another (the capitalist) who does not perform productive labor, then there is a VERY big problem.
I see. Your usual vagueness left me a little confused. I thought you were saying that what you call the capitalist class was producing its own survival plus that of the working class. Since this is much closer to reality, I should have realized that you would have nothing to do with it.
To say that the capitalist class does not perform productive labor is to be almost impossibly, and dangerously, ignorant of what it is that capitalists do. Ever spent any time in the real world?
: How would you like to support someone all your life just because they monopolized the means of production?
I don't know of anyone who monopolizes the means of production. Oh, you're saying that a bunch of different individuals, not organized together in any meaningful way, monopolize the means of production. Oh, I see. Odd use of the word, "monopolize".
: And on to other equally idiotic points in your other post...
: : In fact, most libertarians want to get rid of absolutely everything the government does except for defense.
: : Basically, an anarcho-capitalist is someone who would do away with government all together (which would seem implicit in the term "anarchy"), but understands that private property is simply a fact of life which a.) doesn't need government...
: Without socialized defense, overseas oil would soon cost the price of its production plus the price of its protection---which presently tax-payers pay FOR Exxon et. al so they don't have to hire their own militias for overseas oil fields.
So, you present us with two options: Either all taxpayers pay for the price of overseas oil protection, OR the individual users of the oil pay for it's protection. What was that you were saying about it being wrong for one class to support itself plus another class?
: This brings us squarely to the fact that much of capital's infrastructure is too big and too expensive to be purchased separately.
Which is why people form corporations and methods of investment.
: Marx:
:
: The world would still be without railways if it had to wait until accumulation had got a few individual capitals far enough to be adequate for the construction of a railway.(1)
:
Except that Marx apparently forgot that people form corporations to amass large amounts of capital.
: Railways, highways, defense, research & development, etc., etc. demonstrate that most of capital is already socialized (usually at the public's expense).
...in a mixed economy, yes, it's usually at the public's expense. So, let's get rid of the socialistic aspects of the mixed economy.
: Therefore your libertarian 'unknown ideal' is little more than a rhetorical utopia used to fool Robinson Crusoe types like you.
AH! So, the fact that anarcho-capitalism has yet to be tried means that it's a rhetorical utopia and therefore shouldn't be tried. Whereas, the fact that socialism has been tried again and again, and invariably ended in economic stagnation at best and mass murder at worst, means that we should try it yet again! You're a real dupe, you know that?
: : Unfortunately, property is one of those things which is genuinely impossible to do away with. It rules us in the same sense that hunger or the weather rule us. (There is a hierarchy in our bodies which sometimes puts the needs of the stomach over the needs of, say, your foot. There is a hierarchy in the weather wherein the needs of the thunderstorm pay no heed to your desire not to get wet.)
: Have you been getting your ideas Rush album liner notes? This is beneath even Ayn Rand.
Is this a debate or a comedy act? It's not very funny, and yet it's also not very thought-out.
: Necessity is the confrontation between human and nature.
: Once nature is fully usurped by a controlling minority, then necessity becomes confrontation between those who own nothing but labor and those who own nature (and the ensuing objectified use-values of nature which that alienated labor has produced).
Mindless assertions with little basis in fact. I assume this is more paraphrasing of Marxist doctrine? You're some skeptic, alright.
: : The best thing to do is to let people's freely chosen market transactions allocate the scarce resources.
: ALL resources are scarce once they've been monopolized by a minority.
All resources are scarce always. Either that, or they're infinite.
: : ... a boss can't threaten you with starvation. He can threaten to stop exchanging with you (fire you), but that should be everyone's free right. (What is freedom if not the right to decide whom you are going to deal with?)
: : If, after being fired, you sit on the street and starve instead of either finding a new job, creating your own job, or growing your own food, that's not the boss' fault.
: Here is the prime source of your confusion.
: You see capital atomized. Each worker and each capitalist acting out an individual drama. The old supply and demand card trick.* Never once do you see that each capitalist is ALL capitalists to the worker and that the fundamental class law is: work or starve. ALL capitalists as a class present this unified ultimatum to the proletariat.
And yet, you have admitted in previous posts that some workers are sometimes capitalists and vice versa. So, what? The distinctions are concrete when they support your flimsy arguments, and a little more fuzzy when they support your other flimsy arguments?
: If the means of production were not monopolized by the capitalist class, then workers would struggle with nature for their survival. But since the capitalist class (which I've demonstrated above is a unified
LOL! And LOL some more! Unified? The capitalists are all unified together? It's a massive conspiracy! You an X-Files fan? Or worse, a Chomsky fan?
class possessing socialized labor privately) DOES monopolize the means of production, the worker as a class must struggle with the capitalist as a class for survival.
: What is terrifying about you---and I give Fred the credit for bringing this out---is that instead of thinking you are rebelling against capitalism while unknowingly supporting its it (like most young fools), you instead insist that capitalism IS rebellious.
No, just that it is synonomous with freedom. I suppose anything which has an opposite could be considered rebellious against its opposite, so sure capitalism is rebellious against centrallized tyranny.
