Argumentation
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steve colborn wrote:What exactly, do you mean by “majority ownership?
A socialist society stoping people from keeping the product of their labor to themselves to barter or trade it with likeminded people who didn’t want to give what they made to the community for free.
Young Master Smeet wrote:And property involves the right and power to dispose of and control an article, exclusively.The right, not the power. You’re constantly confusing descriptivity with normativity.
Quote:If I sell myself, and yet retain the capacity to scratch my arse, then I am exercising control over someone else’s property, illegitimately.If you sold your body, and the next owner forbade you to scratch your arse, then yes, you are exercising illegitimate control over someone else’s property.
Quote:Formally, it would be possible to buy an unenforceable property rights, legally. that would have very little to do with the reality of substantial ownership.Slavery is enforceable, so I still don’t see the point.
Quote:Apologies, I wasn’t clear, the circumstances of coercion were a deliberate policy to dominate and control by the slave taker.Coercion is act of applying or threatening the use of physical force. But there is not need to go further, it’s already looking like I’m a defender of the self-ownership concept.
Quote:How are you applying the psychologists fallacy here?You are dismissing an idea without adressing the idea itself, but insted appealing to the “sinister motives” of it’s supporters. As I said, if someone has the most ulterior motive possible to claim that 2+2=4, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s rights, or if he would have the purest of motives to claim that 2+2=5, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he is wrong.
Quote:demonstrating that self ownership includes the capacity of selling yourself into slavery, so it seems evident to me that that seriously blunts its emancipatory connotations.Neither do I, I don’t accept self-ownership as a principle, I think is false and unjustified concept (I prefer individual autonomy, or when debating capitlaists self-possession), but it cannot (and nothing can ever) be inapropriate, wrong or false because of the motives of the ones espousing it.
ALB wrote:I hold no brief for Kropotkin (after all, although he was a communist he wasn’t a Marxist!) but I think you have misunderstood him here.I don’t personally give a damn about Kropotkin and even less about Marx, I concern myself with whether ideas are right or wrong, it’s irrelevant whether Hitler, Stalin or Gandhi expounded them.The point is, if anyone is for taking from me what I made myself (and I have payed for everything that I used in making it) because “it is not mine”, I consider him a robber/ thief, and an enemy to be fought against. The only communism (/socialism as you here define it) that is justified is the one that is voluntary, where the workers by their free choice decide to give products of their labor to the community they belong to. But if they are deprived by force of the products of their labor, or defrauded by lies that they are not entitled to the full product of their labor, but that a part (or all) of it belongs to someone else, that is oppression and exploatation, a crime and a wrong.
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:Morality is not mathematics. It can be shown that morality has changed throughout historyTo be nit-picking, it cannot. It can be shown that dominant ethical views of societies have changed throughout histoy (ethics- systematization of people’s views on morality), but not morality (differentiation between intentions, decisions and action that are good and right and those that are bad and wrong).As I have mentioned, there are moral norms that are apriori norms of discussions (as show by Habermas, and in a simpler, but distorted, way, his “anarcho”-capitalist student Hoppe), and are, by the act of participating in a discussion, accepted by all that enter it. And being that only by discussion a stance can be proven to be ethical (moral) or not, it is impossible to deny the mentioned ethical norms without comiting a performative contradition, which is to say that if denying them is contradictory, they are axioms- undeniable, objective, ethical truisms.
zundap wrote:Society could do what it likes with me, it could, if it had a mind, to have my balls for paper weights without my consent.I didn’t ask you about “could” I asked you about “should”. Not about possibilities, but about ethics.
Fabian wrote:Quote:How are you applying the psychologists fallacy here?You are dismissing an idea without adressing the idea itself, but insted appealing to the “sinister motives” of it’s supporters. As I said, if someone has the most ulterior motive possible to claim that 2+2=4, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s rights, or if he would have the purest of motives to claim that 2+2=5, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he is wrong.
That doesn’t tally with the psychologists fallacy as described on Wikipedia, nor with what I was doing. I no-where referred to “sinister motives” but to logical outcomes of holding a set of ideas, or to the essentially ideational character of certain concepts. If the consequence of a widely held idea that there were an invisible bridge over the English channel was that hundreds of people stepped off the cliffs of Dover, it would not be a pyschologist fallacy to point that out. I think the fallacy you are actually imputing to me is a mix of ad hominem and appealing to the gallery, neither of which I was doing.
My mistake, who know’s what I was thinking about, what I had in mind is simply called “appeal to motive”, or “bulverism”.
Go on, I’ll have one last crack.What I’ve been trying to get at is that “Self ownership” involves a category error. Being “Property” is an aspect/characteristic of Objects, not Subjects. To claim to own a person is inherently, thus, to objectify them, and deny their subjectivity. To claim “Self ownership” is fundamentally to internalise the objectification, or, alternatively, to alienate your self from your Being. If slavery is civic/symbollic death, self-ownership is suicide (emotive fallacy).
Now that’s more like a counter-argument. But, if there is not such thing as self-ownership, why is it wrong (and is it at all wrong) to take someone’s organs without their consent? First example- a plain bandit drugging you and taking your kindey to sell it; second example- a socialist society deciding that someone needs your kidney more then you, and they take it from you without your consent.
It was exactly the same argument as before, just with longer words.As regards socialism. I think it would be incompatible with the founding logic:
Quote:we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.I leave you to unpack the connotations of that.
Fabian wrote:A socialist society stoping people from keeping the product of their labor to themselves to barter or trade it with likeminded people who didn’t want to give what they made to the community for free.Why on earth would somebody, in a socialist society based on common ownership and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, want to behave in this way? Since everybody would have free access, according to their self-determined needs, to what had been collectively produced this doesn’t make sense. What you are talking about just wouldn’t arise. Perhaps you haven’t grasped that in a socialist society there will be no production for sale and no money?
Fabian wrote:The point is, if anyone is for taking from me what I made myself (and I have payed for everything that I used in making it) because “it is not mine”, I consider him a robber/ thief, and an enemy to be fought against. The only communism (/socialism as you here define it) that is justified is the one that is voluntary, where the workers by their free choice decide to give products of their labor to the community they belong to. But if they are deprived by force of the products of their labor, or defrauded by lies that they are not entitled to the full product of their labor, but that a part (or all) of it belongs to someone else, that is oppression and exploatation, a crime and a wrong.Since socialist society will be a society without a state (a central administration having armed force at its disposal), in this sense it will be based on voluntary co-operation. But, as I (and Kropotkin) keep emphasising, the whole concept of an individual producing anything on their own, or of trying to measure an individual’s contribution to collective production, is silly precisely because production is now collective. It’s a leftover from an ideological justification for capitalist society at an earlier stage of its development (which only ever existed as an ideal anyway).If, in a socialist society, someone (like yourself?) wants to work as an artisan producing something nobody is going to stop you, but you’re going to have a problem if you try to sell what you make. As buying and selling and money will have disappeared, you’ll have to give what you produce away free, as I’m sure most craftsmen would prefer to do anyway rather than seeing the products of their skills being mere commodities turned out just to make money.
Fabian wrote:Now that’s more like a counter-argument. But, if there is not such thing as self-ownership, why is it wrong (and is it at all wrong) to take someone’s organs without their consent? First example- a plain bandit drugging you and taking your kindey to sell it; second example- a socialist society deciding that someone needs your kidney more then you, and they take it from you without your consent.As I have suspected all along, I am not sure you fully grasp the implications of a socialist society. Your thinking and analysis pre-supposes the existence of property relations. Socialists envisage a society without property relations; a society of common ownership. Please have a look at some of the articles on the website explaining capitalism and socialism anf the differences between them
Fabian wrote:“The only communism (/socialism as you here define it) that is justified is the one that is voluntary, where the workers by their free choice decide to give products of their labor to the community they belong to”.The origins of words can be interesting as in the word you used above, community.From wikipedia.The word “community” is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, “with/together” + munus, “gift”.So according to this definition capitalism is a false community, on the other hand,socialism/communism with social creativity given freely and free access to social production will be in the above sense a true community. This kind of social relationship will be one where price plays no part and as anything or anyone with a price attached cannot be free, a life without price is freedom.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I leave you to unpack the connotations of that.Meaning you don’t have a concrete answer?
ALB wrote:Why on earth would somebody, in a socialist society based on common ownership and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, want to behave in this way? Since everybody would have free access, according to their self-determined needs, to what had been collectively produced this doesn’t make sense. What you are talking about just wouldn’t arise. Perhaps you haven’t grasped that in a socialist society there will be no production for sale and no money?Firstly, that doesn’t adress the question. Secondly, people are freely acting individuals, they are not machines determined by social circumstances, and some people just would behave that way. Thirdly, I’d want to behave that way, because I think most people are lazy and I don’t like them and wouldn’t want to give them anything for free.
Quote:If, in a socialist society, someone (like yourself?) wants to work as an artisan producing something nobody is going to stop you, but you’re going to have a problem if you try to sell what you make.Oh yeah? Society is going to stop me?
Quote:As buying and selling and money will have disappearedWe’ll use commodity money to buy and sell.
Quote:you’ll have to give what you produce away freeSociety would make me give my products for free? You realize that is pretty much the definition of theft?
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:Fabian wrote:Now that’s more like a counter-argument. But, if there is not such thing as self-ownership, why is it wrong (and is it at all wrong) to take someone’s organs without their consent? First example- a plain bandit drugging you and taking your kindey to sell it; second example- a socialist society deciding that someone needs your kidney more then you, and they take it from you without your consent.As I have suspected all along, I am not sure you fully grasp the implications of a socialist society. Your thinking and analysis pre-supposes the existence of property relations. Socialists envisage a society without property relations; a society of common ownership. Please have a look at some of the articles on the website explaining capitalism and socialism anf the differences between them
You’re evading the questions.
Fabian wrote:ALB wrote:Why on earth would somebody, in a socialist society based on common ownership and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, want to behave in this way? Since everybody would have free access, according to their self-determined needs, to what had been collectively produced this doesn’t make sense. What you are talking about just wouldn’t arise. Perhaps you haven’t grasped that in a socialist society there will be no production for sale and no money?Firsly, that doesn’t adress the question. Secondly, people are freely acting individuals, they are not machines determined by social circumstances, and some people just would behave that way. Thirdly, I’d want to behave that way, because I think most people are lazy and I don’t like them and wouldn’t want to give them anything for free.
I see you really are a wild frontiersman and misanthrope. Fortunately, most people aren’t lazy. You don’t seem to be for one. Me neither. It’s always the others, isn’t it?
Fabian wrote:ALB wrote:If, in a socialist society, someone (like yourself?) wants to work as an artisan producing something nobody is going to stop you, but you’re going to have a problem if you try to sell what you make.Oh yeah? Society is going to stop me?
No, nobody will, but I’m adding a new contribution to the joke section here: Have you heard the one about the man who wanted to sell something in socialism? He’s called Fabian. I’m afraid you won’t be able to open a bank account either.
Fabian wrote:ALB wrote:As buying and selling and money will have disappearedWe’ll use commodity money to buy and sell.
It has been suggested that there could be reservations in socialism for people who can’t get use to not using money, but personally I don’t think this problem will arise.
Fabian wrote:ALB wrote:you’ll have to give what you produce away freeSociety would make me give my products for free?
No, nobody would make you do anything. Even if you stockpile your products in your back yard (which is what would happen since nobody is going to buy them when they can get the same things for free) you’ll still be able, like everyone else, to have free access to what’s available in the common stores and distribution centres.
Fabian wrote:You realize that is pretty much the definition of theft?This looks like another contribution to the joke section: Have you heard the one about the man who thought that giving things away was theft?
ALB wrote:I see you really are a wild frontiersman and misanthrope. Fortunately, most people aren’t lazy.I see myself as a realist, and, unfortunately, most people in the first world are just spoiled brats.
Quote:You don’t seem to be for one. Me neither. It’s always the others, isn’t it?Precisely because I am not one, I can tell people around me are, and they are plentiful.
Quote:It has been suggested that there could be reservations in socialism for people who can’t get use to not using money, but personally I don’t think this problem will arise.Unless you brainwash all people, especially people with conviction, like me- it will.
Quote:No, nobody would make you do anything. Even if you stockpile your products in your back yard (which is what would happen since nobody is going to buy them when they can get the same things for free) you’ll still be able, like everyone else, to have free access to what’s available in the common stores and distribution centres.Are you kidding me? You’re talking about a world where there is abundance of everything and it’s all free for everyone to take, even if they don’t contribute, and that kind of a system will sustain itself by I don’t know what kind of magic, and I’m ridiculed for accepting moral norms? That’s not even utopianism, that’s basically a fairy tale.
It would perhaps be helpful to think of a socialist society in terms of a gift economy – “from each according to his/her abilities to each according to his/her needs. The dominant form of reciprocity in that case would be generalised reciprocity (see for example this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_%28cultural_anthropology%29) Gift exchanges are fundamentally unlike market exchanges. They are essentially moral transactions – another reason why I consider the SPGB’s reluctance to recognize that its standpoint is in fact a moral one to be nonsensical. The purpose of gift exchanges is to bind people together in ties of reciprocal obligation, not to separate individuals into atomistic economic actors who perceive themselves to have separate and indeed competing interests . Thus, the seller of a commodity wants as a high a price as possible while the buyer has the opposite interests. With gift exchanges what is important is not so much what is being exchanged as the social bonding that results form it With generalised recprocity the sense of moral obligation is diffused – or generalised. If people take according to their needs without payment of any kind – that is without any quid pro quo arrangement applying – then there is a generalized expectation that they should also contribute according to their needs. How they do that is up to them. Generalised reciprocity amounts to nothing more than a kind of background form of moral pressure on individuals which highlights the fact that we are all dependent on each other and that we all need to pull together to make society tickObviously if you have free access to foods and services there is no way in which an individual artisan say could start selling his or her product to the general population. Priced goods would be no match for free goods in that respect and even if people had the means with which to buy priced goods why would they want to? Why for that matter would the seller want to sell his or her goods when he or she could likewise get what he or she need for free from the communal distribution points I think the point that Fabian is getting at is that people should be able to do their own and dispose of their product as they chose. O have some sympathy this view but think it needs to be pointed out that this would apply to a very narrow range of goods which can be individually produced such as artisanal products or food from your kitchen garden etc etc . The great bulk of goods produced are essentially produced by cooperative labour and cannot be disposed of in this way . In fact the only way that makes any sense is to make such goods available to the general population via the communal distribution stores. However in the case of individually produced goods, I see no problem with the idea of person X exchanging a bunch a carrots for a handcrafted wooden utensil from person Y. This is not generalised reciprocity but balanced or symmetrical reciprocity since it is directed at specific individuals but it could certainly supplement the latter in a socialist society . Its not strictly barter because again the motivation is different . – it is not so much carried out in order to obtain a bunch of carrots or alternatively a wooden utensil. These things re almost incidental to the process which is to solidify and cement a relationship between X and Y.
Fabian wrote:Are you kidding me? You’re talking about a world where there is abundance of everything and it’s all free for everyone to take, even if they don’t contribute, and that kind of a system will sustain itself by I don’t know what kind of magic, and I’m ridiculed for accepting moral norms? That’s not even utopianism, that’s basically a fairy tale.This seems to be a strange comment, as do some of your others, for someone who introduced themselves to the forum as an anarcho-communist. You don’t even seem to have grasped the basic ABCs of anarchism.
Fabian wrote:Now that’s more like a counter-argument. But, if there is not such thing as self-ownership, why is it wrong (and is it at all wrong) to take someone’s organs without their consent? First example- a plain bandit drugging you and taking your kindey to sell it; second example- a socialist society deciding that someone needs your kidney more then you, and they take it from you without your consent.TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:As I have suspected all along, I am not sure you fully grasp the implications of a socialist society. Your thinking and analysis pre-supposes the existence of property relations. Socialists envisage a society without property relations; a society of common ownership. Please have a look at some of the articles on the website explaining capitalism and socialism anf the differences between themYou’re evading the questions.
I wrongly assumed that you were an anarcho-socialist. Clearly, you find the idea of anarcho-socialism to be ridiculous. You must therefore be a reformist and accept capitalism and all the crap that come with it. – ‘Thou shalt not steal’ etc
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