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peebo
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28 Oct 2011, 1:24 am

simon linguet, in 1763, wrote:
The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him… They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market… It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live… It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him… what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune… These men… [have] the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. … They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?


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28 Oct 2011, 1:40 am

an 1869 article in the new york times defined wage labour as

new york times wrote:
"a system of slavery as absolute if not as degrading as that which lately prevailed at the South"


http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_Kdr ... &q&f=false


marx's view:

karl marx, in the principles of communism, wrote:
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... in-com.htm


david graeber, in the article linked in the original post, notes that the earliest wage labour contracts of which we are aware were actually contracts for the rental of chattel slaves.


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

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peebo
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28 Oct 2011, 1:45 am

visagrunt wrote:
peebo wrote:
a considered argument at least, but no. the existence of public pension schemes does not detract from the fact that employers effectively live off of their employees in a parasitic way. nor does it take away from the fact that the majority of poor working people have no other choice in terms of sustaining their existence than to accept employment. lack of choice implies coercion.


I think you need to qualify "parasitic." In its biological sense, the word implies a relationship in which one organism derives benefit from another while providing nothing in return. That is not the case with employer-employee relationship because there is an exchange of value--money for labour.


i use the word in a broad, metaphorical sense, and from the viewpoint that while something is given back - money for labour - the value of the financial return is not equal, or even nearly so, to the value of the labour given. even slaves who were or are owned, in the commonest sense of the term, received something in return for their labour, but i think we can certainly consider the master/slave relationship as a parasitic one.


i must get ready for work , but i will return to your other points over the weekend when i have the chance.


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

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28 Oct 2011, 10:25 am

peebo wrote:
i use the word in a broad, metaphorical sense, and from the viewpoint that while something is given back - money for labour - the value of the financial return is not equal, or even nearly so, to the value of the labour given. even slaves who were or are owned, in the commonest sense of the term, received something in return for their labour, but i think we can certainly consider the master/slave relationship as a parasitic one.


i must get ready for work , but i will return to your other points over the weekend when i have the chance.


That seems to me to be sloppy use of language. You have taken a credible argument regarding exploitation, and undermined it through hyperbole.

We can all agree that slavery is exploitive and coercive. We can all agree that employers take profit from the productivity of their workers. Let's be objective rather than inflammatory in our comparisons of the two.


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29 Oct 2011, 3:25 am

Quote:
Quote:
this is fair enough but it doesn't really tie in to the discussion at hand. i see you have attempted to link it in the point below...

this is incorrect. yes, pensions do provide an element of growth in capital earned and extracted by workers, however generally this is capital that is remove from their pay packet every week. it does not consist of surplus value, or the redistribution thereof.


On the contrary, it most assuredly does.

First, my pension contributions are matched by my employer, so the contribution value of my pension, of which I am the beneficial owner, is only 50% of the contributions (to both the public and my employer schemes) is money that was mine to begin with.

Second, all of the growth in my pension is due entirely to investment activity. Even if my pension fund were to do nothing more than put the accumulated contributions into an interest bearing account, the interest earned by those funds would still be derived from investment activity (just one further step removed from my direct action). As it is, though, the accumulated value of my pension is significantly larger than my my contributions alone, or even the aggregate of my and my employers contributions.



yes this is true. but this is an external factor that still doesn't detract from the fact that your employer benefits at your expense, i.e. exploits you, by extracting the surplus value of your labour.


Quote:
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indeed this is exploitation of a sort. but not really connected to the discussion at hand, i am afraid.


The fact that it does not tie in to your particular Marxist notion of exploitation does not mean that it is not connected. It strikes me as utterly pointless to muse on idealistic notions of exploitation, coercion and slavery.

A person who actually cares about accomplishing something worthwhile will exit his ivory tower and work to effect change in the real world.


i don't feel that it is an idealistic notion at all. it is a very real issue affecting millions of people on a daily basis. the majority of people are quite literally struggling to survive.

as for your second point, i, in fact, work towards effecting real change in the lives of vulnerable people every day. to suggest i exist in an ivory tower couldn't be further from the truth. but even were this not the case, i don't see how it would preclude my discussing issues, ideological or otherwise, that i feel strongly about on an internet discussion forum.


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

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29 Oct 2011, 3:26 am

visagrunt wrote:
peebo wrote:
i use the word in a broad, metaphorical sense, and from the viewpoint that while something is given back - money for labour - the value of the financial return is not equal, or even nearly so, to the value of the labour given. even slaves who were or are owned, in the commonest sense of the term, received something in return for their labour, but i think we can certainly consider the master/slave relationship as a parasitic one.


i must get ready for work , but i will return to your other points over the weekend when i have the chance.


That seems to me to be sloppy use of language. You have taken a credible argument regarding exploitation, and undermined it through hyperbole.

We can all agree that slavery is exploitive and coercive. We can all agree that employers take profit from the productivity of their workers. Let's be objective rather than inflammatory in our comparisons of the two.



fair enough, it may indeed have been a rather clumsy metaphor.


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith


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31 Oct 2011, 2:38 am

Gedrene wrote:
Yes but they aren't forced in to doing work as in they aren't bought and told to do one job, which is slavery. They can choose their job. They can also go on the dole if they need to wait for a better job. So what? They need to get a job. That isn't slavery. That's called a responsibility.





the penal state outlined:

http://libcom.org/library/renewed-impos ... resistance


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31 Oct 2011, 12:37 pm

peebo wrote:
fair enough, it may indeed have been a rather clumsy metaphor.


So here's my question then.

An entrepreneur has taken money from investors (which might or might not include the entrepreneur, personally) for the purpose of starting a business.

The entrepreneur has used those investments to buy land, build a factory, and purchase machinery. So, how much is fair compensation to the investors for the use of their property (the investment money) from the surplus between what the workers in the factory produce and what they are paid?


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31 Oct 2011, 12:51 pm

peebo wrote:
Gedrene wrote:
Yes but they aren't forced in to doing work as in they aren't bought and told to do one job, which is slavery. They can choose their job. They can also go on the dole if they need to wait for a better job. So what? They need to get a job. That isn't slavery. That's called a responsibility.





the penal state outlined:

http://libcom.org/library/renewed-impos ... resistance

Quit forcing your absurd mismatched theories down my throat and talk to me rather than give off these dimissive, imperious comments!
Today's wage worker is not a slave to any one rich person. Your view of not owning capital as somehow equalling slavery somehow makes you feel priviledged to spit irrelevant terms at me and ignore all context about the true condition of workers in the west. You are thinking in black and white.



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31 Oct 2011, 1:20 pm

peebo wrote:
by denying this, i take it that you must be completely unaware of the current policy of bringing all recipients of disability benefits into tribunals, stripping them of their benefits and forcing them into looking for work?

Give me evidence.

peebo wrote:
have a search on google. a lot of people are talking about it.

You make a claim. You prove it by directing me to or quoting a source.

peedbo wrote:
you don't think this is penal?

Why is visagrunt not stomping over this faulty use of the word penal already? Telling someone to search for a job isn't a punishment. Making sure that they are actually disabled isn't a punishment. They don't pertain to, constitute, prescribe or even subject punishment. It aint penal. I don't have any evidence of these supposed things anyway

peedbo wrote:
and what proletariat distinction are you talking about?

The one where people who own no capital are somehow oppressed workers. People can earn hundreds of thousand without owning any form of production. Marx's theories are built on an oversimplified and fallacious concept of free-market enterprise that barely existed even in his day. You ever hear of the term Praxis? One needs a lot of praxis to make Marx's theories applicable.

Peebo wrote:
are you completely unaware, or in denial of the clear fact that there is unequal bargaining power between workers and owners? being forced to work as a means of survival with no alternative in the capitalist manner, is a form of slavery.

First, you seem to be in complete denial about being wrong, which explains why you'd ever dare use the words in denial against me when I said quite clearly that unequal bargaining power isn't the point I am talking about.
Gedrene wrote:
The point is that having to get a job at some stage isn't slavery, it's called having a responsibility. This is inane.


Peebo wrote:
i'm not ignoring fact. i'm stating fact. the point about managers is irrelevant.
No it isn't. it's you in denial now. Workers can't be paid a share according to their 'input' because first: Nobody would make any profit and all economic growth and progress would stall without saving. Second managers play an important part in organising labour that means that in the end they contribute more to the final profit than workers do. It is also an oblivious fantasy because it tries to equate worker's input with wages when in fact many things have input in both direct and indirect ways.

Peebo wrote:
i can't even understand what you're trying to say here, and it doesn't relate in any way to the point you replied to.

Now you're in denial again. I said self-management doesn't work. Committees are not innovative enough. Only some have the entrepreneurial skills to launch people up. People like to put others in charge in order to act as an interlocutor on their behalf. Also many just aren't interested.

peebo wrote:
you clearly don't get out much if you really believe what you are typing here. people living on minimum wage struggle to survive.

HAHAHAHAHAH! In the UK? I don't think death from poverty is common in the UK at all. As in it never happens except in weird cases.

peebo wrote:
are you really being serious? well researched, serious studies by law centres and social justice groups up and down the country are lying? poor people live in bigger houses?

Show me and quote rather than whinge.

peebo wrote:
good that i have? but you just said that i hadn't.

No, good that you have discussed something new, even if badly.

Seems you've gotten an obsession with trying to put me down. Mostly you have just deleted my comments from the text and accused me of having no context. You talk about various studies but never actually give me any. You accuse me of being in denial when it's clear that you are trying to avoid points I am making and at the end you tapered in to an agressive fantastical accusation about me saying that I hadn't found this interesting.

peebo wrote:
owning a tv isn't an indicator of socio-economic status. and x-boxes didn't exist in the sixties.

It's a sign of prosperity and furthermore trumps the belief that people live at subsistence level.

peebo wrote:
neither do the majority of minimum wage earning and unemployed people.

Because you say so.



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31 Oct 2011, 3:27 pm

mikhail bakunin wrote:
Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which no bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both. Note that I have left out of account altogether the following question: In what way did property and capital ever fall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question which, when envisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot be answered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment against the present owners. I shall therefore confine myself here to the statement that property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their own productive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon their capital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by the commercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat, all live at the expense of the proletariat. (Speculation and exploitation no doubt also constitute a sort of labor, but altogether non-productive labor.)


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31 Oct 2011, 3:43 pm

ratgeb: the subsistence society.


http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/postsi/ratgeb01.html

ratgeb wrote:
1. HAVEN'T YOU EVER, just once, felt like turning up late for work or felt like slipping away from work early? In that case, you have realized that:

a) Time spent working is time doubly lost because it is time doubly wasted — as time which might more agreeably be spent making love, or day-dreaming, on pleasure or on one's hobbies: time which one would otherwise be free to spend however one wished; as time wearing us down physically and nervously.

b) Time spent working eats up the bulk of one's life, because it shapes one's so-called "free" time as well, time spent sleeping, moving about, eating, or on diversions. Thus it makes itself felt in every part of the daily lives of each one of us and reduces our daily lives into series of moments and places which have the same empty repetition and the same growing absence of real living in common.

c) Time spent fulfilling an obligation to work is a commodity. Wherever there is commodity there is, unfailingly, obligatory labor and nearly every activity comes, little by little. to resemble obligatory labor: we produce, consume, eat and sleep for an employer, or a leader, or a State, or for the system of universal commodity.

d) The less work, the more life.

So you see, you are already fighting, consciously or otherwise, for a society which would guarantee each one of us the right to dispose of one's own time and space: and to build for ourselves each day the life we would choose.




go read the rest.


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31 Oct 2011, 4:07 pm

visagrunt wrote:
peebo wrote:
fair enough, it may indeed have been a rather clumsy metaphor.


So here's my question then.

An entrepreneur has taken money from investors (which might or might not include the entrepreneur, personally) for the purpose of starting a business.

The entrepreneur has used those investments to buy land, build a factory, and purchase machinery. So, how much is fair compensation to the investors for the use of their property (the investment money) from the surplus between what the workers in the factory produce and what they are paid?



this is not relevant. because it is framed within the capitalist paradigm. a society in which people are not wage slaves cannot be built upon investment and accumulation of capital.


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31 Oct 2011, 4:52 pm

Gedrene wrote:
peebo wrote:
by denying this, i take it that you must be completely unaware of the current policy of bringing all recipients of disability benefits into tribunals, stripping them of their benefits and forcing them into looking for work?

Give me evidence.


the fact that you are asking for evidence of this suggests that you do not live in the uk, or that you are upper or upper middle class and have no concept whatsoever of reality for working class and unemployed people in this country. this is government policy, and i was of the belief that it is also common knowledge. it has been all over the news. i work every day with vulnerable people whose already difficult lives are being made infinitely more difficult by this.

see here:

http://www.disabilityalliance.org/ibmigrate.htm

as claimants are migrated from incapacity benefit and income support to employment support allowance, they are sent to a mandatory tribunal, where the majority of them are being stripped of their disability related benefits and forced to go through lengthy and stressful appeals to have them reinstated.



Quote:
peebo wrote:
have a search on google. a lot of people are talking about it.

You make a claim. You prove it by directing me to or quoting a source.


i can't find where i posted this. what is it that i said people are talking about? i'll search google for you.

Quote:
peedbo wrote:
you don't think this is penal?

Why is visagrunt not stomping over this faulty use of the word penal already? Telling someone to search for a job isn't a punishment. Making sure that they are actually disabled isn't a punishment. They don't pertain to, constitute, prescribe or even subject punishment. It aint penal. I don't have any evidence of these supposed things anyway


it is penal. forcing someone with, for instance, long term, enduring, mental health problems, who might have problems even going out of the house, to sit in front of a doctor, who is answering multiple choice questions on a computer with no recourse to use his own discretionary judgement, with the view to sending the person a letter saying they do not qualify for disability related benefits, thus forcing them to go through a lengthy appeal process, all the while worrying about their ability to carry on in life, is indeed penal.

forcing young people who cannot find a job, because there are no jobs for them to find, to work for their benefit payments, which are relatively speaking far, far lower than minimum wage, is penal.

not allowing people who are out of work to have any sort of say whatsoever in the sort of work they are willing to undertake is penal.


Quote:
peedbo wrote:
and what proletariat distinction are you talking about?

The one where people who own no capital are somehow oppressed workers. People can earn hundreds of thousand without owning any form of production. Marx's theories are built on an oversimplified and fallacious concept of free-market enterprise that barely existed even in his day. You ever hear of the term Praxis? One needs a lot of praxis to make Marx's theories applicable.


the fact is that the vast majority of workers do not earn hundreds of thousands. and you clearly don't understand the word "praxis".


Quote:
Peebo wrote:
are you completely unaware, or in denial of the clear fact that there is unequal bargaining power between workers and owners? being forced to work as a means of survival with no alternative in the capitalist manner, is a form of slavery.

First, you seem to be in complete denial about being wrong, which explains why you'd ever dare use the words in denial against me when I said quite clearly that unequal bargaining power isn't the point I am talking about.
The point is that having to get a job at some stage isn't slavery, it's called having a responsibility. This is inane.
[/quote]

you were talking about rights, so unequal bargaining power is certainly something relevant to bring into the discussion.
Quote:
Peebo wrote:
i'm not ignoring fact. i'm stating fact. the point about managers is irrelevant.
No it isn't. it's you in denial now. Workers can't be paid a share according to their 'input' because first: Nobody would make any profit and all economic growth and progress would stall without saving. Second managers play an important part in organising labour that means that in the end they contribute more to the final profit than workers do. It is also an oblivious fantasy because it tries to equate worker's input with wages when in fact many things have input in both direct and indirect ways.


your point of view is completely skewed towards capitalism. of course the point i am arguing won't equate with capitalist logic, since capitalism relies on wage slavery under the guise of choice.

Quote:
Peebo wrote:
i can't even understand what you're trying to say here, and it doesn't relate in any way to the point you replied to.

Now you're in denial again. I said self-management doesn't work. Committees are not innovative enough. Only some have the entrepreneurial skills to launch people up. People like to put others in charge in order to act as an interlocutor on their behalf. Also many just aren't interested.


innovative enough for what? we do not need "entrepreneurial skills". we need meaningful existence.
Quote:
peebo wrote:
you clearly don't get out much if you really believe what you are typing here. people living on minimum wage struggle to survive.

HAHAHAHAHAH! In the UK? I don't think death from poverty is common in the UK at all. As in it never happens except in weird cases.


life expectancy for those living in the poorest area of glasgow is 25 years shorter than that of those living in the wealthiest.

Quote:
peebo wrote:
are you really being serious? well researched, serious studies by law centres and social justice groups up and down the country are lying? poor people live in bigger houses?

Show me and quote rather than whinge.


why? did you present any evidence whatsoever that poor people live in bigger houses? your arguments are laughable.

Quote:
peebo wrote:
good that i have? but you just said that i hadn't.

No, good that you have discussed something new, even if badly.

Seems you've gotten an obsession with trying to put me down. Mostly you have just deleted my comments from the text and accused me of having no context. You talk about various studies but never actually give me any. You accuse me of being in denial when it's clear that you are trying to avoid points I am making and at the end you tapered in to an agressive fantastical accusation about me saying that I hadn't found this interesting.


i really don't know what you are talking about here at all. you haven't found what interesting? your arguments are nonsense, you are asking me to quote studies when i reply to your spurious claims that you have in no way backed up.

Quote:
peebo wrote:
owning a tv isn't an indicator of socio-economic status. and x-boxes didn't exist in the sixties.

It's a sign of prosperity and furthermore trumps the belief that people live at subsistence level.


no it doesn't.

Quote:
peebo wrote:
neither do the majority of minimum wage earning and unemployed people.

Because you say so.
[/quote]

not at all. because they say so.


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith


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01 Nov 2011, 12:01 pm

peebo wrote:
this is not relevant. because it is framed within the capitalist paradigm. a society in which people are not wage slaves cannot be built upon investment and accumulation of capital.


Of course it's relevant, because it is the world in which people currently work.

No amount of counting angels on pinheads will create a socialist utopia. But the intelligent, earnest work of socialists can effect positive change inside the capitalist paradigm.


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01 Nov 2011, 12:28 pm

peebo - let me ask you then; does capitalism make the most of a crap human condition or do you instead subscribe to the idea that capitalism is what makes us this way not the other way around?


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