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From: mwm@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Private property and libertarianism
Message-ID: <725@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 15-Feb-85 02:13:37 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbtopaz.725
Posted: Fri Feb 15 02:13:37 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Feb-85 06:07:34 EST
References: <336@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Reply-To: mwm@ucbtopaz.UUCP (Praiser of Bob)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 46
Summary: 

In article <336@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
>How did the free market for labor come into existence?  How did
>labor come to be treated as an exchangeable, nonhuman commodity?  Any
>libertarians want to take a guess?  

Because the products of labor were the first commodity, followed shortly by
the labor itself? [NOTE: This *is* just a guess. Probably the best anybody
can do, considering the time that labor became a commodity.]

>This goes
>along with the FUNCTION of libertarianism as an IDEOLOGY (as opposed to the
>intentions of libertarians as individuals):  TO PROTECT THE BENEFICIARIES OF
>PAST COERCION (THE CAPITALIST CLASS) FROM THE POTENTIAL BENEFICIARIES OF
>FUTURE COERCION.  This explains the libertarian emphasis on the protection
>of private property, for this is IDENTICAL with the preservation of class
>domination.  

Since I think most of the production facilities in the country should wind
up in government hands, I hope you'll excuse me while I snicker at that!

>Libertarians, so far as I know, have not explained why the reward of work of
>a particular kind, managing the deployment of capital, includes, by natural
>right, the appropriation of power over the lives of others (the working
>class).

Rich, I suspect that management jobs include that power not by right, but
by necessity. If you are managing a task that doesn't require human labor,
then that power doesn't exist. On the other hand, if the task you are
managing does require human labor, then the person managing the task has to
be able to direct the application of that labor; otherwise, he might as
well give it up. Maybe you would like to explain how to manage a task when
you have a non-cooperative labor force, and no way (such as control of the
money supply to them) to get them to cooperate.

>In addition, it is state power that has given power over the
>lives of others to the owners of capital:  no one, or hardly anyone, would
>ever become a wage laborer unless he were COERCED into doing so.

Rich, are you seriously claiming that the people who went to work early in
the industrial revolution were forced to do so by threat of bodily harm? Or
maybe you consider offering better conditions than were currently available
elsewhere to be coercion?

>Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes

	<mike