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From: esco@ssc-vax.UUCP (Michael Esco)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Capitalist production
Message-ID: <562@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 20:11:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.562
Posted: Tue Mar 26 20:11:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Mar-85 00:12:56 EST
References: <370@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <532@whuxl.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Co., Seattle, WA
Lines: 55

>> To call
>> capital productive is to attribute a human quality to something that
>> is dead, an animate quality to something inanimate (Marx termed it
>> "fetishism").  It is PEOPLE who do things:  who build machines, who
>> invent machines, who discover scientific knowledge, who, in short,
>> create new wealth, and who are therefore productive.  Capitalism,
>> however, cannot tolerate this truth, since it undermines the
>> rationale for profit-making.  
>> Richard Carnes

People require resources to be productive. Capitalists risk savings in order
to supply the resouces for the workers. Profits are the reward people get for
risking their savings. Money stuffed in a mattress is unproductive, money
supplying resources to enterprises is productive.

> Organizing all the elements
> of machines, labor and planning is a very important function-without somebody
> or some group of people to pull these all together nothing will get
> produced.

Bravo, Tim! For once I agree with you. Too bad you follow that statement
with:

> Of course there is nothing to say this organization has to be
> either inspired ,motivated or organized in a capitalistic fashion.

No, but can you name an organization as effective as capitalism?

> ... one may legitimately
> ask how much an absentee jetset owner who has inherited stock in a
> corporation contributes to the organization or management of the corporation.

Keeping money in a stock implies approval of the current management. If you
are disatisfied, you sell. If enough stockholders sell, the value of the stock
drops and the board of directors will take action to protect the investment
of the remaining stockholders. If the directors do not correct the situation,
they will probably be voted out in the next election.

> But people like Andrew Carnegie,
> Rockefeller who built up their own companies did do much organizational
> work in the process of accumulating their industrial empires.
> Encouraging and allowing entrepreneurship is very important to a
> productive socialism.
>            tim sevener  whuxl!orb

People like Carnegie and Rockefeller did what they did because of capitalism.
They used their personal abilities and savings to the maximum because they
received the benefits of their own efforts. They were able to use their
profits as they saw fit: whether reinvestment, personal affluence, world-
class museums, or lazy relatives. The incentive that drives a Carnegie
also drives Joe Engineer with his small start-up *and* Jim Plumber with
his IRA fund.

							Michael Esco
							Boeing Aerospace