LibSoc natural rights

xslavearcx, it was just like that. Except I wasn't a robot at the time, I didn't read a book by flipping quickly through all its pages, there wasn't an amazed woman standing beside me, and there was no 80s music playing. But yes, other than those things I just mentioned, it was exactly like that. Ask me anything about the influences classical liberalism had on anarchism, markets and economies based on them, or Proudhon. I guarantee I can direct you to a website on it. I'm soooo smart after reading everything on worldcat, I bet I could post a link about anything right now!

This is stupid. Did somebody here actually imply that Proudhon wasn't a socialist? Get a fucking grip, man.

i think that proudhon was a socialist, but he is not by modem standards, someone who held the same views today would be a reactionary arshole because of historical experiences and theoretical developments.

Greenjuice thinks the ideas of socialism where fixed in place in the 19th century and they has been no development since

So writing one of the first and best critiques of the institution of property, and then writing an extensive critique of capitalism where he rejects all forms of capitalist profit isn't enough to make him a socialist? Is he also required to give Marx a rimjob?

Yeah, as opposed to you because you think that socialism stopped developing after Marx. Either that or your idea for what constitutes socialism has no historical or theoretical basis whatsoever, clearly. Follow your own fucking advice, would you please?

That's pushing it. There've been critiques written of private property back to Plato and beyond, and Proudon's isn't so much the best as the most accessible, because it takes as its premise the Lockean "common sense" of popular liberalism. In fact, it's really pretty weak, because it addresses the wage-relation only as a consequence of capitalism, just another burden the working man carries alongside landlords, pawn-shops and unscrupulous bakers, rather than- as Marx crucially identifies it- the fundamental basis of capitalist society.

you're a fucking idiot, quote where i mentioned marx pls

and if you are going to ignore racism sexism etc, fuck of and die

Proudhon's critique is anything but weak. He basically took every argument in his time that was used as an apology for property and used it to attack property. He also speaks in depth about how the existing economic system is pervaded with exploitation and how property essentially underpins the extraction of surplus by capitalists ("property is despotism").

Is wage labor anything but a consequence of capitalism? If it were not for capitalism and the repressive state apparatus that supports it, working people would not have to rent themselves out to masters and they would very likely receive the full product of their labor.

Are you mad at Proudhon for not singling out wage labor? It makes no sense to place special emphasis on wage labor and the capitalist profit derived from it when you criticize capitalism. If you are interested in liberty, then you must oppose every face of usury be it rent, profit, or interest because they are all inherently exploitative.

Nice dodge on the old racism sexism comment ^ jesus christ

I should explain what I mean by "weak". I don't mean that Proudhon's critique is poorly constructed, or that it is not within its own terms robust. As an inversion of Lockean property theory, it's effective what enough. What I mean is that it is insufficiently radical, that it does not get to the root of capitalism, it merely asks us to rethink how we regard the surface-appearances. Proudhon leaves commodity production and the social division of labour, that is, capitalism and class society, quite intact, and thus leaves himself open to rehabilitation as a "radical" form of bourgeois ideology.

Presenting wage-labour as a consequence of capitalism dictates that capitalism is prior to wage-labour, and can exist without it. But how can capitalism exist without wage-labour? Could we really look at a society of pretty commodity-producers prayed upon by landlords and call it "capitalism"? Or, perhaps more pertinent to any revolutionary project, can we really look at a society of self-possessed petty commodity producers and call it "socialism"?

I didn't feel like I had to address it. Even if the allegations regarding Proudhon's supposed sexism and so on were true, it wouldn't invalidate any of his ideas any more than supporting the allies in WWI invalidated Kropotkin's ideas.

What is it that you are defining as capitalism? Because from my understanding capitalism is a market system where you have private ownership of the means of production (whether owned by individuals or the state) and wage labor. Commodity production in and of itself is not only not exploitative but it isn't unique to capitalism. A market system where workers control the means of production and receive the full product of their labor would not be capitalism by another name, to call it so would be disingenuous at best.

Again, this just depends on what you are defining as capitalism? Are ALL market systems capitalist? Is the defining characteristic of capitalism commodity production alone or are wage labor and private ownership of the MoP a more defining features?

Likewise, your second point is dependent on what socialism is to you. Socialism has always meant worker's control of the means of production. What state socialism and anarchism (libertarian socialism) have in common is the labor theory of value. Socialism in and of itself does not entail a rejection of markets. So as for last question: yes, a society where workers themselves own the means of production and sell the product of their labor in markets is still a socialist society even if their model is far from optimal.

I think we have another greenjuice on our hands. So I'm out.

are you seriously going to deny proudhons racism and misogyny?
when you say it wouldn't invalidate his ideas, you are aware that those where some of his ideas right? you think being a misogynist anti Semitic is fine so long as they say capitalism is bad? you don't think this is a political matter?

as for markets, they had a strong tendency to inequality, they are a terrible method to distribute necessities, and get in the way of distributing less essentially items and favour short term discussion making. any market based society will tend towards capitalism or a capitalist like system, it doesn't matter how perfect the intale set up is, the direction that the forces in the market push things are the same.

I'm a work abolitionist and a libertarian communist. You don't need to tell me why markets are a sub-optimal arrangement for a free society. I already understand this.

You're putting words in my mouth regarding Proudhon's supposed misogyny and antisemitism. I've never said that I'm fine with those things. What I did say is that even if he did hold those views, it doesn't automatically invalidate every other thing he ever postulated. Agreeing with some of his ideas is not tantamount to agreeing with every view he held.

You're right; commodity production in itself is not unique to capitalism. I should have specified generalised commodity production, the presentation of labour itself as a commodity, and Proudhon leaves that quite intact. He may like any good radical artisan prefer self-employment, but that's a matter of preference, not principle, and he's quite happy for larger concerns to operate on a basis of wage-labour, provided this is within an overall cooperative framework.

While that doesn't mean that Proudhon's critique is without worth, it does mean that it's fairly seriously blunted, because the further a capitalist enterprise moves towards profit-sharing and representation, the less he has to say about it. Proudhon might be able to savage WalMart with all efficiency, but what happens when he hits something like John Lewis, let alone Mondragon, where workers exercise nominal and to a certain extent even real control over production? His critique very quickly begins to stumble, ceases to be a political critique and simply an organisational one, not a call for revolutionary but for the reform of existing structures- and, unless we somehow believe that Mondragon have achieved "socialism in one factory" where Stalin and the whole might of his party could not achieve it an entire country, Proudhon finds himself the servant of capital, and his critique its ideology. Proudhonism becomes not socialism, but democratic capitalism- if it was ever anything other than that to start with it.

I don't think that private ownership is what defines capitalism, by any means. Private ownership does not entail capitalist social relations, and capitalist social relations do not entail capitalism. The petty bourgeois exist, state property exists. That's not to deny the significant of the relationship between the two, which is real and important, but at the end of the day private property is a legal form, capitalism a social relation.

What distinguishes capitalism, I think, is generalised commodity production, the presentation of labour as a commodity, and thus the social organisation of labour as value - or, in other words, wage-labour. It's the generalisation of wage-labour, and the subsumption of labour under capital, that marks out capitalism as a unique form of society and a unique historical epoch, rather than just being the same old swindle played by barons and priests since the dawn of class society.

What is a "worker", though? Is it possible to have workers, proles, outside of the wage-relation? Is every peasant, every shopkeeper, every self-employed artisan and professional a "worker"? The term, so defined, quickly expands to encompass everyone who isn't an employer, and "socialism" if defined as "workers' control" comes to describe the land-owning peasant and the self-employed professional- absurd on the face of it.