Atlas Shrugged

Just so you know, the doctor is now In, and available to take questions on this topic.Percy - Rand is purely a shill. I'll agree her work is supeficially compelling, in that it is well argued, buit it is methologically baseless, pure Utopianism. It consists entirely of abstract propositions about how things SHOULD be, and does not examine the real, material realities in which we operate. Furthermore, Rand lies about communism, and her work is more accurately seen as propaganda than any form of serious argument.Yes Rand has a lot of influence in American governmental circles. This is because the American government is completely mad and living in a world of its own creation, a hall of propaganda mirrors.The abtract and Utopian nature of Rands argument is echoed by Portmster: "If Walmart has obligations toward those employees by your definition it doesn't stop with Walmart. Those employees have obligations to the homeless as well, right?" Yes, it can stop with Wal-Mart, because engaging to work in a REAL company in the REAL world entails certain specifics. It is an actual contract, both technical and social, and overextension of mere notional principle to all circumstances is a logical fallacy.thats just for starters as unfortunately I have run out of time. But I can set you this homework:Rand talks about the "value" of intellectual contribution, and who ends up with that value. What is value, anyway?Its a central issue.

Hmm, yes. Like all specialised contexts, dictionary definitions are not really apporpriate.The conventional value system operational in capitalism is based on perceivee value - that is, there is no value but what the would-be buyer attributes to the commodity. This is an integral element to the mechanisms of supply and demand.So lets look at rands proposition youn offered in post 5, on this basis. Rand claims that "In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him." And the calssical capitalist reponse is TOO BAD.Value is in the eye of the beholder. Rand can rant all we like, if we do not choose to value ideas in the way she thinks we should, she just has to deal with it. The market sets the price - not Rand. Thus I don;t even have to step out of orthodox economists to demonstrate that Rands argument is impossible in the very system she expounds.But by contrast to Rands polemic about the genius of the individual - and as was demonstrated by the flower cartoon linked above - physical labour is inescapable. Without physical action, no idea, no matter how brilliant or worthy, ever becomes anything at all. Rand's elitism damns the very people who do ALL the valuable - workers. Rands conception of valuye is, in fact, valueless; and the conclusions she draws from her argument therefore necessarily specious.Rand has also failed to address WHY the man at the bottom is at the bottom. She just takes this as if mandated by God, and seeing as christinaity has itself argued that very point, maybe she believed that explicitly. But the man at the bottom is AT the bottom precisely becuase the value they produce has been stolen by the very dillettantes Rand heroises. In fact the social relationship is dimaterically opposite that Rand claims to observe - the people at the top are nonproductive parasites, and the people at the bottom produce all real, affective, value.

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Aren't you making the same mistake as Rand, i.e., claiming that people should be compensated in amounts other than those set by the marketplace? Or perhaps you've shifted from an anti-Rand argument to an anti-capitalism one. One way of looking at the two arguments is that yours is socialism while Rand's is reverse socialism, and neither has much to do with capitalism or free markets.

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Sure. Sorry if thats confusing; because I have internalised both Marxist and orthodox Cappitalist value arguments, I find it quite easy to switch from one mode to another, but that may be hard to follow.But I would strongly disagree that Rands is reverse socialism. Rands argument is a form of Heoric culture; Marx' argument to a price that is not purely market driven is procedurally based - that is, there are sound reasons for selecting the criteria he selects, and thus he offers an objective value system in place of the subjective system. While I can argue that Rand is wrong in terms of her own preferred model, I don't accept that model myself.It is not merely a discussion of what we choose to "value" through our economic action, and the proposition that an alternative set of "values" be applied. And of course, we would never concede that markets can be free under Capitalism. In fact, I would say that the use of the subjective value system is itself a market distortion: that is, it privileges the wealthy as empowered economic actors and subordinates the rest of the economy to their effective demand. Thus the capitalist subjective price model is really a form of social deference to the de facto plutocracy.

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But do you think an economic model exists that does not ultimately result in the kleptocracy you describe? I'll wager my David Ricardo action figure with the Adam Smith Invisible Hand grip if you can think of one.

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Yes - barter between direct producers in a local context.A central feature of the crticism cash raises is the DETACHMENT of the capitalist retailer, the economically empowered actor, from the process of production. By contrast, where primitive societies trade directly, face to face, and producer to producer, not only is there an economic trnasaction but also a social one that has to do with pride, self-expression, self-sustenance, mutual recognition, and the reification of cultural norms. It would be absurdly stupid to practice the form of transaction that Crash, accurately, describes as kleptocracy. Becuase failing to be a good trade partner simply makes you an ex-trade partner; your own status is on the line in every transaction.Note how completely different this is to the idea that a suitabole price is "as much as you can get". Wwhat pertains in this system instead is a form of mutuality; and whats more, becuase each producer is intimtaely familiar with the product they produce, the value of that product, which they seek to exchange, is known to them in an entirely tangible way.Not only does capitalism alienate the producer from the product, it also argues that there is no such thing as society and that these very social aspects of the transaction should be superceded by the merely procedural format of the transaction. This is especially the case with modern bandit capitalism, that no longer even possesses the social conscience the Adam Smith thought was inherent to the capitalist as good citizen.What Crash describes as kleptocracy is a necessarily emergent property of Capitalism, and it arises oprecisely becuase capitalism is not an economic system qua economic system, but a political-economic system for the maintanance of class rule.

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I may be wrong, but the problem as I perceive it is that we as American working class are already at an artificially inflated economic position on a worldwide scale...Thus we almost have to keep the system that we have in order to maintain the slowly shrinking standard of living that we enjoy. Am I right, Contra? There is no way that any sort of socialist system would help the average middle class American is there? It may help people in Niceragua but not Newark!

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Not at all. Remember that that the economically active element in socialism is the individual proletarian producer, rather than the controllers of capital, but it is also not peasants, whom you may be thinking of in Nicaragua.But there is a cogent argument that the Western working class - there is virtually no western middle class by historical standards, capitalism has wiped them out - has effectively been bribed, a process termed in marxist terms "superexploitation". That is, nationalist identities serve to unite the western working class in supporting the capitalist class in its exploitation of external entities - in this case the Third World. The superexploitation of the third world relieves much of the direct and immediate exploitation of workers in the Western states themselves, nad places the human cost out of sight and out of mind.Nevertheless, this does not mean that Western workers are NOT exploited, it merely means the coercion is primarily ideological rather that physical or military. Western workers are still engaged in an economic relationship that alienates the producer from the product and privileges the owners of capital over the producers of commodities. This fact is directly observable in the increasing gap that appears between the wealth of rich and poor - quite observably, the systematic action of domestic economics remains the extraction of wealth from those who produce and its redistribution to those who merely own. Superexploitation merely ameliorates the effects of that exploitation, but that situation depends on the succesful maintanenance of superexploitation. If there is ever any disruption to superexploitation, or the economic system in general, all the pressure on the western working class will immediately appear in full force.It is because this relationship is still exploitative that despite their status as the "labour aristocracy", Western workers still stand to gain from a liberation of economic praxis. Not only is there the human economy on offer, the reintegration of the worker and their work as economincally and socially satisfying activities, but also the actual material wealth that in present society is directed toward the cultivation of the powers that be.The allocation of this material wealth can be seen in the rise of marketting as a major economic praxis. Marketing directs an increasingly sever proportion of all turnover toward the cultivation of consumers purely as consumers. It does not ionnovate, or engineer, or develope, or invent, commodities or products in their own right. more and more capital is expended chasing after a relative static degree of buying power - all of which makes the passing of costs on to the consumer an even more pressing issue. Thus increasingly, consumers pay not only for the goods produced, but also for the privilige eof being persuaded to buy this product over the other, AND for all the other persuasion attempts that failed. Thus, even though the western worker is the recipient of the benefits of third world superexploitation, that worker remains exploited in their domestic capital economy, and if freed from that exploitation would have substantially more disposable wealth at their command.As Marx points out, the tendency in in capitalism is for capital to accumulate; that accumulation of capital then requires the services of further, fluid capital, to maintain itself. Accordingly, more and more productive capital is directed to non-productive purposes, and the economy stultifies, stutters, and eventually collapses. Despite superexploitation, the Western working class remain in a preilous position as the objects, rather than subjects, of economic action.

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What the heck does Crash know? He already admitted in this thread he doesn't know much about economics.

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Snort - more than you, apparently. Like any human being, he is capable of observing or commenting - rather better than spouting dogma in my eyes.

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And I'm sorry to knock you off your Worker's Unite! soapbox, but capitalism is NOT a political system.
Capitalism is:

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... a political system. Yes, this is the central point of difference between capitalist and marxist analyses. You see, your definition is wholly inadequate - it can be applied equally to feudalism. In feudalism, the means of production (land, ploughs, mills) are privateley (aristocratically) or corporately (trade guilds, political abstractions such as fiefs) owned and eveleopement is proportionate to the accumulation (by taxation, frex) and reinvestement (via assarting, frex) of profits in a free market (being primarily a market between free aristocrats).

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Economic system <> political system. Economic systems are not inherently good or evil, they simply are.

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Thats merely an appeal to mysticism. As I often point out, Capitalism is a Utopian ideology, not really a materialist system at all. Can you think of any economic system anywhere in the history of the world that was NOT linked to political interests? No you cannot, you admit this yourself by your very next statement that:

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And I hate to break it to you, but EVERY political system exists to maintain class rule. It's just that individuals have more opportunity to move from one class to another depending on the system.

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Yes exactly so - now you are agreeing with Marx. The history of all civilisation to date HAS BEEN THE HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE. And that class struggle and relationship, as you acnkowledge, is invariably expressed through the economic system. Which is precisely why Marxism proposess THE ELIMINATION OF CLASS, the liberation of economic praxis to do what it really should be doing: making people better off, NOT mediating social relationships.Once again Custard, you cannot merely recite the dogma of bandit capitalism and expect to be convincing. I'm well aware of what capitalism SAYS about itself, but it is my OBSERVATION (and that of Crashfrog apparently) that the facts and the rhetoric do not match. And that is a perception we two share with the millions of people in the developing world whose economies are being systematically raped by the west. Furthermore, I have a systenmatic and materialitic criticism of these claims which you appear simply unwilling to engage, unable to even consider the dogmas of capitalism as open to question or challenge.The division of society into "economic" spheres and "political" spheres is ahistorical, obfuscatory, and purely ideological. It is merely one of the rationalisations that capitalisms Utopianism falls back on for the lack of a sufficiently materialist argument.

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Sorry, I keep my David Ricardo doll, but it is interesting to see this type of transaction is actually increasing through sites like Craig's list, etc.

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Right - just as Marx predicted, the steady improvement of the technological base by dynamic capitalism brings about a market condition that makes direct relations between producers viable on a global scale. Thus, the economic relatinship bewteen producers that pertained in the neolithic can be reproduced in the high tech modern world BECUASE it is high tech.

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The big problem with a strict barter system, and the reason it was immediately abandoned once people realized how convenient currency was, is that it starts to break down when I don't have a product or service of value to the person I want to trade with.

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Sure. But then again, what has changed? If I don;t have the skills that a capitalist employer wants to pay for, I'm stuffed, desppite the presence of currency. In fact this is a distorion of the scenario - becuase OF COURSE anyone who produces a product for which there is NO DEMAND has no right to expect compensation for their labour.This is irrelevant to currency. Currency allows for the mobility of capital, it does NOT affectd the relationship between actors in the marketplace. Currency also presumes, and depends upon, a highly developed, diversified marketplace in which you can reasonably expect to find a buyer for your product even if not locally.But currency also raises a further challenge to your claim that economic and political systems are divorced - becuase currency is one of the primary means by which iron age polities establish themselves as politically potent entities. Currency is, first and foremost, a SYMBOLIC relationship with the economy rather than a direct one, and that symbolism is a perfect vehicle for political propaganda and identity construction. Thus, Athens deployed currency succesfully in the development of its anti-Spartan league.

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Is that what you guys think capitalism is? Trying to get as much as you can get? It isn't. The market determines the value of goods and services, not just the seller - there also has to be demand for the seller's product.

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Come on Custard, yes this IS Econ 101. If you like, I shall rephrase: "as much as the market will bear". The point is the denial of intrinsic value and the resort to ideological subjective value as a means of obfuscating the material facts of the transaction. It substitutes a mechanistic relationship for a human social one, despite the fact that it is actually negotitaing a social, political, transaction.

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The buyer and seller negotiate to come up with a price that is acceptable to each of them. If either one of them doesn't like the terms of the exchange, it doesn't happen.

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Sure - but the point is, both buyer and seller are alienated from both the product and the process of production. As a result, neither of them can negotiate on an informed basis; the material basis of the exchange has been obfuscated into invisibility. The negotiation, then, can only be stylised and abstracted - it cannot be a real *exchange* between economically competent actors. It is instead a form of blind manipualtion in which the only relevant fact is the precedent established by prior nbegotiations, rather than the actual value to either participant of the goods in question,.

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Where free market capitalism breaks down is when there is collusion and monopolies - which is exactly why there are controls in place to prevent that from occurring and to promote as much competition as possible.

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Except that there is necessarily such collusion at all times and places within capitalism. Because the monopolisers of capital always have the option to walk away from the proposed exchange, while the worker negotiating for the very necessities of subsitence CANNOT walk away. This collusion is both tacit (that is, market mediated, the actors being alienated) and overt (such as when capitalist bodies such as the Confederation of British Industry publicvly lobby against a minimum wage). ALL wage labour in capitalism is first controlled by this monopoly on capital itself. And as a result, ALL labour contracts under capitalism are exploitative - becuase one party MUST make a deal, and the the part is free to refuse, that second second party holds an overwhwlming dominance in this SOCIAL relationship.And even worse, that capitl to which capitalists lay claim was itrself produced by the labour of workers. All property is theft; all wage labour is slavery; all capitalists are parasites.

Footnote: I argued above that superexploitation works as a bribe only as long as it can be maintained. This shows exactly why the US, for example, is loathe to engage in actual free trade with the developing world. If the US lowered its trade barriers to third world goods, or dropped the practice of debt-farming and forced "developement" loans, superexploitation of the third world would become steadily less efficient as a displacement of domestic political-economic tensions. But that relationship can be maintained by, for example, being extremely militarily "persuasive" such that the economic demands you place are effectively non-negotiable. This is precisely why, As Lennin argued, Imperialism is the highest form of capitalist exploitation: superexploitation depends upon military dominance. And as one might predict from this argument, a state dependant on superexploitation to win the consent of its domestic workers must continually invest in the military in order to maintain this happy status quo. Therefore, it is entirely predictable in MArxist terms that the modern Us should be spending such an absurd proportion of its GDP on the military, and why such political fictions as "the war on terror" have a very specific role to play in capitalist states.[military spending has a nother "virtuous" effect on the structure of capitalism, but I won't go into that here; suffice to say "beware the military-industrial complex"]

Yes, that is correct - that is Rand's theme. Rather like Neitzches theme, and Hitlers theme. However, it is precisely because it is not methodologically sound that it can be dismissed - it is an apologetic, not even an argument. It is a paean to the romance of the aristocrat - indeed, to a superior CLASS of people.This message has been edited by contracycle, 02-25-2005 05:41 AM

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Not to the aristocrat, a largely hereditary status, but to a self-defining class of people characterized by their energy, ambition, creativity and achievements.

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Which is exactly the claim the aristocrat advances. "Four generations from King to Swineherd" as they used to say in Ireland. Aristos were initially first and foremost self made men, who took others under their generous wing.So once again for the back of the class: Rand's book is an appeal to the romance of the aristocrat, the Heroic culture. It is a historical throwback, and should not be considered even remotely seriously by anyone who claims to hold democratic values dear.Custard wrote

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The ubermensch concept isn't what she is touting in this novel. And pretty much anyone who has read Neitzche or taken philosophy 101 knows that Hitler's ideas are a pathetic corruption of Neitzche's ideas.

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No True Scotsman, eh Custard?This message has been edited by contracycle, 02-28-2005 11:01 AM

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You're describing the reality, not "the claim the aristocrat advances." Kings especially make every effort to hide humble origins.

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No, I am describing the claim the aristo advances - that there is a special class of people that are more worthy than others. Kingship is a rather different issue - William Marshal, who was nearly king, never tried to conceal his origins, for example.

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The aristocrat with his sense of inherited entitlement does not seem consistent with Rand. Heroic culture seems much closer to the mark.

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I suspect you are defaulting to a limited Reformation stereotype of the aristo, or a later democratic criticism. You should not forget that in the early feudal era these individuals are without shadow of a doubt self-made men. And it is that demonstrated ability which makes them into nodes of power and allegiance, justified the claims to inherent, inherited quality.All Rand and Neitzsche do is drag up this ancient and poisonous hero cult and give it a modern gloss. And that is echoed in the Nazi regimes and its own arghument to inherent supremacy.

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I agree with this. It's probably not relevant to the topic whether kings actually emphasized being self-made men or their status of inherited entitlement.

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It is precisely relevant because Rand advances the SAME argument. Modern entrpereneurs also prefer to emphasise their personal over their inherited achivements, but money is as inheritable as a comital fief. Rands argument is an aristo apologetic.