So I am going to make a quick note right now about why freedom and working for other people is not compatible.
First off, freedom is your right to be yourself and express yourself as your individual wants and needs afford you without, of course, inhibiting those same rights in others, who are also free. The other thing is, that your freedom is your own and cannot be taken from you, except by force or coersion of course.
But what about giving it away? Like when you freely choose to work for another person (barring of course circumstances beyond your control). Can you willingly give up some of your freedoms for the better part of a day (8 hours or so in the USA) and still remain free?
The moment that you choose to work for someone else you lose your freedom afforded you in your right of freedom, for being a human. Therefore, it is not possible to be really free when you do not work for anyone but yourself because someone else will tell you what you can and cannot do and how to do what they want you to do.
However, the real problem is, the opportunity to work for yourself, given little or no capital, is impossible given the current circumstances of wealth and capitalism. Hence, as I said before, the circumstances beyond your control are actually circumstances created by other MORE free individuals in that they have the capital/wealth. In other words, a form of force and/or coercion.
Therefore, captialism is economic force on those who have not forced or coerced others to work for them.
Interesting huh?
3 comments:
These are very interesting thoughts. But there is a definite historical process behind the notion of wageslavery, or the fact that all but the wealthiest must sell their labor to survive. When I think of these things on an abstract level, I tend to get pretty angry. So one way to "do something" with the anger is to look to history, to further my understanding of where all this comes from. At the very least, I find it grounding to do so.
I found this article, written by one of my mentors at USM, to be very illuminating in this area. It's fairly brief, but I'd be interested to hear your perspective on it...
Thank you psuche for your comments, let me give an example:
Suppose we are walking down the street and we see a man, A, seizing B by the wrist and grabbing B’s wristwatch. There is no question that A is here violating both the person and the property of B. Can we then simply infer from this scene that A is a criminal aggressor, and B his innocent victim?
Certainly not—for we don’t know simply from our observation whether A is indeed a thief, or whether A is merely repossessing his own watch from B who had previously stolen it from him. In short, while the watch had undoubtedly been B’s property until the moment of A’s attack, we don’t know whether or not A had been the legitimate owner at some earlier time, and had been robbed by B. Therefore, we do not yet know which one of the two men is the legitimate or just property owner. We can only find the answer through investigating the concrete data of the particular case, i.e., through “historical” inquiry.[Murray N. Rothbard, "The Ethics of Liberty"] (Emphasis from original)
What I am saying is that the legitimate or just owner originally was the producers of the materials needed to create products and or those who worked to gather the materials from natural sources and NOT the capitalist who currently owns it.
In other words, from your prespective, it appears that the force of taking things currently owned by those with wealth are being robbed of their property when, based on historical precidence, the rightful owner is reappropriating what was previously theirs.
Needless to say, it is the assumption of rightful ownership of the wealthy/capitalist that the issue of force comes up. And my contention is that the rightful ownership has been usurped and can and should be reaquired by those who rightfully own it.
And to be even more clear, I do not believe that Marxism is entirely correct and hence using it as a defense against my views is unwarranted.
James,
I read the article and found it an interesting read.
I do agree that the current incarnation of how money is being used and hoarded is harming those who work vs those who own that work.
I do believe that money is important insofar as an easier means of exchange between products and currency for other products with currency. But the way that money is used as a product in itself is wrong and incorrect.
The basic idea of usury; profit, rent and interest; is undermining the concept of what the market's original intention was, the free exchange of products. And hence, the barter system, at least on the local level would be much better than the monetary system in use.
I am also interested in perhaps a local monetary currency so that local communities could exchange better if the barter system is not as easily available or perhaps the size of the community (in area and population) could not lead to an easy exchange of products.
Needless to say, it was a good read and I agree that the WB and IMF are just more tools to be used against local economies by transnationals.
Post a Comment