Tom,
Thanks for your refreshing "wake up and smell the coffee" post. I join you as a
"neo-malthusian." I also join you as one who rejects, as you apparently are wont, the
"two-value" logic presented by many marxists. Here is my post from 7 August, which
received no response at all:
Tahir,
I was hoping that this two-value logic ended with the Cold War. You are
unarguably right that money exists for the purpose of mediating exchange values,
or as you put it, to facilitate the exchange of "commodities." But I am
convinced that it is just this word "commodity" that requires a working
definition just now, because I maintain that your other argument, that wage
labor is presupposed by commodities, is not true. In fact, this is just the
essence of the "Third Way" approach, or what is sometimes termed "free market
socialism." Producer cooperatives like Mondragon have been demonstrating for
many years that commodities can be produced by associations of producers who
simply split uup the proceeds among themselves, without an exploiting class to
put their heavy fingers on the scales of division of "surplus value." It is
rather capitalist production alone that presupposes wage labor. But markets and
commodities get along just fine without it.
Peace,
Ken
Tom, This is significant in that it demonstrates a "third way" between capitalism and
the "planned economy" approach of socialism which yet corrects the problem of
capitalist exploitation, which even according to Marx is the besetting problem of the
capitalist scheme of things. I find it revealing that no one on this list chose to
respond to this challenge, despite its empirical, verifiable nature, either by way of
affiramtion or refutation.
Soviet-style socialism has been shown unworkable, yet when a viable model of
transcending capitalist relations such as Mondragon is presented, no one has anything
to say. I suggest that many on this list are dedicated to playing a game called
ideological "gotcha," and no one that I have read yet has shown the slightest interest
in delineating a practical program that will enaable us to overcome the flaws of
capitalism in a way that suffers no loss of efficiency such as that attained by the
market principle of determining demand.
Peace,
Ken
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