Jim Devine wrote:
> John Vertegaal wrote:
> > ... The evil of capitalism in a nutshell is the power to impose
> > rents, without even able to turn the proceeds into a greater
standard of
> > living for themselves.
> The essence of the argument that Gary Dymski and I launch against John
> Roemer's theory of exploitation under capitalism is that he sees
> "surplus-value" (a.k.a. property income) as merely scarcity rent. I'm
> not going to repeat that argument here. Our papers appear in
> _Economics and Philosophy_, 7(2), October 1991: pp. 235-275 and
> _Review of Radical Political Economics_, 21(3), 1989: pp. 13-17.
Sorry, cannot comment; I live too far away from a univ. library to read
them and they're not available to me online.
> > ... Is there anybody on this list who doesn't equate capitalism with
> > free-enterprise?
> To my mind, "free enterprise" is only a slogan, essentially the same
> as "laissez-faire." It means "allow profit-seeking businesses to do
> what they want." In practice, it involves subsidies when businesses
> get themselves into trouble. (This is especially true when the
> businesses have good political connections.) This is not the same as
> capitalism _per se_, which might be state-managed instead, as in
> Japan. In that case, businesses have to follow a lot of rules and
> regulations, while (of course) they usually receive subsidies when
> they get into trouble.
To my mind, "free enterprise" is much more than a slogan. It defines
enterprise to be operating, free from artificially induced powerful
forces that can inhibit a clearing of the market and reproduction in full.
> > Capitalists are as much the enemy of entrepreneurs as they
> > are of workers. The overwhelming majority of start-ups fail,
causing many of
> > them [entrepreneurs?] to lose their home and more; all due to the
evil tactics of
> > capitalists, extracting purchasing power far beyond their own embezzled
> > lifestyle.
> I don't get the distinction. I follow Schumpeter to see entrepreneurs
> as a species of "capitalist," i.e., those who introduce some new
> product or process.
Capitalists make use of the license, given to them by conventional
economics, to extract income from what is deemed to be the positively
valued entity called capital. Entrepreneurs understand that in order to
extract such income, they will have to go into debt first. They are a
different species operating in the same economic theater. I would have
thought that perhaps this distinction can come to the fore only when
capital is unambiguously defined; as in my model. I was glad to find out
though, that raghu came to a similar conclusion from his own perspective.
> That new product or process may not be a good
> thing: whoever introduced "crack" cocaine was an entrepreneur.
That's one reason why there are laws against such entrepreneurship. It's
high time for electronic money to replace cash, and that type of
enterprise could thus be extinguished.
> Some non-capitalists are would-be entrepreneurs and wannabe
> capitalists . A small minority actually make it. Usually those who are
> already capitalists are able to diversify their resources, so that
> failure does not lead to disaster. They are thus more likely to be
> successful entrepreneurs.
> John seems to be following a non-Schumpeterian definition of
> "entrepreneur" entrepreneurs are simply small business-owners. I
> prefer the term "petty bourgeois" for them, though to some extent
> definitions are merely a matter of taste. (BTW, I distinguish the
> petty bourgeoisie from the professional-managerial "middle layers.")
Entrepreneurs are gatherers of skills required to produce output, in the
attempt to ultimately augment society's standard of living. The
necessary funds for this are either created out of thin air, providing
nothing of substance to the process; or, these are tied up with
currently marketed output, invariably resulting in some more or less
"creative " destruction. There is nothing "non-Schumpeterian" here, as I
see it.
John V
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