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Dear Social Credit members,
I really am very short of time and will not be able
to deal extensively with Gunnar Thomson's remarks except to say that, very
obviously, he does not wish ALL people to have a substantial ownership of
productive capital paying out its full earnings. And nor does William
Krehm, whom I very much like). Neither Thomson nor Krehm, moreover, seem
to have any substantial proposal for dealing with the present narrow ownership
of productive capital (and nor do any of the members of the gang of 8 -- when it
comes to making serious, major proposals, the gang is hopeless).
That is right, Gunnar, isn't it?
Gunnar attacks the notion of everybody being a
capitalist. Wrong! Binary economics says everybody should be a
capital owner, a VERY different thing (for a start, capitalists believe in the
narrow ownership of capital, whereas binary economists most certainly do
not. The original Kelso book, The Capitalist Manifesto, had a title
suitable for its time, but very unsuitable now).
Nor does b.e propose making it compulsory for
everybody to own capital -- if you do not want a capital estate giving
income from capital (in addition to your other income, e.g., from labour) then
nobody is going to make you have it.
Gunnar then claims it is a bizarre notion that
machinery creates wealth. I think it highly likely that Gunnar has NOT
read Binary Economics. The gang of 8, of which Gunnar is a member (or has
he, with Henry Liu, resigned?) is full of people pontificating about binary
economics and yet they have not bothered to read the book and, if they have, get
it completely wrong just as that Austrian does all because they HATE the idea of
all people having an independent income, and a substantial one, from productive
capital ownership.
Gunnar's assertion
that it is bizarre to say that machinery itself produces wealth comes
about becasue he believes in the Ricardo/Marx labour theory of value, and
the congealed labour theory at that. According to Gunnar, a huge
hydroelectric dam produces no wealth (it's all done, says he, by the men
operating the dials inside); and a cow produces no milk (it's all done by the
farmer, Gunnar would say); and a tree, according to Gunnar, could never grow by
itself......As for the sun, Gunnar would deny that it makes any
contribution to production whatsoever.....If all that is not bizarre, I don't
know what is.
Rodney Shakespeare.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 6:13 PM
Subject: Spam Alert: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd:
Re: [gang8] The Southwark dimension
--
--------- Forwarded Message
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Dear Michael:
First, let me note Krehm underscores the point which I raised
at the outset of exchanges with Rodney Shakespeare on Gang8 some months
ago:
The notion that everybody must become a capitalist is a
morbid one. It stems, I believe, from the bizarre notion of the Binary
Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth. It doesn�t.
In other words, Capital is not an independent Factor
of Production -
hence Keynes's 'sympathy' for "the pre-classical doctrine
that everything is produced by labour, aided by what used to
be called art and is now called technique, by natural resources which are free
or cost a rent according to their scarcity or abundance, and by the result of
past labour, embodied in assets, which also command a price according to their
scarcity or abundance. It is preferable," Keynes concluded, "to regard
labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur and
his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given
environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective
demand. This partly explains why we have been able to take the unit of
labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system,
apart from units of money and of time." (General Theory, Ch.
16)
Now to your comments:
I thought the key was HOW the economic surplus was to be paid
out: as stipulated and fixed interest payments, or as flexible earnings.
Could the latter reading be what was
meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant?
As I see it, the very concept of such "economic surplus" cannot be
divorced from the "bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that
machinery itself produces wealth."
For if "everything is produced by labour", then "economic
surplus" cannot arise so long as "labour" receives a dollar's income for
dollar's worth of labor.
So what the Binary Economics people must be talking
about is an income transfer mechanism akin to the interest rate
mechanism under contemporary monetary arrangements whereby the purchasing
power of "a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor" is
diluted so that some may reap where they have not sown.
The social welfare system is such a mechanism and,
since it "takes" from some and "gives" to others, people will hold
different views on its adequacy or fairness.
Cloaking such differences in the jargon of Binary Economics
serves no purpose.
Gunnar
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:34
AM
Subject: Re: [gang8] The Southwark
dimension
Dear Gunnar,
The paragraph you cite is indeed
ambiguous.
But before I went on to
your paragraph, I read it to mean that the state could use interest-free
credit to create Public Enterprise, whose EARNINGS would become a flow of
revenue potentially to "the people" (I guess this means the biggest campaign
contributors, as today, or foreign creditors).
I thought the key was HOW the
economic surplus was to be paid out: as stipulated and fixed interest
payments, or as flexible earnings.
Could the latter reading be what was
meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant?
Michael
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