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From: josh@topaz.ARPA (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Overlooked contributions of the rich
Message-ID: <916@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 05:47:52 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.916
Posted: Sat Mar  9 05:47:52 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Mar-85 05:44:09 EST
References: <356@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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> Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
> If I'm not mistaken, libertarians on the net have stated that wealth
> is created by the labor of men and women.  Correct, and since only
> people produce wealth, not capital or money, what gives the
> capitalist the right, merely by virtue of ownership, to appropriate
> any of this wealth created by other people? 

If capital is so irrelavant to creating wealth, why is it so necessary
to "seize the means of production"?  Why don't the workers go off by
themselves and create all the wealth, leaving the poor capitalist to
starve in his factory?  Marxists appear to forget that capital is the
great magnifier or catalyst for labor in creating wealth-- I've addressed
this point before.

> In their efforts to
> justify an exploitative system, apologists for capitalism have come
> up with this answer:  The capitalist is risking his wealth when he
> invests it in production or some other instrument.  But no one has
> ever explained why anyone deserves or "earns" a return merely by
> having taken a risk.

It turns out that in the real world, wealth cannot be created without
risks being taken.  It takes a lot of someone's money to build that
factory that the socialist would expropriate so blithely.  In a steady-
state socialist system, since someone would have to build the factories,
and there were no capitalists (a capitalist is someone who agrees to
give money to build capital, in return for profits...) you must take
the money from the workers by force.  So how is that different from
capitalist "exploitation"?

--JoSH