Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!crsp!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Libertarianism as ideology (on industrial democracy) Message-ID: <360@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 23:16:17 EST Article-I.D.: gargoyle.360 Posted: Thu Mar 7 23:16:17 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 07:05:34 EST Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science Lines: 234 [Sorry about the length of this article; just long enough to cover the subject, however.] Barry Fagin writes: >Richard, if we're so interested in justifying the existing order of >society, why do libertarians advocate (among other things): > The legalization of prostitution? > The legalization of narcotics consumption by adults? > The abolition of all government subsidies to industry? > The repeal of Social Security? [etc.] By "the existing order of society," I don't mean every social arrangement, but rather the existing structure of dominance. What bothers me about libertarians is this: They proclaim the ideals of individual freedom and justice -- great; I applaud. So what do libertarians propose to do about the greatest obstacle to that freedom and justice in our society, the dominance of capital (the power it gives an individual who has it to command a wide range of other goods, simply because he possesses it) and its monopolistic control by one segment of the population? They propose to reinforce it, for that is precisely the effect of their insistence on the capitalist form of property "rights" as an absolute principle. Libertarians also reinforce class dominance by opposing on principle any government redistribution of income or wealth. That is why I called libertarianism a form of capitalist ideology, since "ideology" means an unconscious justification of an existing social order of domination. Now perhaps I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it and that's why I oppose libertarianism. >> The power of government to tax is >>a threat to this social order, since it threatens its basis, the >>"rights" (really privileges) of property. > >Why is property a "privilege", but free speech and freedom of thought a >right? I did not call property a privilege, but spoke of the "privileges of property." In capitalist society the ownership of the means of production gives one the "right" to control the process of production and gives one arbitrary power over the lives of others (the workers). JoSH writes: >Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Socialists believed that >the Government was a tool of the capitalists....Please note that by >Carnes' definition of Socialist, namely a state that was once >capitalist and is halfway to being communist, the US is socialist to >a T. Only stupid socialists think that the state is *just* a tool of the capitalists. And the US, although it has some socialist features, is not socialist by the Marxist definition because the capitalist mode of production is still the underlying structure of the society. Again from JoSH: >Justice is a matter of people getting their just deserts -- it >*does not* mean everyone getting the same thing. Nor does any socialist I know of claim that it does. Social justice in my view is a very complex matter without a simple and elegant specification. But a good principle on which to base it is the following (from Michael Walzer): No social good X should be distributed to men and women who possess some other good Y merely because they possess Y and without regard to the meaning of X. To quote Walzer: "This is the effect of the rule: different goods to different companies of men and women for different reasons and in accordance with different procedures. And to get all this right, or to get it roughly right, is to map out the entire social world." Here's a story from Walzer, about the relation between property and political power. It's somewhat long, but well worth pondering. ________________ George Pullman was one of the most successful entrepreneurs of late nineteenth century America....When he decided to build a new set of factories and a town around [his company and fortune], he insisted that this was only another business venture. But he clearly had larger hopes: he dreamed of a community without political or economic unrest -- happy workers and a strike-free plant.... [So he built Pullman, Illinois, just south of Chicago.] ...in short, a model town, a planned community. And every bit of it belonged to him....There was no municipal government. Asked by a visiting journalist how he "governed" the people of Pullman, Pullman replied, "We govern them in the same way a man governs his house, his store, or his workshop...." Government was, in his conception, a property right; and despite the editorial "we," this was a right singly held and singly exercised. In his town, Pullman was an autocrat. He had a firm sense of how its inhabitants should live, and he never doubted his right to give that sense practical force. His concern, I should stress, was with the appearance and the behavior of the people, not with their beliefs.... I have stressed Pullman's autocracy; I could also stress his benevolence....But the crucial point is that all decisions, benevolent or not, rested with a man, governor as well as owner, who had not been chosen by the people he governed....The men and women of Pullman were entirely free to come and go. They were also free to live outside the town and commute to work in its factories....These tenants are best regarded as the subjects of a capitalist enterprise that has simply extended itself from manufacturing to real estate and duplicated in the town the discipline of the shop. What's wrong with that? I mean the question to be rhetorical, but it is perhaps worthwhile spelling out the answer. The inhabitants of Pullman were guest workers, and that is not a status compatible with democratic politics. George Pullman hired himself a metic population in a political community where self-respect was closely tied to citizen ship and where decisions about destinations and risks, even (or especially) local destinations and risks, were supposed to be shared. He was, then, more like a dictator than a feudal lord; he ruled by force.... But when [the townspeople] did strike [in 1894], it was as much against his factory power as against his town power. Indeed, Pullman's foremen were even more tyrannical than his agents and inspectors. It seems odd to study the duplicated discipline of the model town and condemn only one half of it. Yet this was the conventional understanding of the time.... It is true that the struggle for rights in the factory was a newer struggle, if only because factories were newer institutions than cities and towns. I want to argue, however, that with regard to political power democratic distributions can't stop at the factory gates. The deep principles are the same for both sorts of institutions. This identity is the moral basis of the labor movement....It doesn't follow from these demands that factories can't be owned; nor did opponents of feudalism say that land couldn't be owned....The issue in all these cases is not the existence but the entailments of property. What democracy requires is that property should have no political currency, that it shouldn't convert into anything like sovereignty, authoritative command, sustained control over men and women. After 1894, at least, most observers seem to have agreed that Pullman's ownership of the town was undemocratic. But was his ownership of the company any different? The unusual juxtaposition of the two makes for a nice comparison. They are not different because of the entrepreneurial vision, energy, inventiveness, and so on that went into the making of Pullman sleepers, diners, and parlor cars. For these same qualities went into the making of the town.... Nor are the two different because of the investment of private capital in the company. Pullman invested in the town, too, without thereby acquiring the right to govern its inhabitants. The case is the same with men and women who buy municipal bonds: they don't come to own the municipality.... Finally, the factory and the town are not different because men and women come willingly to work in the factory with full knowledge of its rules and regulations. They also come willingly to live in the town, and in neither case do they have full knowledge of the rules until they have some experience of them. Anyway, residence does not constitute an agreement to despotic rules even if the rules are known in advance; nor is prompt departure the only way of expressing opposition.... Is it enough if residents rule themselves while only workers are submitted to the power of property, if the residents are citizens and the workers metics?...[But the political community] is also a common enterprise, a public place where we argue together over the public interest, where we decide on goals and debate acceptable risks. All this was missing in Pullman's model town, until the American Railway Union provided a forum for workers and residents alike. From this perspective, an economic enterprise seems very much like a town, even though -- or, in part, because -- it is so unlike a home....It is a place not of withdrawal but of decision. If landlords possessing political power are likely to be intrusive on families, so owners possessing political power are likely to be coercive of individuals....Intrusion and coercion are alike made possible by a deeper reality -- the usurpation of a common enterprise, the displacement of collective decision making, by the power of property. And for this, none of the standard justifications seems adequate. Pullman exposed their weaknesses by claiming to rule the town he owned exactly as he ruled the factories he owned. Indeed, the two sorts of rule are similar to one another, and both of them resemble what we commonly understand as authoritarian politics. The right to impose fines does the work of taxation....Rules are issued and enforced without public debate by appointed rather than by elected officials. There are no established judicial procedures, no legitimate forms of opposition, no channels for participation or even for protest. If this sort of thing is wrong for towns, then it is wrong for companies and factories, too. Imagine now a decision by Pullman or his heirs to relocate their factory/town....The decision, they claim, is theirs alone since the factory/town is theirs alone; neither the inhabitants nor the workers have anything to say. But how can this be right? Surely to uproot a community, to require large-scale migration, to deprive people of homes they have lived in for many years; these are political acts, and acts of a rather extreme sort. The decision is an exercise of power; and were the townspeople simply to submit, we would think they were not self-respecting citizens. What about the workers? ....Today, there are many men and women who preside over enterprises in which hundreds and thousands of their fellow citizens are involved, who direct and control the working lives of their fellows, and who explain themselves exactly as George Pullman did. I govern these people, they say, in the same way a man governs the things he owns. People who talk this way are wrong. They misunderstand the prerogatives of ownership (and of foundation, investment, and risk taking). They claim a kind of power to which they have no right. To say this is not to deny the importance of entrepreneurial activity. In both companies and towns, one looks for people like Pullman, full of energy and ideas, willing to innovate and take risks, capable of organizing large projects. It would be foolish to create a system that did not bring them forward....But there is nothing they do that gives them a right to rule over the rest of us, unless they can win our agreement. At a certain point in the development of an enterprise, then, it must pass out of entrepreneurial control; it must be organized or reorganized in some political way, according to the prevailing (democratic) conception of how power ought to be distributed. It is often said that economic entrepreneurs won't come forward if they cannot hope to own the companies they found. But this is like saying that no one would seek divine grace or knowledge who did not hope to come into hereditary possession of a church or "holy commonwealth," or that no one would found new hospitals or experimental schools who did not intend to pass them on to his children, or that no one would sponsor political innovation and reform unless it were possible to own the state. But ownership is not the goal of political or religious life, and there are still attractive and even compelling goals. Indeed, had Pullman founded a better town, he might have earned for himself the sort of public honor that men and women have sometimes taken as the highest end of human action. If he wanted power as well, he should have run for mayor. [Michael Walzer, *Spheres of Justice*] ___________________ Richard Carnes