Around a hundred years ago, guild socialist G.D.H. Cole argued that social democrats had made a major strategic decision not to contest the way property was distributed or production organized under corporate capitalism. Instead, they would limit their agenda to a (partial) equalization of the way the rents on concentrated property, the output of these institutions, was distributed.
One reason was that challenging the actual ownership of property would be politically impossible. But another reason, Cole suggested, was that the original socialist project of attacking the institutional structures of capitalism itself, and putting labor in direct control of the production process, would undermine the power of the managerial and professional classes who made up so much of the social democratic, Fabian and Progressive movements.
Thinkers ranging from Hilaire Belloc to William English Walling argued that such calculations resulted in a grand strategic bargain by which the capitalists were guaranteed some minimum profit and stable oligopoly markets, the managerial-professional classes retained control of the large organizations that dominated society, and the working class was guaranteed job security and a minimum subsistence income. The managerial classes, for all intents and purposes, were coopted into corporate capitalism as Overseers of the Poor.
The social democratic model leaves the basic structure of power intact — and then guarantees everybody access to some minimum package of the output.
When social democrats or “Progressives” say that this or that thing — healthcare, education, etc. — is a “basic human right,” what they mean is that particular good or service remains organized on the old institutional model: High overhead, authoritarian, hierarchical, bureaucratic, inefficient, riddled with Weberian/Taylorist work rules, and controlled by a technocratic priesthood. But all citizens, even the most destitute, will have access to at least a defined minimum of that good or service.
So we get a public school system Ivan Illich and John Taylor Gatto so aptly described, designed to process human raw material into the kinds of “human resources” needed by corporate employers — but the student can get as much of it as she wants, all the way through free and universally available higher education. We get a healthcare system in which doctors are guaranteed upper class incomes via state-enforced licensing cartels, and drug companies are guaranteed high profits by means of patents — but you’re guaranteed free healthcare.
The problem is that this high-overhead production model, even though it’s “free” in the sense of not being funded by fee-for-service, weighs heavily on workers indirectly though a high general tax burden. Even though the average work week is shorter and the average vacation time considerably longer for (say) Germans than for Americans, the average work week is still far longer than it would be if unnecessary unit costs and waste production were simply eliminated by eliminating the monopolies they depend on.
That’s the dark side of this right to free services: They’re also quite frequently compulsory to some degree. Even when new technical possibilities of production drastically reduce the capital outlays, skills or labor time required to produce a given consumption goods, the state guarantees the return on capital, the income and prestige of the professional classes, and the “full employment” of the working class by enforcing artificial scarcity. The threat posed by technologies of abundance is neutralized either by outlawing them, or by giving existing producers a monopoly over them.
The more some particular good like education becomes free, the more it becomes, in a sense, compulsory. Free, universally available higher education leads to the inflation of credentials required for doing even the most basic jobs. It strengthens the institutional nexus between university administrations and corporate human resources departments, and tightens the control of licensing cartels over the freedom to take up a trade. And the state is under constant pressure to suppress private, cooperative, and other self-organized educational alternatives, as well as private insurance, alternative medicine, and nutritional supplements. Of course such measures are always defended as protecting the consumer for her own good — and not to protect the drug companies or professional licensing cartels from loss of income!
As a genuine free market libertarian, I want labor to receive the full value of its product, without paying tribute to big landlords and usurers or the holders of artificial “property” rights like patents, copyrights and licenses. I want the prices of goods and services to be driven by competition down to the real cost of supplying them, without state-enforced artificial scarcities to enclose technical progress as a source of rents. I want the average work week to reflect the time actually required to produce our standard of living, without the monkey of rentiers and subsidized waste on our backs.
That is to say, as a genuine free market libertarian, I am — unlike social democrats and “Progressives” — a genuine socialist.
Translations for this article:
"And the state is under constant pressure to suppress private, cooperative, and other self-organized educational alternatives, as well as private insurance, alternative medicine, and nutritional supplements."
In the US at least, the last two are mostly unregulated. So long as they don't claim to cure, treat, or prevent any disease, alternative medicine and nutritional supplements are pretty much freely distributed. Homeopathic pills are sold over the counter in health food stores that have entire sections devoted to supplements. Plenty of alternative medicine practitioners too (although granted this may not be covered by health insurance). Whatever your opinion about this, it's clear that any effort to suppress them has been ineffective so far.
"Hold me down 'cause I don't wanna wait
For some unemployment plan to set the records straight
Shut it up 'cause I don't wanna hear
About prospects of redemption by the things we fear
Hold me down 'cause I don't wanna go
Things are moving backwards, baby or not at all
Set it up 'cause this is killing me
I'm just waiting for something that will set me free for real."
THE INTERNATIONAL NOISE CONSPIRACY – "BIGGER CAGES, LONGER CHAINS"
Thanks Kevin. It is analysis like this that encouraged me to move past the conventional progressive/social democratic narrative in order to explore libertarian socialist ideas. Thanks so much for contributing to my political education!
Progressives settle for less! Perhaps they should mull over THAT slogan for a bit and see how radical they feel. When workers prepare a feast, social democrats tell them to be content with scraps from the table, while the bosses devour the rest. In contrast, libertarian socialists argue that workers should sit down and enjoy the meal that they worked so hard to prepare (look at Argentina's occupied factories for an example of this).
Kevin,
From reading Michael Hudson recently — example his article on Simon Patten @ Wharton School of Business — early Progressive and Socialist ideals were exactly what you say, REDUCING the “free lunch” rentier overhead which Uncle Miltie Friedman said does not exist. TINFL
It seems to me the track of history is that this churn of idealistic progressive economists was subverted and rolled into a form described by Gabriel Kolko (Triumph of Conservatism) where “socialism” and “progressive” was converted to a Corporate facsimile, like free-form avant and progressive rock was converted into modern mush programming by Clear Channel etc.
LATER, after JP Morgan and friends had their way via Teddy Roosevelt (an environmentalist Tea Bagger I think), and the McKinley admin which is supposed to be the birthplace and time of “Progressive” politics, on through corporate Wall St stooge Wilson, then about 30-40 years later in the midst of credit-fueled speculation-driven economic catastrophe, LABOR was finally cut in on the deal.
That is, instead of eviscerating govt-organized and protected Economic Rent from the system, it was reinforced and expanded to grant tame Labor Unions their own share of govt-organized and protected and limited Economic Rent.
I see this in the same light as what I’ve read about how Hitler and the Brownshirts appropriated the words and ideas of radical socialism to re-invent it as national-socialism. National-socialism was sold as socialism for common “volk” people combined with nationalism for German people and national power (considering the “German nation” as an ethnic race, not a nation-state), but in practice it was the opposite of socialism-anarchism. It’s earliest moves was to crush socialism and kill the socialists. But the RHETORIC was popular!
In consideration of MMT, Warren Mosler and friends argue that modern money which is produced as “fiat” but priced on global markets vs other money and commodities like metals or oil or food, and see “gold std” as a govt regulation placed on top of otherwise “fiat” money.
The point being that since going to a fully free-floating money in 1971, NO NATIONAL (federal) TAXES ARE NECESSARY for any amount of public spending to achieve levels of “full employment” with adequate competition for the labor pool that most people want.
The only limitations on public spending is when a political-economy appears to reach a saturation point such that public spending demand (govt buying stuff for itself and on behalf of some members) competes with private income demand for a limited supply of resources and/or human beings, which then MUST cause inflation. (MV=PT = inflation has already been debunked by Steve Keen who overlaps somewhat with Mosler and others.)
Granted, this is a set of Statist arguments. However, Mosler is coming from the perspective of a multi-millionaire Wall St & Chicago money trader who disparages financial markets as producing little to no real value, disparages govt officials and economists who don’t even understand their own system (or pretend to not understand it), and who combines progressive ideals with business concepts and goals, and shares some Tea Party antipathy to govt bureaucracy, except when and as necessary. His arguments explicitly begin with the assumption that Govt has a “public purpose”, which is true in theory (Jefferson) but which libertarians and anarchists believe is false in real experience.
Mosler seems to be about maximizing public wellness NOW within the existing pro-corporate pro-market paradigm, with all it’s flaws, by utilizing powers that already exist, but for the public good instead of simply for Neo-liberalism.
In that really-existing paradigm, the non-govt sector produces ALL or most goods and most services, for sale, while the govt sector (national) has a monopoly on money.
Also, money is historically data entry, double-entry bookkeeping (per Randy Wray and Hudson), which was managed by some form of “government” or priests, and NOT a substance with intrinsic commodity value, which means trading via barter or pseudo-barter, not commerce.
Gold-money emerged in pre-FOREX pre-Internet days for hiring mercenary armies and for overseas expeditions, and international trade, where a King’s royal stamp or seal would carry little weight. Gold-money is therefore fiat money with barter limitations super-imposed on top of it, by Law.
Neo-classical economics, the most extreme form being Austrian, reduces actual commerce to barter in which money and credit do not exist and do not play any role in exchange, in most models. Money is abstracted out of neo-classical equations, per Steve Keen.
Robert Murphy’s critique of MMT (a set of financial and accounting arguments) by using a coconuts vs bananas trading argument that Steve Keen previously shredded as totally inapplicable to even the simplest real markets, attempts to debunk MMT by substituting commodity barter for actual commerce using actual money.
This all seems to be an attempt to extend freedom short of outright anarchism, and with a logical pro-business attack on “vulgar libertarianism”.