Contrary to mainstream classical political economy, which treated the “original accumulation of capital” as the result of thrift, saving and reinvestment on the part of the capitalist, Marx argued in the first volume of Capital that capitalism — as opposed to simple market exchange — was founded on the separation of the peasantry from their customary property rights in the land and their transformation into a propertyless working class. The history of their dispossession, he wrote, “was written in letters of blood and fire.” Marx’s account included the enclosure of the European open fields in late medieval times, the Parliamentary Enclosure of common pasture and waste, as well as the enslavement of much of the population of the colonial world and the nullification of customary land rights (for example Hastings’s “Permanent Settlement” in Bengal). But as Danielle Nierenberg reminds us (“The Land Battle: 15 Organizations Defending Land Rights,” Food Tank, July 29),  this robbery isn’t just a matter of history. It continues right up to the present day.

Of course it’s obvious that the theft of Third World land and natural resources continued long after Marx’s day. When Marx wrote his brief survey of primitive accumulation, the colonial division of the interior of Africa had not yet even begun. As just one example of that robbery, the native population was driven off the most fertile fifth of the land in the highlands of British East Africa and the land was given to settlers for cash crop production, and the colonial authorities imposed a poll tax on the evicted peasantry to compel them to earn wages working their own stolen land. Under neocolonialism, much of the mineral wealth of Africa and the rest of the developing world remains in the hands of the heirs and assigns of the Western capitalists who looted it in the first place. In the 20th century, a major part of U.S. foreign policy was invading or overthrowing any government that tried to restore these stolen land and minerals to their rightful owners. In Latin America, the United States trained and funded death squads or installed military dictatorships in most countries in order to protect the hacienda system there.

But it’s going on right now, too. According to the Food Tank article mentioned above, some 130 million hectares of land (or 500,000 square miles) in the developing world has been bought by foreign investors over the past fifteen years, most of it to produce cash crops for export and a great deal of it involving the dispossession of people previously cultivating it to feed themselves. For example, the Prosavala land grab in Mozambique will evict 500,000 people.

And some of it is promoted by self-described “progressives” like the folks at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For example, the gigantic Kilombero rice plantation in Tanzania, a corporate undertaking which takes up 20% of the Kilombero Valley, celebrated as a “model investment project” by the Gates Foundation and USAID, forced evicted peasants to choose between either $6 per acre (compared to $17/acre promised) or a maximum of three acres of far less fertile land elsewhere.

Of course this should come as no surprise. What’s  variously called “cognitive,” “progressive” or “green capitalism,” celebrated in Paul Romer’s “New Growth Theory” and heavily promoted by the Gateses, Warren Buffett, and faux-left carpetbaggers like Bono, amounts to a scheme to give capitalism a new lease on life by enclosing new technologies of abundance for rent through “intellectual property” rather than socializing their benefits through competitive markets and commons-based peer production. So it’s only logical for those greenwashed parasites to move on to literally, physically enclosing land just like the gentry of England 250 years ago.

What it comes down to is that enormous fortunes are made, not by producing things, but by controlling the circumstances under which other people are allowed to make things. Henry George, Jr. described it as “controlling access to natural opportunities.” But it basically boils down to enclosure of one kind or another and the extraction of rent. And they can’t do it without government to enforce their patents and land titles. It’s time to smash the state, and with it the parasitic capitalists it serves.

Kevin Carson as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
By Walter Block [1]

Kevin Carson’s (2004) Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is an infuriating book.

On the one hand, its author shows great familiarity with many of the most important libertarian [2] contributors to the field of political economy. Taking them in alphabetical order, they include: Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Art Carden, Sean Corrigan, Roger Garrison, Leonard Liggio, Roderick Long, Tibor Machan, Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Albert J. Nock, Robert Nozick, Franz Oppenheimer, Murray Rothbard [3] and Jean-Baptiste Say.

On the other hand, familiarity with this list of libertarian authors seems to have been wasted on Carson, as he adopts the labor theory of value of all things as the basic building block of his analytic framework. And not only that, one could perhaps forgive a noneconomist for being seduced by the Marxist siren song of the labor theory of value. But he is also way off base on numerous elements of libertarianism, which he attacks with ignorant abandon. As the two main components of political economy are, naturally enough, politics and economics, and as Carson makes no real contribution to either, it is difficult not to dismiss his book as all but worthless. And this is a shame, since a lot of work and effort obviously went into the writing of it. [4] One would have thought that with familiarity with authors of this sort, Carson could not have gone too far astray in his thoughts about political economy. If so, one would have been very wrong.

On the third hand, and there is a third hand, Carson’s familiarity with libertarian political economy is so deep and profound; [5] some of it, at least, has caught on with him. There are vast tracts of his book where he demonstrates this, and even makes original contributions. More on this below, my overall assessment of this book is that it was written by a schizophrenic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: when it is good it is very, very good, when it is bad it is really awful.

What are the specifics?

Let us start off with his defense of the labor theory of value, his main error, and the source of much of his other mischievous and misguided public policy recommendations. For someone in this day and age to even take this doctrine seriously, let alone actually try to defend it, is equivalent to taking a similarly widely and properly rejected position vis à vis the flat earth, or the phlogiston theory. It is, in a word, medieval.

Its well-known refutation goes as follows: If labor and labor alone determines the value of an item, what of the fact that a cherry pie and a mud pie contain the same number of labor hours and yet the former is far more valuable than the latter? The response of the unsophisticated Marxist [6] is that what he has in mind is not labor per se, but rather “socially necessary labor,” or some such. And, sure enough, Carson (p. 38) falls into precisely this trap, hook, line and sinker. But to define “socially necessary labor” as that which is correlated with value (the cherry pie has more of it than the mud pie, which, it turns out, has none), is to leave unexplained its genesis. Why is it that the cherry pie has lots, and the mud pie little or none? Could it be, possibly, that the cherry pie has socially necessary labor and not the mud pie because people like to eat the former and not the latter? Of course this is true. But if so, this is to argue in a circle, since we can never know what is “socially necessary” and what is not until and unless we know consumer values, a very different, and far more Austrian, explanation of price.

A second refutation of the labor theory of value stems from considerations of time, risk, and time preference. Labor is always free to set up shop on its own. That it does not do so, indeed, that it relies upon capitalists to do so on its behalf, further undermines Carson’s Marxist contention that capital exploits labor.

What does capital offer to labor? First, time. It takes time before a factory can be built, raw materials located, insurance undertaken, labor assembled, machine tools set up in place, etc. All during this time, before the first final good rolls off the assembly line, capital is paying labor. Suppose this process takes an entire year. But for this contribution of the capitalist, the laborer would have to live off his savings, mortgage his house, sell his car, etc. He could do so. But he chooses not to. Instead, he chooses to make a deal with the capitalist, for this precious time. Surely the latter deserves something, whatever is agreed upon, for this contribution. And what is typically agreed upon is that the capitalist shall be the residual income claimant, taking for himself whatever is left over after all factors of production, certainly including labor, have been paid their contractual share.

Then, too, there is risk. Suppose that the product does not sell when offered to the public, at all. Not one single solitary item of it. Can the capitalist go back to the worker and say, “Remember that salary I paid you for an entire year, during the time when we were setting up operations? Well, the item didn’t sell. So, please give me back the wages I advanced you.” As the residual income claimant, the entrepreneur can do no such thing. He, not the laborer, is the risk bearer. The point is, the employee gets his salary for sure, and in advance of the completion of production and then sale of the good. Even if this process is not complete for a year or more, the capitalist will have to wait to be compensated. This is why the worker voluntarily agrees to the deal.

And what is Carson’s reaction to this type of Böhm-Bawerkian (1884) analysis? He says (p. 111): “When labor abstains from present consumption to accumulate its own capital, time-preference is simply an added form of disutility of present labor, as opposed to future labor.”

This is singularly unhelpful. Where oh where does Carson think capitalist entrepreneurs arise from, originally, apart from the class of artisans who begin working on their own account, reduce their consumption below income, and use the resultant savings to finance employees on a residual income claimant basis? It of course cannot be denied that some capitalists get their start out of stolen past labor, as he asserts over and over again, but this need hardly be the case. Apart from this, Carson’s answer to Böhm-Bawerk is incomprehensible to me. Presumably, if he had an answer to Böhm-Bawerk’s devastating critique of socialism, he would have offered it at this point.

Instead, he devotes a scant nine pages (pp. 104–12) to even considering this crucially central point, the overwhelming majority of which is used to cite his critics, Very bad form.

Further, Carson’s economic analysis is marred by a series of other errors. For example, he (pp. 15, 24) conflates profits (which disappear in equilibrium) with interest (which does not). He (p. 14) sees economics as a zero sum game wherein the capitalist can only earn at the expense of the worker. He does not seem to realize that all commercial interactions, particularly including the one between employer and employee, are of necessity mutually beneficial in the ex-ante sense, and, as a matter of overwhelming empirical reality, beneficial in the ex post sense as well. He (p. 19) thinks there can be such a thing as “free market socialism,” not realizing this is a contradiction in terms, if the latter phrase is used, as per usual, as employed by this author, to strip the capitalists, entrepreneurs, landowners, etc., of their due. [7] He (p. 20) does not seem to understand that “monopoly” necessarily involves governmental interferences with free entry into an industry. He (p. 22) thinks that “profit results from unequal exchange”; pray tell, what is that? In one sense, all exchange is equal, in that both parties gain in the ex-ante sense, otherwise they would scarcely engage in it. In another sense it is unequal in that each part to the trade values what he gets more than what he gives up. But in neither sense is there anything untoward about it, this author to the contrary notwithstanding. He repeats this error about unequal exchange several times, for example on p. 115. However, he (p. 131) sees “capitalist acts between consenting adults” in Nozick’s felicitous terminology (1974, p. 163) in a positive manner, correctly rejecting the concept of the market as a zero sum game. It is more than passing curious how he can be so sensible in one section of this book, and so prone to error in others.

Our author (p. 68) approvingly cites Smith (1776) to the effect that “the ‘real price’ of a thing … what it ‘really costs to the man who wants to acquire it’ was ‘the toil and trouble of acquiring it’.” But suppose I am out for a stroll and see a gigantic diamond sitting on a rock. I don’t even have to go through the “toil and trouble” of bending down to pick it up; it is right there, hand high. All I do is seize it. There is virtually no “toil and trouble” involved. And yet this precious stone is worth millions.

Here is another. States Carson (p. 131): “In an order of free and voluntary exchange, all transactions are mutually beneficial to both parties. It is only when force enters the picture that one party benefits at the expense of the other.” This is all well and good, at least superficially. The difficulty is encountered when we realize that for these author “force enters the picture” whenever an employer makes an offer to an employee. For him, this is (unjustified) force in that the former is necessarily exploiting the latter. Suppose we invert the initiative. That is, posit that an employer does not approach a group of employees. Rather, the latter initiate the employment contract with the former, realizing that they cannot set up a firm on their own; they do not want to bear the time and risk costs associated with capitalist entrepreneurship. Let us make matters even more uncomfortable for Carson. Suppose that the employer, A, to whom the employees make this proposal, was himself previously an employee; he was, indeed, one of them. Only he, unlike they, saved up a bit of money sufficient to keep matters going for a year, and is willing to bear the attendant risk. Would Carson then give up his thesis that the employer is necessarily exploiting the employees? If so, the core of his book is gone. If not, it is exceedingly difficult to see why we should pay any attention to it. It is difficult to answer this question, as Carson never contemplates any such scenario.

How are we to account for this Carson phenomenon? By this I mean, how can it be that a scholar, who is intimately familiar with the works of Mises, Böhm-Bawerk, Rothbard and many others in the Austro-libertarian tradition, and yet rejects them utterly? This is entirely speculative, but my guess is that although Carson shows great familiarity with this literature, it is possible that he has never personally engaged over it with any of its proponents. That is, he is sort of an intellectual hermit; he only read this material, but never fully wrestled with it, as most people can only do in dialogue with adherents of it. In other words, reading is only part of the practice of scholarship. Personal interactions, debate, dialogue, too, are necessary. My scant evidence for this contention [8] is that Carson (p. 134) characterizes his intellectual opponents as “Miseans,” not the correct “Misesians.” No one who has ever had any personal contact with advocates of this perspective would make this mistake; yet I have heard it, often, from those whose knowledge of the subject comes only from reading books. Perhaps this is only a typographical error. If not, it might have some explanatory value.

To be sure, there are spots in this book in which Carson is dead on in his perceptions. In these cases, he is a full Rothbardian in good standing as far as I am concerned. For example, his (p. 135) magnificent debunking of the claim that “we are the government.” As well, there is his splendid ruling class analysis, where he draws upon the insights of Rothbard, Kolko (pp. 231, 244) and Domhoff (p. 253). [9] As well, Carson is sound as a bell on several very esoteric libertarian considerations, including patents, and even copyrights. Charmingly, his title page reads: “Fayetteville, Ark. Anti-copyright 2004. May be quoted or reproduced without limit.” [10]

A word about nomenclature, There are two types of “capitalism.” First, there is corporate state monopoly capitalism, or economic fascism. Here, the ruling classes are guilty of all sorts of exploitation and abuse. I have in mind outright theft, of course, not merely employing people on a voluntary basis. Second, there is anarcho-capitalism, or laissez-faire capitalism, where, apart from what Marxists like Carson would consider employer exploitation of workers, all is well. The society functions on the basis of the twin libertarian axioms of private property rights (based on homesteading and voluntary trade) and nonaggression. The point is, these two systems are as different as night and day. They have nothing in common except for this highly unfortunate terminology that labels both “capitalism.” Where does Carson stand on this issue? Is he part of the problem, conflating these two, or part of the solution, making a sharp distinction between them? To ask this is to answer it, after one has even perused his book. As might be expected by now, this author does all he possibly can to bring about confusion in this regard.

For example, his (pp. 140–43) denigration of Mises for defending the industrial revolution and others for championing sweats shops employers, who were guilty only of offering higher wages than those prevailing on the farm several centuries ago, or in the underdeveloped world at present. He does so on grounds that these employers were guilty of various and sundry crimes. Maybe they were. But this is all so beside the point. Mises, certainly, was not defending land theft, or whatever charges (other than offering employment on a voluntary basis) Carson is bringing. He was only supporting these employers qua employers! And it is not as if Carson is totally unaware of the crucial distinction between these two very different kinds of capitalism (p. 144). Thus his criticism of Mises, et al., constitutes perhaps a purposeful and willful confusion between the two.

Of course there has been land theft, as Carson (pp. 144–59) charges. But it should not be necessary to remind this author that this is part and parcel of state monopoly corporate capitalism, not the laissez-faire variety. There are those of us who have been struggling to make this distinction, especially for analysts of South and Central America, a region of the world that has seen much more than its fair share of land theft. These analysts commonly confuse the two very different kinds of capitalism. Carson infuriatingly muddies the waters here, even though he full well knows the difference.

Carson’s treatment of the industrial revolution (pp. 159–69) is another case in point. He fails utterly to distinguish between the two varieties of capitalism. Surely, there was some land and other theft, suppression, exploitation. But because of this, our author throws out the innovation baby along with the repression bath water. Surely, we can properly distinguish between the entrepreneur who drags the economy into modernity, and employs children who otherwise would have starved, even if one and the same person were also guilty of violations of the libertarian nonaggression act.

It is much the same with his analysis of world trade (pp. 169–78). He allows the undeniable abuses that sometimes occur to somehow call into question the propriety of trade, specialization and the international division of labor, per se. He (p. 169) states:

The modern “world market” was not created by free market forces. Like capitalist production in Western Europe, it was an artificial creation of the state, imposed by a revolution from above. The world market was established by the European conquest of most of the world, and by the naval supremacy of the Western European powers. Manufacturing to serve a global market was encouraged by state intervention to shut out foreign goods, give European shipping a monopoly of foreign commerce, and stamp out foreign competition by force.

My reply is, sure, but so what? Yes, there was an admixture of the two types of capitalism in the development of world trade. Does this mean we toss it out, because of the violations of liberty? Not at all, instead, we attempt, where possible, and the guilty parties or their heirs can be uncovered, to make reparations (Block 2002; Block and Yeatts 1999–2000). Then, we support world trade, the industrial revolution, foreign investment in underdeveloped countries, sweat shops, etc., not attack them for these imperfections with which they are sometimes historically, but certainly not necessarily, connected.

What is so frustrating with regard to these cases is that this author can full well make the necessary distinctions (p. 189):

The anarchist position … is that exploitation and class rule are not inevitable at any time; they depend upon intervention by the state, which is not at all necessary. Just social and economic relations are compatible with any level of technology; technical progress can be achieved and new technology integrated into production in any society, through free work and voluntary cooperation. Likewise, any technology is amenable to either libertarian or authoritarian applications, depending upon the nature of the society into which it is integrated.

But if so, why blame the industrial revolution? That is, why blame the episode per se? Yes, theft and rights violations of various sorts occurred during this historical epoch. But the same is true of all historical events. We might as well reject them all as this one.

What is it with these “parasitic landlords” (p. 206)? They are guilty of some sort or other of theft or fraud, in which case they are criminals, or they are not, in which case they take their honoured place amongst all other economic actors in the free society. Or, more likely, some of them are, others are not, or, sometimes one and the same person is a free-enterprise landlord, and other times he is, also, a criminal. In such cases, we castigate the illicit acts, and defend the licit ones. But use of this phrase puts Carson way out in left field. Is he running for political office in one of the People’s Republics of Santa Monica, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge, Massachusetts?

I object to Carson’s favoring of “left Rothbardians.” Murray, ‘tis true, made alliances with the left upon occasion, when he thought that to do so would best promote liberty. But the same identical situation occurs, also, for the right. His philosophy, in sharp contrast, was plumb line libertarianism (Block forthcoming), of neither wing. I think Carson is trying to liken so-called left wing Rothbardianism with libertarianism or laissez-faire capitalism, and, by extension, right wing Rothbardianism with state monopoly corporate capitalism, or fascism. But to do so does grave violence to the facts. Rothbard was a libertarian of neither wing; he was an Austro-libertarian anarchist.

Carson (p. 211) appears to be something of a Georgist: “A return on land … could exist only through privilege.” But land, too, is subject to good or bad management. The free enterprise system tends to take land out of the hands of the former and place them in those of the latter. It is unclear why an adamant and unshakeable belief in the labor theory of value would incline Carson, a supposed anarchist, in the direction of disallowing entrepreneurial control of the earth. Perhaps, and this can only be speculative, his view stems from the undeniable fact that there has been more than just a little bit of land theft in history. But this by no means justifies the even greater land theft of taking it away from its honest homesteaders (Hoppe 1993). For a full remedy to the moral and intellectual disease of Georgism, see Rothbard (1957).

Our author takes the mainstream neoclassical view on monopoly and competition vis à vis the correct Austrian one. According to the former, whether or not there is monopoly or competition depends upon the number of firms there are in an industry. According to the latter, it is all a matter of whether or not free entry is legal. Carson (p. 240) characterizes as an example of monopoly capitalism “The rise of an economy dominated by … industries in which a relative few firms predominated.” But as anyone who has ever been in a boxing ring full well knows, this is a highly competitive environment even though there are only two “firms” operating there. True competition can take place with only one firm providing a given service. For example, IBM and Alcoa for many years were the only ones providing computers and aluminum, respectively. Yet, of course, there was no law prohibiting others from entering these industries, and eventually others did just that. Truth be told, competition can take place with zero competitors. As long as no one is prohibited by law from doing something, there is competition in that field. For example, right now no one provides a good consisting of fish and bicycle combos, or chocolate covered pickles. Competition, here, is completely wide open. These are competitive industries, with zero competitors, because there is no law prohibiting or limiting provision of such goods.

Again, frustratingly, Carson takes the correct Rothbardian line (p. 243) vis à vis the “Randroids and Chicago boys” as to trust busting. This initiative was undertaken not by good guy governments’ intent upon saving hapless consumers from the depredations of bad guy businessmen. Rather, antitrust was and is a plot on the part of bad guy businessmen to reduce competition; bad guy governments cooperated in this scheme to bilk the public. Does this author contradict himself purposefully, just in order to vex me?

In this vein Carson attacks (p. 246) corporate “paternalism” wherein firms offer workers, on a completely voluntary [11] basis, such things as housing, pensions, and other fringe benefits. What, pray tell, is wrong with that? Why should wages take the form of only money? What is wrong with nonpecuniary payments? Why is it evil for employers to air condition their premises, paint them nice colors, offer piped in music, etc.? Even granting the Marxist contention that paying wages is a form of theft, why is it additional thievery to pay some of this in the form of nonmonetary compensation?

Further evidence that Carson’s grasp of the distinction between laissez-faire capitalism and fascism is of the most superficial variety, he criticizes institutions of the former such as “scabs” (p. 254), “collusion” (p. 265), “price leadership” (p. 265), and “dumping” (p. 303). As another instance of his economic illiteracy, he thinks (p. 257) “Demobilization of the war economy after 1945 very nearly threw the overbuilt and government-dependent industrial sector into a renewed depression.” He ought to be made to read Hazlitt’s (1979) chapter “Disbanding Troops and Bureaucrats.” Further, he (p. 266) buys into the notion that sees “monopoly profit as a surplus extracted from the consumer in the exchange process.” This is of course quite reasonable in the monopoly that emanates in state monopoly corporate capitalism; here, some firms are forbidden entry, and the privileged others can certainly exploit consumers. But how in bloody blue blazes can this take place under laissez-faire capitalism, where additional profits supposedly garnered by the “monopolists” will draw other entrepreneurs to the industry, as honey does to flies? Surely, all trade in the purely free enterprise system is mutually beneficial in the ex-ante sense, and there is no exploitation.

More economic illiteracy (p. 305):

Still, Stromberg greatly overestimates the advantages of large-scale production in a free market. In all but a few forms of production, peak economy of scale is reached at relatively low levels of output. In agriculture, for instance, a USDA study found in 1973 that economy of scale was maximized on a fully-mechanized one-man farm.

More than passing curious is that Carson would place so much faith upon a USDA study. The correct view, it seems to me, is that outsiders such as bureaucrats, the USDA, or Carson himself can never determine (the presumably continually changing) optimal size of firms. Rather, the market does this. Absent government subsidies, favors, regulations, other interventions, as they would be under laissez- faire capitalism, whatever size firms survive and prosper are the optimally sized ones (Stigler 1958). This is an empirical issue which does not square with pronunciamentos such as Carson’s.

In our author’s view (pp. 322, 324), bigness is badness. But only the market can determine how big is too big. And, if a firm exceeds this barrier, whatever it is, market forces will soon enough rein it in. Companies such as Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s are truly gargantuan. Does this mean they are too big? Not a bit of it. Were this but so, they would now be well on their way toward a reduced size; their competitors would see to it. In future, this might well become the case; if so, we can count upon them shrinking. Nor is it easy to see how the government presently props them up. [12] If anything, the very opposite would appear to be the case. One need not be a Randroid of the “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” (Rand 1966) variety to discern some truly market firms, even in the morass of government regulation now plaguing us.

It is time to draw this review to a close. This is an interesting, even fascinating, but ultimately frustrating book. On some issues, Carson is right on point. On others, he is out there, way, way out there in some sort of Marxist never never land. Perhaps the series of book reviews of which this present one is one part can help bring him back down to reality: free enterprise anarcho capitalist laissez-faire reality, that is.

<< Back to Studies in Carsonian Mutualism.

Notes:
1. Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and
Professor of economics at Loyola University, New Orleans.
2. This is a redundancy.
3. Carson lists no fewer than nine of his publications.
4. Yet one more indication of the weakness of the labor theory of value.
5. Most critiques of Austrianism emanate from those whose knowledge of the field is very skimpy (e.g., Tullock, 1987; for a rejoinder, see Salerno, 1989). The book presently under review is an exception. For another, see Caplan, (1999, 2001, 2003; rejoinders include Hülsmann, 1999; Block, 1999; 2003, 2005; and Barnett, unpublished).
6. Another redundancy, I fear.
7. Of course the phrase could reasonably be used to depict voluntary communal living, voluntary workers’ cooperatives, etc., but these are but part and parcel of the free enterprise system of capitalism.
8. I do not know Carson personally. I have no knowledge of whether or not he has ever personally interacted with any Rothbardians. The guesses hazarded in the text are purely speculative.
9. Sadly, there is no index in this publication. In order to give the page numbers for this discussion, I had to thumb through the entire book. There is also some sloppiness with regard to footnoting. For example, footnotes 30 and 31 on p. 208 refer ostensibly to Milton Friedman; yet, the material on p. 236 does not bear this out.
10. However, he neglects to cite the magisterial Kinsella (2001) on this issue.
11. Well, as voluntary as anything can be, given that the employer-employee relationship is necessarily one of predation and exploitation.
12. Apart from not incarcerating all the principals of these firms for the “crime” of employing workers. Ok, ok, government protects Coca-Cola patents and copyrights. Give me a break.

References:

Barnett, William II. “Contra Caplan.” Unpublished manuscript.
Block, Walter. 2005. “Rejoinder to Caplan on Bayesian Economics.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 19 (1): 79–95.
———.2003. “Realism: Austrian vs. Neoclassical Economics, Reply to Caplan.” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 6 (3): 63–76. http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_3_4.pdf.
———. 2002. “On Reparations to Blacks for Slavery.” Human Rights Review 3 (4): (July–September): 53–73.
———. 1999. “Austrian Theorizing, Recalling the Foundations: Reply to Caplan.” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 2 (4): 21–39. http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_4_2.pdf; and errata: http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_4_9.pdf.
———. Forthcoming. “Plumb Line Libertarianism.” Reason Papers 29.
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———. 1999. “The Austrian Search for Realistic Foundations.” Southern Economic Journal 65 (4): 823–38.
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Stigler, George. 1958. “Economies of Scale.” Journal of Law and Economics 1: 54–71.
Tullock, Gordon. 1987. “Why the Austrians Are Wrong About Depressions.” Review of Austrian Economics 2: 73–78.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot denies that his government seeks to impose restrictions on the sale of Vegemite, Australia’s popular yeast-based sandwich spread. Allegations of such a ban arose after Australia’s Indigenous Affairs minister Nigel Scullion made headlines calling the spread’s use in home-brewing a “precursor to misery” in certain dry counties with large aboriginal populations.

Several scientists have declared brewing alcohol from Vegemite somewhere between difficult and impossible, while one local official has claimed that fermenting orange juice is actually the preferred method in dry counties. Vegemite, for those unfamiliar, is a black, bitter extract and an acquired taste, to put it charitably. It’s hard to imagine Vegemite-based alcohol as an appealing drink, yet that is precisely what the consumer gets under state enforced prohibition.

If true, the Vegemite allegations show how utterly ineffectual government prohibition is. If false, they prove that state officials are not reliable sources of information for what is happening in their own jurisdiction.  Concerns over home-brewing safety have led the Queensland government to talk about removing alcohol restrictions in at least some of the dry counties in recent years.

Much of the renewed controversy stems from concerns about sickness (including type 2 diabetes) and death caused by bad batches of homemade alcohol. There is also the social impact: great harm done to families and communities by the harsh laws imprisoning and fining home brewers.

Prohibition also has the unfortunate side effect of discouraging localized consumption of alcohol. American studies have shown residents of dry counties often drive long distances to consume alcohol only to drive back impaired, causing accidents on their way home. Dry counties are also economically disadvantaged by their ruling class’ Puritanism. Money that could have been spent on alcohol purchased within the community is spent elsewhere, making the local area poorer. Additionally, Prohibition encourages violent criminal elements to enter and dominate communities via black market alcohol trade. What would otherwise be the domain of peaceful community members is handed over on a silver platter (very often) to thugs.

Alcoholism is a real problem among Australia’s indigenous population. But using patronizing, authoritarian means to deal with it does little to help. Aboriginal Australians have been subjected to a long history of prejudice and discrimination, one in which their lands, traditional food sources, and family members have been forcibly taken from them. They’ve also been subjected to “unfree labor” and restrictions on their freedom to move about the continent. Imposing further restrictions on them is not the way to correct these wrongs. Instead, we should do seek to undo the underlying injustices that contribute to poverty and alcoholism.

While Vegemite liquor and other forms of homemade alcohol production are not without risks, it is the state that creates the need to resort to such unsafe measures. We should not begrudge attempts to resist unjust prohibitionism. It should be seen as a positive development that the increased ease of home-brewing in recent years has made such laws less enforceable. Hopefully, such developments bring more attention to this issue and lead to the demise of this authoritarianism.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “Fiorina Claims She’s Not Part of the ‘Professional Political Class’” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford.

While it’s refreshing to learn that Americans are waking up to the reality of a patristic, entrenched political elite, it’s distressing that Fiorina doesn’t consider herself and her fellow corporate executives part of it.

The failure to see the American corporate-state partnership (also known as capitalism) is at the root of the problem. Fiorina and most other supposed free-marketers on the right see a sharp distinction between the public sector and private enterprise. This distinction is illusory. Take for example Hewlett Packard, which Fiorina touts as her major selling point–she was HP’s CEO from 1999-2005. Like other large corporate behemoths, HP is a good-for-nothing welfare queen that derives a great deal of its earnings from feeding at the public trough, both directly and indirectly. HP’s history of being in bed with the United States government and other governments around the world put its former CEO Fiorina squarely in the professional political class she so readily condemns.

Feed 44:

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On August 7th, movie theater shooter James Holmes was sentenced to life in prison. At the sentencing hearing, Holmes’s mother pleaded that he was a sweet, innocent boy whose mental illness haunted him and eventually turned him into a murderer. From Columbine to Charleston, every time a white man opens fire, mental illness is the go-to scapegoat. Rather than admit normal people are capable of evil things, a dysfunctional brain is blamed, as though dysfunction and evil go hand-in-hand. The tendency to blame evil on mental illness lends itself to grotesque human rights violations against those who think differently from what’s socially acceptable.

Much of mental illness is socially constructed. By using medical diagnoses to condemn patterns of thinking, we stigmatize and alienate anyone who thinks differently from what the capitalist, patriarchal state will accept. How dare anyone be restless, anxious, or depressed. People who are socially awkward, can’t focus for long periods of time, or struggle to deal with emotional trauma don’t make good capitalist workerbots. Patriarchal state capitalism depends on the masses’ submission to hierarchy and taking orders. For state capitalism to function, the state’s subjects must conform to the hierarchical standards set before them. People become cogs in the machine, and when a cog doesn’t fit properly into the system, the machine tosses it aside.

In the recent past, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) included homosexuality and gender identity disorder. Gender dysphoria is still by and large considered a psychiatric disorder. Diagnoses that remain in the DSM such as Asperger’s, depression, bipolar disorder, and ADHD reflect “abnormal” personalities, not any sort of illness. While some mental illnesses are real and can be debilitating, neurodiversity is desirable and a normal part of the human condition. Neurodivergence, or divergence from social standards of normal thinking, isn’t shameful.

People who are neurodivergent are much more likely to experience violence than to perpetrate it. One in four neurodivergent people experience sexual, physical, or domestic violence in any given year. Within mental hospitals and similar institutions, abuse runs rampant.

Regardless of the nature of one’s neurodivergence, a 1998 study showed that unless drugs or alcohol are present, the neurodivergent are no more likely to commit acts of violence than anyone else. When people with mental illnesses do commit violence, it is almost always directed toward family members and friends, not strangers. One quarter of the homeless population has a severe mental disorder, as the society that lives in fear of the mentally ill leaves them exposed to street violence and police brutality.

Neurodivergent people are more likely to be the victims of police brutality than their neurotypical counterparts. Police murdered at least 14 people who the state deemed mentally ill between January and August of 2014 alone. Police often arrest people simply because of their mental illness. Or they are involuntarily committed to hospitals and then forced to pick up the bill. The State also notoriously uses mental illness to suppress dissenting opinion, such as in the classic case of anarchist Aurora d’Angelo. Our society treats those with mental illnesses as freaks at best, and criminals at worst.

The neurodivergent need to be able to protect themselves. Because they are frequent victims of violence who cannot look to the State for reliable help, they must have the option to arm themselves. When trying to prevent mass shootings, the State seeks to either restrict the freedom of those with mental illness, restrict access to guns, or both. Many of these restrictions, such as AB 1014 in California, require only that someone be suspected of having mental health issues—no medical diagnosis is necessary. Such medical diagnoses are often based on restrictive social norms and are thus unreliable assessments of neurotypicality anyway. They certainly shouldn’t serve as the standard for curtailing a person’s freedom.

Gun control hurts the societally and legally marginalized the most, including (and especially) the neurodivergent.

Benjamin Tucker famously held that property in real estate depends on continued personal occupancy, so that when a landlord undertakes to rent out a plot of land or a building to a tenant, the “landlord” actually surrenders ownership to the “tenant,” who — despite whatever contract she may have signed — has no obligation, enforceable or otherwise, either to keep paying rent or to return the property at the expiration of the lease.

I think Tucker’s view on this subject is mistaken, but debating its merits is not my present concern. (For a defense of Tucker’s position, see Kevin Carson’s critique of absentee landlordism; for the contrary view, see my forthcoming reply to Carson in the next issue, 20.1, of the JLS.) Rather, for purposes of this post I want to ask a historical question: what was Lysander Spooner’s position on this issue?

It’s often assumed that it must have been similar to Tucker’s; in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, for example, Rothbard treats the abolition of rent as part of the “Spooner-Tucker doctrine.” But while Spooner and Tucker were certainly aligned on many issues, they had some important disagreements as well — most notably on intellectual property (Spooner was pro, Tucker con) and on the ethical foundations of libertarianism (Spooner favoured natural law while Tucker favoured Stirnerite egoism). So it’s by no means a foregone conclusion that Spooner and Tucker must have agreed about rent.

Perhaps it’s assumed that Spooner and Tucker were both anti-rent because they both supported the Irish movement to resist paying rent to landlords. But in Spooner’s 1880 Revolution: The Only Remedy for the Oppressed Classes of Ireland, the only reason Spooner gives for impugning the property title of landlords in Ireland is not that the landlords have failed to maintain personal occupancy, but rather that their holdings “were originally taken by the sword” from the native cultivators — an argument perfectly consistent with Lockean/Rothbardian views on rent.

I can’t claim to have scoured every inch of Spooner’s texts for remarks on this issue, but what I have found convinces me that Spooner’s position on rent was in fact the Lockean/Rothbardian one and not the Tuckerite one at all.

The earliest mention I’ve come across is in Spooner’s 1839 legal brief Spooner vs. M’Connell, in which he asserts the Federal government’s property right over “wild lands” within its territory, adding that the United States “may lease those lands … so long as they retain the title in themselves …” Here occupancy and title are clearly understood as separable. But this early passage is not a reliable guide to Spooner’s mature views, since it plainly conflicts with Spooner’s declaration in his 1886 Letter to Grover Cleveland that “[t]he government has no more right to claim the ownership of wilderness lands, than it has to claim the ownership of the sunshine, the water, or the atmosphere.”

But we also find Spooner remarking, in his 1846 Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure, that “there is no more extortion in loaning capital to the best bidder, than in selling a horse, or renting a house to the best bidder” – which hardly sounds as though Spooner sees anything inherently problematic about rent.

The clearest evidence of Spooner’s disagreement with Tucker on rent, however, comes from his 1855 Law of Intellectual Property. While that work is devoted specifically to the question of property in ideas, in order to address that specific question Spooner finds it necessary to develop a general theory of property rights as such, and in so doing he tells us:

There is no limit, fixed by the law of nature, to the amount of property one may acquire by simply taking possession of natural wealth, not already possessed … [H]e holds the land in order to hold the labor which he has put into it, or upon it. And the land is his, so long as the labor he has expended upon it remains in a condition to be valuable for the uses for which it was expended; because it is not to be supposed that a man has abandoned the fruits of his labor so long as they remain in a state to be practically useful to him. …

The principle of property is, that the owner of a thing has absolute dominion over it, whether he have it in actual possession or not, and whether he himself wish to use it or not; that no one has a right to take possession of it, or use it, without his consent; and that he has a perfect right to withhold both the possession and use of it from others, from no other motive than to induce them, or make it necessary for them, to buy it, or rent it, and pay him an equivalent for it, or for its use. … The right of property, therefore, is a right of absolute dominion over a commodity, whether the owner wish to retain it in his own actual possession and use, or not. It is a right to forbid others to use it, without his consent. If it were not so, men could never sell, rent, or give away those commodities, which they do not themselves wish to keep or use — but would lose their right of property in them — that is, their right of dominion over them — the moment they suspended their personal possession and use of them.

It is because a man has this right of absolute dominion over the fruits of his labor, and can forbid other men to use them without his consent, whether he himself retain his actual possession and use of them or not, that nearly all men are engaged in the production of commodities, which they themselves have no use for, and cannot retain any actual possession of, and which they produce solely for purposes of sale, or rent. In fact, there is no article of corporeal property whatever, exterior to one’s person, which owners are in the habit of keeping in such actual and constant possession or use, as would be necessary in order to secure it to themselves, if the right of property, originally derived from labor, did not remain in the absence of possession.

I think this is as clear a statement as one could ask for that in Spooner’s eyes ownership, while initially acquired by labour and occupancy, does not depend for its continuation on the continuation of such labour and occupancy, but may legitimately be rented out with no loss of the original owner’s just title. Perhaps it was not solely for its defense of copyrights and patents, then, that Tucker described Spooner’s Law of Intellectual Property as “the only positively silly work which ever came from Mr. Spooner’s pen.”

Nor should we suppose that Spooner’s 1855 endorsement of rent was later retracted during his association with Tucker; for just three years before his death, in his 1884 Letter to Scientists and Inventors, Spooner restates in condensed form the standpoint of his Law of Intellectual Property, and notes in passing that the originator of an idea “may either use it himself, or sell it, or lend it to others for use, the same as he might rightfully do with any material property.” (Emphasis mine.) Once again there’s no indication that title to “any material property” is lost when its owners withdraw from personally occupying it and “lend it to others for use.”

So there’s my brief for dehomogenising Spooner and Tucker on the land issue. Perhaps I should add by way of clarification that I don’t mean to be offering the fact that Spooner agrees with me against Tucker about rent as any sort of argument for the truth of my position! (That should be obvious, but I know from experience that if I don’t make it explicit some insightful reader is likely to send me an email saying “So Spooner agrees with you against Tucker; so what? That doesn’t prove that he’s right! You are such a moron.”)

In any case, I agree with Tucker against Spooner about intellectual property, so it’s not as though I can consistently exalt one above the other. In his Law of Intellectual Property Spooner tries to show that if you agree with him about land you’re thereby committed to agreeing with him about copyrights and patents also. Obviously I think his arguments on that point fail, for reasons I plan to address in a future post; my line of attack would be a development of the approach I sketch here and here. But as I said above, my concern in the present discussion is not to offer a theoretical defense of any particular view about property rights, but simply to make the historical, interpretive point that Spooner’s view on rent was not the same as Tucker’s. (Well, to the extent that there’s any polemical payoff I suppose it’s this: those anarcho-socialists who grant the title of “anarchist” to Tucker and Spooner but deny it to Rothbard and other so-called “anarcho-capitalists” on the grounds inter alia of the latter’s disagreement with Tucker about land will find their position at least somewhat harder to maintain to the extent that the distance between the “saved” Spooner and the “damned” anarcho-capitalists is narrowed.)

<< Back to Studies in Carsonian Mutualism.

…They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.

— Karl Hess, Anarchism Without Hyphens

Joseph R. Stromberg discusses realism vs non-intervention.

David Swanson discusses the Vietnam War 50 years later.

Andrew Levine discusses Israel and the alleged threats to it.

Shamus Cooke discusses the idea of a no-fly zone in Syria.

Lew Rockwell discusses Ron Paul’s new anti-war book.

John Feffer discusses the Kurds and the current conflicts in the Middle East.

Robert Fantina discusses Israeli missteps.

Tom Clifford discusses the first Gulf War.

Howard Lisnoff discusses a wrong argument about war and peace.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses Medicare as a cancer on the body politic.

Bryan Caplan discusses his support for open borders.

Ted Galen Carpenter discusses murky public support for American wars.

Ron Paul discusses whether the U.S. government should bring back internment camps.

Justin Raimondo discusses monsters in the Ukraine who were made in the U.S.A.

Karen J. Greenberg discusses the mass killer and the national security state.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses U.S. war crimes.

David S D’Amato discusses private property and coercion.

George H. Smith discusses an atheist priest with libertarian style convictions.

Cora Currier discusses civilian dead in the war against ISIS.

Justin Raimondo discusses how war is peace in the U.S. government.

Chris Woods discusses civilian dead in the war against ISIS.

Ahmad Moussa discusses the incineration of Palstinian children.

Adam Hudson discusses signature strikes.

Richard M. Ebeling discusses markets, marriage, and migration.

Thomas L. Knapp discusses the droppings of two atomic bombs and terrorism.

Mikayla Novak discusses libertarian feminism.

Glenn Greenwald discusses a recent Obama speech defending his Iran deal.

Dan Sanchez discusses state funded religious extremism in Israel.

Ivan Eland discusses why the newly created safe zone in Syria is a bad idea.

David Swanson discusses the dropping of the atomic bombs 70 years on.

On July 26th, 35 of Bill Cosby’s rape victims came forward to discuss their rapes and the culture that ignored their cries for help. A serial rapist going uncharged for years due to celebrity is indicative of a deeper cultural problem — one that treats rape as an innocent mistake rather than a violent crime.

Countless studies point to an underlying culture in our society of male sexual aggression and the victimization of women. Not all men rape, but all men have the capacity to rape, and all women suffer from constant fear of being raped. Fear is central in rape culture — fear of sexual violence, fear of not being taken seriously, fear of men, and fear of the institutions that are supposed to protect us. The FBI estimates that of the mere 40% of rapes that are reported, only 20% are ever prosecuted. Rape is a traumatic experience, in ways different from any other crime, and speaking up about it after the fact to disinterested, cold ears is terrifying.

Rape culture can be defined as, “A complex of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women … and a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women [and girls] and presents it as the norm.”

Most rape victims already know their rapists, whether they are a boyfriend, classmate, or celebrity. The constant fear that is characteristic of rape culture affects all women. Women can do little to protect themselves against the people they already trust. Even if they could, the onus should fall on the rapist, not the victim. The women Bill Cosby raped had little chance to defend themselves, and their cries for recourse fell on unmoved ears.

Bill Cosby himself did not view his actions as rape. According to his deposition, he saw little difference between drugging a woman for sex and buying her dinner with the same goal in mind. Cosby’s attitudes about rape reflect a societal misunderstanding of how consent works. While Cosby was fully responsible for the rapes he committed, his outlook reflects how much work we have left in fighting for women’s bodily autonomy.

Many critics of rape culture say that talking about rape culture shifts blame from the perpetrators to the society around them, therefore relieving rapists of their own responsibility. RAINN, the U.S.’s largest organization combatting sexual violence, criticized rape culture, saying that, “Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions of a small percentage of the community to commit a violent crime.”

This criticism represents a misunderstanding of what rape culture means and why we talk about it. Individuals, while wholly responsible for their own actions, do not act within a vacuum. Culture in many ways dictates the attitudes and actions of the members of that culture. Just as a culture of nationalism fosters violence toward immigrants, rape culture fosters sexual violence. A rapist like Bill Cosby was able to continue to commit crime after crime because society ignored and justified his actions. In order to effectively combat rape, we must embrace a more radical approach that addresses its societal underpinnings. By getting to the cultural root of sexual violence, we can put an end to the very environment that allows rape to thrive.

We don’t have to choose between combatting rape culture and holding individual rapists accountable. Under rape culture, individual rapists are not held accountable for their actions. Our society treats rapists as innocent boys who made a harmless mistake — that is rape culture. Our society sides with celebrities over rape victims despite insurmountable evidence to the contrary — that is rape culture. Cultures are spontaneous orders that arise out of individual action. In countering rape culture we must fight both harmful action and permissive attitudes towards those actions.

RAINN’s alternative recommendations for fighting sexual violence largely include risk-reduction messaging. RAINN shifts the responsibility for preventing rape to the potential victims — not the individuals committing rape. In knocking down discussion of rape culture, critics do the exact opposite of what they intend. They remove the rapist’s responsibility and retreat into the victim-blaming that sits at rape culture’s core.

For a free society to flourish, we must not only respect individual rights, but also uphold individual responsibility. We owe it to ourselves to create a world in which rapists are held accountable for their actions and a culture in which human rights violations like rape are viewed as the atrocities they are. If you deny rape culture exists or say that it doesn’t matter, you are part of the problem. We can either recognize and fight rape culture or foster it — no third option is available.

Primeiramente, devo afirmar minha convicção de que Lysander Spooner e Benjamin R. Tucker foram inigualáveis como filósofos políticos e que nada é mais necessário hoje em dia que um renascimento e um desenvolvimento de seu legado esquecido para a filosofia política. Na metade do século 19, a doutrina individualista libertária havia chegado a um ponto em que seus expoentes mais notórios, por seus vários caminhos (Thoreau, Hodgskin e os jovens Fichte e Spencer), haviam começado a perceber que o estado era incompatível com a liberdade e a moralidade. Porém, esses autores chegaram somente ao ponto de defender o direito individual a se recusar a viver dentro da rede estatal de poder e espoliação. Em sua forma incompleta, essas doutrinas não eram de fato uma ameaça ao aparato estatal, uma vez que poucos indivíduos contemplam verdadeiramente uma recusa dos vários benefícios da vida social simplesmente para saírem do jugo do estado.

Spooner e Tucker foram os responsáveis por esboçar a maneira pela qual todos os indivíduos poderiam abandonar o estado e cooperar em benefício mútuo em uma sociedade de trocas livres e inter-relações voluntárias. Com isso, Spooner e Tucker transformaram o individualismo libertário, fazendo com que deixasse de ser somente um protesto contra os males existentes e passando a ser um norte para uma sociedade ideal; além disso, esses dois autores corretamente identificaram esse ideal como sendo o de um livre mercado, que parcialmente já existia e provia grandes benefícios econômicos e sociais. Portanto, Spooner, Tucker e seus correligionários não apenas mostraram qual era o objetivo a ser alcançado, mas também superaram os “utópicos” anteriores por identificarem esse objetivo numa expansão de instituições existentes e não em uma visão coercitiva ou impossível de uma humanidade transformada. Suas ideias foram verdadeiramente notáveis, embora não tenhamos ainda sido capazes de vivê-las em sua plenitude.

Eu não seria capaz de concluir um tributo à filosofia política de Spooner e Tucker sem citar uma passagem particularmente magnífica de No Treason No. VI, de Lysander Spooner, que foi muito importante para minha formação ideológica:

[É] verdade que a teoria de nossa Constituição é a de que todos os impostos são pagos voluntariamente; de que nosso estado é uma empresa de seguros mútuos a que as pessoas voluntariamente se associam. (…)

Contudo, tal teoria de estado é totalmente diferente dos fatos da vida prática. O fato é que o estado, como o bandido, diz para o homem: “Seu dinheiro ou sua vida”. E muitos, senão a maior parte, de nossos tributos são pagos sob a compulsão dessa ameaça.

O estado, de fato, não aborda o homem num local desolado, abordando-o à beira da estrada e, segurando uma arma contra sua cabeça, procede a limpar seus bolsos. Porém, o roubo não deixa de ser roubo por seus métodos e é muito mais covarde e vergonhoso por esse motivo.

O bandido assume para si toda a responsabilidade, todos os riscos e o crime de seus atos. Não finge ter qualquer direito legítimo a seu dinheiro ou que pretende usá-lo para benefício de sua vítima. Não finge ser qualquer coisa senão um ladrão. Não desenvolveu ainda o descaramento necessário para afirmar ser apenas um “protetor” e que o dinheiro que toma dos homens contra suas vontades simplesmente para que possa proteger os viajantes, que se sentem perfeitamente capazes de proteger a si próprios ou que não apreciam particularmente seu sistema peculiar de proteção. O bandido é sensato demais para professar tais disparates. Além disso, tendo tomado seu dinheiro, ele o deixa, como você deseja que ele o faça. Ele não insiste em segui-lo pela estrada, contra a sua vontade, presumindo ser seu legítimo “soberano” por conta da “proteção” que lhe fornece. Ele não continua a “protegê-lo”, ordenando que você se curve e o sirva; requerendo que você faça isso e proibindo-o de fazer aquilo; roubando de mais do seu dinheiro com a frequência que achar conveniente ou prazeroso; e rotulando-o como rebelde, traidor e inimigo da pátria, abrindo fogo contra você sem piedade, se ousar contestar sua autoridade ou resistir a suas exigências. O bandido é demasiado cavalheiresco para ser culpado de tais imposturas, insultos e vilanias. Em suma, ele não pretende, além de roubá-lo, enganá-lo ou torná-lo seu escravo.

As ações dos ladrões e assassinos que chamam a si mesmos de “estado” são diretamente contrárias àquelas do bandido solitário. [2]

Quem, após ler essa sublime passagem, jamais será ludibriado pelo estado novamente?

Por isso, sinto-me fortemente tentado a me chamar de “anarquista individualista”, não fosse pelo fato de que Spooner e Tucker de certa maneira tomaram esse nome para sua doutrina e dela eu tenho algumas divergências. Politicamente, as diferenças são menores, sendo o sistema que defendo muito próximo ao deles; mas, economicamente, as diferenças são substanciais e isso significa que, em minha opinião, as consequências da colocação em prática de nosso sistema mais ou menos comum seriam nitidamente diferentes.

Politicamente, minhas diferenças com Spooner e Tucker são duas. Em primeiro lugar, há o papel do direito e do sistema de júri na sociedade anarquista individualista. Spooner e Tucker acreditavam no direito de cada tribunal individualmente dentro do livre mercado e, mais especificamente, no direito de cada júri, de estabelecer livremente suas decisões. Não existiria qualquer conjunto de leis racionais ou corpo legal objetivo ao qual os júris deveriam — mesmo que moralmente — recorrer; nem mesmo precedentes judiciais, uma vez que os júris teriam poder para decidir tanto quais os fatos quanto as leis relevantes para cada caso, ad hoc. Sem quaisquer diretrizes e padrões a serem seguidos, até mesmo os júris mais bem intencionados seriam levados a decisões injustas ou antilibertárias.

Em minha opinião, o direito é um bem valioso que não deve necessariamente produzido pelo estado, da mesma forma que o serviço postal ou de proteção não devem; o estado pode ser separado da produção de leis da mesma maneira que ele pode ser separado das esferas religiosa ou econômica da vida. Especificamente, não seria muito difícil para advogados e juristas libertários chegarem a um código racional e objetivo de princípios e procedimentos legais libertários baseados no axioma da defesa da pessoa e da propriedade — que seria, consequentemente, um código de não-coerção contra qualquer indivíduo que não fosse comprovadamente um invasor de outra pessoa ou propriedade. Esse código, assim, seria seguido e aplicado a casos específicos por tribunais e juízes concorrentes dentro do livre mercado. Todos esses tribunais e juízes teriam por dever aplicar o código e seriam empregados no mercado proporcionalmente à qualidade de seu serviço e à satisfação dos consumidores com seu produto. Na sociedade atual, os júris têm a inestimável virtude de serem uma trincheira de defesa do cidadão privado contra o estado.; são núcleos indispensáveis de pessoas fora do aparato estatal que podem ser usados para a proteção do réu injustiçado pelos procedimentos estatais. Numa sociedade libertária, porém, essa virtude deixaria de existir. [3]

A respeito do problema da justiça, contudo, é possível haver uma reconciliação: Tucker, afinal, afirma a certo momento que “o anarquismo significa precisamente a observância e a aplicação da lei natural da liberdade” — e é exatamente isso que eu pleiteio. [4]

Minha segunda diferença política com Spooner e Tucker está no tratamento da questão da terra, especificamente na questão dos direitos de propriedade de terrenos. Acredito, no entanto, que a posição de Tucker seja superior nesse aspecto à dos economistas de livre mercado atuais que se abstém de tomar qualquer partido na questão ou que despreocupadamente presumem que todos os títulos de terras devem ser protegidos simplesmente porque o governo os trata como “propriedade privada”. Sua posição também é superior à dos seguidores de Henry George, que reconhecem a existência do problema da terra, mas que negam a justiça de qualquer propriedade privada da terra. A tese dos anarquistas individualistas, elaborada por Joshua K. Ingalls, era a de que a propriedade privada da terra deve ser reconhecida somente para aqueles que de fato as estejam utilizando. Essa teoria de propriedade automaticamente aboliria todos os aluguéis ou arrendamentos de porções de terra, uma vez que apenas os usuários diretos poderiam ser reconhecidos como donos.

Embora eu discorde fortemente dessa doutrina, ela é um corretivo útil aos libertários e economistas que se negam a considerar o problema do monopólio das terras devido a concessões estatais e, assim, se negam a tratar daquele que é provavelmente o maior problema nos países subdesenvolvidos atualmente. Não é suficiente defender “direitos de propriedade privada”; deve haver uma teoria adequada de justiça dos direitos de propriedade. Caso contrário, qualquer propriedade declarada “privada” pelo estado deverá ser defendida pelos libertários, não importa quão injustas sejam ou quão danosas suas consequências.

Em minha opinião, a teoria adequada de justiça relativa à propriedade da terra pode ser encontrada em John Locke: a terra se torna propriedade privada pela primeira vez pelo critério de uso. Isso descarta como inválidas as vendas estatais de terras devolutas não-utilizadas para especuladores. Até esse ponto, estou de pleno acordo com Ingalls e os anarquistas. Porém, após o uso conferir apropriação, parece uma completa violação da “lei da igual liberdade” de Spooner e Tucker impedir que seu dono legítimo a venda para outro indivíduo.

Em resumo, assim que um terreno passa para a propriedade do Sr. A, ele não pode ser o dono daquela terra a menos que possa transferir ou vender o título da terra para o Sr. B. Impedir que o Sr. B exerça seu título de propriedade simplesmente porque ele não deseja utilizar essa terra, mas agulá-la voluntariamente ao Sr. C, é uma invasão da liberdade de contrato de B e de seu direito de propriedade justamente adquirida. Por contraste, não consigo enxergar quaisquer bases para o princípio de que uma pessoa jamais possa deixar ou alugar sua propriedade justamente adquirida. Neste quesito, a usual espirituosa e inteligente defesa que Tucker faz do livre mercado deixa bastante a desejar. Além disso, essa restrição aos terrenos ou ao uso ótimo da terra, forçando tal má alocação arbitrária dos títulos às terras, prejudica toda a sociedade.

Contudo, minha principal desavença com Spooner e Tucker não é política, mas econômica. Não diz respeito à forma de nosso sistema ideal, mas às consequências que se seguiriam à adoção desse sistema. Portanto, a discussão não é moral ou ética, mas científica. Serei o primeiro a admitir que a maioria dos economistas acredita que sua ciência é uma varinha mágica que resolve todos os problemas éticos e decisões políticas, mas quando questões econômicas estão em pauta, é nossa responsabilidade levar em conta as descobertas da ciência econômica.

Em contraposição aos anarquistas coletivistas e a muitos outros radicais, Spooner e Tucker tentaram usar a economia ao invés de descartá-la como excessivamente racional. Algumas de suas falácias (por exemplo, a “lei do custo”, a teoria do valor-trabalho) estavam presentes em boa parte da economia clássica. Sua adoção da teoria do valor-trabalho os levava a acreditar que rendas [aluguéis], juros e lucros eram pagamentos exploratórios extraídos do trabalhador. Em contraposição aos marxistas, porém, Spooner e Tucker, compreendendo muitas das virtudes do livre mercado, não desejavam abolir essa nobre instituição. Em vez disso, acreditavam que a liberdade integral levaria, através do funcionamento das leis econômicas, ao desaparecimento pacífico dessas três categorias de rendimentos. O mecanismo que levaria a essa abolição pacífica, acreditavam Spooner e Tucker — e aqui eles infelizmente ignoravam os ensinamentos da economia clássica, substituindo-a por suas próprias falácias –, estava presente na moeda.

As duas falácias básicas inter-relacionadas da teoria spoonerista (e nas teorias de todos os autores que foram rotulados como “monetários excêntricos”, ou “money cranks”) são a incapacidade de compreender a natureza da moeda e dos juros. [5] Essas excentricidades monetárias presumem (1) que uma quantidade crescente de moeda é necessária no mercado; (2) que quanto menor a taxa de juros, melhor; e (3) que a taxa de juros é determinada pela quantidade de moeda, sendo aquela inversamente proporcional a esta. A partir dessas premissas absolutamente falaciosas, segue-se a prescrição: deve-se aumentar cada vez mais a quantidade de moeda na economia e diminuir a taxa de juros (ou os lucros).

Neste ponto, as excentricidades monetárias se dividem em duas escolas: a que podemos chamar de “ortodoxa”, que pede para que o estado imprima cada vez mais papel-moeda com esse intuito (por exemplo, Ezra Pound e o Movimento do Crédito Social); e a anarquista ou mutualista, que deseja que indivíduos privados ou bancos façam o trabalho (por exemplo, Proudhon, Spooner, Greene, Meulen). Na realidade, dentro desses parâmetros, os estatistas são economistas muito melhores que os anarquistas; pois embora o estado possa destruir a moeda, causando inflação e diminuindo temporariamente a taxa de juros, a sociedade anarquista levaria, ao contrário da intuição dos anarquistas, a uma moeda muito mais “rígida” do que a que temos atualmente.

Na primeira falácia, deve-se concluir que os excêntricos simplesmente estão levando a sua conclusão lógica uma falácia amplamente adotada por autores pré-clássicos e pelos keynesianos atuais. O ponto crucial é que um aumento da oferta monetária não confere qualquer benefício à sociedade. Pelo contrário, ela ocasiona uma exploração da maior parte da sociedade pelo estado, pelos bancos manipulados pelo estado e seus favorecidos. O motivo é que, em contraposição à quantidade de batatas ou de aço, um aumento dos quais significa um aumento da quantidade de bens que podem ser consumidos, beneficiando um maior número de pessoas, a moeda é capaz de executar seu papel a qualquer quantidade no mercado. Uma quantidade maior simplesmente dilui seu poder de compra, o valor de troca, de cada dólar, enquanto uma quantidade menor eleva o valor de cada dólar.

David Hume, um dos maiores economistas de todos os tempos chegou ao âmago dessa questão ao perguntar o que aconteceria se todos magicamente acordassem com a quantidade de dinheiro em sua posse dobrada, triplicada ou ainda mais. Claramente, a sensação subjetiva de riqueza de todos rapidamente se extinguiria quando os novos dólares fizessem que os bens e serviços passassem a custar o dobro ou o triplo e a sociedade não teria um maior bem estar. O mesmo valeria se todos os ativos monetários subitamente fossem diminuídos pelo meio. Poderíamos também postular uma súbita mudança dos centavos para “dólares”, com um aumento proporcional de todas as denominações. Nesse caso, as pessoas se tornariam cem vezes mais ricas? Não. De fato, a popularidade da inflação ao longo dos séculos advém do fato de que nem todos estão tendo suas ofertas monetárias dobradas ou quadruplicadas de uma só vez. Ela advém do fato de que a inflação da oferta monetária ocorre a um passo de cada vez e que os primeiros beneficiários, as pessoas que recebem o dinheiro primeiro, ganham às custas das pessoas infelizes o suficiente para serem as últimas da fila.

Alguns anos atrás, um brilhante cartum da revista New Yorker descreveu perfeitamente o processo inflacionário e as racionalizações sofisticadas para o roubo e a exploração que são usadas para justificá-la: um grupo de falsificadores contempla alegremente seu trabalho, quando um deles diz: “Os gastos nas lojas do bairro estão prestes a receberem um necessário estímulo!”. Sim, as pessoas que recebem primeiro as injeções de moeda na economia (sendo através da falsificação legal ou ilegal) se beneficiam primeiro (isto é, os falsificadores e aqueles em quem eles gastam seu dinheiro ou, como os bancos, a quem emprestam o dinheiro), mas o fazem às custas daqueles que recebem o dinheiro por último, que veem os preços subirem antes que a nova moeda chegue a seus rendimentos. Há um efeito “multiplicador” na injeção de nova moeda, mas é um efeito que explora algumas pessoas para benefício das outras. Sendo exploração, é também um peso para a produção de bens e serviços genuína dentro do livre mercado.

Já em relação à taxa de juros, ela não é simplesmente o preço do dinheiro e, portanto, não é inversamente proporcional à quantidade de moeda. Na situação descrita por David Hume, por exemplo, uma quadruplicação da quantidade de moeda levaria à quadruplicação de vários preços, ativos, etc, mas não há motivos para imaginar que isso fosse ter impacto sobre a taxa de juros. Se US$ 1000 anteriormente tinham juros de US$ 50 por ano, US$ 4000 terá juros de US$ 200; a quantidade paga em juros aumentará em quatro vezes, como todo o resto, mas não há motivo por que a taxa deva mudar. Lysander Spooner acreditava que se as ofertas monetárias fossem aumentadas suficientemente (como supostamente ocorreria em um mercado livre), a taxa de juros cairia a zero; na realidade, não há motivo para haver qualquer mudança.

No processo de inflação no mundo real, geralmente a moeda nova entra no mercado através de empréstimos. Enquanto isso ocorre, a taxa de juros do mercado de empréstimos cai; essa queda, porém, é estritamente temporária. O mecado rapidamente restaura a taxa de juros ao nível adequado. De fato, nos estágios seguintes da inflação, a taxa de juros aumenta de maneira aguda. Esse processo de distorção inflacionária da taxa de juros, seguida por uma restauração a seu nível normal pelo mercado, de fato é o que caracteriza os recorrentes “ciclos econômicos” que acompanham o capitalismo desde o advento da inflação via crédito bancário. [6]

A taxa de juros não é estabelecida em função da quantidade de moeda. Ela é uma função da “preferência temporal”: a taxa à qual as pessoas preferem satisfações presentes em comparação às mesmas satisfações futuras. Em resumo, qualquer pessoa gostaria de ter US$ 100 agora em vez de US$ 100 daqui a dez anos (ignorando possíveis mudanças no valor da moeda nesse meio tempo ou o risco de não conseguir o dinheiro mais tarde), porque o indivíduo estará em melhor situação se puder gastar ou simplesmente guardar esse dinheiro para si imediatamente.

Deve-se ter em mente que o fenômeno da preferência temporal tem base na natureza humana; não se trata de um fenômeno monetário e ocorreria também em um mundo sem moeda, onde vigorasse o escambo. No livre mercado, os juros não ocorrem apenas na forma de empréstimos, mas valeriam também (na forma dos lucros de “longo prazo”) para um mundo em que todos investissem seu próprio dinheiro e ninguém emprestasse ou pegasse emprestado. Em suma, os capitalistas pagariam US$ 100 este ano aos trabalhadores e donos do terreno, venderiam o produto e ganhariam, digamos, US$ 110 no ano que vem. Isso não ocorreria por causa de uma exploração, mas porque todas as partes preferem uma dada quantia de dinheiro imediatamente do que uma quantia maior no ano seguinte. Assim, os capitalistas, para pagar salários e aluguéis antecipadamente e esperar as vendas, só o fazem se forem compensados por retornos na forma de lucros. Pela mesma razão, os trabalhadores e donos de terra devem estar dispostos a aceitar o desconto de 10% em seu produto para ganhar seu dinheiro de imediato, sem esperar as vendas ao consumidor.

Os radicais devem se lembrar que, se os trabalhadores quisessem, poderiam se negar a trabalhar e formar suas próprias cooperativas de produtores, esperando anos para que seus produtos sejam vendidos para os consumidores. O fato de que os trabalhadores não o fazem mostra a enorme vantagem do investimento de capital, o sistema de salários que permite que recebam seu pagamento antes da venda de seus produtos. Longe de ser uma exploração dos trabalhadores, o investimento de capital e o sistema de juros e lucros é uma enorme vantagem para eles e para toda a sociedade.

A taxa de juros ou lucros no livre mercado, portanto, é um reflexo das preferências temporais das pessoas, que por sua vez determinam o grau pelo qual as pessoas voluntariamente alocam seus ativos, distribuindo-os entre a poupança e o consumo. Uma taxa de juros mais baixa no livre mercado é um bom sinal, porque reflete uma menor taxa de preferência temporal e, assim, maiores poupanças e investimentos de capital. Porém, qualquer tentativa de forçar uma taxa de juros mais baixa que não reflita as poupanças voluntárias causa incalculáveis danos e leva às depressões dos ciclos econômicos. A tentativa de empurrar as taxas de juros para baixo esperando bons resultados é como tentar aumentar a temperatura de uma sala alterando o termômetro.

Finalmente, é importante mostrar as verdadeiras consequências econômicas do sistema de Spooner e Tucker na prática. Sem o estado para criar as condições e coerções necessárias a uma inflação contínua, tentativas de inflacionar a moeda e expandir o crédito não seriam bem sucedidas. Suponha, por exemplo, que eu decidisse imprimir pedaços de papel chamados “dois Rothbards”, “dez Rothbards”, etc, e os tentasse usar como moeda. Numa sociedade libertária, eu teria total direito e liberdade para fazê-lo. Mas a questão é: quem aceitaria esses pedaços de papel como “dinheiro”? O dinheiro depende da aceitação geral e essa aceitação só pode começar com mercadorias, como o ouro e a prata. O “dólar”, o “franco” e outras unidades monetárias começaram não como nomes em si, mas como denominações para unidades de peso de ouro ou prata no livre mercado.

Isso seria exatamente o que aconteceria se o livre mercado pudesse funcionar livremente. O ouro e a prata seriam geralmente usados como moeda e as várias tentativas de criar moeda lastreada em nada simplesmente desapareceriam depois de um tempo. Os bancos que fraudulentamente imprimissem papéis chamados “dólares”, implicando que esses fossem equivalentes ao ouro e à prata, talvez não fossem à falência imediatamente. Mas mesmo nesse caso, esses bancos, sem a ajuda do estado, de suas leis de curso forçado, bancos centrais e “seguros de depósitos” para ajudá-los, desapareceriam em “corridas bancárias” ou estariam confinados a limites muito estritos. Se um banco emitisse novos pedaços de papel e os emprestasse aos clientes, assim que esses clientes tentassem comprar bens e serviços de não-clientes do banco, eles estariam expostos. Os não-clientes deixariam de aceitar as notas ou os comprovantes de depósitos do banco A, da mesma forma que nenhuma pessoa aceitaria meus “dez Rothbards”. [7]

Assim, um sistema de liberdade bancária como o prescrito por Spooner e Tucker, ao invés de levar a um crescimento infinito da oferta de moeda e ao desaparecimento dos juros, levaria a uma oferta monetária muito mais “rígida” e restrita. E, dado que não haveria nenhuma expansão do crédito manipulada pelo governo, a taxa de juros seria ainda mais alta. O economista francês do século 19 Henri Cemuschi certa vez expressou essa visão de maneira excelente:

Acredito que aquilo que se chamava de liberdade bancária resultaria na total supressão das notas bancárias (e também de depósitos bancários) na França. Eu gostaria de dar a todos o direito de emitir notas bancárias para que ninguém mais tivesse que aceitá-las no futuro. [8]

Parece bastante infeliz que uma das características dos grupos libertários e semi-libertários seja gastar grande parte de seu tempo e de sua energia enfatizando seus aspectos mais falaciosos e anti-libertários. Muitos georgistas poderiam ser grandes libertários se simplesmente abandonassem as visões georgistas sobre a terra; mas, claro, a questão da terra é sua maior preocupação. Igualmente, é angustiante para mim, como um grande admirador de Spooner e Tucker, perceber que seus seguidores têm continuamente enfatizado e se concentrado em suas visões monetárias absolutamente falaciosas, praticamente à exclusão de todos os outros aspectos de suas obras, tratando-as como uma panaceia para todos os males econômicos e sociais.

Há no pensamento da chamada “escola austríaca” uma explicação científica do funcionamento do livre mercado (e das consequências das intervenções estatais no mercado) que os anarquistas individualistas poderiam incorporar facilmente a sua visão sócio-política. Para fazer isso, contudo, [é necessário que abandonem suas excentricidades monetárias e reconsiderem a natureza e as justificativas das categorias econômicas do juro, da renda e do lucro.

Os anarquistas individualistas foram expostos a críticas de suas falácias econômicas ao menos duas vezes no apogeu do anarquismo nos Estados Unidos. Contudo, infelizmente, apesar da fraqueza das respostas de Tucker, a lição não surtiu efeito. Na edição de agosto de 1877 da Radical Review de Benjamin Tucker, Spooner escrevia um artigo intitulado “The Law of Prices: A Demonstration of the Necessity for an Indefinite Increase of Money” (“A lei dos preços: uma demonstração da necessidade de um aumento indefinido da oferta de moeda”, em português). Na edição de novembro de 1877, o economista Edward Stanwood escreveu uma excelente crítica, “Mr. Spooner’s Island Community” (“A comunidade isolada do Sr. Spooner”, em português. Além disso, no próprio Instead of a Book, de Tucker, há uma discussão em que J. Greevz Fisher, um seguidor inglês do quase anarquista Auberon Herbert, criticava as doutrinas monetárias de Tucker do ponto de vista da ciência econômica sensata.

Notas:

1. Murray N. Rothbard foi o editor fundador do Journal of Libertarian Studies. Este artigo é reproduzido de sua coletânea Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000, capítulo 13).

2. Spooner, Lysander. No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, No. VI. Boston, 1870, pp. 12-13. Tradução nossa.

3. O professor Bruno Leoni, da Universidade de Pavia, embora longe de ser um anarquista, recentemente escreveu uma instigante defesa da superioridade da elaboração do direito por juízes concorrentes em relação aos decretos arbitrários e variáveis das legislaturas estatais. Contudo, ele também não foi capaz de reconhecer a necessidade de um código libertário e racional para estabelecer o padrão. Cf. Leoni, Bruno. Freedom and the Law. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1961; e Rothbard, Murray. “On Freedom and the Law”. In: New Individualist Review. Inverno, 1962, pp. 37-40.

4. Tucker, Benjamin. Instead of a Book. New York City, NY: 1893, p. 37.

5. Para uma maior simplicidade, nós também continuaremos com a prática dos economistas clássicos de unir lucros e juros na mesma análise. Na realidade, a taxa de lucro do mercado tende, no longo prazo, a igualar a taxa de juros. Os lucros (e os prejuízos) de curto prazo tendem a continuar a existir no mercado mesmo que acontecesse o que Spooner defendia e a taxa de juros (e de lucro de longo prazo) caísse a zero. A verdadeira natureza da distinção entre juros e lucros não foi descoberta até o trabalho de Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1921).

6. A Grande Depressão americana de 1929 tem sido universalmente atribuída como efeito do capitalismo de livre mercado. Para uma explicação dessa depressão que se baseie na teoria acima de inflação do crédito bancário, cf. Rothbard, Murray. America’s Great Depression. Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2000.

7. Para uma explicação mais completa dos princípios da moeda e da estrutura bancária no livre mercado em relação a um cenário de intervenção estatal, cf. Rothbard, Murray. What Has Government Done to Our Money?. Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 1990.

8. Cernuschi, Henri. Conte Le Billet de Banque. Paris, 1866, p. 55. Citado em Mises, Ludwig. Human Action. Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 1998, p. 443.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

There’s an increasing sense of crisis in the far left today. Having lashed itself to an implicit primitivism over the course of the twentieth century now that that ship is sinking much of the left is desperately looking for a way off.

The Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek is one of a number of recent attempts by those resisting capital to free themselves from this deadweight and chart a course forward that is actually — in its words — “at ease with a modernity of abstraction, complexity, globality, and technology.” While largely failing to draw attention from on-the-streets radicals, the MAP has still emerged as a significant document for a certain set of ‘anti-academic’ academics with cachet in radical circles. And in many respects this Left Accelerationist project has brought a much needed gust of sanity. A voice finally calling out the emperor’s nudity when it comes to the absurdly lazy and sweeping dismissals that have grown popular in the left. As The Accelerationist Reader, published a year later, put it,

Hegemonic neoliberalism claims there is no alternative, and established Left political thinking, careful to desist from Enlightenment “grand narratives”, wary of any truck with a technological infrastructure tainted by capital, and allergic to an entire civilizational heritage that it lumps together and discards as “instrumental thinking”, patently fails to offer the alternative it insists must be possible.

Having long ago rejected the disconnected dinosaurs of mass political organization, the far left has increasingly accepted as the only alternative a retreat to the willful disconnect of reactionary localisms. But both directions are effectively characterized by a turn away from the future and, increasingly, from all forward-seeking and path-finding vigilance. As a result the left as a whole has grown in many respects confused, even traumatized, by our changing world. Today it often appears confined to just prettying up the walls of its prison cell and pretending that having “no future” was totally its plan in the first place. What little resistance it still offers has shrunk down to mere rejection, a ritualized and empty suspicion that often defaults on viewing the history still before us as more of a storm to be weathered than something to be determined. The resulting insular death spiral has been largely characterized by attempts to recapture sensations and aesthetic trappings through “reactionary obsessions with purity, humility, and sentimental attachment to the personally gratifying rituals of critique and protest and their brittle and fleeting forms of collectivity.” (ibid)

But — as the internet has come to saturate our everyday life — the left’s holdouts have finally been dragged into a world that has largely advanced without them. Witness the frantic attempts to catch up to all this technology stuff; to assure everyone that there’s nothing paradigm-smashing in the last century of scientific discoveries, or that one should basically be able to get by with some cliffnotes. Frequently this is phrased in terms of “cybernetics” — the eyeroll-deserving way a certain brand of leftist tries to dismissively wrap up all the computer science, neuroscience, game theory, etc (ie virtually every advance in scientific paradigms since the 50s) they weren’t alerted to in their undergrad courses. Note, for instance, Tiqqun’s wingnutty meltdown about vitalism or the Invisible Committee’s belated concession in “To Our Friends” that maybe they do need to understand all this technology stuff, as well as their deeply embarrassing (for all parties) attempt to lecture hackers at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress.

For anarchists it’s worth watching these spasms because this moment of reconfiguration will set the stage for whatever new metamorphoses are ahead of the left. Can it reinvent and free itself from a nihilist vs. organizationalist quagmire? Can it integrate the insights of the last century and not only adapt to our present landscape but restructure itself to blaze a path forward through all the complexities and changing contexts still before us? Can anything be salvaged from the non-anarchist left?

Sadly in the case of Accelerationism it appears we will have to keep waiting for an answer. This minor academic fad may finally open some windows but the “fresh air” it brings is thick with the dust of corpses.

In its very best moments this Acclerationism says exactly what anarcho-transhumanists and virtually everyone else with any direct knowledge of the situation have long argued, “Our technological development is being suppressed by capitalism as much as it has been unleashed. … these capacities can and should be let loose by moving beyond the limitations imposed by capitalist society.”

But this much should hardly warrant praise and Accelerationism’s direct failings are far more concerning: Firstly, it fails to accurately diagnose the root forces driving progress within society today as immediately liberatory and thus it poses a false or confused tension whereby “the bad” must be intensified for progress to be made — when in fact what must be intensified is the already present good, once accurately identified, as well as the stakes. Second, it tries to sneak in alongside the repudiation of localism a repudiation of the bottom-up (as if those were remotely equivalent), and in so doing reveals itself as merely the latest carrier for a sort of left-liberal academic elite that despises decentralization and hungers for a return to a context where they can once again rule as de facto technocrats.

Accelerationism is an old slur in certain circles and obviously any use of the term itself assumes that something must be “accelerated,” but from what I’ve seen the “left accelerationism” heralded by the MAP has not yet been particularly clear or settled on what that is — outside of some sweeping abstract and impressionistic language. And it rather steadfastly avoids grappling with any real particulars in how this is all supposed to work out.

In contrast, accelerationism, making a different analysis of the ambivalent forces at work in capital, will insist on the continuing dynamism and transformation of the human wrought by the unleashing of productive forces, arguing that it is possible to align with their revolutionary force but against domestication, and indeed that the only way “out” is to plunge further in

It’s easy to read this in a very positive sense, but the language is worryingly broad. While it would be nice to know just what direction inward “in” denotes, a hell of a lot more turns on the use of quotes around “out”. What exactly is being set as the things we’re trying to escape? And to what degree are we serious about this? One suspects the lack of clarity is intentional, a rhetorical move to pull people in without actually committing to a perspective. But in practice what this has accomplished is allow folks like Benjamin Noys to characterize the position as a demand to “work more, produce more, and consume more.”

Even still Left Accelerationists have remained loathe to actually tackle the details or provide substance. And when they do swing near what this process would actually look like they sometimes end up confirming everyone’s fears: an ever deeper dispossession leading to some kind of breaking point. In other words precisely the well-worn position of “make things worse until they break” that we all know has totally worked throughout history like when Congolese villagers were having their hands macheted off and slaughtered in the millions by Belgian task masters. The strategy to push capitalism and the effects of it to become ever more visible and obviously rejectable — to raise consciousness through immiserations — is some “Punx in Hummers” shit and is hardly new or a heresy, but a banality. A particularly cardboard entry in the grand old tradition of leftists incapable of conceiving of any motivation save the apocalyptic.

Of course not every Accelerationist writer makes the mistake of engaging all too closely with what exactly the process to be accelerated is. And some say quite anodyne things. The MAP put its most explicit focus on technological development, which, sure, great! Although I should note that presently the most significant technological innovation and creativity is already arising outside the increasingly tight shackles of capitalism. And I’m not sure that deepening this by say organizing and empowering ronin PhDs and autodidacts through hackerspaces and radical centers around the world really reflects anything like the notion that “the way out is through”.

But by the time the Accelerationist reader came out the focus had broadened to “accelerate [capitalism’s] uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.” At best this sort of handwavey language sometimes boils down to nothing more than appeals for more rationality and strategy — which it must be admitted sadly qualifies as a revolutionary position. But there’s good reason to be suspicious of the hazy and sweeping language, as well as the choosing of terms with traditionally negative connotations. Accelerationism has historically meant deepening the horrors of capitalism until a breaking point was reached and this has rather inescapably centered all other “Accelerationisms” around that perspective. Whatever other arguments folks want to make, this association with “make things worse” has been the primary lens through which Accelerationism has been approached and sits at the core of nearly all discourse on it.

Such a framing hardly represents a clean break with the primitivist rot of the left. An enthusiastic embrace of rationality, scientific reductionism, strategy, and technological development — in short the brightest expressions of our creativity, vigilance, and agency — should hardly have to be posed as “making things worse before they can get better.”

One of the keys here is that Accelerationism retains the same tendency towards dismissive lumping famously at play in “civilization” within their own use of “capitalism.”

But “capitalism” — in the sense of macroscopic tendencies of capital accumulation, normalized wage labor and attendant dynamics — is if anything radically opposed to innovation and meaningful growth. It’s not a matter of capitalism having internal contradictions so much as capitalism and the market being radically different creatures. The accumulative and centralizing tendency of capitalism is only one force among many at play in our society, and it is in no way inherently emergent from the microdynamics of exchange. Yet Accelerationism inherits the Marxist — which we might call the proto-primitivist since the one so clearly descends from the other — tendency to sweepingly characterize the entirety of existing society as a single beast of tightly integral parts and a teleological arc rather than a messy battlefield.

This blithely anti-reductionist tendency that prefers loose impressions to radical analysis is perhaps the most noxious characteristic of an insular brand of academics in the humanities to which Marxism fled when it couldn’t put up a fight anywhere else. An academic graveyard all the cool kids now hang out in. It has long been sympathetic to the aristocracy’s primitivist inclinations. Like all abusive ecosystems of power this academic enclave is deeply hostile to any hint of cleansing objectivity or clarity that might leave no room for the gaslighting and strategic-noncommunication that underpins power dynamics. It wants anything but firm and universally accessible ground for the disenfranchised, much less the dissolution of the various scarcities of information that provide a ladder for social hierarchies. Primitivism is, at root, an ideology that embraces the mysticism so strongly emergent in the last century of Marxist academia.

Any clean break with primitivism must then include a break with these monsters of obscurantism and anti-reductionism, and yet Accelerationism ducks its head in submission to many of their rotten assumptions, implicitly painting rationality as something partially negative that we must nevertheless embrace or push through. The language of modern accelerationists is persistently implicitly apologetic, using disturbing wordings for things that should be emphatically positive:

the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt or critique … but to accelerate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies

Most irritatingly and forebodingly the accelerationist says “we should embrace science and rationality” without ever really bothering to actually making an argument for why. Despite coming from a context in which both are widely demonized! As a consequence it seems like one is either supposed to embrace science and rationality for no good reason whatsoever — as a matter of situational expediency or random quirk or because it’s now fashionable — or one is revealed to have been waiting all along for some kind of allowance. And if the latter then the question becomes if one was already persuaded why did one need an excuse? There are certainly good arguments for an enthusiastic embrace of science and rationality, so this kind of timidity is disturbing. It’s a lot like finding a cult survivor hesitantly and flinchingly suggesting that “maybe, kinda sorta it’s not actually good, perhaps maybe to eat babies. sometimes.“ Sure you can agree with them that eating babies is bad, but the main result of their denunciation should be an inclination to keep your eyes on them around nurseries.

Of course one can be more charitable. And there are moments in which one just wants to hand some anarchist economics to the poor malnourished academics brought up in the Marxist tradition. After all it’s easy to salvage the anti-oedipal language by distinguishing deterritorialization in terms of market forces and reterritorialization in terms of capitalist forces. Of course Deleuze and Guattari effectively took them as part of an integral whole, but this is both true and not true. Not only do capitalism and markets reflect dramatically different underlying concepts and dynamics, but in the real existing world they are often separable dynamics or in serious conflict. There are certainly ways in which the liberatory market forces are structurally harnessed — as a kind of liquid fuel in the engine of state/capitalist power. But there are other respects in which the situation is far less solid or resolved, in which one force is not co-opted and enslaved by the other, but in which they are orthogonal processes or at war with each other.

Expanded beyond just what market anarchists term the “market” to more expansive things like science and rationality, such deterritorializing flows can be seen as the emergence of a hive mind — of minds straining to poke more holes through the walls of the cages that keep them localized into a more fluid connection or blending. In which context traditions, cultures, and other memetic cruft are rejected as ossifiying, fossilizing impositions upon society just as they are upon an individual’s mind.

I’m certainly a fan of the fluidic metaphors this discourse provides. But that’s because such better reflect the complexities at play. And that really is the operable word missing from this discourse. The most important guides and constraints in these processes are information theoretical.

When the MAP asserts,

We may be moving fast, but only within a strictly defined set of capitalist parameters that themselves never waver. We experience only the increasing speed of a local horizon, a simple brain-dead onrush rather than an acceleration which is also navigational, an experimental process of discovery within a universal space of possibility.

You can tell they’re flailing for some critical distinction distinction. They’re explicitly ditching the concrete definition of acceleration in terms of the second derivative of motion that more closely matches the subject of Nick Land’s project, and letting the term bleed out into a very loose and evocative notion.

But this loses sight of the main issue, complexity. We should certainly be proactively conscious and vigilant in our exploration and agency in struggle, but these are not particularly insightful distinctions. Sure we can act in specific conscious ways to better further and direct the social singularity we’re all participating within, but it is nonetheless happening.

And it is this global feedbacking cultural, memetic and intellectual complexity at the core of our experience of the internet era that is of most revolutionary import. A reality accelerationism ignores almost entirely.

The MAP declares that “what capitalist speed deterritorializes with one hand, it reterritorializes with the other. Progress becomes constrained within a framework of surplus value, a reserve army of labour, and free-​floating capital.” But capitalism is decidedly not succeeding at reterritorializing. The complexities of our world are growing ever more out of control. Partially in the sense of a social-technical infrastructure that is being monkey-patched and expanded upon in greater depth by anarchist hackers faster than the NSA can keep up, but primarily in the sense that our perception of the world has catalysed into a feedback loop of awareness and nuance that is straining the inherently rigid structures and mechanisms of power. It is here that anarchists and transhumanists have identified the most fertile point of pressure.

In the same sense that there are inescapable material realities that constrain and partially determine social dynamics, there are also inescapable computational realities. And this is in no small part why the market has been seen by an explosion of interest from radicals since the early 70s as a critical component of the fight against power.

Marxists have struggled deeply with this inescapable reality since Hayek and the default reflex has become to throw away all of “cybernetics” as a tainted ideological pseudoscience. But if the more rational primitivists are right to highlight the fundamental constraints placed on societies by dynamics of energy, libertarians are also right to look to the fundamental constraints placed on societies by computer science. Both are matters of physics. And just as you can’t shuffle around carbon costs and pretend to have erased them, you can’t simply shuffle around matters of information and calculation and pretend they’re no longer a problem.

A project seeking to make a clean break with the irrational primitivism of the left should damn well tackle the way it has systematically disregarded computational complexity, much less its failure to step up and actually embrace an analysis grounded in such. The left has rather — with its deepening corruption by the primitivism always lurking within it — embraced simplicity. Its managerial tendencies making a perfect synthesis with the primitivist aversion to intellectual vigilance (“we tried thinking/technology before and look at where that got us”). Again and again systems are critiqued in terms of being “too complex” to understand/control, often while simultaneously derided as mechanical rather than organic. But the only substantive distinction between the mechanical and the organic is one of fluidic complexity. Does it make sense to inveigh against the biosphere for being “too complex and too hard to entirely understand and control”? Of course not. And yet the more organic, the more complex and fluidic the market, our technologies or our culture have gotten, the more conniptions Marxist theorists have gone into. We should be deepening the vibrant, rich, lush complexities of human interrelation in the internet era, not just because as we do this power structures like the state and silicon valley tech giants falter and find themselves less and less capable of control, but because such complexity is inextricably tied to expressions and experiences of liberation.

To unleash the flows of liberated desire in our discourse, economics, etc is not to turn into that which is terrible and double down, but to resist it.

Like the tentative cult survivor, Accelerationists are always making the excuse that “there is no escape.” But the truth is there may very well be an escape from the present situation in localist, luddite, or anti-rationalist terms, and that escape towards primitivism is what power wants.

The neoliberal focus on crisis and capitalism’s increasing appeals to it as a way to flatten and reduce the complexity of society is very much of this vein. When the normal modes of management have become untenable power frequently falls back on just lobbing nukes at its own populace in hopes that apocalyptic destruction will bring the situation down to something more manageable once again.

What we are in fact seeing, with the gradual demise of primitivism, is the rabid turning of capital and the state against technological innovation and information technologies. Hence the stark images of politicians and chiefs of police calling for the outright abolition of cryptography and the internet. And their hostility to any glimmering of markets freed of the chains of capital is, of course, a longstanding tradition. Power abhors complexity.

Yet accelerationists of all stripes share a sad tendency to wax back into characterizing the market and rationality as a kind of death. This baggage sorefully needs to be shed off. And the rejection or deliberate ignorance to the calculational problems that the market grows from — the stubborn tendency to continue portraying the market as a dead “mechanical” thing or as creating death rather than being fundamentally organic in violent struggle against the mechanical death of capital — leads to embracing centralized, overly simple and inorganic solutions like “universal income”. Everyone these days shares a certain sympathy for universal income — certainly no one should have to work to live — and universal income schemes may well be an alleviative reform, but to tackle the artificial (that is to say violently simple) scarcities and capital concentrations of our present hellscape through the imposition of even more clunky artifice is a dangerous approach to say the least. And to champion it inexorably leads to an authoritarian turn.

The MAP sadly doubles down on this, embracing both artificially simple praxis and an artificially simple image of capitalism as an attractor in the phase space of possible human relations with near universal reach:

We believe that any post-​capitalism will require post-​capitalist planning. The faith placed in the idea that, after a revolution, the people will spontaneously constitute a novel socioeconomic system that isn’t simply a return to capitalism is naïve at best, and ignorant at worst.

We should of course, as radicals pursuing uncompromising visions of a better world, seek to map the possible, to explore paths forward and alternative dynamics, to better understand the lay of the land and our options, in any possible context, not just our present one. But “planning” carries with it a very specific legacy of temper tantrums against complexity, the entitled edicts of supremely unimaginative committees. Truly radical paths must be blazed from the bottom up, not from the Jacobin reading group on down. Planning assumes a certain about control over what is possible. It implies starting from a block of granite and chipping out a pre-visioned figure, rather than letting one’s path to a more fundamental goal fluidly respond and adapt to what is possible. Planning does not reflect a creative navigation but rather the same old Marxist need to impose an arbitrary theoretical order rather than actually do any sort of actual scientific inquiry.

I mean, I swear to fucking god, I’m not making this up, the MAP itself actually positively cites Cybersyn. One is tempted to be charitable and envision the left’s deepening turn to primitivism over the last fifty years as a kind of visit to Narnia, from which the survivors now emerge still wearing bell bottoms and wondering when dinner will be served. But in truth there is no excuse for this kind of science denialism: “That both of these were ultimately unsuccessful can be traced to the political and technological constraints these early cyberneticians operated under.” I cannot fathom the studious mental labor it must involve to take this excuse seriously. Or maybe ‘success’ is being measured not in terms of the rich and diverse subjective desires of actual human beings, but in terms of some clunky parameters and measured against one of the zombie capitalist states contemporaneous with 1970s Chile. I readily grant that a modern Cybersyn might manage to build a socialism capable of avoiding the mass starvations of the Soviet Union, because the variables to food production are relatively small compared to advanced technologies and human hunger or nutritional needs relatively constant. But really? Such noble aspirations.

How I wish I could report that the MAP’s authoritarian turn was limited to writing dubious economic historical fanfic about Allende on his Star Trek bridge, but the MAP makes very clear that it wants to chuck out anything resembling horizontalism or decentralization alongside localism.

Secrecy, verticality, and exclusion all have their place as well in effective political action… We need to posit a collectively controlled legitimate vertical authority in addition to distributed horizontal forms of sociality, to avoid becoming the slaves of either a tyrannical totalitarian centralism or a capricious emergent order beyond our control.

…Which I’m sure will totally work because as we’ve already established this fictional universe runs on magic.

It’s not entirely clear what’s going on here. Are the authors swallowing at face value the ridiculous claim that the only avenue for anti-authoritarianism or resisting the expansion of state power is a localist luddism? Are they somehow muddling the expansion of state power with the acceleration of feedbacking technological development? Whatever the case, this analysis is no more a rejection of the primitivist ideology than donning an evil mustache and joining a frakking company might be.

One is left wondering if the authoritarian impulse is the driving force or whether the authors, as academics, are so deeply twisted by their class status that when pressed for paths forward they can imagine no other means than establishing an “intellectual infrastructure” or vanguard elite — complete with a request for government funded think tanks, I shit you not — to drive it. It’s a farce that anyone might claim to be shedding off the primitivist infection of the 20th century while never once engaging with the anarchist and now internet-era drive to make everyone the intellectuals. Yet again accelerationism belies the same primitivist and statist tendency to suppress complexity rather than embrace it.

If, indeed, as the MAP declares, “sectarianism is the death knell of the left” then I say we should have as much of it as possible. If something is to be accelerated let it please be sectarianism. A fractal sectarianism until the corpse of the left is finally dissolved away and anarchism released. Developing an acid strong enough to eat our own rotten power structures has always been a prerequisite to eating capitalism and the state. Only our spineless timidity has held us back.

But of course we should not be surprised by Left Accelerationism’s embrace of managerial elitism, their highly palpable hunger for a technocracy of humanities academics. As with virtually every discourse derived from Marx, the goal has never been to actually achieve a better world.

The term accelerationism has a long history and yet it has only ever appeared in academic writings and never in real-world application. It is — we must address the elephant in the room — fundamentally an academic position. Unintelligible outside a discourse of continental philosophy that is inextricably an expression of class. A pure concentrated bourgeois elitism matched with a total lack of earnest sincerity or reductionism/radicalism. An arena where enthusiastic obscurantism has encouraged the enfranchising of new hierarchies, new ecologies of power relations, competitive games of positioning via masturbatory clouds of language utterly attenuated from anything rooted.

This discourse or community is not just relatively disconnected from the sciences, it has emerged in no small part from a desperate need to define itself in contrast with the sciences. And partially as a result it is inclined to perpetuate antiquated lenses rather than to just start over or drastically restructure an analysis. In a very real sense theories and models never die in continental discourse; the humanities it speaks to champion an append-only system of notes upon notes. And as such, unlike the sciences, it offers an inherently elitist system. It creates and fetishizes artificial economies of intellectual capital, forcing people to slog through an only ever growing canon without ever actually simplifying the actual points down again and restructuring appropriately. Great for the hipster academic who wants to treat social analysis like building a record collection — the bourgeois twentysomething trending bohemian and looking for opinions to champion at dinner parties where the glassware is mason jars. But while these traditions have come to strongly influence the playschool modes of activism as a personal phase and/or radicalism as currency for community-forming that characterize a lot of the modern left, they have had absolutely zero impact on the ground.

The reality is — the reality that Accelerationism and the rest of the spasming left are so obviously responding to — the people presently blazing the future are not continental academics and humanities majors at rich private liberal arts colleges. They’re anarchist hackers and direct actionists. Or scientists and engineers.

I suppose it’s cool and all that some folks within the continental tradition have completed a long arc back towards rationality and a rigorous “modernity”, but while y’all were away we were getting shit done. And I’m not sure y’all have much to contribute to that. Besides holding doors open to others trapped in the same discourse seeking to escape a sinking ship.

There’s a deep division between radicalism and the kind of endless network traversing and circles upon circles analysis that is frequently necessary to get a fragmentary lay of the land in discourses that waft on top of complex underlying dynamics. The latter can quickly grow cancerous, reflecting the sort of thing David Graeber has called out as a professional obsession with ‘interpretative depth’ rather than actual relevance.

Accelerationist theorists are often of a Marxist genealogy and so they borrow the Marxist tendency to talk in terms of sweeping macrostructures or other large-scale epiphenomena, refusing to tackle an underlying ethics. This is part of a broader annoying tendency to try to derive normative conclusions from ones intuitions in response to certain sweeping impressions rather then from any sort of foundational ethical orientation. Like so much of leftist/primitivist discourse they seem incapable of formulating any sort of ethical appeal that isn’t just setting up rather obvious intuition pumps. See for example the dominant mode of argumentation in the left today whereby a given thing is proven bad by being able to associate it in some nebulous manner with big bads like imperialism or sexism. How tenuous or irrelevant this connection is hardly matters. We have a vague bundle of impressions of “capitalism.” That bundle is bad. And thus anything we can pattern match to any aspect of that bundle is likewise bad.

Most of us can recognize how ludicrous this mode of argumentation is when hit in the face with it, but it still has an insidious appeal to those indoctrinated with a hostility to reductionism. Asking “what exactly are the specific problems at core with this huge array of things we’re calling capitalism?” is a sacrilegious act. Where more radical traditions want to break words apart into distinct and clear concepts, the continentals correctly surmise that kind of clarity would undermine the aristocratic game of much of the humanities.

And thus time and again this continental orientation leads — despite its proclamations of anti-essentialism — rather inexorably towards reactionary attempts to determine and embrace some kind of irreducible “human nature” or “human experience” that can’t truly be taken apart or reconfigured, and thus has no real latitude.

It’s no weird quirk that the continental philosopher Nick Land is both a founding figure of modern Right Accelerationism and of Neoreaction. It is precisely his continental roots that provide a foundation for such fascism. Forming a model of the world through a very sweepingly abstract and macroscopic analysis and embracing the first explanations or narratives that fall out rather than looking deeper for ways to reshape and change things is the very polar opposite of radicalism. Even in those moments where concrete language is adopted, the neoreactionary impulse has consistently been to make quick claims about what is and ignore all other possible explanations. Of course neoreactionaries as a whole come from many directions, some former transhumanists who recoiled from much of technology when they realized the inescapable liberatory conclusions of giving people more means, but Nick Land’s project is very much one still in the vein of the worst tendencies of continental philosophy. And we should not be surprised. Accelerationism as a term has a nihilist history, a context Land and in the process other accelerationist writers are consciously calling upon.

Nihilism, like God, unleashes mental stress by ultimately acting as a cognitive stop, a get-out-of-thinking-free excuse — to be desperately invoked rather than reflected on. And so it either inherits or forms arbitrary feedback loops to protect this state of brain death. In neoreactionaries this finds expression through their hunger for the quickest ways to provide models. Invoking cognitive science to ‘explain away’ rather than to radically probe. Everything can be quickly dismissed as signalling or ritual or IQ or race or whatever. Looking for dynamics only insofar as one can quickly create a taxonomies or just-so-stories to slap on things and impede any further examinations that might lead to competing hypotheses or radically new possibilities.

In contrast to this reactionism one might pose an actual, full-throated embrace on many levels of “deterritorialization” and “unleashed flows” — not as a nihilist position that gives up and accepts whatever drifts its way — but instead as a position of Full Vigilance. Such vigilance is ultimately the only solid thing in the conceptual or computational landscape — as a direction rather than a point. It is adamantly not an abyss. For vigilance to signify an endless nothingness one must adopt the nihilist position that all arguments or perspectives are equally mappable into one another once you cast off all arbitrary attachments. That there is no metastructure or universally unique points in the flows of meta-desire. Such a perfectly flat situation would of course be an astoundingly ordered one and thus an unlikely random topology, but the nihilists cling to this delusion of flatness or meaninglessness as an excuse to get out of vigilantly exploring any further. To just default on whatever instincts or impulses they’re currently prone to without much examination. Sometimes this leads to a bunch of burnouts collectively trying to hold onto the friendships and aesthetic trappings of their former anarchist life. Other times it leads to nerd neonazis talking about how whites and ‘alpha’ men will rule after the collapse of civilization. In either case the surrender is one of conceptual-localism — wandering in happenstance circles or sticking to a current position merely because you happen to reside there and deriding any world-traveling or diligent exploration as a waste. Both are caught in the pull of an increasingly irrational rejection of the universal, the cosmopolitan, the earnestly curious.

I bring up the worst mutations of Right Accelerationism because I am not convinced that Left Accelerationism can be separated from its darkside. I’m not sure that it can truly mark a break with the primitivism that practically defines today’s left without breaking with much of the baggage of the continental and Marxist tradition. And yet it’s also unclear what would even remain of Accelerationism without that baggage.

For example, the notion of “alienation” that is often so central in accelerationist texts is, frankly, so often a silly, detached and merely evocative impression. Everything is alienation; nothing is. A universe without alienation of any sort would be an empty and homogeneous universe, undifferentiated. Even if we go back to a supposedly more concrete traditional Marxist version, one is tempted to scream that neither the pre-capitalist artisan nor the capitalist factory worker should have necessarily chosen to psychologically identify with the products of their labor in the first place. And yet of course here too is “human nature” invoked.

I strongly suspect it’s impossible to define “alienation” concretely with any sort of substance while still bearing a resemblance to how the term is presently used. I’m far more aligned to the Xenofeminist Manifesto‘s relatively dismissive approach: “okay, we are alienated, but have we ever NOT been?” We have never really had much agency in our conditions, material or social. Homo sapiens, like all creatures, have always been forced to do stuff. And the saccharine tale of an ideal state lost is a reactionary one.

Yet if you held a gun to my head and demanded I conjure some definition for the word “alienation” I’d probably preserve its negative connotations. However I would argue that the currents of technological development and engagement at play within our society today are minimizing not accelerating alienation. And “natural conditions”, or the primitive homo sapiens hunter gatherer state — no matter how enmeshed with the surrounding environment — still represents an incredible degree of alienation. After all our neural networks are deeply imprisoned within our skulls. The default human form allows only the tiniest of pinholes of channels to interact with the broader universe. In such a picture the accelerating richness and complexity of our understanding and capacity to reconfigure ourselves or communicate with one another is anything but a deepening of alienation. Science and technology ultimately decrease alienation. Without technics or tools there would be no way to extend the depth, immediacy and rootedness to our engagement with the universe. Technology/language, for instance, expand the bandwidth and scope of our capacity to communicate with one another, a long slow climb whose summit might be cast as true electronic telepathy or mind-merging.

To even speak of such aspirations or dynamics would, of course, seem wildly out of place in Accelerationist discourse, which wants to maintain sufficient distance from transhumanism to avoid appearing earnest and uncool. And that’s basically the problem. There’s nothing new here, just a kind of whiny attempt at excusing a return to relevance that is at the end of the day more concerned with justifying and looking hip before one’s peers than actually returning to relevance.

Accelerationism is in short the same old antiquated Marxist and Continental garbage. A mixture of insular elitism and the very anti-intellectual currents of localism and immediacy inherent to those lenses they’re now claiming to break with.

My first read when Williams & Srnicek published the MAP was a very bemused “well obviously” at a number of points, tempered by an irritation at its lack of guts to go further. It’s a position still-born, almost certainly destined to die in a tiny corner of academia as a mildly interesting fad. And no flood of papers can give it life.

There is a widespread sense by many today that the future is “coming at us,” like a train to a tied up damsel. At its very best Left Accelerationism offers the hope that we might reverse the identification of inertia in this portrait and reinvigorate within people the notion that it is we who are accelerating at the future. At its worst, however, accelerationism presents either a kind of nihilist surrender or a vision of an authoritarian and elitist Left that might yet still survive through parasitism. Through latching onto rationality, technology, etc so as to keep fed a stultifying, sedentary space of “human life” — the subject of so much continental discourse, now built up like layer upon layer of hardened scum that its practitioners are loath to get started scrubbing it away and in doing so admit their failures.

The strands of leftism ready to abandon their marriage to primitivism will no doubt continue searching for a path forward. A course-correction capable of dragging them into the post-Turing era. I await that day. In the meantime, to misuse Nietzsche, the truth is that we still haven’t seen anything yet.

Many libertarians say the traditional Left/Right political spectrum has become meaningless and useless. But to the extent that this is true for them, this is only because they have allowed themselves to be befuddled by political fraud and, perhaps, by a weak background in political history. The spectrum is just as useful and meaningful as it always was, which is very. It is necessary only to clarify one’s thinking about the past century in American politics to see that this is so.

But let us begin at the beginning — with what the left/right spectrum meant when it was created during the French Revolution. Murray Rothbard has written that 18th Century “liberalism” was “the party of hope, of radicalism, of liberty, of the Industrial Revolution, of progress, of humanity; the other [party] was Conservatism, the party of reaction, the party that longed to restore the hierarchy, statism, theocracy, serfdom, and class exploitation of the old order.” And according to Will and Ariel Durant in their book The Age of Napoleon, it was in the French Legislative Assembly in the fall of 1791 that the terms Right and Left were first used in this political sense. As the Durants tell it, when the assembly convened, the “substantial minority dedicated to preserving the monarchy … occupied the right section of the hall, and thereby gave a name to conservatives everywhere.” The liberals, meanwhile, “sat at the left.”  Some fifty-odd years later, after another French Revolution (the one that took place in 1848) had unseated the last French king, Louis Philippe, the same seating arrangement was revived for the newly elected legislative assembly of the Second Republic. As has often been noted, two of the newly elected legislators who sat together on the left side of that assembly in 1848 and 1849 were the free market economist and publicist for free trade Frederic Bastiat and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first man ever to publicly declare himself an anarchist.

This conception of the Left/Right political spectrum also guided the political understanding of the 20th Century libertarian activist and writer Karl Hess, who wrote forty years ago that on “the far right […] we find monarchy, absolute dictatorships, and other forms of absolutely authoritarian rule,” while the Left “opposes the concentration of power and wealth and, instead, advocates and works toward the distribution of power into the maximum number of hands.” Just as the farthest right you can go is absolute dictatorship, Hess argued, so “[t]he farthest left you can go, historically at any rate, is anarchism — the total opposition to any institutionalized power, a state of completely voluntary social organization.”

Now, if we take this model of the Left/Right political spectrum and apply it to the politics of today, what follows from that? First, that all dictatorships, whether they are called communist or fascist, are on the Right. This is, of course, contrary to the doctrine set forth a few years ago in a ridiculous and unfortunately somewhat influential book called Liberal Fascism, in which the author, Jonah Goldberg, attempts to prove that fascist dictatorships like the one Adolf Hitler ran in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s were and are Left-wing dictatorships, because they were socialist and socialism is a Leftist phenomenon). In fact, exactly the opposite is the truth of the matter. Fascism and socialism are the same thing, but they are both products of Right-wing thinking. Socialism has never really been on the Left. The original socialists, in the early part of the 19th Century, were advocates of the ideas of Henri Saint-Simon, a former monarchist and thoroughgoing conservative, a Right-wing defender of the ancien regime who had decided that the industrial revolution and the end of monarchy in France had to be taken into account by those who wanted a big government to run everyone’s lives as the kings of old had done. In effect, they transferred their allegiance from the king to a hoped-for technocracy, which could engineer the perfect society by applying “scientific” ideas to the job (but only if it had unlimited power to do so).

Two brief quotations from Ayn Rand seem relevant here. “Fascism and communism,” she wrote, “are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory … both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state.” And, again Ayn Rand: “There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism — by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.” And fascism, socialism, and communism are, quite evidentally, all “forms of authoritarian rule,” to refer back to Karl Hess’s words. So all three belong on the Right side of the traditional Left/Right political spectrum. Adolf Hitler was a Right-winger. So was Joseph Stalin.

And so are today’s self-proclaimed “progressives.” As Richard Ebeling pointed out recently, these “progressives” are, ideologically speaking, “the grandchildren” of Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Imperial Germany in the last two decades of the 19th Century. As Ebeling writes, “Bismarck persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm to initiate a series of government programs and controls to gain political support of the ‘working class’ population that became the basis and inspiration for the modern Welfare State around the world.” As Bismarck himself put it, “My idea was to bribe the working class, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare. … Life insurance, accident insurance, sickness insurance … should be carried out by the state.”

Sound familiar? It should. For this is the song that has long been sung by both Republicans and Democrats. These two parties, widely and absurdly believed to represent Right and Left, respectively, in American politics, are in fact no more different from each other than are Lewis Carroll’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They differ only on which Bismarckian welfare state programs should be given the most money and on how much any given Bismarckian welfare state program should have its budget increased in any particular year. That all Bismarckian welfare state programs should enjoy annual budget increases is taken for granted by both Republicans and Democrats. Today’s America is really governed by a single conservative party with two wings: the Republicans and the Democrats; if we choose to vote for a major party candidate at all, we have no real choice but to elect someone who wants to expand government and reduce individual liberty, that is to say, a conservative, a Rightwinger. “Statism” is a synonym for conservatism.  Statism is the politics of the Right.

But if both Republicans and Democrats, both conservatives and modern “liberals,” as well as self-styled “progressives,” are on the Right, who is on the Left? The answer is: libertarians. Libertarians are almost the only true leftists left in this country. When I interviewed the longtime anarcho-communist Murray Bookchin for Reason magazine back in 1978, he made some comments on the Left/Right political spectrum that are well worth rehearsing today. “The American left today as I know it,” he told me, “is going toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism. It’s becoming the real right in the United States. We don’t have an appreciable American left any more in the United States.” Before our conversation was over, however, Bookchin acknowledged that there was, after all, an American Left worthy of mention. “People who resist authority,” he said, “[people] who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights — this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left, and I feel much closer, ideologically, to such individuals than I do to the totalitarian liberals and Marxist-Leninists of today.”

Bookchin was convinced, he told me, that Marxism was “the most sinister … form of totalitarianism. … I don’t think,” he said, “that the Soviet Union and China are accidents, aberrations; I think they follow from Marxism-Leninism. I think that Leninism comes out of Marx’s basic convictions.” Still, he said, “I believe in a libertarian communist society.”  On the other hand, Bookchin added quickly. “I believe that any attempt on the part of a libertarian communist society to abridge the rights of a community — for example, to operate on the basis of a market economy — would be unforgivable, and I would oppose the practices of such a society as militantly as I think any reader of your publication would. If [a libertarian communist society] assumed any totalitarian forms, any authoritarian forms whatever, I would oppose that.  And not only that: I would join your [free market] community in fighting it. … If socialism, which is what I call the authoritarian version of collectivism, were to emerge, I would join your community. I would migrate to your community and do everything I could to prevent the collectivists from abridging my right to function as I like. That should be made very clear.”

In other words, what Bookchin was calling for was voluntary communism.

Some libertarians are in the habit of saying, “We libertarians are neither Right nor Left; we are libertarians.” But no matter how emphatically they thump their chests while saying this, they’re wrong. They have allowed themselves to be deceived and misled by a political confidence game foisted on the American electorate beginning in the 1930s, when an opportunistic demagogue named Franklin Delano Roosevelt began passing off as the newest kind of “liberalism” a package of homilies and government programs that had traditionally been presented to the American public by the Republican Party, the party of big business, the party that was in favor of capitalism but opposed to the free market. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” consisted mainly of government programs introduced by his Republican predecessor, Herbert Hoover, laced with a generous dose of the bribery of the electorate first popularized by Otto von Bismarck. Some will object that conservatives have historically been for individual liberty and free markets, but this view is uninformed and ahistorical. The Republicans who opposed the New Deal opposed it mostly because they weren’t running it themselves; they took their libertarian rhetoric from true liberals, the classical liberals who are labeled “the Old Right” today by the historically confused. These people, many of them publicists like H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, and Isabel Patterson, had joined the Republicans after being forced out of the Democratic party, apparently in the belief that only by doing so could they oppose FDR’s policies. The party adopted their rhetoric, but they employ it only to dupe that subset of the electorate that cares about such things; then, once in power, they do as FDR did, the precise opposite of what they claimed to believe in.

Many of the same libertarians who say the traditional Left/Right political spectrum is now meaningless and useless also say that, beginning in the 1930s (or, according to some, beginning around the turn of the 20th Century), the terms Left and Right changed their meaning. But in fact they did not. What happened is that popular usage of these terms changed, as more and more citizens with less and less education decided to follow the lead of confidence men in public office.

As it happens, while I was beginning work on this podcast episode a few days ago, I was reading the American philosopher Susanne Langer’s three-volume work, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, her swansong, an altogether remarkable discourse on problems in theoretical psychology and what you might call speculative anthropology. And in its pages, I ran across Langer’s remark that “popular usage … commonly confuses and degrades the real sense of words.” Yes, yes, I understand that popular usage ultimately determines the correct meanings of words. At the same time, however, there are numerous words whose popular usage is so confused and degraded that serious students and teachers of the disciplines in which those words need to be used have specified more precise meanings for them in their professional work. “Anarchy” is one of those words. “Capitalism” is another. “Selfishness” is a third. My advice to serious students of and writers on fields like political theory, economics, and ethics is to do just that — be precise with the meanings you attach to the words Right and Left as they apply to political theory. Follow the guidance of the traditional Left/Right political spectrum. Abjure the foolish attempts of people like Noah Goldberg to make sense of a modernized spectrum that puts Barack Obama and Rand Paul at opposite ends, with totalitarian communists and anarchists (who are nothing but fully consistent libertarians) to the left of Obama and with both Adolf Hitler and Gary Johnson to the right of Rand Paul. Clarify your thinking about this spectrum.

Just the other day, a libertarian wrote on Facebook that he couldn’t imagine what a Left libertarian would be since the left favors big government so the concept of a Left libertarian is a contradiction in terms. This is what the confusion and degradation that come with popular usage of ill-understood words leads to. Be clear in your own mind, at least, about what Left and Right actually refer to. Understand that we libertarians (along with those ancoms who favor a purely voluntary collectivist society) are the Left in the America of the early 21st Century. It is not the concept of a Left libertarian that is a contradiction in terms; it is the concept of a Right libertarian that is a contradiction in terms, that is logically incoherent, that is, in fact, laughable on its face.

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One proposal that periodically resurfaces in debates on managing endangered species is so-called “privatization.” Predictably, it has emerged once again in the context of Cecil the Lion’s death at the hands of a rich safari-hunting dentist. Of course proposals for “privatization” generally come from the Right, and what they mean by it is reorganizing some function on a for-profit business model under the control of a commercial firm. A case in point is James Kirkup’s article at (naturally) the Telegraph: “The real scandal of killing Cecil the lion: the price” (July 29).

There are all kinds of problems with such a model (more on this below).  But there’s a great deal to be said for the general approach of defining property rights in natural resources. Note:  By “property” I simply mean a set of rules governing access to a scarce goods, not “Property” in the sense of Proudhon’s “Property is theft.”

Chris Dillow, a Marxist who writes at Stumbling and Mumbling blog, points out that there’s a rich variety of available alternatives for allocating such access rights (“Creating markets,” July 31). They include not only the two alternatives usually discussed in stereotypical “debates” on wildlife management — state ownership and ownership by capitalist corporations — but the kinds of commons-based management the late Elinor Ostrom discussed in her work on the governance of common-pool resources.

A major consideration in deciding between such rule-sets, Dillow continues, is that they all to some varying degree carry transaction costs of enforcing the interests of the owners against their subordinates. Clearly the enforcement of game laws carries a cost under state ownership of wildlife reserves, as Kirkup notes. Regardless of laws aimed at protecting endangered species, he says, the demand from people who like killing exotic animals is “something the world will always attempt to satisfy.” Right now it’s satisfied “often clandestinely, by park rangers and others generally paid a pittance to watch over rare animals, who accept bribes from hunters. In other cases those rangers are simply outgunned by commercial poachers who can earn vast sums bagging rare creatures for others.” Either way, “our current system… is not working.”

He’s right about that. Other than market pricing of the right to kill lions, though, he’s quite vague about how his system would work. What would prevent park rangers from clandestinely giving would-be hunters access to lions like Cecil at less than the new higher price, or to more lions than the sustainable yield of a wildlife park, under whatever ownership regime — government or corporate — Kirkup prefers? He doesn’t even give a hand-wave by way of answer.

New Institutionalist economists like Oliver Williamson tell us that the best way to minimize transaction costs is to vest ownership and control in the owners of the factor which is most difficult to police. I would argue that this is usually the workers directly engaged in production. Their superior direct knowledge of the production process — “local” or “distributed” knowledge, as Friedrich Hayek called it — gives them an advantage over those who attempt to manage them. This is why corporate management in the 20th century put so much effort into developing “scientific management” techniques to deskill workers and make the production process transparent. And it’s why deliberately withholding the benefit of workers’ direct knowledge of the production process, by working-to-rule, is such a brilliant strategy for sabotaging production.

Generally speaking, the further removed the nominal owners of an institution are removed both from the physical location of what they’re managing and involvement in the process itself, the more difficult the institution will be to manage. In the case of absentee management by a corporation or a government agency, the people in the central office will always know less about what’s going on than those in direct contact with the situation.

In the case of wildlife preserves, the obvious implication is that they should be managed as common pool resources, like the common pastures of medieval European villages and many other similar institutions around the world surveyed by Ostrom. Hunting, strictly limited to sustainable yield, and for a high price — as Kirkup suggests — might be part of the rules. Or as more people find trophy hunting morally abhorrent — as I do — perhaps ecotourism is a viable source of revenue for the local population.

The best way to ensure a ranger won’t clandestinely give a millionaire dentist access to a lion for a bribe is to make sure all the rangers are local villagers with vested economic rights in preventing hunting beyond the long-term sustainable yield of the preserve. And even when a crooked ranger decides that a bribe is worth more than their shared rights in the common, the most effective way to stop it is policing by their neighbors and fellow owners of the common, who all have a shared interest in preventing depletion. The same principle operates in the plywood cooperatives of the American Pacific Northwest, which require only about a quarter of the front-line supervisors of capitalist-owned enterprise because — unlike a capitalist enterprise where all the benefits of efficiency go to management in the form of bonuses — workers all have a common interest in preventing slacking and inferior work.

Hierarchy — authority — always creates conflicts of interest. Hierarchies were created in the first place to make it easier for those at the top to extract more labor from those at the bottom, and keep the surplus for themselves. So long as ownership and control of natural resources in a region is vested in authorities separate from those who live there, who have no interests in common with those who live alongside the resources, our management of the natural world will be characterized by looting and depletion. Anarchy is the mother of order.

On July 31st, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large Animal Trophies Act (CECIL), crudely named after the slain lion whose death, at the hands of a Dallas dentist, sparked great outcry. The Act seeks to place further restrictions on the import and export of endangered wildlife or the remains thereof in hopes of discouraging senseless trophy-hunting.

One wonders how enforceable such an act would be given that wealthy trophy-hunters will likely always be able to find ways to smuggle their bounties back into the country. A strong case can be made that such laws are increasingly unnecessary in our current internet age. The negative publicity surrounding Cecil’s death greatly harmed his killer’s business and forced him to apologize.

In a similar scenario, the McKinney, Texas cop who assaulted teenage party-goers was forced to resign when a video of his actions surfaced online. This is part of a larger trend of increased awareness of abuses by the police due to the ease of video documentation and online information sharing.

Additionally, there is the Centerplate CEO who was forced to resign after a video of him kicking a dog went viral. Other business have lost customers due to the publicizing of their discrimination against homosexuals, although sympathies have often reversed when the state stepped in to further punish the individuals in question.

All this shows that bad publicity, in and of itself, can penalize bad behavior, without the counterproductive arbitrariness of government action. Government regulations allow their targets to present themselves as victims of unfair persecution. Non-state retribution in the form of bad publicity allows people to voluntarily withhold business without the use of force. This is not to say that the internet does not also allow for those who wish to reward bad behavior to do so as well, which has happened in a few isolated cases. But the overall trend is that Americans are becoming less accepting of homophobia, cruelty towards animals, and abuses by police. Such actions are now far more likely than ever to hurt one’s financial future and social well being. This will only become more true as the spread of information becomes even faster. The voluntary desktop regulatory apparatus will only become more important, as market forces push businesses to maintain positive online reputations.

True, there is occassionally a negative side to online justice. Tragically, many users lack the maturity to understand that death or rape threats, as well as the disclosure of others’ personal information, are neither humane forms of punishment nor are they likely to win others over. As the public becomes increasingly aware of such “negative online justice,” websites will be under increased pressure to curtail it, as Facebook and YouTube do with reported offensive content. We are still learning to protect ourselves from harmful online behavior, and how to teach others not to engage in it. This is part of the learning curve necessary to adapt to a new world where information flows freely. While such a world may be experiencing some growing pains, the proven ability of accelerated information-sharing to reward good and punish evil should make it a welcome development.

Murray Rothbard rejeitou fortemente essa tentativa marshalliana de sintetizar as inovações marginalistas com o legado de David Ricardo. Com isso, rejeitava a tentativa de sintetizar o trabalho e a espera como elementos do “custo real”. Para entender por quê, devemos começar com a distinção de Rothbard entre a avaliação de ações ex ante e ex post. Ao julgá-las ex ante, o agente determina qual curso de ação futuro provavelmente maximizará sua utilidade. Um julgamento ex post, por outro lado, é uma avaliação dos resultados de ações passadas. Rothbard negava que os “custos irrecuperáveis” poderiam conferir valor: “custos incorridos no passado não podem conferir qualquer valor (…) presente“. [88] “É evidente que (…) tendo sido feito o produto, o ‘custo’ não tem qualquer influência sobre seu preço. Custos passados, efêmeros, são irrelevantes para a determinação presente dos preços.” [89]

Contra a doutrina da economia política clássica de que o “custo determina o preço“, que “deveria ser a lei da determinação dos preços ‘no longo prazo'”, ele argumentava que “a verdade é o exato contrário”:

O preço do produto final é determinado pelas avaliações e demandas dos consumidores e esse preço determina qual será o custo. A remuneração aos fatores de produção resulta das vendas ao consumidor e não os determina por antecipação. Os custos de produção, portanto, estão à mercê do preço final e não o contrário. [90]

De fato, uma doutrina revolucionária! Em uma análise mais cuidadosa, contudo, não parece ser tão revolucionária assim. O Marshall e o Ricardo a quem Rothbard se opunha tão dramaticamente não passavam de caricaturas. Suas formulações do princípio do custo não era tão grosseiramente metafísica quanto a afirmação de que “o preço do produto final é determinado pelos ‘custos de produção'” [91] (Rothbard foi, porém, mais caridoso do que Böhm-Bawerk, que se sentiu impelido a negar que havia poder “em qualquer elemento da produção para conferir valor imediatamente ou necessariamente ao seu produto” [92])

É preciso admitir, também, que Rothbard tentou ser um pouco justo, fazendo uma descrição um pouco menos cartunesca das “tesouras” marshallianas:

Marshall tentou reabilitar a teoria do custo de produção dos clássicos pela concessão de que, no “curto prazo”, no mercado presente, a demanda dos consumidores controla o preço. No longo prazo, porém, entre bens reprodutíveis importantes, o custo de produção é determinante. De acordo com Marshall, tanto a utilidade quanto os custos monetários determina o preço, como lâminas de uma tesoura, onde uma lâmina é mais importante no curto prazo e a outra no longo prazo.

Contudo, Rothbard imediatamente começou a destruir a doutrina de Marshall — ou melhor, uma caricatura dela. Em seu espantalho de Marshall, em uma interpretação moderna dos realistas escolásticos da Idade Média, o “longo prazo” era um fenômeno com existência concreta:

A análise Marshall sofre de um defeito metodológico grave — de fato, de quase todas as confusões metodológicas em relação ao “curto prazo” e ao “longo prazo”. Ele considera que o “longo prazo” é algo que de fato existe, como o elemento permanente, persistente e observável sob o variável e essencialmente desimportante fluxo do valor de mercado. (…)

A concepção de Marshall acerca do longo prazo é completamente falaciosa e elimina toda a base de sua estrutura teórica. O longo prazo, por sua própria natureza, jamais existe e jamais pode existir.

Para analisar as forças determinantes em um mundo em mudança, [o economista] deve construir um mundo hipotético de não-mudança [i.e., a economia em rotação uniforme]. Isso é muito diferente de (…) afirmar que o longo prazo existe ou que ele é, de alguma maneira, mais permanente ou existente que os dados reais do mercado (…). O fato de que o custo se iguala ao preço no “longo prazo” não significa que os custos de fato se igualarão aos preços, mas que a tendência existe e que ela é continuamente perturbada na realidade pelas variações dos dados de mercado apontados por Marshall. [93]

(Nós já vimos, por sinal, que o longo prazo de Marshall não é equivalente ao mundo estacionário hipotético dos austríacos, da economia em rotação uniforme, mas ao “equilíbrio final” austríaco, ao qual a economia tende, mas nunca atinge.)

Compare a versão de Marshall descrita por Rothbard ao que o próprio Marshall disse, como já o citamos anteriormente:

Na vida real, contudo, essas oscilações raramente são tão rítmicas quanto as de uma pedra pendurada livremente a uma corda; a comparação seria mais precisa se a corda estivesse posicionada sobre um córrego cujas correntes pudessem fluir livremente a um dado momento e fossem parcialmente cortadas no seguinte. (…) Pois, de fato, a demanda e a oferta não permanecem inertes por muito tempo juntas, mas estão em mudança constante e todas as suas mudanças alteram a quantidade de equilíbrio e o preço de equilíbrio, dando novas posições aos centros em torno dos quais a quantidade e o preço tendem a oscilar. [94]

Há uma tendência constante em direção a uma posição de equilíbrio normal, no qual a oferta de cada um desses agentes [i.e., fatores de produção] estará posicionada em relação à demanda por seus serviços de forma a prover o ofertante uma recompensa suficiente por seus esforços e sacrifícios. Se as condições econômicas do país permanecessem imóveis durante tempo suficiente, essa tendência se realizaria em um ajuste da oferta à demanda em que tanto máquinas quanto seres humanos seriam remunerados de acordo com o seu custo de manutenção e treinamento. (…) Na realidade, as condições econômicas do país estão em constante mudança e o ponto de ajuste da oferta e da demanda normais em relação ao trabalho é constantemente deslocado. [95]

Mais importante do que o desvio da maioria dos preços de seu valor normal a um dado momento é o fato de que eles tendem a esse valor ao longo do tempo se não forem perturbados por privilégios monopolísticos. Como Schumpeter escreveu, embora haja sempre uma taxa média positiva de lucros “é suficiente que (…) o lucro de cada fábrica individualmente seja incessantemente ameaçado pela competição real ou potencial de novas mercadorias ou métodos de produção que, cedo ou tarde, o transformam em prejuízo”. A trajetória do preço de qualquer bem de capital ou de consumo, sob a influência da competição, será em direção ao custo: “pois nenhuma combinação de bens de capital permanece como fonte de ganhos excedentes para sempre”. [96] Ou, nas palavras de Tucker, “a competição [é] o maior nivelador dos preços ao custo do trabalho de produzir”. [97]

Ignorando por ora as caricaturas de Rothbard sobre as opiniões de Marshall (i.e., sua suposta opinião de que o longo prazo de fato existe, da mesma forma que um modelo estático como a economia em rotação uniforme), nós vemos que Marshall de fato afirmou algo bastante parecido com o que Rothbard disse: o preço dos bens reprodutíveis tende ao custo de produção. O preço de equilíbrio e o “longo prazo”, como “equilíbrio final” austríaco, não são vistos como termos conceitualmente realistas, enquanto coisas de fato existentes. Ao contrário, são construções teóricas que tornam os fenômenos do mundo real mais compreensíveis. A pose austríaca de ceticismo radical quando é ideologicamente conveniente efetivamente pria os economistas da capacidade de fazer generalizações úteis sobre as regularidades observáveis dos fenômenos no mundo real.

O problema com a crítica de Rothbard a Marshall é que ela poderia ser aplicável com igual justiça ao próprio Rothbard. Por exemplo, Rothbard admitiu que o custo de produção pode ter um efeito indireto sobre o preço, através de seu efeito sobre a oferta. Em sua discussão sobre a distinção entre julgamentos ex ante e ex post que citamos acima, ele também afirmava que é “claro que os julgamentos ex post [do agente] são úteis para ele principalmente na avaliação de suas considerações ex ante para ações futuras”. [98] E logo depois da afirmação citada acima de que “o custo não tem qualquer influência sobre o preço do produto”, ele continuava:

Que os custos tenham uma influência sobre a produção não é algo negado por ninguém. Contudo, a influência não se dá diretamente sobre o preço, mas sobre a quantidade produzida ou, mais especificamente, sobre o grau ao qual os fatores de produção serão usados (…). A posição dos custos nas escalas de valores individuais, portanto, é um dos determinantes da quantidade, do estoque, que será produzido. Esse estoque, evidentemente, desempenha um papel mais tarde na determinação dos preços de mercado. Isso, porém, é muito diferente de afirmar que o custo determina ou que age em coordenação com a utilidade na determinação do preço. [99]

Foi quase exatamente assim, porém, que o próprio Marshall explicou o funcionamento do princípio do custo, exaustivamente, em sua discussão da crítica de Jevons a Ricardo, no apêndice I de seu Principles of Economics. De fato, pode-se encontrar muitas passagens nesse livro nas quais Marshall descreve a influência do custo sobre o preço através da oferta, em termos quase idênticos aos usados por Rothbard acima. Marshall não alegava que o preço de um bem presente específico era misticamente “determinado” pelo seu custo de produção passado. Ele alegava que os preços, ao longo do tempo, tendiam ao custo de produção através das decisões dos produtores devido às decisões dos produtores sobre se os preços de mercado justificam a produção futura.

E os austríacos anexaram algumas concessões às suas afirmações mais radicais de que a utilidade determina o valor e que o preço final determina o custo de produção. Böhm-Bawerk, em seu The Positive Theory of Capital, escreveu que o valor era determinado pela “importância do desejo concreto (…) que é menos urgente entre os desejos atendidos pelos estoques disponíveis de bens similares” (ênfase nossa). [100] Rothbard escreveu que “[o] o preço de um bem é determinado por seu estoque total em existência e por sua demanda no mercado” (ênfase nossa). [101] Da mesma forma: “No mundo real dos preços de mercado imediatos, é óbvio que os preços são somente determinados por valorações do estoque — pelas ‘utilidades’ — e não pelo custo monetário (…). [A] maioria dos economistas reconhece que, no mundo real (no chamado curto prazo), os custos não são capazes de determinar o preço (…)” (ênfase nossa). [102] Isso é muito parecido, na prática, com o entendimento de Marshall sobre a predominância da lâmina da utilidade da tesoura no “curto prazo”. A diferença, como observamos acima, é que Rothbard denunciava a própria ideia de um longo prazo como se fosse absurda.

As qualificações de Rothbard a respeito do princípio da utilidade sugerem uma fraqueza na teoria subjetiva do valor à qual nós recorrentemente apontamos nas seções anteriores: ele só pode ser interpretado literalmente se ignorarmos o aspecto dinâmico da oferta, tratando o equilíbrio entre a demanda e os estoques existentes a qualquer momento sem se preocupar com o fator tempo.

Isso vale tanto para a teoria do valor utilidade austríaca, que presume estoques fixos no momento da troca, quanto para a sua teoria de imputação dos preços dos fatores de produção, que também presume um estoque fixo de bens de ordem mais alta. Como Dobb os criticava:

Se a situação for tratada em termos de bens de capital concretos (ignorando o genus do “capital” como um fator supostamente escasso), então, se os bens são reprodutíveis, não há qualquer razão para a existência de uma taxa de lucro positiva em condições estritamente estáticas. Se todos os inputs além do trabalho são produzidos, de onde surge a “escassez” específica que dá origem ao lucro? Se as premissas de um equilíbrio totalmente estático forem adotadas coerentemente, então a produção no setor de bens de capital da economia tenderá a aumentar até que a produção de bens esteja adaptada à necessidade deles (…). Com a oferta integralmente adaptada à demanda para propósitos de substituição, não há qualquer espaço para que os preços estejam acima dos custos de substituição (ou depreciação). [103]

Dobb também criticava a premissa austríaca de que há “ofertas dadas de vários fatores, com a consequente determinação de todos os preços através da demanda”. [104] Mais tarde, no mesmo trabalho, Dobb observava quão artificiais pareciam as teorias baseadas inteiramente no equilíbrio de curto prazo da oferta e da demanda:

[Para] fazer tais afirmações, vários fatores devem ser tomados como dados (como — para citar um caso extremo — em todas as afirmações sobre situações de “curto período” ou “semi-curto período” marshalliano): os dados são variáveis dependentes em um níveis mais profundo de análise. (…)

Uma maneira de ilustrar o que se pretende dizer quando falamos de contextos nos quais relações de troca determinadas pela demanda são aplicáveis podem ser os seguintes. Podemos supor que todos os insumos produtivos sejam objetos naturais disponíveis a qualquer dado momento em determinadas quantidades naturais [e.g., os meteoritos de Marshall] (…). Nesse caso, evidentemente, o processo de produção, como considerado normalmente (…), não existiria (…).

Pelo contrário, se a atividade humana desempenhar um grande papel no processo produtivo e insumos reprodutíveis substituírem objetos naturais escassos, a essência do problema econômico se torna diferente. (…)

Porém, se uma maneira formal de determinação em termos de relações de escassez (…) puder ser construída e puder passar alguma informação em uma situação de meios ou insumos naturalmente determinados, por que isso não pode ocorrer também em situações análogas onde quaisquer conjuntos de n meios ou insumos, embora não dependentes de limitações naturais, sejam necessariamente determinados em suas ofertas de alguma maneira? (…) De fato, isso é possível, mas (…) sujeito à condição restritiva de que o conjunto de n meios ou insumos seja dado. Essa é uma grande restrição. Ela exclui de qualquer consideração as situações em que essas ofertas provavelmente mudariam (i.e. mudariam como efeito “resposta” sobre seus preços) e uma análise dessa natureza não pode nos informar por que e como essas mudanças ocorrem e quais são seus efeitos — por esse motivo nos referimos às situações a que essa teoria se aplica como “situações de semi-curto período”. [105]

Em Political Economy and Capitalism, Dobb criticava de maneira parecida a premissa austríaca de que, “dado um conjunto de condições, a oferta dos fatores produtivos últimos é fixa”. [106] Ele qualificava sua afirmação em uma nota de rodapé, acrescentando que, “[estritamente] falando, os austríacos não presumiram, precisaram presumir, que a oferta dos fatores básicos de produção era imutável, mas meramente que a quantidade deles era determinada por condições externas ao mercado, podendo assim ser tratada como independente”. [107] No entanto, o efeito prático era de que, “[sendo] limitadas por uma escassez (momentaneamente) inalterável, esses fatores, como qualquer outra mercadoria, teriam um preço igual ao serviço marginal que pudessem desempenhar na produção: esses preços formam os elementos constituintes do custo”. [108] Isso requeria a deliberada separação da “teoria do valor” dos fatores de produção de seus custos ou de quaisquer “características que afetam a oferta”. [109]

Adicionalmente, a teoria austríaca de precificação dos fatores de produção é, em certo sentido, uma elaborada tentativa de fugir da questão central. A afirmação de que os fatores são precificados de acordo com sua produtividade marginal é apenas outra maneira de dizer que o preço se baseia na capitalização dos lucros e rendas esperados. Porém, a proporção de lucros e rendas são exatamente os pontos de disputa entre as versões austríaca e mutualista do livre mercado.

Como James Buchanan observava, a teoria subjetiva era uma forma de aplicar a teoria do valor clássica a bens cuja oferta era fixa para todos os bens, reprodutíveis ou não.

O desenvolvimento de uma teoria geral das trocas se tornou uma preocupação central. A análise clássica foi rejeitada porque continha dois modelos separados: um para bens reprodutíveis, outro para bens cuja oferta era fixa. A solução era avançar a generalidade do modelo simples de valor de troca que os autores clássicos reservavam para a segunda categoria. O valor de troca é, em todos os casos, afirmavam os teóricos marginalistas, determinados pela utilidade marginal, pela demanda. No momento da troca no mercado, todas as ofertas são fixas. Assim, os valores ou preços relativos são estipulados exclusivamente pelas utilidades marginais relativas. [110]

Marshall acreditava, por sinal, que o custo de produção influenciava a demanda, mesmo no curto prazo, através das expectativas futuras dos compradores de mudanças em preço com o aumento da produção. Para um caso similar dos efeitos das espectativas sobre o preço da demanda, não precisamos ir mais longe do que os bens eletrônicos. Quantas pessoas já adiaram a compra de um DVD player na expectativa de que eles passassem a ser mais baratos em um ou dois anos?

Para os austríacos, por definição, “valor” é idêntico ao preço de mercado a qualquer dado momento. O “preço futuro” de fato está sujeito a mudanças, através das reações dos produtores ao preço presente; porém, introduzir um “preço de equilíbrio” como conceito útil ou afirmar que existe uma relação entre o preço de equilíbrio e o custo é anátema. Construtos teóricos são ótimos e válidos — somente para austríacos.

A doutrina austríaca de que a utilidade determina o preço, se interpretada literalmente, é um total absurdo. A doutrina é verdadeira somente com suas qualificações complementares: que o valor é determinado sem consideração pelo longo prazo, mas somente pelos estoques de ofertas em relação à demanda do mecado a qualquer dado momento. Essas qualificações, combinadas com a admissão de Rothbard de que o custo de produção indiretamente afeta o preço através de seus efeitos sobre a oferta, levam a essência da teoria de Rothbard para muito perto da de Marshall.

A caricatura de Marshall feita por Rothbard tem paralelo com o espantalho da economia política clássica que Jevons se congratulava por ter desmantelado há mais de um século. A análise de Marshall da crítica de Jevons a Ricardo, que vimos anteriormente, poderia ser voltada a Rothbard com efeitos similares: se considerarmos as teorias de Marshall em vez da paródia rothbardiana, fica aparente que as duas são muito mais próximas em substância do que Rothbard admitiria. Contudo, se considerarmos as teorias tanto de Marshall quanto de Rothbard como descritas por seus oponentes — como a simples assertiva de que o custo “determina” o preço ou de que a utilidade “determina” o preço –, a verdade estará muito mais próxima da primeira do que da segunda.

Ao levarmos em consideração as mudanças na oferta em resposta a mudanças da demanda, terminamos com um modelo no qual a oferta de bens se ajusta à demanda até que o preço marginal se iguala ao custo marginal e onde a oferta de fatores de produção, quando elástica, aumenta até que os preços dos fatores reflitam o custo de provê-los. Em outras palavras, exatamente aquilo que Ricardo e o resto da escola clássica afirmavam.

As doutrinas subjetivas da utilidade e da imputação de preços, como vimos, são verdadeiras até certo ponto, mas dependem de interpretações fora do comum de suas premissas e de qualificações a seus conceitos que as tornam irrelevantes aos problemas tradicionais da economia política. Talvez seja esse mesmo o intuito.

Referências:

88. Rothbard, Murray. Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles. Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1962, p. 239.
89. Idem, p. 292.
90. Idem, pp. 302-303.
91. Idem, p. 304.
92. Böhm-Bawerk. Eugen von. Capital and Interest. New York City, NY: McMillan, 1890, p. 140.
93. Rothbard, Murray. 1962, p. 305.
94. Alfred Marshall. Principles of Economics: An Introductory Volume. 8ª ed. Nova York: The MacMillan Company, 1948, pp. 346-347.
95. Idem, p. 577.
96. Schumpeter, Joseph. Ten Great Economists From Marx to Keynes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 40-41.
97. Tucker, Benjamin. “Does Competition Mean War?” in: Instead of a Book, by a Man too Busy to Write One. Boston, MA: Adamant Media, 2000, p. 405.
98. Rothbard, Murray. 1962,
99. Idem, p. 292.
100. Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von. The Positive Theory of Capital. New York City, NY: G.E. Stechert, 1930, p. 148.
101. Murray Rothbard. Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and Mcmeel, Inc., 1970, 1977) 88-9.
102. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State 303.
103. Dobb, Maurice. Theories of Value and Distribution. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1973, pp. 205-206.
104. Idem, p. 114.
105. Idem, pp. 179-182.
106. Dobb, Maurice. Political Economy and Capitalism: Some Essays in Economic Tradition. Londres: Routledge and Sons, p. 160.
107. Idem, p. 160.
108. Idem, p. 160.
109. Idem, p. 140.
110. Buchanan, James. Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory. Collected Works, vol. 6. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999, p. 9.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Toward a New Lexicon of Liberty” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford.

Libertarianism is viewed in the mainstream political conversation as the ideology of capitalism, of corporate greed and a toxic expression of globalization, McDonalds, Nike, and all the rest nodding along to rote libertarian defenses of sweatshops, phony and politically-corrupted “privatization,” and free trade agreements that include stringent intellectual property provisions. It’s really no wonder that people who care generally about fairness and about helping the poor and less fortunate avoid libertarianism at all costs, despite the fact that we libertarians actually have very good explanations for economic injustices and the realities of concentrated wealth.

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Bernie Sanders thinks open borders are a “right-wing proposal” that “would make everyone in America poorer.” Sanders’s comments not only display a shocking ignorance of the economics of immigration, but also a disappointing, racist, xenophobic tendency among the mainstream left.

While Sanders also thinks we have a “moral responsibility” to “work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty,” he apparently doesn’t believe this extends to a duty not to lock the global poor out of the industrialized world. How can we fulfill our moral obligations to the global poor if we continually fence them out of the developed world and leave them to stagnate in their own underdeveloped, unfree nations?

If we have a moral obligation to aid impoverished people around the world, the least we can do is to tear down the walls that lock them in poverty. Allowing for the free movement of people between nations would provide foreigners the opportunity to escape the poverty of their native countries and climb the socio-economic ladder. If Sanders wishes to really tackle the problem of international poverty, then he should be an adamant supporter of open borders. as According to Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Studies, open borders would double world GDP.

When individuals are free to move and travel without asking permission from government bureaucrats, they are capable of crafting meaningful lives and communities that enable everyone to advance their well-being on their own terms. When nation states, voters plagued by anti-foreign bias, and corporate-bought politicians forcibly restrain the free movement of individuals and their families, poverty becomes institutionalized along arbitrary geo-political boundaries.

Sanders’s implicit nativism is perhaps more dangerous than his economic ignorance. His primary concern is the welfare of Americans, and if they suffer the least bit, he’s justified in violating the rights of foreigners and keeping them poor so Americans can prosper. Of course, Sanders is wrong that open borders would make Americans poorer.

But what if easing immigration restrictions actually did make Americans worse off? Would that justify building fences to keep competing workers out? Would it justify violating the right of foreign-born humans to travel as they wish? For Senator Sanders, it clearly would, because for him and other nationalists, American lives are simply more valuable than other lives.

While Sanders seems interested in alleviating poverty, his anti-immigration sentiments prove he really only cares about alleviating American poverty. If you are a poor child in the United States, then you deserve government provided healthcare. If you are a poor child in Mexico, you not only don’t deserve subsidized healthcare, you ought to be locked in your impoverished country condemned to live a miserable life. Sanders lets the random, arbitrary location of one’s birth influence how much dignity and respect one deserves as a human being. And this person is considered a leftist in America?

Perhaps the standard American political landscape should be revised when a self-identified democratic socialist shares the same nativist views of someone on the extreme right.

The sorry state of the mainstream left that embraces bad economics and closed borders (as a cover for xenophobia and anti-foreign bias) is a sign that we need a truly radical left. Without one, we’ll never transcend the downright cruelty that the political game rewards. A radical left that understands the solution to low wages and worker exploitation is to strike down monopolies, rather than create new, bigger ones. A radical left that recognizes the evils of state control and closed borders. A radical left that sees the potential for a liberated world embracing the free movement of goods, ideas, and people. Of course, consistent moral individualism and good economics can only be found on the libertarian left.

The Labor Theory of Value:
A Critique of Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
By Robert P. Murphy [1]

Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2004) is an impressive work. It first attempts to rehabilitate the classical labor theory of value (by giving it a subjectivist spin), and then traces the history of capitalism to show that it was founded by, and necessarily relies upon, State aggression. Carson finally ends by sketching his vision of a just world based on the principles of “mutualism,” in which labor retains its product and every actor internalizes the full costs of his or her decisions.

In the bulk of my article I shall have few kind things to say about Carson’s analysis. Specifically, I will argue that his rebuttals to Böhm-Bawerk’s famous critique of the labor theory of value, as well as Carson’s attempted rehabilitation of the theory along subjectivist lines, utterly fail. Because of this, I wish to state upfront that Carson is a serious scholar; his views should not be dismissed as those of a leftist crank. Even as one who teaches two separate semesters in the history of economic thought, I learned a great deal from Carson’s discussion of the classical economists. More important, I had never really considered the origins of the present distribution of property titles, and Carson makes a strong case that the typical libertarian defense of the modern employer/employee relationship may be quite naïve due to ignorance of the historical development of capitalism.

These matters, however, lie outside the scope of the present article. What I intend here is to restate the case for the superiority of the marginal, subjective theory versus the labor (or more generally, cost) theory of value, and to show why Carson’s modern labor theory (which is quite distinct from that of Marx) is just as unsatisfactory as its predecessor.

Economic Theories of Value

Before proceeding, we should be clear on what an economic theory of value is supposed to do: Its task is simply to explain the exchange value of particular goods and services. That is, an economic theory of value must explain why someone selling good X can receive x berries in exchange for it, whereas someone selling good Y will only find someone willing to give up y berries in exchange for his good (where y < x). [2]

In the context of a money economy, of course, an economic theory of value must explain the money prices of various goods and services. In this sense, an economic theory of value is really just a theory of price formation. However, any satisfactory theory must be relevant even in a world of purely direct exchange, and (in principle) should be able to explain the exchange ratios prevailing between any two types of goods, regardless of whether one of them is a money commodity. [3]

The Classical Cost (Labor) Theory of Value

The classical economists (by which I mean writers such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill, but also Fréderic Bastiat) adhered to some version of the cost theory of value, and in particular a labor theory of value. Although each writer differed in minor details and points of emphasis, at this level of generality we can take a cost theory of value to state the following: A good’s “natural” (or long-run) price is equal to its total cost [4] of production. Similarly, a labor theory of value claims that a good’s natural price is proportional to the total quantity of labor required to produce it. [5]

At first glance, it would seem as if these two theories were incompatible, and yet one can find numerous passages from a given classical economist in which he seems to support one or the other. How to explain this apparent contradiction? The answer is that labor was viewed as the only fundamental “cost” involved in the production of a good; [6] the costs of a given commodity could thus be ultimately reduced to a certain amount of human toil.

A numerical example will be useful. Suppose that the price of a haircut is $6, while the price of a shoeshine is $7.50. A proponent of the cost theory of value could explain this as follows:

The haircut takes thirty minutes of labor, and the scissors are depreciated by 1/20 of their full value, because (let us suppose) the scissors must be replaced after 20 haircuts. The wage rate is $10 per hour, and a new pair of barber’s scissors costs $20, and hence the total cost per haircut is $5 + $1 = $6. In contrast, a shoeshine takes only fifteen minutes of labor, and uses up 1/5 of a can of shoe polish. It costs $25 for a new can of shoe polish. Therefore the price of the shoeshine must be $2.50 + $5.00 = $7.50. [7]

Now a proponent of the labor theory of value could heartily concur with the above cost analysis, and simply push it back one step:

The reason the scissors cost $20 is that (let us suppose) it takes a worker forty-five minutes to turn an ounce of metal into a finished pair of scissors, and the metal costs $12.50 per ounce. Similarly, the reason the new can of shoe polish costs $25 is that (let us suppose) it takes a worker two hours to turn $5 worth of wax into the finished product. We thus see that the price of the shoeshine is really reducible to the price of 15 + 24 = 39 minutes of labor, i.e., $6.50 worth of labor, plus $1 worth of wax, [8] for a total price of $7.50. Notice that we have gotten rid of the cost of the can of shoe polish altogether. And were we to continue, we would ultimately reduce the price of the shoeshine into the total amount of labor time that went into it (which we know must be forty-five minutes, since the shoeshine costs $7.50 and the wage rate is $10).

As this simplistic numerical example illustrates, one could theoretically trace back the expenditures on inputs until all intermediate capital goods had been eliminated. This procedure is quite similar, of course, to the process by which Austrians impute all net productivity to the “original factors” of land and labor (e.g., Rothbard 1993, pp. 410–11). The difference, however, lies in the fact that the labor theorist of value does not believe the owner of an original natural resource can earn a rent on his or her factor input. [9] Because only human beings experience discomfort from providing labor, even the prices of natural resources can ultimately be reduced to inputs of labor; Mother Nature never charges for her services.

A Critique of the Classical Cost (labor) Theory of Value

The cost theory of value has its merits. It does provide a coherent explanation of market prices, in particular relative prices; good X costs twice as much as good Y because it costs twice as much to produce good X. Empirically, there certainly seems to be a general tendency for prices to equal costs (including the interest cost on invested capital). Moreover, there is a natural mechanism by which to explain this tendency: If the prices of a product were to exceed its cost of production, either existing producers or newcomers would increase output, lowering the price of the product and/or bidding up its cost of production. On the other hand, if the price of a product were below its cost of production, it would not pay to continue making it, and the diminished future supply would lead to higher prices for the product and/or lower costs of its inputs.

Despite these points in its favor, there are serious — in my opinion, fatal — flaws with any cost (and a fortiori, labor) theory of value. Let us briefly review some of the most important.

Methodological objections. The most fundamental objection is that a cost theory of (exchange) value entirely neglects the causal role of subjective valuations in the formation of market prices. Human actors are forward looking, and hence past expenditures and effort are irrelevant to the present determination of the relative merits of two different commodities. Even if all memory of previous expenditures were suddenly lost, market prices would still form. Clearly then, the cost theory of value is not the deepest explanation possible.

Applicable only to reproducible goods. Obviously the cost theory of value can only explain market prices of reproducible goods. An entirely different theory is needed if one wants to explain, say, the relative price of a Van Gogh painting and a guitar played by Elvis.

The time element. The cost theory can only explain the “natural” (long-run) price of a good; it cannot explain the day-to-day fluctuations in market price that characterize any actual good. Additionally — as Böhm-Bawerk stressed — the phenomenon of originary interest destroys any hope to explain the final price of a good by the prices of its inputs, unless “time” is classified as an input with its associated money price.

“Costs” are prices. [10] the cost theory of value is at best a partial theory; it explains the price of a television set by reference to the money costs of the labor, glass, and other resources that went into its construction. But these “money costs” are really nothing but the market prices of these particular goods and services (i.e. labor hours, units of glass, etc.). The cost theory of value does not, therefore, build up price from more fundamental building blocks; instead, it merely spells out relationships that must obtain (in the long-run) among the prices of certain goods and services.

In contrast to the classical cost (labor) theory of value, the so called “marginal revolution” ushered in the modern, subjective theory, whereby market price is determined by the marginal utility of a good. As Böhm-Bawerk’s famous horse market example illustrated, one can explain equilibrium prices relying solely on the money valuations of various marginal units of different commodities (II, pp. 215–35). In the exposition of Rothbard (1993, pp. 91–108), the vestiges of cardinal utility have been completely eliminated; equilibrium exchange ratios can be explained entirely by the individuals’ ordinal rankings of various marginal units.

The marginal utility approach to price determination (in the eyes of its proponents) avoids all of the objections listed above, and it can also accommodate the merits of the cost (labor) theory of value. That is, the long-run tendency for a reproducible good’s price to equal the money expenditures (including interest on invested capital) necessary for its continued production is entirely compatible with the marginal utility explanation.

Carson’s Defense of the Classical Economists

In light of the above, one might wonder how anyone could possibly deny that this is one case where economic science has truly advanced. Carson’s arguments to the contrary are interesting, but in my opinion are quite unsatisfactory.

One of Carson’s main points is that the classical economists conceded all of the major drawbacks to their theory:

Since Böhm-Bawerk and others made so much of the various scarcity exceptions [11] to the cost principle, we will examine the treatment of such exceptions in the writings of the classical political economists and socialists themselves. If, as we shall see below, the classicals freely admitted such exceptions, it follows that the marginalists and subjectivists were attacking a straw man; or at the very least, that they had a far different idea of the level of generality necessary for a theory of value. (p. 27)

First, even though the classicals were aware of the exceptions (as Carson ably documents, pp. 28–34), it does not follow that Böhm-Bawerk et al. we’re attacking a straw man. The numerous exceptions to the cost principle really are exceptions, and represent a deficiency vis-à-vis the marginal utility explanation. It is particularly ironic that Carson should accuse Böhm-Bawerk of attacking a straw man in this manner, since Carson himself quotes Böhm-Bawerk’s gentle treatment [12] of Ricardo:

Ricardo himself only went a very little way over the proper limits. As I have shown, he knew right well that his law of value was onlya particular law; he knew, for instance, that the value of scarce goods rests on quite another principle. He only erred in so far as he very much over-estimated the extent to which his law is valid, and practically ascribed to it a validity almost universal. The consequence is that, later on, he forgot almost entirely the little exceptions he had rightly made but too little considered at the beginning of his work, and often spoke of his law as if it were really a universal law of value. (Böhm-Bawerk quoted in Carson, pp. 42–43)

At this point, the equitable reader might defend Carson by suggesting that perhaps Böhm-Bawerk erected a straw man by claiming that Ricardo “practically ascribed to [his law of value] a validity almost universal.” But this too is not so, and once again Carson himself provides the evidence, namely, a quotation in which Ricardo says that he views labor as “the foundation of all value, and the relative quantity of labour as almost exclusively determining the relative values of commodities” (p. 87). [13]

So far I have merely played referee to Carson’s charge of straw man. Let us now analyze the more substantive claim, namely, that the various exceptions — freely admitted by the classicals — are not a blow against their theory:

Böhm-Bawerk’s straw-man caricature of what the labor theory was intended to demonstrate, certainly, did not hold up at all well under his onslaught. But then, straw-men are deliberately constructed to be knocked down. He would have made as much sense in saying that the law of gravity was invalidated by all the exceptions presented by air resistance, wind, obstacles, human effort, and so forth. The force operates at all times, but its operation is always qualified by the action of secondary forces. But it is clear, in the case of gravity, which is the first-order phenomenon, and which are second-order deviations from it. (p. 25; italics in original)

Carson returns to this defense again and again — the labor principle is the underlying, driving force of a commodity’s natural price, around which the actual market price fluctuates due to disturbances. Yet I humbly recommend that in future editions, he drop (or seriously revise) the physics analogy, for it doesn’t serve his cause.

In classical mechanics [14] (i.e., the physics of Isaac Newton), the “law of gravity” was not invalidated by air resistance, obstacles, etc. The law of gravity stated (roughly) that the gravitational force between two objects was directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers of mass. Thus a book sitting on one’s table would not violate this law at all; the downward force of gravity (given by the law) happens to be exactly counterbalanced by the “normal force” of the table pressing upward.

This is not at all analogous to Ricardo’s view of labor as “the foundation of all value, and the relative quantity of labour as almost exclusively determining the relative values of commodities.” As Böhm-Bawerk and others showed, this “law” is simply not true, because other factors influence a commodity’s price besides the quantity of labor required for its production. Therefore a more accurate analogy would have been the law that declares, “Gravity makes everything fall.” This law is generally true, but is offset by disturbing forces (such as those provided by a table), just as Carson admits of the labor theory of value. But what self-respecting physicist would cling to this law? None would. Physicists would rightly reject such a law as false and seek to discover more precise rules governing an object’s motion. [15]

In an attempt to demonstrate the inconsistency of modern Austrians, Carson quotes Böhm-Bawerk on this issue of generality:

A fourth exception to the Labour Principle may be found in the familiar and universally admitted phenomenon that even those goods, in which exchange value entirely corresponds with the labour costs, do not show this correspondence at every moment. By the fluctuations of supply and demand their exchange value is put sometimes above, sometimes below the level corresponding to the amount of labour incorporated in them. The amount of labour only indicates the point toward which exchange value gravitates — not any fixed point of value. This exception, too, the socialist adherents of the labour principle seem to me to make too light of. They mention it indeed, but they treat it as a little transitory irregularity, the existence of which does not interfere with the great “law” of exchange value. But it is undeniable that these irregularities are just so many cases where exchange value is regulated by other determinants than the amount of labour costs. They might at all events have suggested the inquiry whether there is not perhaps a more universal principle of exchange value, to which might be traceable, not only the regular formations of value, but also those formations which, from the standpoint of the labour theory, appear to be “irregular.” But we should look in vain for any such inquiry among the theorists of this school. (Böhm-Bawerk quoted in Carson, p. 23)

Now how can one possibly object to Böhm-Bawerk’s stated goal? Astandard criterion of progress in any scientific discipline is to come up with laws or principles of greater generality. The epitome of a scientific advance is the replacement of Newtonian mechanics with relativity; Einstein’s equations could explain everything Newton’s could (because at low velocities they “reduced to” Newton’s laws), and they could explain things that Newton’s laws couldn’t. Thus one would think that to answer Böhm-Bawerk, Carson would need to show that Böhm-Bawerk’s own preferred theory did not fit the bill.

But although Carson does indeed question the adequacy of the subjective theory (a topic we will explore below), his immediate reaction to Böhm-Bawerk’s quotation from above is the following:

In fact, this fourth exception [to the Labour Principle] is absolutely devoid of substance, unless one adopts the later Austrian pose of radical epistemological skepticism toward the notion of “equilibrium price.” And if, as Böhm-Bawerk said, Ricardo himself admitted the existence of that exception, it can only be deduced that Ricardo did not view it as a fatal flaw in the labor theory. It would seem to follow that Böhm-Bawerk and Ricardo differed in their opinions of the significance of the phenomenon — in which case, Böhm-Bawerk’s real task would be to show why Ricardo was mistaken in his views of what constituted an adequate theory. (pp. 23–24)

There are two separate issues Carson raises in this response. The more important is the issue of “adequacy” for a theory of value. If there were no better explanation, then yes, it certainly would not be “fatal” that the labor theory could only explain long-run tendencies, and only for a limited class of commodities; a partial understanding is better than none at all. But because Böhm-Bawerk knew of a superior theory that did not suffer from these flaws, and itself retained the merits of the labor theory, naturally this is sufficient to prove the “inadequacy” of the labor theory.

The other issue Carson raises is the notion of “equilibrium price.” The modern reader must realize that the classical economists (as well as modern economists in the tradition of Piero Sraffa [1960]) would take the term to mean the long-run price that would obtain in the absence of disturbances; it is thus analogous to the Misesian notion of final price (Mises 1966, p. 245).

But that is not what someone like Böhm-Bawerk (or just about any modern economist) would mean by the term. For them, the equilibrium price is that which equates the quantities of supply and demand at any moment, considering all relevant influences on supply and demand.

It is true, even this notion of equilibrium is a hypothetical one; the actual market price at any given moment may not be the equilibrium price. It is also true that many Austrians, following Lachmann, question the validity of such a hypothetical construct. But for those Austrians who continue to endorse the notion of an equilibrium price (while admitting that it may never in fact be attained in the real world, but only approximated), they are still being perfectly consistent in preferring their explanation to that of Ricardo. As Carson himself admits, the lack of realism (i.e., the lack of the equilibrium price to exactly equal the actual market price at any moment) is true for both camps. The difference lies in the generality of the theory: The modern subjectivist has a theory of price that seeks to explain the (time-sensitive) prices that would form in a market, so long as all “pure profit” opportunities had been seized. These hypothetical, possibly changing equilibrium spot prices would incorporate shifts in consumer demand, interruptions in supply, and all other changes so long as they were anticipated, and the theory would apply to nonreproducible goods as well. [16] In contrast, the Ricardian theory attempts to explain merely the single value of the long-run “equilibrium” (natural) price of a commodity, and is only applicable to reproducible goods. Unless one could demonstrate that the former approach really does lack something provided by the latter, the subjectivist theory is obviously superior.

To his credit, Carson does dispute the explanatory power (and empirical truth) of the subjective theory. One of his main objections is that

making scarcity and utility depend on the balance of demand and “present goods” at the present moment, [the subjective theory] ignores the dynamic factor. In taking the balance of supply and demand in a particular market at a particular time as a “snapshot,” and deriving value from “utility” in this context, it ignores the effect of short-term price on the future behavior of market actors: the very mechanism through which price is made to approximate cost over time. (pp. 26–27)

Later Carson quotes John Stuart Mill, who expresses the point with great clarity:

It is, therefore, strictly correct to say, that the value of things which can be increased in quantity at pleasure, does not depend (except accidentally, and during the time necessary for production to adjust itself), upon demand and supply; on the contrary, demand and supply depend upon it. There is a demand for a certain quantity of the commodity at its natural or cost value, and to that the supply in the long run endeavours to conform. (Mill quoted in Carson, p. 34)

The alleged superior “dynamism” of the labor theory should be judged in the context of my discussion above; the labor theory is more “dynamic” in the sense that it can only deal with long-run trends, whereas the subjective theory attempts to explain the height of spot prices at each point in time, including such prices in the far distant future. This is not at all what most people mean when they refer to one theory as static and another as dynamic.

Even so, Carson (following Mill) raises an interesting point: Are the subjectivists failing to see the forest for the trees? Even if the labor theorist admits that, at any moment, market price is determined by supply and demand, if these forces are themselves governed by the labor principle, then isn’t the labor theory more fundamental in a sense?

We do not need to answer this question, because its premise is not true. Demand (not quantity demanded) is indeed completely independent of any cost considerations; Mill is simply being sloppy when he says that demand depends on value. In standard mainstream economics, supply of course is determined by (marginal) cost. Yet even so, this does not reduce everything to the labor (or cost) principle; at best it shows (as Alfred Marshall would insist) that it is wrong to attribute exchange value to one or the other. To give a simple illustration: Suppose we are in an initial long-run equilibrium where the price of cigars is $5. Suddenly there is a huge increase in demand for cigars (i.e. the demand curve shifts to the right). Unless the supply curve is perfectly elastic, [17] the new equilibrium price will be higher, say $8. The “cost principle” is upheld here, of course, but the cost of making a cigar is itself not independent of the market demand; it jumped from $5 to $8 (because of higher marginal costs at greater levels of output). And note that this is not merely a short-run effect; as any principles textbook explains, even long-run supply curves can be upward (or downward) sloping in certain regions of output. (Indeed, this is the textbook explanation for why certain industries are “natural oligopolies” or “natural monopolies.”) So although it is true that the marginal utility of a good can be influenced by cost considerations (because cost factors can influence the quantity of the good), it is also true that consumers’ demand curves can influence the cost of production of a commodity (because demand factors can influence the quantity of the good).

Beyond this, the Austrian economists really do view utility as the fundamental determinant of price. This is because the supply curve is not really determined by “objective” technical facts alone, but is itself dependent upon psychic evaluations of satisfaction on the part of producers. Purist Austrians deny any such thing as “real cost” and insist that all costs of production are really opportunity costs, which are defined as subjective valuations of forgone opportunities. Thus subjective value permeates not just the demand side, but also the supply side of price determination. The fundamental starting point of modern price theory is the notion of exchange, of each party giving up that which he values less for that which he values more. This insight is completely overlooked by any cost (or labor) theory of price.

Carson’s Contributions to a Modern Labor Theory

To his credit, Carson recognizes that Böhm-Bawerk’s critique of the labor theory contained at least some valid points. Carson thus tries to rehabilitate the theory to rid it of the (admittedly flawed, see p. 87) objective interpretation given by Marx, and also to accommodate the role of time preference. On both points, I must conclude that Carson’s attempted repairs are inadequate to save the theory.

Searching his chapter on “A Subjective Recasting of the Labor Theory,” it is hard to pin down exactly what Carson’s new theory is. He explicitly denies, for example, that the relative exchange value of two commodities is dependent on the relative quantity (however measured) of labor involved in their production. As far as I can tell, the following is the best summary of Carson’s subjective labor theory:

A producer will continue to bring his goods to market only if he receives a price necessary, in his subjective evaluation, to compensate him for the disutility involved in producing them. And he will be unable to charge a price greater than this necessary amount, for a very long time, if market entry is free and supply is elastic, because competitors will enter the field until price equals the disutility of producing the final increment of the commodity. (pp. 70–71)

Except for his statement that “price equals the disutility,” [18] I think most Austrians would agree with the sentiments above. If this makes them adherents to a subjective labor theory of value, so be it. But do the two sentences above really constitute a theory of price determination? Could they really replace modern marginal utility analysis?

Later Carson explains why labor is the only “real” cost, while all other costs are simply opportunity costs (and hence artificial):

The marginalists themselves, both neoclassical and Austrian, have recognized that labor is a “real cost” in a unique sense. … The only cost in the expenditure of a factor other than labor is an opportunity cost — the other uses to which it might have been put, instead. But the expenditure of labor is an absolute cost, regardless of the quantity available. Or to be more exact, the opportunity cost of an expenditure of labor is not simply the alternative uses of labor, but non-labor. The laborer is allocating his time, not just between competing forms of labor, but also between labor and nonlabor. (pp. 72–73; italics in original) [19]

I must confess that I have never found this alleged uniqueness of selling one’s labor (relative to other seller’s products) very compelling. Suppose I own a virgin forest next to my house. I am considering all of the different uses to which I could put it. I might clear it and plant tomatoes, I might sell the land to the developer of a shopping center, or I might withdraw it from “production” altogether and leave it in its natural state. To the extent that I would experience genuine physical discomfort to see men chop down the trees, how is this not a “real cost” in Carson’s sense? [20] On the other hand, certain goods (such as beer) give a physical satisfaction, while other ones (such as a math textbook) generally do not. Yet we still explain the demand for beer and textbooks by reference to utility, even though the former case includes physiological experiences while the latter does not. Does the beer then offer “real utility” in contrast to the book’s “opportunity utility”?

Because of its relevance to the earlier discussion of generality, I cannot leave this topic without mentioning Carson’s ridicule of the opportunity cost concept:

The subjectivists … treated the existing structure of property rights over “factors” as a given, and proceeded to show how the product would be distributed among these “factors” according to their marginal contribution. By this method, if slavery were still extant, a marginalist might with a straight face write of the marginal contribution of the slave to the product (imputed, of course, to the slaveowner), and of the “opportunity cost” involved in committing the slave to one or another use. (p. 79)

To this all I can reply is that yes, Mr. Carson, that is exactly how I would explain the pricing of slaves (or rather the rental price of a slave — the price of a slave himself would depend on the rate of interest, the slave’s life expectancy, whether the owner would own any offspring, etc.). The subjective theory of value can explain prices even under conditions that do not conform to our sense of justice. [21] I can also analyze the effects of, say, a tariff on cars, even though I consider tariffs to be immoral and inefficient.

We finally come to Carson’s discussion of time preference. Recall that one of Böhm-Bawerk’s objections to the labor theory was that it ignored (what he would call) originary interest. To give a simple example, the market price (even in the long-run) of twenty-year-old wine will be higher than of ten-year-old wine, even though the quantity of labor involved in producing both bottles is virtually identical. Thus a Marxist approach, in which the “total labor” involved in a good’s production involves objective quantities (however measured), cannot possibly deal with a case such as this. [22]

Carson deals with the problem by declaring, “Even if today’s labor is exchanged for tomorrow’s labor at a premium, it is still an exchange of labor” (p. 111). To this one might simply ask, “Why? Why isn’t the exchange of the product of today’s labor for the product of tomorrow’s labor really an exchange of product?” But then Carson moves into demonstrable error:

When labor abstains from present consumption to accumulate its own capital, time-preference is simply an added form of disutility of present labor, as opposed to future labor. It is just another factor in the “haggling of the market,” by which labor’s product is allocated among laborers. (p. 111)

This will simply not do. Carson has here confused the lower utility attached to a future product, with a higher disutility from producing it. Carson is familiar (p. 105) with Böhm-Bawerk’s critique of the abstinence theory, in which he made this distinction with great clarity, yet apparently Carson missed Böhm-Bawerk’s point. Let me therefore apply the argument to our example of wine: In what sense is there greater disutility in producing wine that is intended for sale in twenty years, versus wine that is intended for sale in ten years? If someone breaks in and steals such a bottle, does the producer “lose” more if he had intended to sell that bottle in twenty years (versus ten)?

Of course not. The reason the laborer who makes a bottle of wine and sells it after twenty years may receive three pigs, while the laborer who sells a bottle after ten years only receives two pigs, is not that it took more physical exertion (or psychic disutility in general) to make the former bottle. Rather, it must be (given our stipulated numbers) that the workers get more utility from pigs delivered sooner rather than later, and that (for example) someone wishing to sell three pigs to be delivered in ten years would only be able to fetch two pigs now in exchange.

This leads to my final comment on Carson’s treatment of time preference. After admitting that even in a mutualist society, present goods would exchange at a premium for future goods, Carson writes, “It is only in a capitalist (i.e., statist) economy that a propertied class . . . can keep itself in idleness by lending the means of subsistence to producers in return for a claim on future output” (p. 112). What happens, I wonder, in a mutualist society if an industrious worker accumulates a large stockpile of consumer goods, and sells them in exchange for future goods? Could he not live indefinitely off the interest? Would this be forbidden, or does Carson just deny that it would ever happen in the absence of State intervention?

Conclusion

Kevin Carson provides a knowledgeable discussion of the classical theory of value, but he fails to rescue it from the critique of Böhm-Bawerk. There are numerous flaws with the labor theory, none of which applies to the modern subjective theory. In addition, everything true of the cost (labor) theory can be incorporated in the subjective theory of value.

Furthermore, not only did the subjective value theory of Böhm-Bawerk and others provide a better alternative to the labor theory, but it also ultimately allowed for the explanation not merely of relative prices, but also of absolute money prices. (Because of its disregard of utility, it is difficult to conceive of a cost theory that could adequately explain the absolute height of money prices.) Initially, the handling of money prices was an embarrassment for subjective value theory, but in the hands of Mises (1980) — if I may be permitted a Marxist spin — this apparent deficiency in the subjective theory was transformed into its glorious fulfilment.

<< Back to Studies in Carsonian Mutualism.

Notes:

1. Robert P. Murphy is visiting assistant professor of economics at Hillsdale College. Email Robert.Murphy@hillsdale.edu. His research interests include capital and interest theory, and the history of economic thought, especially the work of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.

2. Notice that the task (as I have defined it) for an economic theory of value need not concern itself with what Carl Menger (1991) referred to as the relative “saleableness” of various goods.

3. Indeed, subjectivist value theory was originally applied only to the case of direct exchange, where it was often used to derive merely relative (equilibrium) price ratios. Actual absolute money prices were then explained by an entirely different mechanism, involving macro aggregates (such as the supply of money and the velocity of circulation). It took Ludwig von Mises’s pioneering work (1980) to incorporate the explanation of money price formation into subjective value theory. I will have more to say about this in the conclusion.

4. Let me warn the reader that, in this article, I will quite often completely disregard the modern definition of cost as the (psychic, subjective) value of a forgone opportunity. Especially when dealing with the “cost” theory of value, I will use the term to simply mean expenditures on inputs, which is what everyone else has in mind in this context.

5. Note that I have not said a labor theory equates a good’s price with the quantity of labor necessary for its construction, because (unlike costs) labor is denominated in different units.

6. As we shall see below, Carson too subscribes to this view.

7. Obviously I am forced to trade realism for nice round numbers in these scenarios.

8. Remember that a can of shoe polish requires two hours (i.e., 120 minutes) of labor, and that each shoeshine uses up 1/5 of a can; therefore each shoeshine requires 15 minutes of immediate labor, plus 120/5 = 24 minutes of labor required for the transformation of wax into polish. Furthermore, each new can of shoe polish requires $5 worth of wax, and hence each individual shoeshine uses up $1 worth of wax.

9. In some expositions — such as Carson’s — the claim is that the owner of an original factor ought not receive compensation beyond his input of labor.

10. In fairness, I point out that this last objection does not apply to the classical labor theory of value, since units of labor are not themselves prices.

11. I.e., cases in which relative supply and demand, not cost, determine price.

12. Readers familiar with some of Böhm-Bawerk’s scathing critiques will appreciate the relative courtesy of the above quotation.

13. In fairness, Carson earlier claims that the term commodity should be understood to mean reproducible goods, i.e., precisely those to which the cost (labor) principle applies. Even so, the other exceptions to the labor principle (such as temporary fluctuations in demand, and originary interest) would still apply, and render the short quote from Ricardo above inaccurate.

14. I am using classical mechanics both because of the analogy to classical economics, and also because its law of gravity is much simpler than Einstein’s version.

15. I don’t wish to make too much of this point; there are certainly other principles from the natural sciences that would be analogous to Carson’s view of the labor theory of value. I am just pointing out that his particular choice of the law of gravity is a very poor one

16. The modern theory can easily handle “pure endowment” (i.e., no production) economies, such as the P.O.W. camps of World War II. In his famous paper discussing the pattern of prices (in terms of cigarettes) in the camp, and their conformity to the laws of supply and demand, Radford says, “It is difficult to reconcile this fact with the labour theory of value” (Radford 1945, p. 193).

17. Lest Carson accuse me of attacking a straw man, let me make it perfectly clear that Carson discusses elasticity. But, as with Ricardo’s admissions concerning exceptions to his law, here too Carson simply seems not to realize the significance of the admission.

18. There are places where Carson seems to rely on this error, rather than merely being sloppy with his wording. For example, when criticizing Marx’s attempt to compare labor hours of different skill, Carson writes that “the only way to make such a reduction without circularity, by market forces, would be by reference to some feature common to both ‘complex’ and ‘simple’ labor, in terms of which they can be compared on a common scale: i.e., the subjective disutility experienced by laborers.” (p. 90; italics added)

19. Along these lines, Carson elsewhere writes that

the exchange value of a good derives from the labor involved in making it; it is the disutility of labor and the need to persuade the worker to bring his services to the production process, unique among all the “factors of production,” that creates exchange value. (Carson, p. 83)

20. For a different example, imagine a widow forced to pawn her wedding ring to avoid starvation. If this causes her “objective” pain, does it count as a “real cost” of her supplying the market with one more wedding ring?

21. Carson also explains away deviations from natural value due to profit and interest by saying that these items (except for the role of time preference that Carson allows) are “monopoly returns on capital” and would not distort market prices in a mutualist society (p. 24).

22. The marginal utility approach can explain this easily, of course: In the first place, the older wine tastes better and thus consumers value it more.

References:

Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von. [1884] 1959. Capital and Interest, 3 vols. South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press.

Carson, Kevin A. 2004. Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. Fayetteville, Ark. http://mutualist.org/id47.html

Menger, Carl. 1991. “On the Origin of Money.” In Austrian Economics: A Reader. Richard M. Ebeling, ed. Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press. Pp. 483–504.

Mises, Ludwig von. [1912] 1980. The Theory of Money and Credit. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

–1966. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 3rd rev. ed. Chicago: Contemporary Books.

Radford, R.A. 1945. “The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp.” Economica n.s. 12, no. 48 (November): 189–201.

Rothbard, Murray N. [1962] 1993. Man, Economy, and State. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Sraffa, Piero. 1960. The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

…Many libertarians in this century have been, in my view, insufficiently sensitive to the perspective of the poor, of laborers, of women, of minorities. But I view this as a historical aberration, brought about by the fact that a) the triumphant advance of socialism pushed libertarians into a century-long alliance with conservatives, and some aristocratic, patriarchal, un-libertarian attitudes rubbed off; and b) when the libertarians did re-emerge from the conservative movement in the last quarter of this century, they did so under the influence of Ayn Rand’s hard-edged ethic of rugged individualism. But these distorting influences are, I think, starting to fade, and the day of a “kinder, gentler,” green-spectacled libertarianism, truer to its historical roots, is beginning to dawn.

The new libertarianism, then, must take more seriously the left’s concerns, for in many ways they are its own concerns also.

— Roderick Long, Beyond the Boss: Protection from Business in a Free Nation

Alfred Marshall, fundador da chamada escola neoclássica de economia, também foi o primeiro importante economista a tentar uma reconciliação das ideias de David Ricardo com os marginalistas. Seguidor da escola Senior-Longfield pela interpretação de Mill, Marshall tratava a “abstinência” do capital (ou “espera) como outra forma de desutilidade como a do trabalho. Assim, ele fundiu as duas em uma teoria subjetiva unificada do “custo real” como fator determinante do preço da oferta. Como afirmava Mill, os lucros eram a remuneração pela abstinência do capitalista, da mesma maneira que os salários remuneravam o trabalho. Essa síntese marshalliana adotava praticamente todo o aparato teórico do marginalismo, mas estava muito mais próxima das teorias sobre o custo de produção de Ricardo e Mill. [70]

Em relação ao lucro como “custo” do capital, Marshall o explicava em termos subjetivos: trata-se do retorno necessário para persuadir o capitalista a colocar seu capital no mercado: “Todos estão cientes de que não seria oferecido qualquer pagamento em troca do uso do capital a não ser que se esperasse algum lucro a partir desse uso. (…)” Em contraposição à teoria da mais-valia de Rodbertus e Marx, Marshall afirmava que o valor de troca resultava “do trabalho e da espera”. Marshall fazia uma distinção, nos mesmos termos que Böhm-Bawerk, entre o juro bruto e o juro líquido que resultava da espera em si. [71]

Desta ideia de lucro ou juro como recompensa pela “abstinência” ou “espera” (ou “preferência temporal”, como os austríacos preferem), nós teremos muito a dizer nos próximos dois capítulos [de Studies in Mutualist Political Economy]. É suficiente dizer por ora que o valor de mercado da abstinência, como a taxa austríaca de preferência temporal, varia bastante em relação a fatores como a distribuição de propriedades e as restrições legais impostas à competição no mercado de capitais.

Marshall reformulou os fatores gêmeos de determinação do preço de Ricardo, o trabalho e a escassez, como as duas lâminas de uma tesoura: “Seria tão razoável discutir se é a lâmina superior ou a inferior a responsável por cortar a folha de papel quanto discutir se o valor é governado pela utilidade ou pelo custo de produção”. [72]

Marshall acreditava que Ricardo havia errado em sua ênfase na importância do custo ou preço e não na demanda ou utilidade. Em relação à ignorância de Ricardo em relação à demanda, Marshall escreveu que ela recentemente recebia maior atenção devido:

[À] crença cada vez mais aceita de que foi prejudicial o hábito de Ricardo de enfatizar o lado do custo de produção na análise das causas determinantes do valor de troca. Pois embora ele e seus maiores seguidores estivessem cientes de que as condições da demanda tivessem importância tão grande quanto às da oferta na determinação do valor, eles não expressavam suas ideias com suficiente clareza e foram mal-compreendidos por todos exceto os mais cuidadosos leitores. [73]

Como a última frase sugere, Marshall acreditava que as falhas da economia ricardiana se deviam tanto às suas más interpretações quanto à própria teoria.

Porém, mais importante ainda, a afirmativa de Marshall de que a demanda desempenha um papel “tão importante quanto” a oferta é qualificada por seu entendimento do fator tempo. Para Marshall, quanto menor o período de tempo, mais era possível tratar a oferta como fixa momentaneamente; assim, a lâmina da escassez predominava em relação ao custo. O preço era determinado, a qualquer dado momento, por um equilíbrio entre demanda e oferta que existiam nesse momento. Com a entrada em jogo do fator tempo, fazendo com que a oferta fosse tratada como uma variável dinâmica, a lâmina do custo ganhava em importância até que, em um hipotético equilíbrio “puro”, o preço se aproximasse cada vez mais dos custos. Marshall concluía que, “de maneira geral, quanto menor o período que consideramos, maior deve ser a atenção dada à influência da demanda sobre o valor; quanto mais longo o período, mais importante será a influência do custo de produção sobre o valor”. [74]

Ao descrever o equilíbrio hipotético ao qual o mercado tendia, Marshall usava termos similares aos de Mises em relação à utilidade de “construções imaginárias”:

Nosso primeiro passo no estudo das influências exercidas pelo elemento tempo sobre as relações entre o custo de produção e o valor pode ser a consideração da famosa ficção do “estado estacionário” sobre o qual essas influências pouco seriam sentidas; e, a seguir, contrastar os resultados encontrados nesse estado com os verificados no mundo moderno. [75]

Numa incrível semelhança a Böhm-Bawerk, ele escrevia que os preços de curto prazo “são governados pela relação entre a demanda e os estoques de fato existentes no mercado” a qualquer dado momento. [76] Os estoques existentes de bens são tudo o que está disponível antes da passagem do tempo requerida para nova produção, a despeito da demanda. Os bens em excesso são “custos irrecuperáveis”, à despeito da queda da demanda:

Novamente, não há conexão entre o custo de reprodução e o preços no caso dos alimentos em uma cidade sitiada, dos medicamentos cujas ofertas se esvaíram em uma ilha atingida por uma doença, das pinturas de Rafael, de um livro que ninguém deseja ler, de um navio encouraçado obsoleto, do peixe quando seu mercado já está abastecido, do peixe quando o mercado está quase sem abastecimento, de um sino avariado, de um tecido que tenha saído de moda ou de uma casa em uma vila deserta. [77]

O custo de produção é uma influência sobre o preço apenas ao longo do tempo, de acordo com o ajuste da oferta em resposta à demanda efetiva, fazendo com que a oferta e a demanda se aproximem do equilíbrio.

Porém, como o próprio Marshall observou, a oferta em si é uma variável dependente: “a oferta corrente se deve em parte à ação dos produtores no passado; e tal ação foi tomada como resultado da comparação dos preços esperados pelos bens com as despesas para produzi-los” [78] Ao longo do tempo, a oferta e demanda agem para levar à produção ao encontro da demanda efetiva ao custo de produção, igualando assim o preço ao custo de produção. O preço da demanda é sempre um sinalizador para os produtores reduzirem ou aumentarem a produção até que o preço da demanda se iguale ao preço da oferta.

O problema com esse modelo simples, continuava Marshall, é que a demanda e oferta poderiam se modificar, de forma que o ponto de equilíbrio ao qual o mercado tende está em contínuo movimento.

Na vida real, contudo, essas oscilações raramente são tão rítmicas quanto as de uma pedra pendurada livremente a uma corda; a comparação seria mais precisa se a corda estivesse posicionada sobre um córrego cujas correntes pudessem fluir livremente a um dado momento e fossem parcialmente cortadas no seguinte. (…) Pois, de fato, a demanda e a oferta não permanecem inertes por muito tempo juntas, mas estão em mudança constante e todas as suas mudanças alteram a quantidade de equilíbrio e o preço de equilíbrio, dando novas posições aos centros em torno dos quais a quantidade e o preço tendem a oscilar.

Tais considerações mostram a grande importância do elemento do tempo em relação à demanda e à oferta. [79]

Apesar de tais complicações, é verdadeiro a qualquer dado momento que o preço de mercado tende a um ponto de equilíbrio no qual o produtor é compensado por levar seus bens ao mercado.

Há uma tendência constante em direção a uma posição de equilíbrio normal, no qual a oferta de cada um desses agentes [i.e., fatores de produção] estará posicionada em relação à demanda por seus serviços de forma a prover o ofertante uma recompensa suficiente por seus esforços e sacrifícios. Se as condições econômicas do país permanecessem imóveis durante tempo suficiente, essa tendência se realizaria em um ajuste da oferta à demanda em que tanto máquinas quanto seres humanos seriam remunerados de acordo com o seu custo de manutenção e treinamento. (…) Na realidade, as condições econômicas do país estão em constante mudança e o ponto de ajuste da oferta e da demanda normais em relação ao trabalho é constantemente deslocado. [80]

Se Ricardo havia exagerado em sua ênfase em uma direção, Marshall acreditava que os expoentes da revolução marginalista haviam exgerado ainda mais na direção oposta. Marshall acreditava “os fundamentos da teoria legada por Ricardo permanecem intactos; muito lhes foi acrescentado e muito foram aperfeiçoados, mas pouco deles se enfraqueceu”. [81]

Em relação a Jevons, não apenas ele havia cometido excessos em sua doutrina, mas dependia também de más interpretações do trabalho de Ricardo e Mill:

Existem poucos autores em tempos modernos que tenham se aproximado da brilhante originalidade de Ricardo quanto Jevons. Ele parece, contudo, ter julgado Ricardo e Mill de forma excessivamente severa e ter a eles atribuído doutrinas mais restritas e menos científicas do que aquelas que de fato defenderam. Seu desejo de enfatizar um aspecto do valor ao qual aqueles haviam dado importância insuficiente provavelmente foi responsável por seu dito: “A reflexão repetida e a investigação me levam à opinião um tanto inovadora de que o valor depende inteiramente da utilidade (…)”. Essa afirmação não parece ser menos parcial e fragmentária, e muito mais enganosa, do que a observação a que Ricardo recorria frequentemente e descuidadamente de que o valor dependia do custo de produção; Ricardo, porém nunca a considerou nada mais além de uma parte de uma doutrina mais ampla que ele havia tentado explicar.

Jevons continua: “tentamos traçar cuidadosamente quais leis naturais da variação de utilidade em relação à quantidade de uma mercadoria em nossa posse, chegando a uma teoria satisfatória das trocas à qual as leis da oferta e da demanda são consequência necessária. (…) Verifica-se que o trabalho frequentemente determina o valor, mas apenas de maneira indireta, através da variação do grau de utilidade de uma mercadoria através de um aumento ou de uma limitação da oferta”. Como veremos, a segunda dessas duas afirmações havia sido feita anteriormente quase da mesma maneira, embora de forma um tanto vaga e imprecisa, por Ricardo e Mill; estes, no entanto, não aceitariam o primeiro enunciado. Pois, embora considerassem as leis naturais da variação da utilidade como demasiado óbvias para requererem explicação detalhada, e embora admitissem que o custo de produção não tivesse qualquer efeito sobre o valor de troca se não pudesse atuar sobre a quantidade levada ao mercado pelos produtores, suas doutrinas implicam que o que é válido para a oferta é verdadeiro, mutatis mutandis, para a demanda e que a utilidade de uma mercadoria não poderia ter qualquer efeito sobre seu valor de troca se não tivesse igualmente efeito sobre a quantidade que os compradores retiram do mercado. [82]

Em relação à afiramativa aparentemente absoluta de Jevons de que o preço é determinado pela utilidade, Marshall observava que “o valor de troca de um objeto é o mesmo em todo o mercado, mas os graus finais de utilidade aos quais ele corresponde não são iguais em quaisquer dois pontos”. Um comerciante “abre mão de coisas que representam igual poder de compra para todos os seus membros, mas utilidades muito diferentes”. [83] Marshall havia avançado o mesmo argumento mais cedo em seu livro, usando o exemplo de uma viagem de carruagem: embora a utilidade marginal de uma viagem de carruagem possa ser muito maior para um pobre do que para um rico, o preço, nos dois casos, é de dois centavos de libra. [84]

É verdade que o próprio Jevons estava ciente desse fato e que sua teoria pode ser levada à coerência dos fatos da vida por uma série de interpretações que, com efeito, substituem “preço de demanda” e “preço de oferta” por “utilidade” e “desutilidade”: porém, quando adaptada dessa maneira, ela perde grande parte de sua força contra as doutrinas mais antigas. Se ambas devem ser interpretadas de maneira estritamente literal, as formulações mais antigas, embora não perfeitamente precisas, parecem mais próximas da verdade do que aquilo que Jevons e alguns de seus seguidores pretendem colocar em seu lugar. [85]

Em defesa da sofisticação da doutrina de Ricardo, como ele a compreendia, Marshall citava uma passagem de uma carta de Ricardo a Malthus: “é a oferta que regula o valor e a oferta é controlada pelo custo de produção comparado”. Em sua carta seguinte, dizia: “não contesto a influência da demanda sobre o preço dos grãos ou de quaisuqer outras coisas, mas a oferta a segue perto de seus calcanhares e logo toma para as próprias mãos o poder de regular o preço, sendo nessa regulação determinada pelo custo de produção”. Da mesma forma, citava Mill, que dizia que “a lei da demanda e da oferta (…) é controlada, mas não suplantada pela lei do custo de produção, uma vez que o custo de produção não teria qualquer efeito sobre o valor se não pudesse ter sobre a oferta”. Assim, a doutrina “revolucionária” de Jevons, de que a influência do custo de produção era sentida através das leis da oferta e da demanda, era parte da doutrina de Ricardo e Mill. [86]

Em seu resumo do conflito entre Jevons e os economistas políticos clássicos, Marshall criticava os primeiros por negligenciar o elemento tempo da mesma maneira que Ricardo: “Tentam refutar as doutrinas a respeito das tendências últimas (…) das relações do custo de produção e do valor por meio de argumentos que se baseiam nas causas de mudanças temporárias e flutuações de valor de curto prazo”. [87]

Como veremos na seção seguinte, a ênfase exagerada de Jevons no curto prazo e seu tratamento dos estoques existentes ofertados como um fator estático a cada momento era quase integralmente reproduzido pelos austríacos posteriores em suas críticas ao princípio do custo.

Referências:

70. Dobb, Maurice. Theories of Value and Distribution. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1973, pp. 112-113; Meek, Ronald. Studies in the Labour Theory of Value. 1956, p. 123, pp. 245-246.
71. Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics: An Introductory Volume. 8ª ed. Nova York: The MacMillan Company, 1948, p. 580, pp. 587-588.
72. Idem, p. 348.
73. Idem, p. 84.
74. Idem, p. 349.
75. Idem, p. 366.
76. Idem, p. 372.
77. Idem, p. 402.
78. Idem, p. 372.
79. Idem, p. 346-347.
80. Idem, p. 577.
81. Idem, p. 503.
82. Idem, p. 817.
83. Idem, p. 818.
84. Idem, p. 95.
85. Idem, p. 818.
86. Idem, p. 819.
87. Idem, p. 821.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.