Social Libertarianism

Don’t you think this is covered by the labour theory of value?
Namely, specifically defining “the value of the produced object” in terms of the labour put into it?

The value of the produced object being based on labour is not only a central concept for Marx, but earlier classical liberals including Adam Smith - so by extension, would you say classical liberalism also forgot about the value of the produced object - or did they cover it elsewhere in a way that Marx did not?

Does being mildly interested in doing your job, or even being passionate about it cancel out or balance with the desire to get paid more? Would passionate employees commonly accept less pay, perhaps do the work for free if it meant they could hold onto their job? Even if offered the same or more for a different job? Perhaps in some exceptional cases. In those cases, would they actively push for less pay out of their passion - in line with the interests of the employer?

You have to push this passion extremely far to genuinely align employee and employer interests. As a rule and not just in exceptional cases they do not have the “same perspective, value, approach of, or interesting in a business”, just as Marx said, though perhaps better phrased.

Socialism is about centralized authority and nothing else, even though it is defined as “government control over means of production and the economy”. By granting control over the economy and means of production, government controls everything - the goal. And that is why they have gone to such extreme measures to promote climate change terrorism.

I believe that humanitarianism is merely their carrot on a stick. Those promoting socialism have made it clear by their real actions that they could not care less about you or anyone else. It is merely a global power grab for the suckers.

He is? That seems so unlikely, but I’ll let him handle that.

I think most people have tremendous internal motive to value what they do, and if it is producting something, rather than say a service, yes, they tend to value the product, if they can. If there is enough respect for them in the process and there is some way to convince themselves to value the product. I am sure even some anti-bellum slaves took pride in the crops or work well done tilling a field, even if they did hate their masters and so on. We like to take value in what we do. So if corporations have managed to make cubicle work utterly meaningless, they have had to be fairly creative in getting there. Because we want meaning and value in what we do and will bend our souls, often too much to find it or even ‘find’ it there.

Yes, there is a lot of garbage being made, solutions to problems that are not problems, improvements on things that are fine, and marketing processes that start with creating the market rather than informing people, hey, I have a solution to X that you’ve been yearning for, that actually allows you to be more of who you are directly or by freeing you up to be that.

Now we make el-scooters which people ride to the gym where they are paying to ride exercycles.

I agree. And the middle class is being eliminated.

This is precisely the idiocy.
The value of a piece of bread isn’t in the labour put into it, it is in its nutritional value. More precisely, the power to still any particular hunger. More precisely, it has value because it is valued. Which is why it is being baked in the first place.

Same with a car. The value is not in any labourers effort but in its power to transport, and to be precise, in its power to transport people who desire to be transported by this car.

It is perfectly astonishing that people can err this gravely about the nature of value. The sheer arrogance of the workers claim that he is the value of what he works at - this is perhaps the Stirnerian Ego which Marx introduced in Hegel to which Promethean referred.
In any case it is utterly insane.

In the same way the Marxist worker on a banana farm would claim that his efforts of picking the banana represents the value of the banana.

I wouldn’t believe that you actually fall for this idiocy if a billon people hadn’t fallen for it before you.
Naturally, such a radically distorted, childishly solipsistic view will keep any Marxist, any workers who think they are the value of what they have the privilege to work at, completely powerless to improve their conditions. And rightfully so! Fuck em, these arrogant knobs.

By Marxist logic, a really badly cooked meal on which some idiot spent ten days is worth more than a very fine meal prepared in half an hour. But it isn’t about the pains of the cook, it is about the enjoyment of the meal. Understanding that is the basis of culture, but Marx was just too barbaric for this most basic sanity.

Of course he lived in England, which means he probably never had an enjoyable meal, but that only goes so far as an excuse.

My family used to be the core of the Dutch Communist party, which was rather influential around the time I was born. Everyone had been to Moscow and Beijing and was on terms with Stalinists and Trotskists alike - it was never about morality with us, always about practice and the vitality of the party, the company of the workers, the brotherhood, essentially. I know what Communism is, but Socialism has always been the other camp - the social democrats, who are, as you say, moralists.

Very true. Now each Franchise workforce is modelled on the ground of “Sympathies” and thus taps from the same vat of passions as Socialism and other solidarity-politics.

As a capitalist, I would put responsibility with the individual, except in cases where there is demonstrable deliberate misleading and lying. A market is only truly free if solid information about all products is readily available.
If McDonalds were to claim that their food is healthy then there would be an issue. But as it is, people just opt for McDonalds because they have weighed their values and the outcome is that they prefer a burger over a weight loss.
We could debate whether or not people should be compulsive and driven by their desires, but that wouldn’t change the decisions these people make.

People make mistakes, constantly, and very serious ones, some of which Ive pointed out in my post to Silhouette above. They make decisions based on the most atrocious mishaps of logic, and live their lives and ruin other peoples lives based on these mistakes. That tendency of ambitious and educated people to completely disregard the most vital logic is at the top of my to-resolve list - all of this has to do with understanding value.

beforethelight.forumotion.com/t1 … e-ontology

Well demand, and supply right?
The more difficult it is to do something, the more you’re going to have to pay workers to do it and the rarer it’s going to be, the more you’re going to have to charge consumers.
It’s both.

Let’s sum things up a bit.

Libertarianism is an advanced form of freedom that takes individualism about as far as it can go. People can do ‘whatever’ they want, until it ‘impedes’ upon the ‘rights’ of others. These are all vague concepts; so the definition of Libertarianism is very expansive. Actions that are normally illegal in modern society, would be legal in a Libertarian society. You can do whatever drugs you want, unless you harm another. So drugs would be legalized. You can have sex however you want, so most sexual taboos would be legalized. Suicide would be legalized. “As long as it doesn’t harm others”, then it would be morally acceptable in a Libertarian society.

It should be common-sense that a Libertarian society is anti-social.

Thus you cannot be a “Social Libertarian” as it’s a contradictory statement. You can’t be “social” on one hand, and anti-social on the other. It’s kind of like the “Free-Will” debate recently. You can’t merge two contradicting terms together, and then claim it. You are forced to choose, according to the logical paradox inherent within the terms. So which is it, should peoples’ “Rights” be subsumed under “what is best for everybody” (Egalitarianism) or shouldn’t they, and individuals can “do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t harm others”? In the Moral sense, and religiously, most people know that Libertarianism simply doesn’t work. Laws need to be enacted because average people are simply irresponsible, and quickly abuse leniency. If you allow people to do drugs, then many or most will begin to abuse it. Same with suicide, and sexual debauchery, etc. So you could call it “Moralizing” for a ‘Socialist’ to denounce Libertarianism.

Here’s my personal opinion, since some of you seem to want to know. I’m more of Libertarian, myself. That’s how I was raised. However, the biggest problem of Libertarianism is that it presumes and assumes that most people have some type of personal-responsibility and accountability, which they don’t in fact. You can’t tell a society of ten million people that “it’s okay to do drugs as long as you don’t hurt anybody”, because the implication is that you are still “allowed” to harm yourself. It gets more complex in ‘taboo’ sexual practices. Sure you can say it’s “okay” for people to have sex with whomever they want, but then, do you really want to “allow” sexual immorality to run rampant through your society as-if that’s going to improve or strengthen your society in the long-run? What does common-sense dictate? It’s unhealthy, diseased, (morally) wrong, and in the long-term, will weaken or possibly even destroy, a society.

So, to the OP, I say ‘No’, the two terms cannot be reconciled. You have to choose, to lean one way or another.

Sure it’s easy to be a ‘Libertarian’ as a single-white-male living in Modern decadent Western society.

But once you start knocking women up, and babies and family enter the picture, that “Libertarianism” ends quickly. Family, social-obligations, etc. take over. You are forced to live in a family, a relationship, a tribe, a society. And so moral rules must be imposed. I would call that “Social” at least, and personally that is my abstraction toward “Socialism”. Europeans have a different definition of ‘Socialism’, as do history in general. Old World nations and countries view socialism as ‘inherent’ within their Countries’ upbringing and social indoctrination. Thus, in Finland, your society is Finnish, and you speak Finnish. In Romania, your society is Romanian, and you speak Romanian. In Italy, your society is Italian, and you speak Italian. In France, your society is French, and you speak French.

This is not the case in the New World. Socialism is not inherent within “Western” people and civilization. This is the big gap of ignorance that many political analysts overlook or simply don’t know about.

Yes but the ground is the wanted-ness of the object. In cases of economic relevance, the reason why professional labour is being spent on it.

Someone can spend a lifetime on making something only he can make, but that doesn’t mean it has any value, not in any sensible theory of value that supposed to regulate an economy anyway. “Intrinsic value” is nonsense, also when it applies to labour.

On the other hand most of us produce things of value without getting paid for it, because we want these things in existence despite it maybe not being wanted. We might feel we should be rewarded for it, but if everyone was rewarded for every bit of energy he put into anything at all, where does the reward come from?

Certainly Uright about that. “Social Libertarian” is an oxymoron.

Although I understood what you meant. Man does in fact use his “Left” hand to liberate and destroy while using his “Right” hand to affirm and save (hence the “Right” and “Left” political parties).

Studies show while the middle class tend to be somewhat happier and healthier than the working class, the upper class aren’t any happier and healthier than the middle class.
Insofar as materialism is an extrinsic good, the upper class aren’t better off than the middle class.
I guess you could say the upper class are still better off than the middle class in that they’re further from being the working than the middle class.
However, if they shared some of the wealth with the working class, the rich wouldn’t be any less happy and healthy, all classes would be about equally happy and healthy and there wouldn’t be as much, if anything to fear from being or becoming working class.

While everyone should work, we produce, consume and waste too much, damaging the health and wellbeing of ourselves and the earth in the process.
If the billionaires shared some of the wealth with the working and middle classes, the working and middle classes wouldn’t have to produce as much junk to survive.
We could still produce as much junk as we do now if we wanted to but it’d be more optional, some people would choose not to, to be more discriminating with what they give their time and energy to, which would be good for the health and wellbeing of us all.

um marx isn’t talking about the ‘quality’ of a commodity, the demand for the commodity, or how much a buyer likes the commodity. but i do understand how you all might misconstrue the use of the term ‘value’ in the phrase ‘labor theory of value’, and think that somehow… what, marx was too dumb to know that if you like a cheeseburger, you value it? please don’t tell me you really thought marx meant this. seriously? this is how you know someone has scarcely a clue what a thinker meant when they bring up something so elementary and simple that the thinker which they believe they are criticizing couldn’t have possibly missed it. when the criticism is so loopy and off the mark you have to ask; wait… this can’t be what marx meant. shirley.

what marx is doing is analyzing how value is determined in the economic exchange between worker and owner in the negotiation of wage and profit. by ‘value’ here he means ‘what does it cost both the worker and employer to be involved in this exchange’. he’s not saying that the popularity or demand for a commodity has nothing to do with its value. in this theory of labor, he doesn’t mean ‘value’ in that way.

interviewer: mr. marx, are you telling me the fact that i want that t-shirt doesn’t make it valuable?

mr. marx: that’s precisely what i’m saying. the value of the t-shirt is equal only to the labor produced to make it.

seriously?

who was it that was talking about marx’s ‘misunderstanding of what value is’, anyway? it was jakobson again , wuddint it?

sigh yeah… it as jakobson again.

This matrix incorporates the labour theory of value with modern supply/demand economics and completes it with what Jakob offers about the “value of the produced object”:

Valuation. .| Supply | Demand

Objective. | Rarity. | Need
Subjective | Labour.| Want

Labour theory of value reminds us of the fact that value comes from what we want to put in,
Supply and Demand reminds us of the fact that value comes from what we want to get out, as well as what we physically can provide,
Jakob reminds us of the fact that value also comes from the properties of the thing itself.

Current Supply/Demand economics only takes into account the objective supply and the subjective demand, and is therefore only half the picture.
I propose this improved model to complete the picture.

Labor can be every bit as objective as rarity and need.
The laborer wants/needs/deserves to be compensated for taking care of peoples wants/needs.
And we shouldn’t forget about the monetary cost of production.

Capitalists don’t necessarily contribute anything to the public good.
While small capitalists are usually intimately involved with their small business, big capitalists often aren’t involved with their big business or businesses at all, beyond making sure they’re profiting from it or them.

Self made billionaires are often workaholics who contribute a lot to the economy, but their grandkids and great grandkids are often spoiled, narcissistic, corrupt and contribute little to nothing (see affluenza).
even if the capitalist is a workaholic, he could only seriously involve himself in a tiny fraction of what he owns, yet he makes massive profits off all of it, hardly equitable.

But often capitalists don’t involve themselves beyond making sure they get a big cut.
Big capitalists could simply transfer ownership to CEOs and/or workers and the companies would run themselves, CEOS and/or workers are perfectly capable of running things, of hiring and firing when need be, so they should make all the profits.

Another thing to consider is intellectual property.
Intellectual property has benefits and detriments.
On the one hand it helps incentivize creators, on the other it leads to oligopolization.
Arguably there’s nothing libertarian about intellectual property.
If you profitably copy someone, you’re not violating their liberty or property in any real, tangible way, in fact by preventing you from profitably copying someone, they’re violating your liberty and property.
I’m not suggesting we should do away with intellectual property, but if we’re going to permit people to patent their creations thereby violating our liberty and property, then it’s only fair a large % of the profits should be put towards the public good.

What billionaires ‘contribute’ to the economy is whatever has been provided by the workers who produce his assets. So technically, the workers contribute to the economy, not the parasite that happens to ‘own’’ what the workers produced.

There’s many ways to define property.
Some believe in intellectual property, some don’t, some a synthesis.
Right libertarians define property absolutely, if something is yours, it’s yours till you sell, give it away or die, whereas left libertarians define it limitedly, something is yours as long as you (routinely) physically occupy or use it.
Therefore, if you’ve never occupied or used something, it can’t be yours, even if you bought and pay tax on it, and If you no longer occupy or use something, it’s considered abandoned, up for grabs by whoever is or is about to occupy or use it.
For others, all property belongs to the state or society, so if you have something, it’s at most a temporary privilege, it can be taken away from you by the state or society, and for others still, property belongs to the powerful, might makes right, whether the powerful are few or many.

Property is a sociobiological construct.
We make it up, but unlike postmodernists I don’t believe we make it up in a vacuum, our instincts inform it, which partly vary from time and person to time and person, in addition to what we believe as individuals and a society is right or beneficial for whatever reasons.
Rather than fully embrace left or right libertarianism or socialism, I have tried to synthesize them in my thinking.

Right, there are many ways of defining liberty, see what I just wrote on the differences between right and left libertarianism for example, on intellectual property, on property vs possession or (routine) physical occupancy and use.

Furthermore, where should we draw the line between what’s yours and mine exactly?
What are we to do about air, soil, water, light, noise and other forms of pollution?
What are we to do with animals, children and the disabled?

You see both right (vertical) and left (horizontal) libertarianism are in favor of individual and negative rights as opposed to right and left socialism if you will which are in favor of group and positive rights, but right libertarianism defines individual and negative rights in a way that easily leads to enormous disparities.

Right, we’re very far from a libertarian society by any definition.

I disagree if by social here you mean ethical, it’s as ethical to afford individuals with inalienable negative rights as it is to afford groups with inalienable positive ones.

By Social Libertarian I meant the cooperativization and unionization of big business on the one hand, which’s perfectly compatible with left libertarianism and its take on individual and negative rights, and the nationalization and heavy taxation of big business on the other, which isn’t compatible with right or left libertarianism.
Socialism and libertarianism aren’t opposites, some forms of socialism are perfectly compatible with left libertarianism (cooperativization and unionization), and while others aren’t (nationalization and heavy taxation), they’re still not opposites, as socialism is just an economic theory, one often regarded by its proponents as ethical, and its detractors as unethical, a greedy power grab by the plebs or the state, whereas libertarianism is both an economic and social theory, so you could be a socialist on the economy but a libertarian on social issues.

It isn’t black/white, it’s a spectrum, you can also have a lot of one over here, in this domain or sphere, and a lot of the other over there, in that domain or sphere.

What you’re talking about here is social conservatism.

In my view, most people, most of the time, don’t make poor choices.
And what poor choices are is a matter of some contention and in many ways up to individuals to decide for themselves.
And people learn better through trial and error than they do by ordinance.

People only need to be protected from multinationals, not themselves, or rather the state needs to stop protecting multinationals from us and natural market forces.
As people grow wealthier after the megacorps are broken up and/or socialized, they will have more time and energy to make better decisions.

I think if the state should intervene at all in our (inter)personal lives, it should do so by making social services available to help people get their life in order, but these services ought to be voluntary, not compulsory, and either funded by big business or convert some of big business into these sorts of services, not by taxing working people.

Parents shouldn’t be permitted to severely abuse or neglect children.

I’m a nationalist and a social democrat.
Canada is still majority white, English and Christian (I’m agnostic, but still).
If anyone’s heritage should come first, it’s ours.
If nonwhites, nonEnglish and nonChristians immigrate here, while they should be able to keep many of their customs, they should have basic knowledge of and respect for ours.

i was just looking over this thread again and i realized i didn’t give you a proper introduction. better late than never, though.

don’t know if you ever heard this, but this was the last recording she (we; and iambiguous also makes a cameo appearance at 2:12) did shortly after the infamous battle with the west side hegelians at revleft.com many years ago. they put the heat on her so she dropped off the grid and went underground to avoid capture.

we - aka ‘the mafia’ - know her as ‘lil’ kim’ or ‘queen bitch’ now, and actual sightings of her these days are very rare, if ever. all that remains today among philosophy circles is the legend of rosa lichtenstein

vocaroo.com/i/s0OZt2tjOUEP