File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0005, message 1


From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: BHA: RE: (real?) definitions 
Date: Mon, 1 May 2000 11:02:46 +0100


Hi Ruth,

I'm sorry if I disappoint you, but I know absolutely nothing about markets
as such, and your account goes at lot deeper than I was attempting to
suggest. But yes, broadly put that seems to be the point of contention,
although I would perhaps tinker with your use of "non-class" a little.

However, it seems to me that it is not the case that we all agree that "we
can have "markets," in the sense of exchanges of use-value...in
non-capitalist class societies. Howard might disagree with this, certainly
if you take your "b" to be the real point of contention. Because, as you put
it, "Howard SEEMS to be saying that even if they were merely a means for the
distribution of use-values markets in fact presuppose a-social, or
individualized,
> production relations -- which Howard sees as antithetical to a fully
> socialized society". If we accept the seemingly unexceptional "a", Howard
seems to be saying that "real" socialism is not possible, for where there is
market there is something which is antithetical to a fully socialised
society. In which case the unexceptional becomes a pretty exceptional limit
to utopian theorising. Although I could have totally misunderstood Howard's
point.

On Marx, well far be it for me to criticise the "old gent", but this might
be a point of departure between CR and Marx. The fact that private property
and the control of the means of production are both embedded within a set of
particular social relations does not mean that private property (your right
to your bike) and control of the means of production (the right to
manufacture and sell bikes) are one and the same. I can't remember off the
top of my head what exactly Marx did say about the "property is theft
argument", but I seem to remember he was pretty scathing about it. I don't
want to go too far down the road of discussing Lock, but suffice to say
Locke did not think you had a right to own as many bikes as you wanted, he
said you had the right to have as many as you had laboured for, and
moreover, that the amount you were entitled to keep stood in a complex
relation to the amount left in common. In classic liberal fashion Locke's
account of property is based on the distinction (and relation) between what
is private (labour) and public (the commons). What complicates this cosy
little relationship, and makes Government necessary, is money because this
facilitates Locke's account of "increase" and gets round the problem of
"spoiling"; money helps increase the commons and does not spoil so it's ok
to hoard it. But hey, I don't want to be put in the position of defending
Locke against Marx.

Cheers,





=================================Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: 01970 621769
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cow
==================================
>



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