I just don’t think this argument really tracks. If we were hunter/gatherers, we would have no choice but to hunt and gather for food. No it’s not consensual, you have to do it, but would we really say we were being coerced? By who? Nature?
You can say there is bad stuff about Capitalism, and better ideas or systems we should do instead, without this coercion claim.
In the case of capitalism, we are actually speaking about coercion, though. The concept of “primitive accumulation” (or “primary accumulation”), as introduced by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy, refers to the historical process that led to the formation of capitalism by separating the producer from the means of production. This separation is what ultimately pushed people into the capitalist labor market, making them dependent on selling their labor to survive. The coercive forces that pressured people into capitalism and the labor market can be understood through several key mechanisms:
Enclosure of the Commons: In England and elsewhere in Europe, land that was previously held in common for collective use by peasants was enclosed, privatized, and turned into private property. This process forced many peasants off the land, depriving them of their traditional means of subsistence and making them dependent on wage labor.
Colonialism and Slavery: The expansion of European powers into the Americas, Africa, and Asia involved the appropriation of land and resources, often through violent means. Indigenous peoples were displaced or enslaved, and their resources were extracted for the benefit of European capitalist economies. This not only facilitated the accumulation of capital but also integrated various regions into the global capitalist system.
Legislation: Laws and regulations played a crucial role in this process. For example, the series of laws known as the “Poor Laws” in England were designed to coerce the unemployed and poor into working for wages. These laws restricted the movement of labor and made it illegal to refuse work, effectively pushing people into the labor market.
Destruction of Alternative Economies: Pre-capitalist forms of production and exchange, such as feudalism, communal living, or barter systems, were systematically destroyed or undermined. This was not only through direct coercion but also through economic policies and practices that favored capitalist modes of production and exchange.
Industrial Revolution: The technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution created a demand for labor in factories. The rural populations, already dispossessed by the enclosure movements, migrated to urban centers in search of work, further entrenching the wage labor system.
Marx argued that primitive accumulation was not a one-time historical event but an ongoing process that sustains capitalism. It involves continuous dislocation and dispossession to maintain a labor force that has no other choice but to sell its labor power. This process ensures a supply of workers for the capitalist system and maintains the conditions necessary for capital accumulation.
In essence, the transition to capitalism, fueled by these coercive forces, created a society where the majority must sell their labor to a minority who owns the means of production, thereby establishing the capitalist labor market and perpetuating the cycle of capital accumulation.
If we were hunter/gatherers, we would have no choice but to hunt and gather for food.
The argument is not that people are forced to labor, but that people are forced to labor on behalf of others. Which is to say, its the difference between a Hunter/Gatherer living off the land and a King’s Huntsman, who is distinguished from a Poacher, in that he has duties and privileges assigned to him by another guy.
You can say there is bad stuff about Capitalism, and better ideas or systems we should do instead, without this coercion claim.
The nature of the Capitalist system is to lay claim to physical property with some threat of violence. It is inherently a dictatorial system, in which a handful of people are afforded the right to claim surplus to sustain and enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbors.
The “bad stuff” is what makes Capitalism a system at all. It is - to crib a joke from Monty Python - the violence that is inherent within the system. If you don’t pay your dues to the King, he gets to beat them out of you.
How can you even discuss Capitalism without talking about this innate coercive mechanic?
This is falling for the capitalist consent vs. coercion framing. Capitalism doesn’t have to be coercive to be wrong. Even some perfectly voluntary capitalism with a UBI would still be wrong because capitalism inherently violates workers’ inalienable rights to workplace democracy and to get the fruits of their labor (surplus). The much stronger framing is alienable vs. inalienable rights. An inalienable right is one that the holder can’t give up even with consent.
Capitalism doesn’t have to be coercive to be wrong.
Capitalism is, necessarily, coercive. You can find other things wrong with it, but this is an inherent characteristic of reserving ownership to a “landed” class.
Even some perfectly voluntary capitalism with a UBI would still be wrong because capitalism inherently violates workers’ inalienable rights to workplace democracy
But it achieves that end through the process of “Capital Strikes” (ie, lockouts, hiring freezes, speculative hording, etc). And capital strikes are only possible via coercive force (ie, putting a guy with a gun in an industrial site who shoots any worker that tries to enter and engage in production).
The much stronger framing is alienable vs. inalienable rights.
Rights are legal fictions. There is no such thing as an inalienable right in a material sense. You show me a right, I’ll show you a guy with a gun who can alienate it.
Here’s the thing: as long as poverty exists, poverty exists as a threat to get people to do things without their full consent. In some cases, like in the case of sex work, that can be actual sex, in which case, it cannot be faithfully said that all sex is fully consensual as long as it’s agreed to out of survival fears. In other cases, like for example minimum wage labor, people are accepting minimum wages out of fear of having nothing, and so they accept anything. This complete lack of bargaining power is behind low wages, dangerous conditions, terrible hours, poor treatment, etc.
Alienated ≠ violated
An inalienable right isn’t one that should not be alienated, but rather can’t be alienated. For labor’s rights, responsibility can’t be alienated at a material level. Consent isn’t sufficient to transfer responsibility to another. For example, a contract to transfer responsibility for a crime is invalid regardless of consent.
Legal rights can be fictions but also can be based on ethics.
Workers consent to employment unlike kings. Inalienability shows it’s invalid
Consent isn’t sufficient to transfer responsibility to another.
These are legalistic concepts, not materialistic concepts.
For example, a contract to transfer responsibility for a crime is invalid regardless of consent.
A contract is valid when it is enforced. And any cartel boss will tell you how “illegal” contracts are regularly enforced between criminal organizations.
Past that, the very subject of crime and enforcement is subjective, as illustrated by the various states of the drug trade, human trafficking, and stolen property. More than one pawn shop has subsisted primarily on fenced goods. The legality of their stock does not appear to inhibit the success of their business.
Legal rights can be fictions but also can be based on ethics.
Consent and responsibility are descriptive not legal concepts there.
Opposing coercion is an ethic. Certain material facts logically imply ethics. A brain has finitely many states it can be in. The whole state space is finitely representable. Minds can be mathematically modeled completely in principle. The concept of strong attractors and flows in the space of all possible minds is thus coherent. The transcendent truth about ethics is unknowable, but that doesn’t allow denial of moral realism.
Sure, consent and responsibility can be legal concepts. De facto responsibility, which is the “who did the deed” sense of responsibility, is what can’t be transferred even with consent. Responsibility in this sense is descriptive. Property and contract play no role in determining who is de facto responsible for an action
The moral claim is that the de facto responsibility should match legal responsibility. This is why contract to transfer legal responsibility is invalid @microblogmemes
It only tracks because you can’t get consent from nature. You could have gotten consent from fellow humans. The humans who put this structure in place were people that could be negotiated with and spoken to. Not some blind force.
Is your argument is that our needs have been imposed by nature rather than society and therefore our society is not coercive? I think this doesn’t work because our option to meet our needs in the traditional way has been removed; in most cases living as a hunter-gatherer has been rendered impossible (natural sources of food depopulated/destroyed) and illegal (all land is privately or publicly owned and you can’t live on it without meeting expensive requirements).
And even if that coercive situation hadn’t been created, it would still be our collective responsibility to remove unnecessary naturally imposed hardships that cannot be efficiently dealt with on an individual level.
Hunter/gatherers worked less hours and ate better food then those working the land. But the coercion here is meant by one group making others work more then necessary so they can get richer. Just because there are difficulties in nature, doesn’t mean it’s ok for humans to make it harder for other humans.
I can keep a good attitude in bad weather, but when it’s a felony conviction because every stage of the process is just people looking to profit, I’m mad about it.
But we aren’t hunter & gatherers anymore (not that back then there were capitalist). That age is gone (for now).
Nothing about capital (something someone can own & accumulate) is required to have and sustain cities, technology, services, etc. And it all comes from the propaganda that people are lazy & don’t work if they don’t have to (the opposite is true, but the distinction is that often what you want to do can’t be monetized for various & fairly random bullshit reasons - like, you will always find people that will want to bake/cook/serve, but most of the people that would enjoy that just get a different job that pays better & the ones that don’t like it get stuck with it … and we all get the worst part of that deal, even as consumers, except the people with incentive to maximize sales & minimize wages … like that is a good long-term goal for society or something).
I just don’t think this argument really tracks. If we were hunter/gatherers, we would have no choice but to hunt and gather for food. No it’s not consensual, you have to do it, but would we really say we were being coerced? By who? Nature?
You can say there is bad stuff about Capitalism, and better ideas or systems we should do instead, without this coercion claim.
In the case of capitalism, we are actually speaking about coercion, though. The concept of “primitive accumulation” (or “primary accumulation”), as introduced by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy, refers to the historical process that led to the formation of capitalism by separating the producer from the means of production. This separation is what ultimately pushed people into the capitalist labor market, making them dependent on selling their labor to survive. The coercive forces that pressured people into capitalism and the labor market can be understood through several key mechanisms:
Enclosure of the Commons: In England and elsewhere in Europe, land that was previously held in common for collective use by peasants was enclosed, privatized, and turned into private property. This process forced many peasants off the land, depriving them of their traditional means of subsistence and making them dependent on wage labor.
Colonialism and Slavery: The expansion of European powers into the Americas, Africa, and Asia involved the appropriation of land and resources, often through violent means. Indigenous peoples were displaced or enslaved, and their resources were extracted for the benefit of European capitalist economies. This not only facilitated the accumulation of capital but also integrated various regions into the global capitalist system.
Legislation: Laws and regulations played a crucial role in this process. For example, the series of laws known as the “Poor Laws” in England were designed to coerce the unemployed and poor into working for wages. These laws restricted the movement of labor and made it illegal to refuse work, effectively pushing people into the labor market.
Destruction of Alternative Economies: Pre-capitalist forms of production and exchange, such as feudalism, communal living, or barter systems, were systematically destroyed or undermined. This was not only through direct coercion but also through economic policies and practices that favored capitalist modes of production and exchange.
Industrial Revolution: The technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution created a demand for labor in factories. The rural populations, already dispossessed by the enclosure movements, migrated to urban centers in search of work, further entrenching the wage labor system.
Marx argued that primitive accumulation was not a one-time historical event but an ongoing process that sustains capitalism. It involves continuous dislocation and dispossession to maintain a labor force that has no other choice but to sell its labor power. This process ensures a supply of workers for the capitalist system and maintains the conditions necessary for capital accumulation.
In essence, the transition to capitalism, fueled by these coercive forces, created a society where the majority must sell their labor to a minority who owns the means of production, thereby establishing the capitalist labor market and perpetuating the cycle of capital accumulation.
Thanks for taking the time to do this informative write-up.
Yes, that is very well gathered, and something people don’t intuitively understand how it shapes us over (only a few) generations.
Chatgpt is that you D:
deleted by creator
The argument is not that people are forced to labor, but that people are forced to labor on behalf of others. Which is to say, its the difference between a Hunter/Gatherer living off the land and a King’s Huntsman, who is distinguished from a Poacher, in that he has duties and privileges assigned to him by another guy.
The nature of the Capitalist system is to lay claim to physical property with some threat of violence. It is inherently a dictatorial system, in which a handful of people are afforded the right to claim surplus to sustain and enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbors.
The “bad stuff” is what makes Capitalism a system at all. It is - to crib a joke from Monty Python - the violence that is inherent within the system. If you don’t pay your dues to the King, he gets to beat them out of you.
How can you even discuss Capitalism without talking about this innate coercive mechanic?
This is falling for the capitalist consent vs. coercion framing. Capitalism doesn’t have to be coercive to be wrong. Even some perfectly voluntary capitalism with a UBI would still be wrong because capitalism inherently violates workers’ inalienable rights to workplace democracy and to get the fruits of their labor (surplus). The much stronger framing is alienable vs. inalienable rights. An inalienable right is one that the holder can’t give up even with consent.
Capitalism is, necessarily, coercive. You can find other things wrong with it, but this is an inherent characteristic of reserving ownership to a “landed” class.
But it achieves that end through the process of “Capital Strikes” (ie, lockouts, hiring freezes, speculative hording, etc). And capital strikes are only possible via coercive force (ie, putting a guy with a gun in an industrial site who shoots any worker that tries to enter and engage in production).
Rights are legal fictions. There is no such thing as an inalienable right in a material sense. You show me a right, I’ll show you a guy with a gun who can alienate it.
Here’s the thing: as long as poverty exists, poverty exists as a threat to get people to do things without their full consent. In some cases, like in the case of sex work, that can be actual sex, in which case, it cannot be faithfully said that all sex is fully consensual as long as it’s agreed to out of survival fears. In other cases, like for example minimum wage labor, people are accepting minimum wages out of fear of having nothing, and so they accept anything. This complete lack of bargaining power is behind low wages, dangerous conditions, terrible hours, poor treatment, etc.
Alienated ≠ violated
An inalienable right isn’t one that should not be alienated, but rather can’t be alienated. For labor’s rights, responsibility can’t be alienated at a material level. Consent isn’t sufficient to transfer responsibility to another. For example, a contract to transfer responsibility for a crime is invalid regardless of consent.
Legal rights can be fictions but also can be based on ethics.
Workers consent to employment unlike kings. Inalienability shows it’s invalid
These are legalistic concepts, not materialistic concepts.
A contract is valid when it is enforced. And any cartel boss will tell you how “illegal” contracts are regularly enforced between criminal organizations.
Past that, the very subject of crime and enforcement is subjective, as illustrated by the various states of the drug trade, human trafficking, and stolen property. More than one pawn shop has subsisted primarily on fenced goods. The legality of their stock does not appear to inhibit the success of their business.
Ethics has no material basis.
This doesn’t mean anything.
Consent and responsibility are descriptive not legal concepts there.
Opposing coercion is an ethic. Certain material facts logically imply ethics. A brain has finitely many states it can be in. The whole state space is finitely representable. Minds can be mathematically modeled completely in principle. The concept of strong attractors and flows in the space of all possible minds is thus coherent. The transcendent truth about ethics is unknowable, but that doesn’t allow denial of moral realism.
When you’re discussing contracts and property - which is also a legal concept - they absolutely are legal concepts.
https://www.amazon.com/When-We-Cease-Understand-World/dp/1681375664
Sure, consent and responsibility can be legal concepts. De facto responsibility, which is the “who did the deed” sense of responsibility, is what can’t be transferred even with consent. Responsibility in this sense is descriptive. Property and contract play no role in determining who is de facto responsible for an action
The moral claim is that the de facto responsibility should match legal responsibility. This is why contract to transfer legal responsibility is invalid @microblogmemes
It only tracks because you can’t get consent from nature. You could have gotten consent from fellow humans. The humans who put this structure in place were people that could be negotiated with and spoken to. Not some blind force.
Is your argument is that our needs have been imposed by nature rather than society and therefore our society is not coercive? I think this doesn’t work because our option to meet our needs in the traditional way has been removed; in most cases living as a hunter-gatherer has been rendered impossible (natural sources of food depopulated/destroyed) and illegal (all land is privately or publicly owned and you can’t live on it without meeting expensive requirements).
And even if that coercive situation hadn’t been created, it would still be our collective responsibility to remove unnecessary naturally imposed hardships that cannot be efficiently dealt with on an individual level.
Hunter/gatherers worked less hours and ate better food then those working the land. But the coercion here is meant by one group making others work more then necessary so they can get richer. Just because there are difficulties in nature, doesn’t mean it’s ok for humans to make it harder for other humans.
I can keep a good attitude in bad weather, but when it’s a felony conviction because every stage of the process is just people looking to profit, I’m mad about it.
But we aren’t hunter & gatherers anymore (not that back then there were capitalist). That age is gone (for now).
Nothing about capital (something someone can own & accumulate) is required to have and sustain cities, technology, services, etc. And it all comes from the propaganda that people are lazy & don’t work if they don’t have to (the opposite is true, but the distinction is that often what you want to do can’t be monetized for various & fairly random bullshit reasons - like, you will always find people that will want to bake/cook/serve, but most of the people that would enjoy that just get a different job that pays better & the ones that don’t like it get stuck with it … and we all get the worst part of that deal, even as consumers, except the people with incentive to maximize sales & minimize wages … like that is a good long-term goal for society or something).