Lexicus
Deity
I think were really talking about the same thing as far as wages go. I'm saying that the perceived value of the employee gives them higher wages. You're saying the power employee gives them higher wages. In reality the power comes from the perceived value of that employee. Although there is something of a wage gap many of the most shocking statistics, at least in Canada, are very exaggerated. You see a chart of health sector employee wages and men get paid more than women, you break it down and see that men merely occupy higher paying positions and get paid more or less the same in these positions. Although this could still be considered a problem it isn't people actively paying men more. Plus this would support either theory as men may have more value to their employers. (I'm not saying the wage gap doesn't exist anywhere just that feminist organizations exaggerate it to shock people which is something most social justice movements do unfortunately)
Again this could be explained with perceived value and in reality we're arguing the same thing here. Someones perceived value to society and their power in society are pretty much equal when the society is their employer.
Power trumps perception. The perceived value of my labor may be very low to my employer, but if I band together in a union I increase my power and my employer will pay me more.
I don't think we are saying the same thing. This is even inherent in what you're saying - the reason that the employer's perception of the employee's value even matters is because the employer has power over the employee. In situations where the employee has more power than the employer, the employer's perception of the employee's value is irrelevant.
I know I went on a rant but surely it wasn't too confusing .
Not confusing, confused.
The bases of capitalism is the ultimate power of the market. Redistributing wealth skews the market and therefore is anti-capitalistic. I do agree that some wealth distribution can be good but you have to be careful. No one really understands exactly how the market works (economic information is too dispersed) so to meddle with it isn't the best idea.
Well see, my response would be that there is no such thing as a "natural" distribution of wealth. There is plenty of redistribution going on in what you would call "the market". Indeed, much US corporate governance the past 40 years or so has functioned to redistribute wealth upward, away from workers (you can see this by googling "wage productivity gap").
Basically my point is that the market is 'meddled with' inherently. There is no such thing as a 'natural' state of income distribution that would happen without any 'meddling' (because there can never be no meddling, ever). Markets are constructed, not natural, and never exist independently of the societies in which they are situated.
My argument can just as easily explain this by saying that the owners believe the slaves are sub-human and have no value. Even if they do have value their perceived value to the employer is zero as otherwise they would be paid.
The mere belief that slaves were subhuman and had no value wouldn't matter if the power relations were not such that masters had absolute power over slaves.
Adam smith was anti-crony capitalism. He invented capitalism. (in essence). I will completely agree with you that his works have been perverted by those claiming to be capitalists for their own ends but to say he is anti-capitalistic is like saying George Washington was against the United States of America. We have basically taken every warning Adam Smith gave us about using his system and thrown it out the window allowing the corporation instead of the consumer to thrive. I would agree that Adam Smith would be taken a back by the system we call 'capitalism' now but saying he is anti-capitalistic is simply ridiculous.
I don't know maybe we're using different definitions of capitalism here. Because my definition is basically the economic system Adam Smith laid out in the Wealth of Nations where the invisible hand guides the market and consumers have the ultimate power.
I suspect you haven't read Wealth of Nations, only read what others have written about it. It is a fundamentally anti-capitalist tract in that it denounces the rent-seeking behavior of contemporary capitalists (such as the people running the East India Company for example).
The invisible hand was never a major part of the arguments in the Wealth of Nations and as I alluded above, Smith admitted the invisible hand was the hand of God. Smith argued in Wealth of Nations and elsewhere for state intervention to redistribute income and to secure basic living standards for people - exactly what you've characterized as "anti-capitalistic." This is why I said your original point here was muddled.
Imp. Knoedel said:Also Adam Smith didn't invent capitalism. Nobody invented capitalism, it came about as a result of historical development. You could argue that Smith created a scientific theory to describe capitalism, but Marx did the same thing and better.
There's nothing strictly scientific about Marx or Smith's theories. The central bit of what Marx saw as his scientific description of capitalism for example rests on a tautology (Labor Theory of Value), not a falsifiable proposition.
Imp. Knoedel said:Corporations are a logical consequence of the way capitalism works.
I would say corporations are just a logical consequence of the human propensity to come together to work on things that are bigger than any one person. There's nothing inherently capitalistic about the corporation- the first ancestors of modern business corporations are monasteries and churches in Europe. That was AFAIK the first place that the legal device of interpreting an association as a legal individual was used.
georgjorge said:I don't really get that argument. "Meddling" with the market might not always produce favourable results, but neither does a market without "meddling". I think that here you have fallen into the trap of viewing a market as something natural which should stay untouched by external forces, like a natural habitat.
Exactly this. Markets and capitalism are hardly synonymous. Capitalism is closer to a system where capitalists rig the market for their own benefit.
georgjorge said:There would be no wage labor in such a system. Why would owners of capital go to the trouble of hiring workers and paying them exactly what they added, hence making no profit (surplus) at all? Also, how would they acquire their capital in the first place without surplus (though I know about primitive accumulation but that's not sustainable)?
Wage labor doesn't require someone making a profit. NGOs and non-profit organizations (and states for that matter) use wage labor all the time, but don't systemically extract surplus value from the labor of their employees.