Teachers are not people

[Traitorfish]

Actually I don't think I am. I can't really talk about communism, but tribute is just the same. If Minos makes a treaty that we will send him fourteen youths or suffer the consequences, we by accepting it say that peace with Crete is 'worth' fourteen youths to us. If we decided that peace with Crete was worth less than fourteen youths, we'd refuse and fight the war. Similarly, if he said that we should pay him £500 yearly or face war, we would by paying the tribute be saying that peace was worth £500 a year or more, and if it ceased to be so, we would stop paying. Of course, there's shoe leather cost involved, because it costs us to break the treaty in bad feeling - we don't like to break promises, so we can ascribe to that a monetary value (you would have to pay me a certain amount of money to break a promise for no loss or gain, so that's the fallout that I suffer for breaking a promise)

That's an analogy, not a description. You can say "oh, it's like X, Y and Z", but that doesn't mean that it is X, Y and Z. In the case of tribute, it wasn't perceived as a form of commerce by those participating in it- in fact, they were often explicitly differentiated- nor do historians generally understand it as such. All you're saying is "stuff moves around" and "people make cost-benefit analyses", neither of which imply in themselves or together the existence of commercial relations. It only functions if you elevate liberal economics to the level of a metaphysics.

You're right, sorry - I've been talking about the free market throughout, which I think has been my entire point for quite a while. Unfree competition is a bad thing, and I'm not going to deny that.

What's the distinction between "free" and "unfree" competition?

I'm saying that enclosure represented a straightforward increase in wealth for the whole of Britain - that is, if you added up the income of everyone in the country, you'd get a bigger number after enclosure than before. Again, you need a free market for it to trickle down.

Which "unfreedoms" did you have in mind?

On the contrary. Enclosure directly led to an increase in agricultural productivity; that much is beyond dispute. This led directly to an increase in population: enclosure also led to rural-urban migration, which directly facilitated, if not outright caused, the Industrial Revolution. Without that, we would be living in a much worse place than we are now.

Well, that's exactly the sort unhelpful abstraction I was talking about. "X happened, and four hundred years later it was like Y" doesn't tell you a shadow of a glimpse of a thing about how we got from one to the other.

They could only do so because food production was getting more efficient. If it hadn't been, and they'd taken land away from crops in favour of wool, food prices would have risen to the point whereby it would have been more profitable to plant crops. There's an economic principle that all options are equally attractive - assuming that nothing fundamental changes in an economy (ie; it becomes possible to grow more food for the same cost), there's no option which is categorically better than the others. The classic example is queuing: there might be two queues for the cinema, and one might be shorter than the other, but seeing this people will move from the longer to the shorter until the two are equal.

Well, no, not really. The Highlands had never exported crops to the Lowlands, only beef and mutton, and that actually increased after the Clearances as land was freed up for grazing. The relationship between the Clearances and the agricultural revolution was the fact that the surplus of impoverished labourers in the Lowlands and England produced a market for meat and for wool, which was more profitable for the competitive, thoroughly capitalistic landlords than the meagre rents brought in by the Gaelic peasantry.

It doesn't, but it does mean that any plan including the phrase 'it'll work if we ignore the worldwide market' can be discounted. Ignoring the wider market in ecoomics is like ignoring friction in physics.

Which is presumably why the Soviets didn't, and so can't be understood as a planned economy, or at least no more so than any given factory can be described as a tiny "planned economy".

I think too-dramatic changes from the present state of affairs, as well as being unlikely, would be quite unstable. Our current society allows people to run pretty much as they would naturally, with a few constraints: the more constraints on natural behaviour, the more people break the rules and fight the establishment. For example, the more laws, the more crimes.

You make a comparison to "as they would naturally", but what does that actually mean? What is "natural" for humans? And where exactly do we locate this "natural" behaviour in a world of financial capitalism, loan-driven consumption and service-sector employment? (Can't speak for you, but I've never seen a bushman spend ten hours sat a conveyor belt saying "have a nice day" until he wasn't even sure what it meant any more.)

A planned economy has to be nationalised (or practically nationalised), doesn't it? To be honest, it means I can't find an actual example if you discount the one large socialist state in history, so I'm trying to find a near alternative.

I don't see why it does, no. "Planning" means that production is organised on a non-monetary basis, and "nationalisation" means that an industry is taken over by the state; the two don't actually have anything to do with each other.

 

[Flying Pig]

That's an analogy, not a description. You can say "oh, it's like X, Y and Z", but that doesn't mean that it is X, Y and Z. In the case of tribute, it wasn't perceived as a form of commerce by those participating in it- in fact, they were often explicitly differentiated- nor do historians generally understand it as such. All you're saying is "stuff moves around" and "people make cost-benefit analyses", neither of which imply in themselves or together the existence of commercial relations. It only functions if you elevate Smithian economics to the level of a metaphysics.

I'm going to agree to differ on this point, because I'm no longer confident that I understand the difference between what we're saying well enough to make a good reply.

What's the distinction between "free" and "unfree" competition?

Good question. In brief, perfectly free competition means that nobody has the power to set the price of a commodity. It has has these characteristics:

• Firm and enforced property rights
• Symmetric information between buyers and sellers
• Zero entry and exit barriers to the market - ie, anyone can switch freely between being a buyer and a seller, or choose to do neither
• An infinite, or at least very large, number of buyers and sellers
• No tarrifs, quotas or intellectual property rights
• Nothing off-limits for buying or selling

And some others (there are actual economics around here who can tell you far better than I do). Now obviously we can never have a perfectly free market and its doubtful whether we'd want one - I don't want to live in a world where university places, legal judgements and public offices go to the highest bidder, or where intellectual property has no meaning - but the closer you get to that, the better the competition and the freer the market. Under these circumstances, we have economic efficiency - that is, the allocation of resources which produces the greatest total output of goods and services.

Which "unfreedoms" did you have in mind?

If the market is free, people spend all the money that they don't need or feel the need to save with a view to spending it later (passing it on to a son counts as spending it, though) since money in the bank doesn't mean anything. Therefore, if there are sellers waiting to take advantage of it, if Jack gets richer he'll spend more money, and so Jim will get richer as well (remember what we said about the pork roll; by Jack shopping at Jim's shop they both get richer). When people have their options to enter the market and trade closed down, either through active opposition or a lack of means, they don't benefit from it. So, for example, workers usually need the freedom to negotiate the terms of their employment if they are to benefit from competition.

That's exactly the sort unhelpful abstraction I was talking about.

I think it's a fair cause-and-effect.

Well, no, not really. The Highlands had never exported crops to the Lowlands, only beef and mutton, and that actually increased after the Clearances as land was freed up for grazing. The relationship between the Clearances and the agricultural revolution was the fact that the surplus of impoverished labourers in the Lowlands and England produced a market for meat and for wool, which was more profitable for the competitive, thoroughly capitalistic landlords than the meagre rents brought in by the Gaelic peasantry.

Highlanders have to eat too. Even then, had there been no increase in agricultural efficiency, taking land away from the production of food would have led to a rise in food prices. Supply and demand is pretty indisputable.

Which is presumably why the Soviets didn't, and so can't be understood as a planned economy, or at least no more so than any given factory can be described as a tiny "planned economy".

Very good, but in that case no real-world country can ever have a planned economy. Unless I'm missing something, that means we can discount it as a political idea.

You make a comparison to "as they would naturally", but what does that actually mean? What is "natural" for humans? And where exactly do we locate this "natural" behaviour in a world of financial capitalism, loan-driven consumption and service-sector employment? (Can't speak for you, but I've never seen a bushman spend ten hours sat a conveyor belt saying "have a nice day" until he wasn't even sure what it meant any more.)

We naturally try to maximise our own happiness. This means that we naturally try to maximise our own consumption. We don't naturally refrain from stealing. We don't naturally 'do the right thing' if it means significantly hurting our own happiness. Human beings remain animals.

I don't see why it does, no. "Planning" means that production is organised on a non-monetary basis,

Can you explain this one a bit?

 

[Traitorfish]

Good question. In brief, perfectly free competition means that nobody has the power to set the price of a commodity. It has has these characteristics:

• Firm and enforced property rights
• Symmetric information between buyers and sellers
• Zero entry and exit barriers to the market - ie, anyone can switch freely between being a buyer and a seller, or choose to do neither
• An infinite, or at least very large, number of buyers and sellers
• No tarrifs, quotas or intellectual property rights
• Nothing off-limits for buying or selling

And some others (there are actual economics around here who can tell you far better than I do). Now obviously we can never have a perfectly free market and its doubtful whether we'd want one - I don't want to live in a world where university places, legal judgements and public offices go to the highest bidder, or where intellectual property has no meaning - but the closer you get to that, the better the competition and the freer the market. Under these circumstances, we have economic efficiency - that is, the allocation of resources which produces the greatest total output of goods and services.

But we live today close to this ideal than we have for probably a century, and we very demonstrably do not have that. Huge amounts of both capital and labour sit even as we speak in disuse, because the market has decided that it has no need for them. Further, the period of the greatest and most generalised efficiency, c.1945-c.1975 was one in which the state meddled constantly. How do you reconcile that with the assertion of natural "efficiency"?

If the market is free, people spend all the money that they don't need or feel the need to save with a view to spending it later (passing it on to a son counts as spending it, though) since money in the bank doesn't mean anything. Therefore, if there are sellers waiting to take advantage of it, if Jack gets richer he'll spend more money, and so Jim will get richer as well (remember what we said about the pork roll; by Jack shopping at Jim's shop they both get richer). When people have their options to enter the market and trade closed down, either through active opposition or a lack of means, they don't benefit from it. So, for example, workers usually need the freedom to negotiate the terms of their employment if they are to benefit from competition.

Where these freedoms absent in the case of the Clearances?

I think it's a fair cause-and-effect.

Saying that X is the condition of Y does not imply that X caused Y. The Earth's gravitational field is the condition of my writing this, but that hardly suggests that it is the cause.

Highlanders have to eat too. Even then, had there been no increase in agricultural efficiency, taking land away from the production of food would have led to a rise in food prices. Supply and demand is pretty indisputable.

What makes you think that prices would have risen such that it became more profitable to repopulate the Highlands with subsistence farmers? If anything, it would and intensify the Clearances, because increasing food prices mean that rearing mutton and beef for export became yet more profitable than rent. And, wouldn't you know, that's exactly what happened.

Very good, but in that case no real-world country can ever have a planned economy. Unless I'm missing something, that means we can discount it as a political idea.

So not only have we elevated liberal economics to the a metaphysics, we've given it a pal in the nation-state?

We naturally try to maximise our own happiness. This means that we naturally try to maximise our own consumption. We don't naturally refrain from stealing. We don't naturally 'do the right thing' if it means significantly hurting our own happiness. Human beings remain animals.

You don't think that this describes non-capitalist societies? And, if not, then what exactly was happening for that first 99.9% of human history that no longer applies?

Can you explain this one a bit?

To say that an economy is "planned" is to say that it does not employ the mediation of a homogenising commodity into which all other goods can be translated, i.e. money, and instead deals solely in use-values. Production and distributed is organised on the basis of what is needed where. This wasn't the case in the Soviet Union, where production was still based on the exchange of money, either in the form of actual cash or in the form of financial calculations.

 

[Flying Pig]

But we live today close to this ideal than we have for probably a century, and we very demonstrably do not have that. Huge amounts of both capital and labour sit even as we speak in disuse, because the market has decided that it has no need for them. Further, the period of the greatest and most generalised efficiency, c.1945-c.1975 was one in which the state meddled constantly. How do you reconcile that with the assertion of natural "efficiency"?

Oh, please don't think I'm one of those people who thinks that a free market and a deregulated market are the same thing. They're not. Locking a bunch of people in a room with some goods and some money is not a free market; the state needs to intervene in the economy in order to make the market free, and to bring about the conditions I set out. For example, without state regulation, there would be almost totally asymmetric information between buyer and seller - without the Sale of Goods Act, shops would be able to lie about their wares to convince you to buy something worth far less than its asking price.

Where these freedoms absent in the case of the Clearances?

I think so - as a general rule of thumb, any population with huge economic inequalities is unlikely to be a free market - but I'm not really enough of a historian to debate this example in detail. I do say that the 'cleared' did not have the freedom (which doesn't mean that they were actively prevented from doing so) to find a new job on their own terms, which is why so many ended up with poverty or having to emigrate.

Saying that X is the condition of Y does not imply that X caused Y. The Earth's gravitational field is the condition of my writing this, but that hardly suggests that it is the cause.

You're totally right, but this is one of those cases where correlation does not imply causation, but it does wave a placard and say 'look over here'. It's an abstraction, but it's not an unfair one - unless you have a better one?

What makes you think that prices would have risen such that it became more profitable to repopulate the Highlands with subsistence farmers?

Subsistence farmers are a bit different; because they're not in the market - they eat the products of their labour rather than trading with them - they don't benefit from it. This is another reason why a free market and a deregulated market are not the same thing.

So not only have we elevated liberal economics to the a metaphysics, we've given it a pal in the nation-state?

I'm not sure I see the point...

You don't think that this describes non-capitalist societies? And, if not, then what exactly was happening for that first 99.9% of human history that no longer applies?

Before industrialisation, people lacked the means - namely, tools of production which a worker can never hope to own himself - to do some of the nasty things that they do nowadays. These means exist nowadays, and you can't put the cat back in the bag.

To say that an economy is "planned" is to say that it does not employ the mediation of a homogenising commodity into which all other goods can be translated, i.e. money, and instead deals solely in use-values. Production and distributed is organised on the basis of what is needed where.

This wasn't the case in the Soviet Union, where production was still based on the exchange of money, either in the form of actual cash or in the form of financial calculations.

I think this is the false dichotomy between production and services and money. All industrial production is based on the exchange of money - those doing the producing don't actually need the things that they make in the quantity that they make them, so they exchange them for something that they do want. [How] did the USSR avoid this?