[Peace] free market vs crony capitalism

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Critics of capitalism have assumed (not just since Marx) that there can be no level playing field between those who own the means of production and those who have to sell their work of head and hands if they want to eat regularly.

“Capitalistic economic relations perpetuate a form of bondage which, as early as 1767, Simon Linguet had declared to be 'even worse than slavery' - writing

'It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm laborers to till the soil, whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters, who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? "He is free," you say. That is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters: that is, need. It is this that that reduces them to the most cruel dependence.'

"And if there is something degrading to human nature in the idea of bondage, as every spokesman for the Enlightenment would insist, then it would follow that a new emancipation must be awaited, what Fourier referred to as the third and last emancipatory phase of history. The first having made serfs out of slaves, the second wage earners out of serfs and the third which will transform the proletariat freemen by eliminating the commodity character of labour, ending wage slavery and bringing the commercial, industrial and financial institutions, under democratic control.” [Chomsky]

—CGE


> On May 11, 2017, at 3:38 PM, Dianna Visek via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> There's a vast difference between the free market, meaning a level playing field, and crony capitalism, where government and business are in bed with each other.  Many folks on the left use the term "capitalism" to refer to both.
> 
> Dianna
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