Yesterday we looked at what Henry George had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part XII
Karl Polanyi, the “not quite Karl Marx” guy
       Karl Polanyi, in his book The Great Transformation, originally published in 1944, during the Second World War, discusses the big three elements of the market system that all economics textbooks talk about; land, labor, and capital. In the market system, these three commodities, along with goods and services, have their prices in rent, wages, and interest respectively. However, Polanyi argues, effectively I believe, that these are fictitious commodities, only invented by industrialists to keep the self regulated market system going. Goods and services, he argues, really are “commodities here empirically defined as objects produced for sale on the market; markets, again, are empirically defined as actual contacts between buyers and sellers” (Polanyi 1975, 72). But land, labor and capital, even though they have been artificially turned into commodities, are not and should not be commodities. Labor is just a name for what people do to live, land is just another name for the natural environment, and money is a just a social agreement about what constitutes a medium of exchange, and none of the three are actually produced the way goods and services are produced, as commodities for buying and selling.
       I am not able to refute Polanyi’s argument that making these into commodities really is essential to a self-regulating market, but whether or no, I agree that they are not really produced and should not really be commodities. If they are not really essential to a self-regulating market, then we can stop using them in this way and the market system can continue without them. If they really are essential to the market system, then I suggest that we get rid of the market system and try a much more regulated political economy. Richard Schlatter writes a redundant anthology
       Richard Schlatter, in the conclusion to his 1951 book, Private Property: The History of an Idea, after assessing many theories of private property throughout history, including the Christian medieval and reformation thought, notes that the Classical theory of the natural right to property, as fashioned by John Locke, is almost impossible to defend in modern Capitalist theory, and yet it is still being used, in different situations and even by opposing viewpoints (Schlatter 1951, 278, 281). At first glance, he seems to be confusing Locke’s theory of labor with the State of Nature theory, but on second reading I realize that he is right; nobody uses the State of Nature theory anymore, yet everybody, Capitalist and Socialist alike, feels comfortable with Locke’s labor theory, even though it is no more valid than any other theory. Also, Locke’s theory can be easily modified to fit either a collectivist rights theory or an individualist rights theory. Laborers, as individuals have a right to the fruits of their labor (Free Market economics) and laborers collectively have a right to the fruits of their labor (Socialism and Communism). Schlatter’s most ironic point is that modern Capitalists still pay lip service to that theory, even though their economic activities work against it.
Friday: C. B. Macpherson turns that “exclusive property” idea on its head.
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

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