[Khern]

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The main difference between Adam Smith and Karl Marx...

Smith's primary intellectual tool: Logic

Marx's primary intellectual tool: Rhetoric


I could make up a word, we'll call it 'utterfailure'. The definition of this word is "any individual with a net worth under $10 million." Of course, the definition has nothing to do with what people will assume given the name. I, like Marx, chose this "arbitrarily."

This is the way Marx uses the word 'exploitation'. His definition has little to do with the one people are used to. It simply represents the clever manner in which Marx influences people through rhetoric.

Marx believes that the worker is not appropriately compensated for his labor, placing no weight on the value of capital in society. He does not give credit to the capitalist for using his mind (the most powerful tool to any individual in a capitalist system) to pool the resources necessary to provide employment for the worker. Instead, he believes that the worker is "exploited," regardless of the fact that the capitalist and worker enter an agreement in which both parties consent.

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The agreement to which you refer is a dubious concept. The worker has to work or else he will starve, this is a pretty unfair situation for the worker to be in. To many it seems like borderline extortion, work or die. This is especially evident in smaller fields of work, ie mining towns in West Virgina. Here people are born into a situation where they have limited employment and almost no chance to escape to a larger market.

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There is a significant difference between meeting basic needs and creating an egalitarian society. Given basic needs, the labor aggrement would not be coercive.

As I noted below, even F.A. Hayek agreed that our society should be able to provide a basic survival to everyone. (I think he may have even noted that without this, labor contracts would be coercive.)

I was quite surprised when I read this, and I asked (in this thread) how libertarians on this board felt about his assertion. I am still interested in any responses. I am still not sure how I feel about this.

Ah, I found the quote:

"These two kinds of security are, first, security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenence for all; and second, the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person of group enjoys compared with others.
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There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which our has obtained the first kind of security should not be garunteed to all without endangering general freedom."
F.A.Hayek, The Road to Surfdom, Ch 9.

This is from one of the leading libertarians of our time. Can anyone draw an economic picture that makes this make sense, or one that makes it seem ludacris?