What follows is another email reply out to that student at Tainan's Cheng Kung University who emailed me some responses to my Ha Joon Chang posts. His comments and questions appear in italics, mine in regular typeface.
"I find you focusing on the trees and not the forest."
That's 'cos the critters live in trees, not in forests.
"But, Chang seems to be trying to illustrate another example of the changing concept of "state intervention". He's not debating exactly how the slaves were freed, or why. He's trying to show his point on the changing (or dialectical, if you want) meaning of "state intervention".
Two points: first, his "changing concept" of state intervention is invalid - it would be both more honest and more accurate for him to claim changes in popular acceptance of state intervention; otherwise it's a bit like having a changing concept of armed robbery, changing according to whether the person being robbed is popular or unpopular at any given time. The concept itself does not change, simply because the object or context to which it is applied may change. Second point: to allow Chang to stipulate to a "changing concept" of state intervention cedes to him a rhetorical device for shutting down debate, i.e. certain state interventions are no longer interventions and to contest them as such is illegitimate. Look again at his words: he says that opposition to slavery can be done on grounds of economic efficiency. Why do you think he says that?
"...he's pointing out that over-time--through progress, certain "interventions" become ingrained conceptually, culturally, humanly, societally--and are no longer perceived by the population as interventions--like, child labor laws in Western Europe or the U.S.--they are self-evident truths, so to speak..."
I realize what he is arguing, and I am rejecting his anti-conceptual way of framing it as "state interventions" which are not "state interventions". An honest person would speak of changes in the popular acceptance of state interventions - draw your own conclusions about Chang's honesty, I have already drawn mine.
"...they are self-evident truths, so to speak..."
I understand, but that "self-evident" bit arises only because of the lack of rational criticism, which must not be shut down.
"You're playing the linguistical-category game and missing the big picture."
Excuse me, but I would hope on reflection, you'd admit that it is Chang playing linguistic games with his "state interventions" that are not "state interventions" nonsense - and not me. I am acutely aware of the big picture Chang is playing to and for you to accuse me otherwise and of playing linguistic games - in the full knowledge of what Chang said - is disgraceful.
"Child labor laws are no longer applicable--because we have progressed past needing child-labor, and we understand putting a child to work damages his education--and his future, not to mention society."
Look - when you say "putting a child to work damages his..." you are abstracting child labour from the context of any particular case, but it is precisely that context which can make all the difference. For instance, if a child is born into such wretched circumstances wherein he is faced by the choice of labour or starvation, then it is fucking outrageous for you to insist that such labour be outlawed in case it damages his education. Now that doesn't mean that nobody should do anything about such cases of child poverty - it just means that an offer of help through labour should not be taken away from that child just because you think it isn't good enough. And it is not linguistic gamesmanship to highlight your use of the verb "putting" there and note the implication of coercion. For in cases where children are being coerced into labour, then the problem is not the labour per se, but the act of coercion.
"Therefore, child-labor laws are not the same-type, or the same level of intervention as taxes, social programs, or even government controls. Over time, as a society becomes more advanced, child-labor laws are deemed "non-interventionist", because they are no longer needed--again, they become self-evident - a commonly held belief."
Child labour laws are most certainly of the same type as taxes and other government controls - they are infractions of negative liberty standing on the threat of force. They differ from social programs in that such are attempts to engineer positive liberty (opportunities) for some on the basis of prior infractions of other people's negative liberty: robbing from Peter to give to Paul. This notion of a "level" of intervention is, at best, misleading; what you seem to be referring to are levels of popular acceptability of a given intervention, so for instance everyone gets pissed about paying property taxes, but nobody complains that they can't hire 8 year olds to mop the floors. But this is a mere reiteration of the criticism I already made above.
"This assumption is called democracy..."
I know very well what it is - and can say so more precisely: the electoral mechanism. Just because people do vote themselves the stolen products of other people's labour and property, doesn't mean they ought to do that.
"I like his environmental example. I'm interested in your idea, here: "I believe that pollution, like other externality issues, would be best dealt with, not through government regulation, but primarily by strengthening the integrity of the overall legal architecture to the principles of individualist ethics, such as private property; in particular such a reform program would most certainly require repeal of a substantial number of laws, regulations and abolishing of regulatory agencies." Care to expand on specifics?"
Perhaps, but not until I am convinced you have at least understood the basics (as distinct from assent to) - otherwise I'd be wasting my time. And if that sounds patronizing, then just remember that you accused me (!) of playing linguistic games in the face of Chang's ridiculous and unnecessary Orwellianism.
"You seem to harp on the fact that Chang asserts that "intervention is not intervention if enough people agree". In fact, he does kind of say this--and I would agree with him, because a society should determine its own actions. Societies must be run democratically. The majority rules."
Instant dismissal: these are mere assertions of oughts, without a speck of argument. Don't you think I at least deserve a fucking argument before the bastard goons come along to cart off what little shit I have?
"I understand the meaning of terms create concepts, concepts that describe and/or determine reality, and they are very important."
No you don't understand - concepts cannot determine reality, they are mental integrations of aspects of reality. Reality can only be changed through your deliberate use of concepts to guide your actions. Ayn Rand's theory of concepts is her decisive contribution to philosophy, and is the single most important thing to understand about her philosophy - and you got it wrong.
"...your key refutation against his main assertion(s)?"
Read all three parts through slowly and attend with care to the meaning of every single word. I've done my bit: the rest is up to you.
Saturday, 12 February 2011
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"Look - when you say 'putting a child to work damages his...' you are abstracting child labour from the context of any particular case, but it is precisely that context which can make all the difference. For instance, if a child is born into such wretched circumstances wherein he is faced by the choice of labour or starvation, then it is fucking outrageous for you to insist that such labour be outlawed in case it damages his education. Now that doesn't mean that nobody should do anything about such cases of child poverty - it just means that an offer of help through labour should not be taken away from that child just because you think it isn't good enough. And it is not linguistic gamesmanship to highlight your use of the verb 'putting' there and note the implication of coercion. For in cases where children are being coerced into labour, then the problem is not the labour per se, but the act of coercion."
ReplyDelete--Good piece of writing there, Mike, and an excellent response. I've been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting to find someone else who makes this argument. A child needing to work or wanting to work for whatever reason should not be frowned upon; perhaps the "needing to" part may have outside causes, and I, like you, do not see any reason for finding some other form of solution--your "Now that doesn't mean that nobody should do anything about such cases of child poverty"--but if he wants to buy a car or an Xbox or a Ted Williams baseball card and his parents won't give him the money, for example, he may decide it is a "need" (for needs can at times, be normative judgments made by the individual), even though others may consider such things a "want" or whatever. I don't take it upon myself to decide for others what they believe their needs and wants to be. Anyway, back to the point, if the child decides to earn the money, and wishes to find employment, what is the problem with that? I started helping farmers back in my hometown n weekends when I was 9--seven years before I could legally work. Although others may be led to believe that this affected my intellectual abilities, which is of course arguable, I think it taught me more than it deprived me of. (Ending a sentence with a preposition--damn you, underaged employment!)
Anyway, I agree with everything in your statement here: the problem is not the work, it is the choice/coercion issue. And this is why I think that legislation which limits an individual's decision to be employed for money (or some other form of compensation) because of his/her age should be abolished in favor of leaving the choice to the individual--and not even to the individual's parents. Because I think parents should not be allowed to force their children to work, although advice, incentive, and whatnot--even for a parent to go so far as to request his/her child to seek employment so long as the ultimate decision is left to the child--is perfectly acceptable.
I do think children need to be protected from exploitation; and I agree with you that in this situation exploitation occurs in the act of coercion, not simply the offer of providing employment for someone who wishes to undertake it. Again, great piece of work here (even if you don't agree with some of the things I've written). I've been waiting for someone else to make the distinctions you've made (above).
Thanks Nathan, but I would certainly be more judicious with that adjective "excellent" - that bit on child labour is really not much more than entry-level stuff to my mind.
ReplyDeleteWhen you said this...
"I started helping farmers back in my hometown on weekends when I was 9--seven years before I could legally work. Although others may be led to believe that this affected my intellectual abilities, which is of course arguable..."
I laughed! It's funny on two levels - as self-deprecation and as a twist on the meaning of "intellectual abilities", i.e. as susceptibility to the sinister gibberish of the Left.
I received a reply essentially confirming my failure to persuade and comparing me unfavourably to Naomi Klein.
ReplyDeleteWell, Mike, you'd be amazed at how many people would call this excellent if they actually thought this far. To us, this is "entry-level stuff," but I think when people study the history of the Industrial Revolution, people are conditioned to jump to conclusions regarding child labor. I'm also amazed at the number of people who assume that people work because they are coerced into doing so; isn't that essentially the argument of the Left? When a boss tells you to work, it's coercion. But when the state (or Leftist intellectuals) tell you to work, it is somehow different--better. I don't want to get started. I was merely saying good work for reaching a conclusion similar to mine and being willing to write it. Many either don't consider this aspect of the argument or jump to the wrong conclusion regarding it. Most people sneer when I say something like what you've written. George Carlin said the obvious, too, and I still think he was probably the world's greatest comedian: to say the obvious and to make it hurt--that is one kind excellence (at least as far as I'm concerned).
ReplyDeleteAs far as the "intellectual abilities" and "sinister gibberish of the Left" are concerned, the pigs will always take over the house and live in comfort because their brain work deserves it.
And regarding the reply (your second comment): I think that pretty much stands as evidence for the validity of my first paragraph (above).
"... I think when people study the history of the Industrial Revolution, people are conditioned to jump to conclusions regarding child labor."
ReplyDeleteWell, conditions for child and indeed adult labourers in the cotton mills of Manchester were deplorable - of that there is no doubt and I certainly think any decent person would have been appalled, as were Marx and Engels. And let's not forget that similar conditions to these exist elsewhere in the world right now, and wherever and whenever they may be ameliorated by private, voluntary action without doing other harm, it is good to do so.
" I'm also amazed at the number of people who assume that people work because they are coerced into doing so; isn't that essentially the argument of the Left? When a boss tells you to work, it's coercion. But when the state (or Leftist intellectuals) tell you to work, it is somehow different--better."
I explained this point in part 1 of my Ha Joon Chang response. Voluntary labour is reclassified as coercion consequent to an unexamined dependence on the positive concept of liberty. This is one of the reasons why "positive liberty" is such a dangerous concept - not only is it easily corrupted itself, but holding it, especially in an unexamined form, tends to corrupt other concepts too such as coercion and thereby degrade one's ability to think.
"George Carlin... world's greatest comedian"
Ha! Only someone from the U.S. could say that! To me, the world's greatest comedians are all local lads nobody's heard of. I remember once a taxi driver in England boasting about the private license plates on his car, only to have someone make this in response. That little thing put me in fits...
Perhaps one has to be from the States to appreciate Carlin. He was very critical of US "culture," and I can't recall an act where he was critical of another (or at least not an act centered on it). Because of this, it's understandable that others, even other Westerners, would not have the same appreciation of his work. If you're not an American, it doesn't hit home as much--and it's that "hitting home" that works. (I also said "I . . . think . . . probably. . . .) It's certainly open to debate.
ReplyDeleteMy point about the Industrial Revolution factory conditions was the association people make between conditions then and conditions now (at lesat in the West) and the conclusions drawn therefrom, i.e., child labor then awful = child labor now awful (although the two situations, in my opinion, are quite different). I will also argue, especially after being sickened by a twisting of the meaning of laissez-faire by Dorothy Solinger, that one of the major reasons why factory conditions in private firms in China are as awful as they are is because "laissez-faire" is not laissez-faire in China. Rather, the "contract system" binds workers to a particular place for a particular length of time and gives all control to the company; the company often exploits the very contract it writes, but is allowed to--sometimes even encouraged to--by the party-state to keep the economic ball rolling. My problem with this is that if a company does not adhere to its own contract yet forces the worker to do so, that is a distortion of the free labor market and poof! then and there goes laissez-faire. And if the worker agrees to everything in the contract and both the company and the worker follow the contract word-for-word, even though conditions may be appalling, there exists no problem because both are sticking to an agreement both made freely.(And anyone who has studied [or been to] China knows that laissez-faire doesn't exist there any more than it does or did anywhere else.)
"...the "contract system" binds workers to a particular place for a particular length of time and gives all control to the company; the company often exploits the very contract it writes, but is allowed to--sometimes even encouraged to--by the party-state to keep the economic ball rolling."
ReplyDeleteThat's right, but inequality of legal position in contract negotiations is a general problem which also occurs to a lesser extent in Taiwan and the U.S. also. I'm interested in your mention of this Dorothy Solinger - I looked her up - did you go to her classes at Irvine or something?
No, I am familiar with some of her work (my field of study has dealt with some of her research).
ReplyDeleteYou say she "twisted" the meaning of laissez-faire?
ReplyDeleteI'll find the particular article. What I mean is that her idea of laissez-faire is more than a bit incorrect, when she admits the unfairness of the contract system (very pro-employer) but still considers the labor market free--"laissez-faire capitalism." This particular work is dealing with labor allocation patterns in China. I'll see if I can locate the article and let you know.
ReplyDeleteHere is one (I think there were more than one) of her articles to which I was referring; this is a chapter in a book: Solinger, Dorothy J. "The Impact of the Floating Population on the Danwei: Shifts in the Patterns of Labor Mobility Control and Entitlement Provision," in _Danwei: the Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective_, edited by Xiaobo Lu and Elizabeth J. Perry (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997) ch. 8. There were several more, I think, but this was the most recent I've come across (I needed to read it for a seminar last semester.)
ReplyDeletePresumably, this would be a representative passage:
ReplyDelete"Where there are no state overseers to intervene, the lack of legality bequeathed by decades of party rule has aggravated the mercilessness of the market, rendering the capitalism practiced in these firms totally unregulated and laissez-faire, far removed from the welfare capitalism to which we are accustomed in the late twentieth-century West. In the state firms, on the other hand, the ethos and the apparatus of the state still manage to ensure a modicum of welfare for peasant workers, shored up by a regulatory regimen not yet fully decimated."
She seems to presuppose that poor material conditions of living are the result of inherently predatory market relations rather than the result of scarcity. But it is only by coordinated production that scarcity and want can, over time, be relieved. Market exchanges simply allow this to happen. Even the welfare policies of the State presuppose such coordinated production - from taxation of which they may be funded.
For Solinger to characterize such relations between laborers and factories in China as "laissez-faire" is a very narrow reading which deliberately ignores the broader, and most certainly un-laissez faire market context in which both factories and laborers act. But then I would expect nothing less from an "academic" in The People's Republic Of California.
That would be a representative passage indeed.
ReplyDelete