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Ownership and Control in CapitalismThe production necessary for running and maintaining a Socialist social system will be based upon the work the working class already performs for the Capitalist social system. That's an indispensible precondition.Capitalism, with its crucial dependence on objective science and engineering, involuntarily educates its working class for running and maintaining socialism. That running-and-maintaining education was perfected long ago, and generations have graduated with honours from that school.But we can't graduate as a united class until we educate ourselves to unmask the insidious capitalist superstructure that is able to create inverted impressions or benign impressions of power relations in capitalism.Marx worked a lifetime — entirely on our behalf — to dispel the illusion that the working class's running and maintaining of capitalism is its actuality.Its actuality is far worse. The legally and socially free worker finds himself dispossessed of and disempowered over the instruments he must necessarily work with. The only socially necessary possession this legally and socially free worker has and controls is his own ability to use those instruments owned and controlled by the equally free and socially free capitalist class.But the legally and socially free worker has no choice but to sell the very thing he owns and controls in the service of the capitalist — his ability to labour. In other words, when he accepts employment he voluntarily [legally and socially] parts with his one legal and socially free possession.But in this legally and socially free transaction with his employer, the legally and socially free labourer also trades away his own socially-necessary upkeep by his employer for his own vaunted legal and social freedom. In times of need, the free worker must therefore prostrate himself at the mercy of a social system where he quickly disillusions himself over who is actually running and maintaining the social system he formerly deluded himself he ran and maintained. He rapidly discovers that the legally free and socially free worker, himself, is responsible for his own upkeep — that is the sum total of his finally remaining ownership and control — freedom that reminds him of slavery![Yet, even worse than slavery is his situation in times of need, for the legally and socially free worker finds himself unable to upkeep himself unlike a slave, who [with great social foresight] has effectively traded his own personal freedom in exchange for his socially-necessary upkeep at his master's own expense.]We all know what Marx thought about the actuality of the worker's running-and-maintaining of capitalism in the service of the capitalist's owned-and-controlled resources and instruments of labour. Ownership and control trump running and maintaining. The power relationship is entirely one way, as it legally and socially should be, if you happen to legally and socially own all the means of working, apart from the will and ability to perform it yourself.The worker's sole legally and socially free possession — his concrete ability to work — is viewed in an entirely different light by the capitalist, who now owns and controls it, and so is now able [legally and socially] to employ it in his own interest.The worker's dearest posession is now viewed purely abstractly as the variable part of the capitalist's very own [owned and controlled] capital, destined ultimately to be indistinguishable in the form of money from the rest of his very own capital that currently exists in the form of his very own [owned and controlled] resources and instruments that he supplies the labourer with to perform his labour process.In the capitalist process of production, the worker's now alienated [no loner legally or socially his own] concrete labour circulates away from him to the capitalist in the form of the capitalist's sought-after capital. To add insult to injury, the labourer's traded freedom [ownership and control] is now legally and socially free to be abused to gain the capitalist more labour than his upkeep. That's exactly how the capitalist, through his ownership and control and the labourer's non-ownership and no-control, is able to expand his capital.In the only applicable capitalist sense, does any capitalist really care if the labourers actually run the show? That way, it's a perfect illusion of capital.The answer to the reverse charge that — the capitalist doesn't control capital — is clearly shown above to be absolute nonsense. It's the other side of this insidious illusion.The capitalist only needs to control capital in the essential way for him — by owning its material components — the resources, instruments and voluntary labour of the working class.In controlling the labourer's labouring process, the capitalist controls the production process of capital. Do we really think that the capitalist's capital expands by chance, and that the power of capitalist ruling class ownership and control [legal, social or otherwise] has nothing at all to do with it?
DJP: The fundamental thing which sets capitalism apart from other modes of production is the constant need to reproduce and enlarge capital for its own sake. In this sense neither the capitalist nor the working class is in control.In another sense of the word, 'control' of the means of production is in the hands of the working class, after all it is workers who operate the vast productive and administrative machinery they are just doing so in the interests of capital.After all it would be possible to have a capitalist system without a capitalist class. It's the law of value that governs capitalist society and it is that which must be overcome.Fundamentally Wrong but Consequentially Right!Unfortunately, I must take your list of fundamentals as a critique of mine. My critique of yours is that they are omnipresent and pervasive but they are not fundamental. They are consequential.The capitalist base is solely about ownership and control of the social system's resources and instruments of production, and the social relations that coalesce around them.Everything else is consequential upon this, is a consequence of this — is not fundamental. In that sense, everything else is an instance of a consequential possibility. These instances can only be understood in terms of the fundamental. Our goal is to change fundamentals, and let the consequentials follow in their wake..Challenge 1.The need for capital to be capital — to expand — arises precisely from the capitalist social system's base.Can you explain how capital expansion — though apparently fundamental — isn't consequential upon private ownership and control of society's resources and instruments directed toward the production of surplus value?Challenge 2.Marx showed that the capitalist social system arose out of rudimentary forms of capitalist ownership and control that existed sporadically in pre-capitalist societies, where the worker found himself doubly free of being owned himself and of owning his means of production. [Land-owning feudalism's achilles heal was that it allowed some workers to own their personal means of production — otherwise the capitalist class couldn't haven't arisen from them to now own all of society's means of production.]Can you explain how capital arose [=fundamental to its becoming] if not on the social ownership basis outlined above?Challenge 3.Marx spent most of Capital Vol 2 analyzing a Simple Reproduction model of social capital flow — one in which individual capitals necessarily expand as capital [as you say — that's what capital must do or hopes to do in order to be capital] — but in which overall social capital remains constant. Sure, it was an investigatory model for him, but he saw it as a theoretical possibility — much as our non-class conscious opponents, the Greens, crave their variety of Capitalism to become in actuality.Can you explain how — if expansion is fundamental — capitalism can't survive in something like a steady state, where the capitalist class is still extracting surplus value, carving up the same amount between themselves, just [unfortunately] not more of it?Challenge 4.If Capitalism's need "to enlarge for its own sake" is fundamental, and not derivative from the constitution of its base, what do we call a society in which capital is not enlarging, but shrinking — as now.Can you explain what system we are currently living under since it isn't fundamentally expanding at the moment?Challenge 5.Growth, contraction or steady state. It is always fundamentally capitalism as long as capitalist relations of ownership and control of society's resources and instruments persists.Can you explain why it's not possible for capitalism to exist indefinitely — even when it attains a possible state of utter chaos — if capitalist relations of ownership and control of society's resources and instruments remain in tact?Challenge 6.You assert that in one sense workers are practically in control and in another sense that nobody is in control, only avaricious capital is.If we are concentrating on fundamentals of the capitalist social system — I make the counter assertion that both forms of control are powerless to subvert the fundamental [absolutely indispensable] control that matters in capitalist society — the capitalist class's control of the use of all of society's resources and instruments productively in its own interest [what Marx calls productive consumption] to extract surplus value and not for social need.In passing, materialists fully understand that both classes are mere agents of the system. However, eventually our class does get to control the currently-uncontrollable capitalist social system when we eventually abolish it, and then craft ourselves a social system that we can consciously control. To perform this momentous act, we should not delude ourselves over where the only fundamental control [or lack thereof] resides.A minor point. It has never has been necessary for the ruling class to control its social system — which before socialism couldn't be done anyway. It is sufficient for it to control that piece of the social system that's essential to its class interest — always to control use of the resources and instruments of production.Do you really believe in a fundamental sense that capitalists have no real control over production in their own class interest, even if they exercise it within the possibilities of a social system which controls them?Challenge 7.You claim the law of value is fundamental. Omnipresent perhaps. Marx spent his working life to show how it appears fundamental to us — acts like a law of nature, though often as much in the breach as in the observance — but it is totally consequential upon the base's production process. The law of value takes pride of place in the capitalist pantheon of pervasive fetishes, alongside money and the fetish of all fetishes — capital. It definitely derives from the base, and will be abolished when we abolish the fundamental capitalist base.Can you explain how the Marxian law of value is not a necessary social law, consequent upon production being carried out under capitalist conditions of ownership and control of society's resources and instruments, and that vice-versa that the system is a consequence of the fundamental law of value?Challenge 8.You claim it is possible to run capitalism without a capitalist class. Really?Every disappointed-capitalist, wistful humanist, radical economist and everyday do-gooder agrees wholeheartedly.Can you explain why we go to the bother of engaging in a fundamental class struggle to remove capitalism and so capitalists, if the inessential capitalist class [a benign target of misguided attack] isn't fundamental in any way whatsoever to capitalism?Challenge 9.Our Party Object concentrates exclusively on ownership and control of society's resources and instruments for social production.Can you explain why, if our Object is fundamentally correct in doing this, the similar ownership-and-control approach to describing capitalism offered in an earlier post is fundamentally [it may be totally inadequate] wrong?Our century-old Object and Declaration of Principles are the banner under which the working class will reclaim the social system. It says better than anything else in such small compass what is fundamental about capitalism. That has always and ever will be our fundamental case!
I propose the following definition, inspired by the wonderful century-old formulation of our Object and Declaration of Principles.It describes as concisely as I can the essence of what Marx called the social base of the capitalist mode of production. I deliberately avoid what Marx called its social superstructure, since we hold that to be derivative of the base.Capitalism is a system of society based upon the ownership and control of the society's means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the society's ruling [or capitalist] class; and also based upon the society's working [or ruled] class being freed from such ownership and control, and being itself free of ownership by the ruling class; and consequently based upon society's working class being compelled to perform society's necessary labour without control over its mode of labour, and hence based upon its members living out their social existence without control over their own lives.This definition distinguishes capitalism from other exploitative modes where the ruled classes are not themselves free — as in chattel slavery — or are not freed from ownership of their means of living — as in feudalism. Modified: Sat, 03/11/2012 – 12:48pm. "…without control over its mode of labour." originally read "…without control over its means of living,"
Co-opting by the SuperstructureI think your point about co-opting misses the only real point — that it is the superstructure's role to annul, anesthetize, trivialize, sanitize, bastardize all threats to the integrity of the capitalist system as-a-capitalist-system by co-opting these threats into its very generous bosom. Finally, it is we who must un-co-opt the co-opted.Banker ScenarioIt's the usual case of non-class conscious "moral outrage" succumbing to the might of Marx's social superstructure doing precisely what Marx said that social superstructure was itself co-opted by class-exploitative society to do.Swindlers who swindle themselves are rescued by a trillion-dollar donation. Their representative meets hostile donors who, perceiving a shared stake in the survival of his line of business, release him on a good-behavior bond to continue swindling. Like a plot from "Hustle"."Moral outrage" is an easy target for co-opting because it can be defused in the short term as it merely threatens the stability of the system [people quickly decide it is more important to preserve an outrageous system than to preserve their outrage against it] and moral outrage never threatens the viability of the system [which, unfortunately, non-class conscious people also think is much more worth preserving].But class-conscious theory is a long term issue, and even it has proven a ready target for co-opting, by agency of our non-class conscious opponents. They have all but successfully annulled, anesthetized, trivialized, sanitized, bastardized it precisely because it does directly threaten the long-term viability of the system.Look what the non-class conscious agents of the capitalist superstructure have done to our song: "class struggle"=wages battle; "class conscious"=unionist; "Marxism"=Leninism; "socialism"=capitalism; "democracy"=dictatorship; "ideology"=superstructure; even the Party name. This is a tribute to the might of the capitalist superstructure working through its willing agents — Marx's non-class conscious political heirs!Look what the non-class conscious agents of the capitalist superstructure have done to our theory. They mathematized Marxian economics [thereby adding academic respectability to it] by co-opting it in the service of Sraffian linear algebra. When Marx's value theory proved antagonistic to its imposed environment, the whole tribe of Marxian academic economists [being non-class conscious] instinctively blamed the import and not the environment.The wondrous upshot of this mathematical amalgam of interpenetrating opposites was that value and surplus value were redundant fictions, and that man, machinery and animals are all equally exploited and all three are equally sources of profit. This is a tribute to the might of the capitalist superstructure working through its willing agents — Marx's non-class conscious theoretical heirs!This victory was celebrated in an academic festival in which the whole tribe of professional Marxist economists paraded before the amazed capitalist superstructure a job worthily done and dusted. Finally they had disproved Marx mathematically. We owe thanks to Andrew Kliman and others for reclaiming Marx [un-co-opting him] from this non-class conscious illusion.All this establishes the point that co-opting is a very serious problem indeed. But it runs deeper than moral outrage. The whole socialist case is about unmasking the illusions of the capitalist superstructure. Put another way, we must un-co-opt the co-opted.Primal Co-optionCo-opting is an essential function of the social superstructure. Otherwise we could never bring our actions and ideas into conformity with our changing world. Natural evolution works the same way — progressive adaptation of what already exists — which its theoreticians take as proof against divine [perfectly engineered] creation.In that sense, co-opting is normal. Which is why, when the superstructure of a class-exploitative base builds into itself a disingenuous component, alongside its perfectly natural component, we readily fail to detect the sleight of hand.The superstructure's disingenuous component has to annul, anesthetize, trivialize, sanitize, bastardize whatever threatens the base that raises it.Firstly, it is important to distinguish our very own capitalist superstructure's insidious deliberate cunning distortion from the naive distortion that beset the superstructure of primitive social economic formations. Their naive distortion arose from their superstructure's limited social base. For them, when grand appearance presents itself at odds with reality, their elementary superstructure seeks an imaginary reality through natural awe of the natural world. Their elementary superstructure confines all grand conceptions incestuously within its sterile self because it lacks the social base to support the science to refertilize itself.[However, their everyday life teaches them very well indeed how to distinguish between appearance and reality [= science] with a skill that elicits our admiration and gives us sophisticates a gimpse into the lost co-operative sociability of the ancestral superstructural world that we've been co-opted out of. But the grand conceptual paralysis that arises from its limited social base also shows us why the whole tragedy of civilization has been socially necessary.]Secondly, it's important to acknowledge that our very own sophisticated superstructure cannot dispense with its naive component because its base — whose sole function is to extract surplus value — necessarily relies on the growing power of objective science and equally on the vestiges of cooperative sociability [it can't fully extinguish that because the base only functions through the social agency of us sentient feeling humans].In passing, LaFargue's article is precisely his take [shades of Rousseau] on the primal co-option in which class exploitation in the social base erodes its natural reflection in the primitive superstructure and sets the superstructure off on its disingenuous course.His implied conclusion is profound. The superstructure of a class-divided society is irrevocably class divided. But it can't show it. It would be naively naive indeed of it to reveal the shameful riven avaricious soul of the base that raised it. Consequently, the naive primitive superstructure, once wholly social, undergoes a grand primal co-option in the interests of the ruling class. Henceforth it must hide its disunited social shame from itself behind a disingenuous perception of united sociability. This is the universal insidious co-option from which all others derive as instances.
Class ConsciousnessMy point is that class-conscious socialists [which precisely means people who are convinced of our Object] must come to recognize that it is impossible to change what Marx called the social base, without first changing what Marx called the social superstructure, in order to accomplish our Object.Our non-class conscious opponents [which precisely means people without conviction in our Object] quite correctly recognize that it is possible to modify the social base, even if they harbour the fond illusion that it is they who are determining the modifications rather than, as Marx spent his working life demonstrating, the social base itself determining them to perform necessary modifications to itself.The mighty social base allocates its non-class conscious minions the necessary bit roles in its normal adjustment process that sustains the whole base–superstructure edifice as a complex self-adaptive system. They are its necessary willing unsuspecting agents, eager to resolve discord between base and superstructure. [When will they ever learn!]But the base always suggests its possible possibilities in the first place, and only actuates those modifications it can accede to, and then on its terms, and decidedly not on any of our socially unconscious opponents' terms. If only the entire social organism were as easily amenable to being changed as to being adjusted, we'd be living in socialism long ago.On the other hand, the social base allots us class-conscious socialists a different role that can only be played out in its superstructure. That role is to change the mighty superstructure itself as precondition to changing the even mightier determining base.It is only when the superstructure consciously recognizes that it no longer conforms to its base — this is precisely what is meant by class consciousness — that it can deterministically move against and redetermine its base, something that normally can't be done. The impossible becomes possible!In Marxian materialism, this is the case of determinism doing a switch-back upon itself. In Hegelian terms — it is the negation of the negation. Amazingly, the base determines its own dissolution by agency of its own determined superstructure. This is ultimately what the "reflection" process in the clause "the superstructure reflects the base" is finally about.Class-conscious socialists must, and only can, operate in the superstructure [which includes politics, art and, shudder, morality] in order to propagate our Object. The superstructure's illusions are the objects we must fight and overturn before we overturn the social base.The Party is the only political and social organization that has been doing this consistently class-consciously for over a century, and has regularly demonstrated that it can, when called upon, use morality most effectively to further its Object.Perceptions of MoralityThis thread originated from a moral judgement of the quite normally human kind made by ALB. My originating post was, perhaps naively, intended to back him up over what always comes across as a theoretical slip. In the event, it has highlighted how pervasive is fear of the capitalist social superstructure for all of us.Hud955: "Morality is merely a reflex of class interest, not class interest itself."If linked by "reflex", they are inextricably yoked together. Idealist Hegel would call them "identical" and treat them as interpenetrating ideas. Materialist Marx would link them via an intermediary "reflecting" deterministic material process — in this case, presumably a process of social practice.In passing, typically Marxian "reflex" (or reflected) processes are the interesting "dialectical" processes. They develop through stages by performing that negation-of-negation back-flip [a "reflection" that "reflects" itself] in which the determiner determines the determined to determine the determiner — in your case, morality would then turn the scales upon class interest to redirect it instead of being directed by it. That happy event, though expressed abstractly here, will befall capitalist class interest.Regarding LaFargue. His scientific account casts the origin of ideological morality out of natural social relations in a way that touches the core of our social being [despite hints of Rousseau], and we immediately feel impelled to restore tainted morality to a higher form adequate to advanced social needs [Engels] — at least I feel impelled to want to restore it upon reading him. He makes us feel the need for transforming society.But leave LaFargue and his mentor Engels, and consider their progenitor Lewis Henry Morgan [in passing a Republican congressman, no less]. Morgan wrote perhaps the finest combined moral–scientific judgement against capitalism and for socialism that we have. We know it almost by heart.The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction…. the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.Engels, lost in admiration, reproduced this extract in full, leaving every bourgeois-ideologically tainted word of it verbatim, unaltered, uncommented, unexpurgated because every sentient reader knows in his heart of hearts precisely what underlying natural content is intended.Morality in its bourgeois form lacks every vestige of humanly cooperative content. At the very least, we should be able to confront the stinking perversion of a corpse that now parades in its name. We have powerful such confrontations by Marx, Engels, Morgan and, yes, ourselves as models.
Dear Hud955,Both you, TheOldGreyWhistle and I, as committed socialists all three, accept that capitalist conceptions of "rights" and "morality" are socially-necessary ideological expressions of an exploitative class society.Both of you, however, overstep the science when you spirit away the ideological conceptions of capitalism as if they were figments of the imagination. If we could unmask them as easily in practice, we'd already have won socialism.Our task is to unmask them in practice. If you've already spirited them away in theory, you've already dismissed the central problem, and all means of its solution.Our most powerful weapon, the materialist conception of history, when applied to the capitalist economic formation is almost exclusively devoted to comprehending and exposing these ideological expressions and their life history. For us not to use this science against its special target — human ideological forms — is to give up the fight before it starts.Furthermore Marx expressly concludes that these are the very "ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out". That conviction lies at the very heart of his science.[Of course he acknowledged these forms as expressions of "relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production", but we don't fight class battles at that deep level — or as he would have put it — we conduct class struggles in the "ideological" superstructure and not in the "ecomonic" base, even when it appears that we do.]Naturally, Marx himself fought with intellectual ferocity against these capitalist ideological forms all his theoretical life. Most spectacularly, he went for capitalism's jugular when he exposed its central commodity fetish. This central ideological conception of capitalism acts like a law of nature — just like gravity, as you both imply — and we, necessarily social beings, in our daily lives can do little practical about it other than shrug our shoulders and unwittingly help sustain it — and we don't even have to help sustain gravity.Your brave clause "revolutionary action is the growing consciousness of class interest" is too abstract if it doesn't lock horns with the system-sustaining ideology of capitalism. For that's what it has to overcome, mentally before physically, and largely all it can do with its weapon — the materialist conception of history. Fortunately for us, it is salutary to discover that the most powerful science of human history is on our side.A life time's exposure to commodities and money never brought anyone — apart from Marx — around to a spontaneous realization that capital and money are not [just] things but ideological expressions of the exploitative capitalist social process of production. [He found them to be its most perfectly-concise and adequate ideological expression. Who but he could have seen that — but once assimilated as a key to his thought processes, it completely changes how we understand the capitalist system. Amazingly, this apparently rarefied insight almost tumbles out of his well-known basic formulation of the materialist conception of history.]Similarly, isolated personal insight through social experience into less-veiled capitalist ideological expressions is still unlikely to lead to socialist consciousness without first being comprehended in the global context of the materialist conception of history. That's why we, along with humanity as a whole, need that conviction-based agreed-upon socially-necessary social construct called science.Because prospective socialists are all trapped [just like us] to varying degrees within capitalist ideology, we create our own process of winning them to our ranks. This intellectual [or conscious] Primitive Socialist Accumulation process must engage directly with but in opposition to capitalist ideology if it is to engage with anything substantial — not abstract or purely academic — at all.Capitalism has spontaneously prepared the inevitable ideological battle field. It has exploitative-class ideology on its side. We have the materialist conception of history on ours. We have the intelligence on it.
Dear TheOldGreyWhistle, in the spirit of your open invitation to discuss central issues of our case — though not yet in the forum you propose — I submit this response to your previous.Marx [Preface to the Contribution] sees morality [by implication] as a definite form of social consciousness arising from the "relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production".He sees socialism as ending class antagonism in the sense of "an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence", and with it the demise of "legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic" ideological forms of consciousness.He makes the case for socialism in terms of class interest, and not in terms of "morality" nor, by implication, in "legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic" terms. But he also points out that these are the very "ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out".In other words, we have to combat these ideological forms with science [the materialist conception of history], in terms of class interest, because they are the central ideological forms that our opponents conceive our case by and confront it with.We would hardly concede that socialism is not a "political" issue, for we actively engage with that ideological form by using it but opposing it as a class issue. Likewise, with the other ideological forms, especially "art", but also that dreaded ideological form "morality".
ALB: Yes I had thought of making a play on words myself with "repugnant" and "repugnance"It was irresistible — the image of the Nobel Economics prize-giving clique rewarding work on "repugnance economics" was far too delicious to pass by unremarked. Apologies for sidetracking your more important point.
ALB: "Repugnance economics", is that our answer to the "Economic Calculation Argument"?I hope not — neither by name nor definition:"Repugnance economics" — in essence, the study of transactions where the application of the price mechanism is regarded as morally repugnant, such as the sale of body parts, sperm and eggs, prostitution and even dwarf-throwing.While games-theory optimization tools may very well find their way into the toolkit for managing a future socialist society — as ALB suggests — all class-based economical theory is irredeemably "repugnant".The exponents of class-based economic theory (because of their perceived or adopted social position) of necessity practice the justificatory science of exploitation. They have assimilated the truly repugnant aspects of class exploitation with what appears on the surface to be blithe unconcern.Games-theory optimization strategies based on the ranking of human subjective evaluations — from Pareto to the post WWII mathematical crowd — are highly relevant to the world of capitalist economics, but only as theoretical baubles and justificatory diamonds. Capitalism's dynamic profit motivation inevitably succeeds in riding roughshod over any such strategy based on merely subjective human evaluation.Should we take these intriguing intellectual problems seriously in a practical sense? As ALB suggests, such optimization strategies have a hope of working — not under our present capitalism but — under the socialism we are all working for.The Achilles heal of stable ranking of human subjectivity is actually wobbly because of its over-riding dependence upon the supposed rock-solid lynch pin or pivot of mere illusory human subjectivity itself — that most fragile, variable and manipulable evanescence — and not the actually solid lynch pin or pivot of socially agreed-upon social necessity.This almost certainly renders these formal strategies with their stable solutions unsuitable in their present capitalist-posed and capitalist-assumed framework for any serious direct application to a future world of associated producers who own and control their means of production — and so think socially — and not to the present world of opposing (or disassociated) producers and private owners of the producers' means of production — where everyone "thinks" individually and so assumes non-deterministically (and this in a deterministic world) that he/she evaluates situations thoroughly individually.Capitalism's great justification is that it optimizes everything — above all human well being itself. Hence the attraction of optimization theory as a powerful justification tool.Social production, under any social system, will always depend to a lesser or greater extent on optimization strategies. But stable optimization of human valuation for the whole of us is an illusion. What happens to the stability when our perceptions/evaluations change? — the world of human evaluation just ain't stable or comprehendible, whereas the sought-for world of socially agreed upon need is at least acknowledged to be deterministic, and so actually understandable.Understandability is the last thing that capitalism desires — hence the power of these wondrous stable solutions governing human happiness to reconcile us to it!Other, less significant, thoughts come to mind…Moral repugnance is a social construct, which easily succumbs [= rationalized to complete satisfaction] when confronted by social necessity — discussed in Marx's 1844 notes,Did not the early Christian church fathers and the 19th century romantics set up in their dens an "alas poor Yorick" skull as macabre company? Cadaver repugnance has regularly become chic.Some of our greatest humans were "economically repugnant". Renaissance heroes (Leonardo, Michelangelo, …) let alone anatomical and medical pioneers chose eternal damnation over temporal repugnance when they studied cadavers clandestinely. Did the 18th century physician expect not to pay the gruesome grave robber?Finally, apart from dwarf throwing, all of the listed "repugnant" economies of the rather journalistically phrased definition have perfectly "respectable" economic existence — e.g., gene patenting, etc. In short, they are only "morally repugnant" in the limited sense of our modern professional ethics committees — in a sense securely untroubled by capitalist exploitation.But the over-riding point remains that human economic exploitation and its theoretical justifiers are the most adequate representations of "repugnant economics".
