Libertarijanizam - srpske varijacije

[Turnbull]

Ne razlikuješ deskriptivno od normativnog.

 

Niko nikada nije tvrdio, niti tvrdi da su svi ljudi jednaki po parametrima koje si naveo.

[Sammael]

Ono što pokušavam da ilustrujem je da suštinska nejednakost ljudi po njihovim nasleđenim i stečenim karakteristikama nužno vodi nejednakosti koja je usađena u srž ljudskog društva; mi težimo tome da budemo bolji, uspešniji, bogatiji i srećniji od drugih i samim tim se ta nejednakost propagira. 

[Turnbull]

Ne razlikuješ deskriptivno od normativnog.

 

[Miralem]

da pokusam ovako: ljudi nisu jednaki, niti isti. poenta je da ipak treba da budu jednaki pred zakonom, da na trzistu imaju jednake uslove, etc, etc. slabljenje drzave, za sta se libertarijanci zalazu, nuzno vodi nepostovanju zakona, tj oni bogatiji ce biti u mogucnosti da uvode zakon jaceg. a to generalno ne valja, sem ako bas ti nisi taj jaci. ne mogu jednostavnije da objasnim od ovoga.

[Turnbull]

Miralem objasnio.

[Sammael]

E dobro, sad je jasnije (izvinjavam se, ali meni treba malo više od "ne razlikuješ deskriptivno od normativnog").

 

Smatram da je apsolutno neophodno da postoji jaka struja koja se protivi sadašnjem trendu jačanja države i njenog mešanja u apsolutno sve pore života i pokušaja regulisanja svega i svačega. Ne mislim da libertarijansko zalaganje za smanjenje moći države nužno vodi u feudalizam i zakon jačeg (premda je nesporno da bi mnogi, naročito američki, libertarijanci to voleli i želeli).

[Turnbull]

Ali zašto samo države? Država nije ni jedini, a neretko ni glavni locus moći, prisile i normiranja i regulisanja privatnog života (čak, vidi primer, i najprivantjih od privatnih potreba). Privatni kapital ni najmanje ne zaostaje, da ne pominjem spregu izmđu ova dva. Tu onda libertarijanizam ne da ne pomaže, nego nema ništa ni da kaže o tome. Tu ti treba kolektivna akcija u vidu npr. sindikalne borbe.

 

 

 

Lavatory and Liberty

Tuesday, October 01 2002 @ 02:22 PM CDT

Contributed by: Admin

Views: 3,258

Submitted by Reverend Chuck0:

Lavatory and Liberty

The secret history of the bathroom break

By Corey Robin, 9/29/2002

IN HIS NEVER-ENDING quest for control of the workplace, Henry Ford confronted many foes, but none as wily or rebellious as the human digestive tract. Hoping to tame what he called the body's ''disassembly line,'' Ford wheeled lunch wagons into his auto plant in Highland Park, Mich., and forced workers to wolf down a 10-minute sandwich on the job. So industrialized was ingestion at the plant that workers growled about their ''Ford stomach.'' But where Ford sought to speed up the meal's entrance into the body, his successors - from store managers in the Midwest to fashion moguls in New York - have concentrated on slowing down its exit.

Today's workplace can sometimes seem like a battlefield of the bladder. On the one side are workers who wanna go when they gotta go; on the other are employers who want to stop them, sometimes for hours on end. Just this past month, a Jim Beam bourbon distillery in Clermont, Ky., was forced to drop its strict bathroom-break policies after the plant's union focused negative international attention - from ABC News to Australia - on Jim Beam and its parent company, Fortune Brands, Inc. According to union officials, managers kept computer spreadsheets monitoring employee use of the bathroom, and 45 employees were disciplined for heeding nature's call outside company-approved breaks. Female workers were even told to report the beginning of their menstrual cycles to the human resources department, said one union leader.

In their 1998 book ''Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time,'' Marc Linder and Ingrid Nygaard of the University of Iowa - he's a law professor, she's a urogynecologist - trace the long and ignoble history of the struggle for the right to pee on the job. In 1995, for instance, female employees at a Nabisco plant in Oxnard, Calif., maker of A-1 steak sauce and the world's supplier of Grey Poupon mustard, complained in a lawsuit that line supervisors had consistently prevented them from going to the bathroom. Instructed to urinate into their clothes or face three days' suspension for unauthorized expeditions to the toilet, the workers opted for adult diapers. But incontinence pads were expensive, so many employees downgraded to Kotex and toilet paper, which pose severe health risks when soaked in urine. Indeed, several workers eventually contracted bladder and urinary tract infections. Hearing of their plight, conservative commentator R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. advised the workers to wear special diapers used by horses in New York's Central Park carriage trade.

How does a country that celebrates the joy of unfettered movement tolerate such restrictions on this most basic of bodily motions? Why do the freedoms that we take for granted outside the workplace suddenly disappear when we enter it? ''Belated Feudalism,'' a study by UCLA political scientist Karen Orren, suggests a surprising, and shocking, answer. According to Orren, long after the Bill of Rights was ratified and slavery abolished - well into the 20th century, in fact - the American workplace remained a feudal institution. Not metaphorically, but legally. Workers were governed by statutes originating in the common law of medieval England, with precedents extending as far back as the year 500. Like their counterparts in feudal Britain, judges exclusively administered these statutes, treating workers as the literal property of their employers. Not until 1937, when the Supreme Court upheld the Wagner Act, giving workers the right to organize unions, did the judiciary relinquish political control over the workplace to Congress.

Prior to the '30s, Orren shows, American judges regularly applied the ''law of master and servant'' to quell the worker's independent will. According to one jurist, that law recognized only ''the superiority and power'' of the master, and the ''duty, subjection, and, as it were, allegiance'' of the worker. Medieval vagrancy statutes forced able-bodied males into the workplace, while ancient principles of ''entire'' contract kept them there. A worker hired for a period of time - often five to 10 years and beyond - was legally not entitled to any of his earnings unless and until he completed the entire term of his contract. When rules of vagrancy and entirety failed, judges turned to other precedents, some dating from the time of Richard II, requiring workers seeking employment to obtain a ''testimonial letter'' from their previous employer. Because employers were under no legal obligation to provide such letters, judges could effectively stop workers from ever trying to move on.

As soon as workers entered the workplace, they became the property of their employers. Judges enforced the 13th-century rule of ''quicquid acquietur servo acquietur domino'' (whatever is acquired by the servant is acquired by the master), mandating that employees give to their employers whatever they may have earned off the job - as if the employee, and not his labor, belonged to the employer. If an outside party injured an employee so that he couldn't perform his duties, the employer could sue that party for damages, ''as if the injury had been to his chattel or machines or buildings.'' But if the outside party injured the employer so that he could not provide employment, the employee could not likewise sue. Why? Because, claimed one jurist, the ''inferior hath no kind of property in the company, care, or assistance of the superior, as the superior is held to have in those of the inferior.''

''Belated Feudalism'' set off multiple explosions when it appeared in 1991, inflicting serious damage on the received wisdom of Harvard political scientist Louis Hartz. In his 1955 classic ''The Liberal Tradition in America,'' still taught on many college campuses, Hartz argued that the United States was born free: Americans never knew feudalism; their country - with its Horatio Alger ethos of individual mobility, private property, free labor, and the sacred rights of contract - was modern and liberal from the start. For decades, liberals embraced Hartz's argument as an explanation for why there was no - and could never be any - radicalism in the United States. Leftists, for their part, also accepted his account, pointing to the labor movement's failure to create socialism as evidence of liberalism's hegemony.

But as Orren shows, American liberalism has never been the easy inheritance that Hartz and his complacent defenders assume. And the American labor movement may have achieved something far more difficult and profound than its leftist critics realize. Trade unions, Orren argues, made America liberal, laying slow but steady siege to an impregnable feudal fortress, prying open this ''state within a state'' to collective bargaining and congressional review. By pioneering tactics later used by the civil rights movement - sit-ins, strikes, and civil disobedience - labor unions invented the modern idea of collective action, turning every sphere of society into a legitimate arena of democratic politics. It's no accident that when the factory walls came tumbling down, other old regimes - of race, gender, and sexual orientation - began to topple in their wake.

If there's one flaw in ''Belated Feudalism,'' it may be Orren's optimism about the irreversibility of feudalism's demise and labor's gains. For in today's workplace, as Linder and Nygaard show, the spirit, if not the letter, of the old regime persists. And it may be gaining ground. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1979, 25 percent of employees in medium- to large-sized companies did not have paid rest breaks during which they could go to the bathroom. By 1993, the last year for which there are statistics, that number had jumped to 32 percent. (In 1992, 51 percent of employees working at small firms did not receive paid rest breaks; there are no statistics for earlier years.) Not until April 1998 did the federal government, under pressure from the labor movement, even maintain that employers had to grant employees an ill-defined ''timely access'' to the bathroom.

Though most reviewers haven't picked up on this theme, Barbara Ehrenreich's recent bestseller ''Nickel and Dimed'' offers a startling inventory of contemporary workplace feudalism, where workers are constantly forced to hand over body and soul to employers. Even before workers are hired, drug tests ask for their bodily fluids, surrendered in company bathrooms to proprietary supervisors. Personality tests insist on deep confession: Is the worker prone to self-pity? Does he think people talk about him behind his back? Once hired, employees confront the upstairs-downstairs world of old Europe. One advertisement for a corporate cleaning service brags, ''We clean floors the old-fashioned way - on our hands and knees.'' At a Minnesota Wal-Mart, workers are punished for ''time theft'' - doing anything besides work on company time - bringing to mind Frederick Douglass's famous description of himself as a piece of stolen property. (It may be Wal-Mart itself that is stealing time. In class-action lawsuits across 28 states, employees are challenging a ''zero-tolerance'' overtime policy that forces employees to clock out at the end of their shifts but then keep working.)

Like so much else in the contemporary economy, feudalism has gone upscale and high tech, eliminating liberal freedoms of speech and association in the wired workplace. Exxon Mobil and Delta have installed a software program on their company computers to ferret out any sign of employee opposition to management authority. The program forwards to managers all employee documents and e-mails - saved or unsaved, sent or unsent - containing ''alert'' words like ''boss'' or ''union.'' As a supervisor explained to the Wall Street Journal, ''The workplace is never free of fear - and it shouldn't be. Indeed, fear can be a powerful management tool.'' So repressive is today's workplace, wired or not, that Human Rights Watch recently sent Lance Compa of Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations there to investigate. What did he find? In the last decade alone, according to federal government statistics, almost 200,000 employees punished for exercising their right to form and participate in a union.

When Walt Whitman heard ''America singing,'' he thought he heard the ''varied carols'' of independent workers, ''each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.'' As Orren shows, it's not clear that was ever true. But today, with the pink slips flying, it's all too easy for corporate managers to make sure that employees sing only company tunes. As unions start to organize the low and high ends of the service economy, it may prove labor's task, once again, to force a measure of modernity on this obstinate medieval world.

Corey Robin teaches political science at Brooklyn College, SUNY. He is currently at work on "Fear: Biography of an Idea."

This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 9/29/2002.

© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

 

Edited June 2, 2014 by Turnbull

[Sammael]

Za razliku od države, privatni kapital nema moć da direktno reguliše (iako ima neki oblik moći prisile). Moć lobiranja je tu, ali da država nema sva ovlašćenja koja ima, lobiranje ne bi imalo značaja.

 

Sindikalna borba je, hm, upitna, jer sindikati u sadašnjem obliku gledaju svoje interese bez šire političke slike, ali se slažem da je neki vid udruživanja ljudi koji su individualno slabi sasvim legitiman i potreban (ukoliko ti ljudi smatraju da jeste). 

[ultra plasticni]

Miralem objasnio razliku izmedju jednakosti i ravnopravnosti

[Turnbull]

Ako nema garantovanih radničkih i socijalnih prava, kapital itekako ima moć da direktno reguliše. It's his way or the highway, a na highway-u se umire od gladi. pa sad ti možeš da kažeš da to nije prisila, ako ti je tako lakše, ali to ne menja ništa na stvari.

 

Ukratko, "manje države" nikako nije isto što i manje prisile i regulacije. Pravo pitanje je kakva treba da bude država i po kojim principima treba da bude organizovana i kako o tome treba odlučivati. Ali to je opet prepoznatljivo političko pitanje o kojem libertarijanska politika ima vrlo malo da kaže, baš kao što nema ništa da kaže ni o sindikalnoj borbi.

[Sammael]

Ako nema garantovanih radničkih i socijalnih prava, kapital itekako ima moć da direktno reguliše. It's his way or the highway, a na highway-u se umire od gladi. pa sad ti možeš da kažeš da to nije prisila, ako ti je tako lakše, ali to ne menja ništa na stvari.

 

Ukratko, "manje države" nikako nije isto što i manje prisile i regulacije. Pravo pitanje je kakva treba da bude država i po kojim principima treba da bude organizovana i kako o tome treba odlučivati. Ali to je opet prepoznatljivo političko pitanje o kojem libertarijanska politika ima vrlo malo da kaže, baš kao što nema ništa da kaže ni o sindikalnoj borbi.

 

I sad dolazimo do toga čiji treba da bude "my way" i čija je prisila bolja - državna ili privatna. Da li države zaista donose zakone u cilju zaštite ljudi, ili u cilju povećanja sopstvene moći i kontrole? Da li je nekontrolisani (ili manje kontrolisani) privatni kapital zaista put u feudalizam? 

 

Sadašnja država je aberacija. Za kontrolu i regulaciju nije potreban onoliki državni aparat, nego je država postala sama sebi smisao i cilj i nastaviće da se povećava preko svih mera i granica ako se to na neki način ne preseče. Ko kontroliše kontrolore?

Edited June 2, 2014 by Sammael

[Lord Protector]

A kakav je stav libertarijanaca što se tiče solidarnosti među ljudima, ovde govorim o solidarnosti koja je iskaz volje pojedinca i koja je bez medijacije države? Znači ništa tipa državna pomoć već humanitarni rad individualaca, volontiranje, pomoć bližnjem. Pojedinac svojom voljom pomaže drugom pojedincu ili grupi pojedinaca, sopstvenim sredstvima. Da li je to dozvoljeno i da li se kosi sa izvornim načelima jer se time unosi poremećaj i deregulacija na tržištu, slabi preživljavaju i jaki ne mogu da pobede u toj nefer tržišnoj utakmici? Solidarnost nema tržišno opravdanje, pa kako je onda uklopiti u libertarijanski svetonazor?

Edited June 2, 2014 by slow

[MancMellow]

problem libertarijanizma smo apsolvirali. problem socijalizma, izgleda nismo, a vrlo je jednostavan: ko kontrolise drzavu? Osim drugih drzava, naravno. 

 

a onda je tu i onaj, da ga nazovem filozofskim, problem: koja su prava coveka stecena rodjenjem. 

 

sve u svemu - to je sve zajedno teska ideologija. 

 

Prevelika vlast drzave/drzava nuzno vodi, eventually, u ratove medju njima. Prevelika moc privatnog kapitala nuzno vodi u sve vecu i vecu ekonomsku nejednakost i to na svetskom nivou. Kao i u ratove, ali u manjoj meri katastroficne nego u prvom slucaju. Resenje je - mera. Nije neka mudrost, ali je vrski tesko postici je. 

[MancMellow]

A kakav je stav libertarijanaca što se tiče solidarnosti među ljudima, ovde govorim o solidarnosti koja je iskaz volje pojedinca i koja je bez medijacije države? Znači ništa tipa državna pomoć već humanitarni rad individualaca, volontiranje, pomoć bližnjem. Pojedinac svojom voljom pomaže drugom pojedincu ili grupi pojedinaca, sopstvenim sredstvima. Da li je to dozvoljeno 

 

Ne samo da je "dozvoljeno", nego je i veoma pozeljno. I tu u stvari dolazimo do verskih korena libertarijanizma.

[Sammael]

problem libertarijanizma smo apsolvirali. problem socijalizma, izgleda nismo, a vrlo je jednostavan: ko kontrolise drzavu? Osim drugih drzava, naravno. 

 

a onda je tu i onaj, da ga nazovem filozofskim, problem: koja su prava coveka stecena rodjenjem. 

 

sve u svemu - to je sve zajedno teska ideologija. 

 

Prevelika vlast drzave/drzava nuzno vodi, eventually, u ratove medju njima. Prevelika moc privatnog kapitala nuzno vodi u sve vecu i vecu ekonomsku nejednakost i to na svetskom nivou. Kao i u ratove, ali u manjoj meri katastroficne nego u prvom slucaju. Resenje je - mera. Nije neka mudrost, ali je vrski tesko postici je. 

 

Jako dobro rečeno.

 

Solidarnost ima svakako dodirnih tačaka s verom, ali ja sam npr. agnostik pa mi je opet to razmišljanje blisko.

 

Idealno gledano, pojedinci koji imaju više nego što im je realno potrebno vremenom postaju toga svesni (neka vrsta prosvećenosti, jbm li ga, a možda i potreba za javnom aklamacijom) i potom taj višak sredstava redistribuiraju na neki način za koji smatraju da doprinosi poboljšanju celog društva. Na taj način donekle oblikuju društvo prema svom načinu razmišljanja (čime se povećava moć pojedinca).

 

Tu bih svakako svrstao filantropski i humanitarni rad svih vrsta (a la Melinda & Bil Gejts), a koreni ovoga sežu i u antička vremena što se tiče pokroviteljstva neprofitnih delatnosti kao što su umetnost i nauka. Naravno, renesansa je bila najbolji primer spoja privatnog kapitala i neprofitnih delatnosti (arhitektura i urbanizam, nauka, umetnost...).