Re: [OPE] free competition

> Jerry Levy claims free competition is a myth, and that Marx believed this, but anyway Marx
> supposedly never talked about free competition. When I point out this interpretation of Marx is
> simply false, he scurrilously tries with a few selected quotations (or dictionary definitions) taken
> out of context, to prove that he is right anyway!

Jurriaan:
 
For someone who claims to have a distaste for invective, you have an unfortunate habit of
periodically using it. In any event, I will not oblige you by responding to your
mischaractizations (a purposely under-stated word) about me since the issue (lest we forget)
in this thread is not Jerry Levy and Jurriaan Bendien.

I am perfectly willing to concede that Marx and Lenin referred to free competition. I did indeed offer
a few 'selected quotations' - in the order that they arose at the MIA in the very search which
I thought *you* referred to. I guess nothing less than my referencing *every* single statement
which Marx (and Engels?) made concerning 'free competition' would have been condemned by you as
citing "selected quotations" - even though you did not attempt to explain those quotations by
Marx. No matter. You are entitled to your inconsistencies and double standards.
 
 
I most certainly did NOT take a few dictionary quotations "out of context". You make such a
statement without even attempting to examine the many definitions (virtually all of which attach
the same meaning to the expression) which are given in other sources. It is enough for you to
dismiss them as "dictionary definitions". These definitions and others from many other sources
show that there is a common understanding and meaning of that expression today - although it is,
of course, possible it could have had a somewhat different meaning at an earlier point in time.
That's something I am open to discussion about - and will address later in this post.

Now here's where the two of us differ - when I raise a question which does not primarily
concern Marx, you almost always steer the question to what for me is a secondary question -
Marx's perspective. Furthermore, you seem intent - on an almost daily basis - on defending Marx
and showing how the "NMEC" has grossly mis-interpreted his perspectives. I have no doubt that many
Marxists have mis-interpreted Marx and have said so on many occasions, but for me it is not a
primary question.

So here's what I will concede - Marx and Lenin did indeed refer to free competition. On that point
- which was never the major issue I was addressing in this thread - I was incorrect. [NB: For the record,
not that it really matters, this is NOT the first time I said I was wrong on OPE-L. Indeed, I have
said so many, many times.]
 
 
In making that concession, though, I will CONTINUE to say that the idea "free compeition' is indeed
ideological and that the idea that there existed a period of free competition in capitalist history
is a MYTH.

So, there you have it: Marx and Lenin were WRONG to buy into this claim. OMG, I said Marx and
Lenin were wrong - I can just imagine your blood pressure rising! How DARE I say that about Marx!
I'm ONLY Jerry Levy, after all, not a genius like Marx or his defender on OPE-L.
 
 
I'm sure you will be quick to note that both Marx and Lenin were students of economic history
and undertook exhaustive research into the literature which was available at the time. Indeed.
 
 
By the definitions of free competition which are almost universally accepted today, I will
stand by the statement that the belief that free competition actually existed as a period
of capitalist history is a myth. Although I fully anticipate, even though I will capitalize
the following for emphasis, that you will ignore what I am about to say and attempt to steer the
discussion back to Marx, as I said before *WHETHER OR NOT THIS IS TRUE IS INDEPENDENT OF WHAT MARX
- AND LENIN - HAD TO SAY ABOUT THIS TOPIC*.
 
 
> Let us suppose, hypothetically, that Jerry is correct with his dictionary definition about
> state interference...
 
 
I guess that's your back-handed way of saying that I was correct and you were wrong, but you
just don't want to say that. In any event...

> The fact still remains that in reality, "free competition" carried a different meaning in the
> 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century than it does today, because the nature of capitalist business
> and the state was different from what it is today.
 
 
Well, let's see. What *EXACTLY* do you think it meant then?
 
 
> The ability of the state to regulate business competition was much less, particularly in
> the 16th, 17th and 18th century, simply because a well-financed, centralized public
> administration capable of implementing a coherent set of policies in the empires
> *did not exist*, any more than integrated capital markets existed.
 
 
while it's - of course - true that the state didn't regulate competition in these
centuries to the degree which it began to in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries,
I think you seriously understate the extent to which state not only could - but, in fact,
often did - get in the way of free competition in this earlier period of capitalist history.
I cited a number of acts passed in the UK which show that - even in the citadel of the
bourgeois champions of the ideology of free competition - it did in fact never exist.
If you think that the British Crown and Parliament was not well financed
or organized to establish coherent policies, I think you are mistaken. Amongst other
groups, tell that to the Irish! THe Spanish and French monarchs were certainly not
under this illusion about the British state!
 

> How could a million Irish starve in the Irish potato famine while the state did nothing
> much? Well, that was "free competition", a cut-throat competition to stay alive!
> (in the Bengal famine of 1770, about a third of the population died - millions more
> Indians died in the 19th century!).
 
 
Yes, but at the same time that the state did nothing to save the lives of the Irish,
they ALSO created and perpetuated state monopolies - a clear violation of the
principle of free competition. The Irish and Indians were allowed to stave to death
not because of the principle of free competition - indeed, that was a crass rationalization
by the most reactionary representatives of the British bourgeoisie - but because they were
poor and there was no profit in keeping them alive. Indeed, this is a demonstration of
the reactionary character of this ideology.
 
 
> You can calculate (as I have done) that in 1800, there must have been about one UK
> civil servant for every 350 or so citizens, <snip>
 
 
Yes, but the British state still had the ability to make laws and enforce its will.
Indeed, they had some weapons then to enforce their will that they don't have now.
If you crossed the King or Queen, they had means to make you do what they wanted.
The people of Scotland learned this lesson again and again at the point of bayonets,
cannon, etc. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be part of a business undertaking
which got caught illegally selling goods for which another firm received a Royal
Charter. (Reportedly, if you killed a swan belonging to the Crown, the penalty was death.)
Even the bourgeoisie knew that if they crossed the King or Queen, there was
a place for him or her in a dungeon or the Tower.
 
 
Having said this, I note that you haven't offered a definition of free competition
from any 16th, 17th, 18th, or 19th Century original source which defines free competition
in any significant way other than the standard way in which it is defined today. Do
you want to rise to that challenge or are we simply supposed to take it for granted
that free competition meant something else to authors then?
 
 
Did, for instance, classical political economists - including Bentham and James Mill
(two authors who Marx was certainly well-read on) - use the expression in some 'different'
sense? I have seen no evidence to that effect, but if you have actual original sources
(from any one other than The Holy Marx) please let us know about them. I am all ears.
 
 
I would mention that in one of the 'selected' quotations I gave from Marx, he was
indeed employing the commonly accepted definition of the expression (although, as with
[almost] everything else, he was highly critical of it) - but I don't want you to
get side-tracked. In the larger scale of things, what Marx meant by the expression
'free competition' is of much less important than the historical question of whether a
period of free competition actually existed in capitalist history.
 
 
In solidarity, Jerry
 
                                                
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Received on Thu Apr 14 20:16:06 2011