[P2P-F] Worker Ownership, Scale of Production, and Use Value

[Kevin Carson]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:49 PM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:

> For example, what if I owned the tools to perform the
> service, but hired someone to do the work?

I'd expect a skilled artisan who made his living by performing such
work to already own the tools of his trade, if they were affordable by
an individual and he had enough work to retire the capital outlay.

Under those circumstances, why would he agree to work under a set of
conditions where someone else offered him access to a set of tools he
didn't need -- especially if he perceived that the reason for the
unusal setup was to enable the person hiring him to use him as an
equivalent of the "Salvadoran nanny" and be subject to
micromanagement?  Nobody wants to be treated as a poor relation in
someone else's space.  People who choose self-employment generally do
so because they're sick of eating shit and being bosses around by
other people, and they want a sense of independence and control over
their work.

> Let's say I own the cable-splicer and whatever else
> equipment a network technician would need, and he
> used that equipment to network my house.
>
> Should he then become part owner of those tools?
>
>
> What if I owned all the wrenches and other things
> needed to fix my car, or install plumbing but hired
> someone else to do the work?
>
> Should he then become part owner of those tools?
>
>
> If he owned his own tools (the same as the ones I
> was offering), notice he would not be able to stop
> other potential Workers for reverse-bidding for that
> job - even when those other workers did not own
> tools themselves, because I would allow those non-
> owning worker to access my tools "at cost".  His
> ownership would not help him except in cases where
> he was vying for a job from a customer that did NOT
> own those tools.

But in all these cases, I'd expect ownership of tools of the trade to
be the default for most such laborers.

> I would be 'protected' through my ownership in the
> Means of Production from being forced to pay more
> than lowest wage any worker would offer.

Well, sure.  And the owner of a factory today is protected through his
ownership of the Means of Production from being forced to pay more
than lowest wage any worker will offer.  Hooray for Bounderby of
Coketown!  Ain't the Dark Satanic Mills grand!

> This seems to indicate that competition between
> workers is maximized when consumers own the Means
> of Production.
>
> This minimizes Wages and causes Profit to be undefined.

Believe it or not, most people who work for a living aren't willing to
accept a state of affairs in which wages are minimized in return for
an opportunity to lord it over others when they put on their customer
hat and get to play king for a day.  Taking orders from some high-hat
who owns the means of production isn't much fun for a worker.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html