Alienated Inalienist

Posted by Erik

Lately I've been fascinated with some of David Ellerman's works on alienation. He has a blog here: www.blog.ellerman.org, and several websites. The one that originally caught my attention was abolish humanrentals.org, the basis of which is pretty much summed up below. In essence, humans can't be rented, just as they can't be sold, so 'democratically controlled' worker-owned cooperatives should be the standard. I'm not sure Ellerman also thinks 'cost should be the limit of price' or that workers should receive their 'full product,' but what he proposes seems agreeable enough to me, or at least how he approached this fundamental issue.

One of Ellerman's main critiques is that there has been a misframing of the "standard liberal coercion-versus-consent dichotomy" (http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2012/07/the-pons-asinorum-of-political-economic-theory/)

He posted his critique in brief here:

I have been struck by the narrowness of the spectrum between the right liberals (Deirdre's nice phrase) and the high liberals...One example is the most basic and almost defining misframing used by liberalism of the contrast between coercion and consent. Various shades of left-liberals, not to mention socialists, play an important social role of validating that misframing and then just taking the other side by arguing that, say, the employment relation is "really" coercive in various ways (all the way from the distribution of property to pee-breaks).

Yet political thinkers (particularly of civic republican bent) such as Quentin Skinner and Otto Gierke, have long been clear that since the sophisticated defense of most any form of autocracy has been that it is based on an implicit social contract (vouchsafed by the prescription of time)-- that the real division is between (1) consent to contracts of alienation (e.g., pactum subjectionis of Hobbes) that alienate/transfer the right of self-governance, and (2) consent to contracts which only delegate the exercise of that right to delegates, representatives, or trustees to be exercised in the name of the governed. That is the old translatio vs. concessio debate that seems to be intellectually "unavailable" across the liberal spectrum surveyed and remixed by Tomasi. And unavailable for a good reason.

The principal virtue of the consent versus coercion framing in modern debates is that it puts political democracy and the employment contract on the same side of the dichotomy that frames the debate. And hence the importance of "bleeding-heart" lefties that accept that misframing, and want to argue about trade unions and pee-breaks. Since even the dullest commentator knows that the employer is not the representative or delegate of the employees, the more telling framing of the debate would put political democracy and the human rental contract on opposite sides of the framing dichotomy--which is why that framing is "unavailable."

Fortunately there is a deeper tradition that descends from the Reformation and Enlightenment and that is based on inalienable rights arguments against the alienation contracts per se (not against their abuses). Alienation contracts such as the self-sale contract, the nondemocratic constitution, and the coverture marriage contract have all been outlawed in the western democracies (although there are liberal attempts to revive consent-based nondemocratic government in the idea of charter cities, "free cities," and seasteading). 

Only the self-rental contract remains, and that is why it is so interesting to see Tomasi and the assembled writers as sticking to the consent-coercion misframing, and ignoring the inalienable rights tradition that outlawed those three other alienation contracts.

^"standard liberal coercion-versus-consent dichotomy"

Ellerman suggests this instead: "The real issue: Alienation-versus-delegation for voluntary institutions":

also see: http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2010/03/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument-2/

I like this approach and most of his critiques* of "libertarians," although most of them miss and cross the bow of left libertarianism, and rightly fall onto right libertarianism, though some on the left end probably make the same mistake/misframing. (*see http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2012/06/listen-libertarians-part-i/)

Although I agree, at this point in time, my left-libertarian mindset lured me into seeing the following issues with Ellerman's reframing:

I have a concern similar to Matthew MacKenzie above(this was my comment on his post: http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2010/03/inalienable-rights-part-iii-a-litmus-test-for-liberalism/). You touched on my concern briefly when answering James. I’m having difficulty seeing how democracy is not alienation, and how the re-framing you suggest, while admirable, still falls short (http://www.blog.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ListenLibs2.jpg). I can see direct democracy or participatory democracy being less likely to alienate than representative democracy, but not immune to alienation– especially if the constitution/contract was not agreed to by one or more citizen/employee. Further, it seems voting is alienist as its often no more than renting because voting separates the will from the power to act and transfers it to someone else (renting representative(s), the state, or the public). In addition, to use your words “control exercised in the master’s own interests” is very suggestive of positive political theory and the idea that politicians are self-interested actors. For these reasons, democracy seems alienist (esp. representative democracy), and in my mind you need to add a few more boxes to your re-framing. maybe like this: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxtZ-hLgmVaVZlZIUjM1dXJDajQ/edit?pli=1

I [added] in brackets[ ] to Ellerman's eloquent and brief summary below of the main problem, which I tried to address in my edited version of his chart on the alienation-versus-delegation reframing.

“Obedience to the employer [voter or state, and/or representative] is “counted” as “fulfilling” the contract [vote and/or constitution] on the part of the employee [state or voter, and/or representative], and the payment of wages [and provided services [perhaps from money taken by force]] counts as fulfilling the contract on the part of the employer [voter or state, and/or representative]. Thus both sides “fulfill” a voluntary contract [vote and/or constitution]. Then the institutionalized fraud of renting persons can parade upon the stage of human institutions as a normal voluntary contract vouchsafed by today’s secular clergy of [politicians,] economists, lawyers, and philosophers.”

I don't know that my edited reframing is entirely correct, but for the time being I'll assume that it is. All Power To All People!

Proudhon summed up one of the problems with the alienation of politics nicely: "democracy...exists fully only at the moment of elections and for the formation of legislative power. This moment once past, democracy retreats; it withdraws into itself again, and begins its anti-democratic work. It becomes AUTHORITY." see this older post in this blog for the rest of Proudhon's genius: the solution of social problem

Now if I could just fit Josiah Warren's 'cost is the limit of price' into my revision...

Thanks David!