A “free market” as the term is usually understood is a well-defined thing, which of course has many problems and failure modes, but is not well-represented by a market dominated by a large cartel routinely controlling prices. It is also not the same thing as capitalism.
How is it defined? Usually understood by whom? Are you talking about abstract concepts or historical examples of “free markets” and their development?
Cartels and monopolies are the result of “free markets” btw. The strongest agents will organize to dominate and destroy the competitors however they can.
The free market is an abstract concept, one which rarely exists in anything like its ideal form due to its instability under current conditions of capitalist development. The original definition given by classical economics is still the prevalent one. Despite what slogans from some proponents of capitalism would have you believe, not only are free markets not identical with it, but capitalism tends to take markets further and further from anything resembling their theoretically ideal state of freedom.
‘Free-markets’ has never referred to a philosophical, moral or spiritual idea of freedom, except when used rhetorically in discourse by the right, especially since Thatcher and Reagan, i.e. the full onset of the Neoliberal counter-revolution.
Economists do not study the idea of ‘freedom’. That is a philosophical concept. When they say ‘free’, and you actually look at the structure of the propositions they use, they are referring essentially to the private autonomy of firms as ‘free’ to the degree that there is no non-private, social, public or governmental interest (it’s not only the government, as this definition implies that trade-unions make a market ‘less free’).
I understand what you mean, but I’d really strongly object to the use you’ve made of the term though as that is precisely the use which was introduced by the right-wing for the purposes of delegitimizing labour organization by conflating labour organization with the anti-competitive nature of cartels in the ideological and rhethorical climate of Neoliberalism that has continuously fetishized supposed competition and playing off our fear of it while nevertheless tending the conditions that promote cartelization of the global economy to the hilt.
The difference is that cartels are firms controlled by capitalists for the purpose of profit and capital accumulation. They fix prices for this purpose. Workers do not, because by their very nature capital accumulation is the logic of the capitalists’ material interests, and so in strong contradiction, in the final analysis, with the material interests of labour. Cartel on this definition you’ve used would then just mean ‘price control’. But is then a monopoly or the government a cartel when they respectively fix or regulate prices? The purpose of the introduction of the term was to refer to new formations, concentrations and centralizations of capital in the late 19th century for purposes of overcoming the economic slowdown of this period. It seems harmful, confused and inevitably confusing to widen the meaning of the word so broadly.
I obviously agree that labour should organize, and there are circumstances in which markets might be tolerated in very restricted ways from a socialist perspective, and in such markets labour should therefore of course be organized in such a way as to control production and therefore prices. But the assumption in your question that markets are ‘legitimate’ in general strikes me as deeply problematic and politically un-Marxist.
Yes, actually
Actual free markets are almost as rare as actually existing socialism.
free market is when good so obviously when the market does something bad it must not be the market
the free market produced the triangle trade ffs
Really? I thought the most infamous example of triangular trade was more of a mercantilism thing.
Ah, of course, real capitalism has never been tried
A “free market” as the term is usually understood is a well-defined thing, which of course has many problems and failure modes, but is not well-represented by a market dominated by a large cartel routinely controlling prices. It is also not the same thing as capitalism.
How is it defined? Usually understood by whom? Are you talking about abstract concepts or historical examples of “free markets” and their development?
Cartels and monopolies are the result of “free markets” btw. The strongest agents will organize to dominate and destroy the competitors however they can.
The free market is an abstract concept, one which rarely exists in anything like its ideal form due to its instability under current conditions of capitalist development. The original definition given by classical economics is still the prevalent one. Despite what slogans from some proponents of capitalism would have you believe, not only are free markets not identical with it, but capitalism tends to take markets further and further from anything resembling their theoretically ideal state of freedom.
‘Free-markets’ has never referred to a philosophical, moral or spiritual idea of freedom, except when used rhetorically in discourse by the right, especially since Thatcher and Reagan, i.e. the full onset of the Neoliberal counter-revolution.
Economists do not study the idea of ‘freedom’. That is a philosophical concept. When they say ‘free’, and you actually look at the structure of the propositions they use, they are referring essentially to the private autonomy of firms as ‘free’ to the degree that there is no non-private, social, public or governmental interest (it’s not only the government, as this definition implies that trade-unions make a market ‘less free’).
trade unions are also a form of cartel that seeks to set the prices of comodified labour
an example of how cartels can be a perfectly legitimate part of the market
I understand what you mean, but I’d really strongly object to the use you’ve made of the term though as that is precisely the use which was introduced by the right-wing for the purposes of delegitimizing labour organization by conflating labour organization with the anti-competitive nature of cartels in the ideological and rhethorical climate of Neoliberalism that has continuously fetishized supposed competition and playing off our fear of it while nevertheless tending the conditions that promote cartelization of the global economy to the hilt.
The difference is that cartels are firms controlled by capitalists for the purpose of profit and capital accumulation. They fix prices for this purpose. Workers do not, because by their very nature capital accumulation is the logic of the capitalists’ material interests, and so in strong contradiction, in the final analysis, with the material interests of labour. Cartel on this definition you’ve used would then just mean ‘price control’. But is then a monopoly or the government a cartel when they respectively fix or regulate prices? The purpose of the introduction of the term was to refer to new formations, concentrations and centralizations of capital in the late 19th century for purposes of overcoming the economic slowdown of this period. It seems harmful, confused and inevitably confusing to widen the meaning of the word so broadly.
I obviously agree that labour should organize, and there are circumstances in which markets might be tolerated in very restricted ways from a socialist perspective, and in such markets labour should therefore of course be organized in such a way as to control production and therefore prices. But the assumption in your question that markets are ‘legitimate’ in general strikes me as deeply problematic and politically un-Marxist.