Reading Giblin and Doctorow’s Chokepoint Capitalism and they used a term “freedom of contract” I hadn’t heard before, and which I realized that I have over-valued in my brain.

I’ve already broken through in a few spots, for instance employment contracts can obviously be exploitative and workers have little ability to negotiating the terms on their own.

Or bank loans, not because of the negotiation so much as the moral stigma attached to defaulting on loans. I can see that the bank took a risk, they can take the consequences too. Why add moral consequences to an action that already carries financial consequences?

I think this loans issue comes back to an association of business contracts with social promises, which I’ve spent some time breaking down.

The employment issue is another kettle of frogs. That comes back to consent and whether a person who is not entirely free can consent. I guess that’s the whole point of a revolution though. Any attempt to make contract law fairer to respect the fact that some parties are signing under duress will be thorny, because all people are under duress under capitalism.

There’s barely a question in there, but … thoughts?

  • davel [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    A critique of the moral framework of debt:

    Michael Hudson: …and forgive them their debts

    Clean Slate debt cancellations (the Jubilee Year), used in Babylonia since Hammurabi’s dynasty, first appear in the Bible in Leviticus 25. Jesus’s first sermon announced that he had come to proclaim it. This message – more than other religious claims – is what threatened his enemies, and why he was put to death.

    This interpretation has been all but expunged from our contemporary understanding of the phrase, “…and forgive them their debts,” in The Lord’s Prayer. It has been changed to “…and forgive them their trespasses (or sins),” depending on the particular Christian tradition that influenced the translation from the Greek opheilēma/opheiletēs (debts/debtors). On the contrary, debt repayment has become sanctified and mystified as a way of moralizing claims on borrowers, allowing creditor elites and oligarchs the leverage to take over societies and privatize their public assets, especially in hard times.

    Historically, no monarchy or government has survived takeover by creditor elites and oligarchs (viz: Rome). In a time of increasing economic and political polarization, and a global economy deeper in debt than at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, …and forgive them their debts shows what individuals, governments, and societies can learn from the ancient past for restoring economic and social stability today.

    Michael Hudson interview: Debt and Power

    • luddybuddy [comrade/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      This is good shit. Also connecting that to the english peasant rebellion (can't remember which one) where they went to London and burnt all the records, so nobody knew who owed whom.