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MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY GENERAL>Marxist political economy concerns itself variously with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution.Related topics such as finance/business, etc. also welcome
related threads:
>>213072 /crisis/ General (monitoring the market, trends, fluctuations, etc.)
>>1852043 / CYBERCOM / (discussion of cybercommunism, the planning of the socialist economy by computerized means)
I thought marxism was a critique of political economy not economism.
what is this
>>1853095is that a giant shit on his weed scale?
>>1852697marxists generally have the virulence of economising every aspect of life
>>1852814in capital marx cites previous and contemporary figures of political economy. Its clearly intended to be a "response" to existing works, alongside a reinterpretation of his own conditions.
I would say that to go straight into capital without reading any previous thinkers of political economy would be extremely unwise.
>>1853103Marx makes the proper point that paper money works just as well as gold as long as it still remains the "universal equivalent" (the commodity that cannot be commodified, and so retains a standard of valuation by regulation of its issuing - but of course there has always been inflation in precious metal standards too).
Has anyone read into Yanis Varoufakis's theory on Techno Feudalism? While I don't think it's completely correct, it makes some intriguing arguments and may reveal some truth.
>>1853110gold becomes money without any special effort on the part of society
>>1853116I would disagree and say that a commodity only become money proper once it is distributed by a central body like a government (this view is called "chartalism"). Thats why metal coins have to be given signatures like faces, and why they are only available to be traded in certain regions.
The creation of money is not the circulation of gold, but gold given by a standard of trade.
Now, the *intrinsic* qualities of gold allow it to be a *store of value* (by being scarce, light and impervious to corrosion), but this isnt money. Money is the universal equivalent set by social standards. Money is currency. Legal tender.
This is why gold can be "valuable" but you cant generally trade for goods with gold. The gold has to be converted into money, which is what has always happened with gold standards. The gold is denominated by coins and notes.
Practically, you can just cut out gold from the picture and simply set the issuing of money by a proxy gold standard, which is what america did til 1971.
>>1853122A good historical lesson is the one about the tribe who traded in seashells - BUT these shells were extracted by the scarce means of retrieval and thriugh dangerous feats. So see here how the essence of money is in the labours it takes to extract it (which is what marx points to as the Value invested in s gold standard, in the machinery and workers used to reproduce itself).
But then the british came to the island and bought it out by importing so many of the seashells. See here how Value is not in the thing itself, but its social function by scarcity (which must be contrived by whichever means - lord keynes gives an excellent example when he says how you could bury money in a hole and then hire people to dig it up, where rhey get to keep what they find. The analogy can also work for a government).
>>1853129Yes. "Universal equivalent" sums it up well. It is the commodity of commodities. But by perculiarity, it is also a commodity that cannot be commodified, like how you cant "buy" dollars, since it would be circular. It cancels itself out.
>>1853129>>1853130But we also have to recognise that marx's perspective is contingent upon the institution of commodity-money as the dominant practice, so "universal equivalence" doesnt fly for paper money in quite the same way since money is technically not a commodity, but its representative form - gold is a universal equivalent, but dollars or pounds arent.
This is why so many claim that today there is no "backing" for fiat currencies, but i would say in relation to marx's comments about the extraction of gold, the real process is the employmemt of labour - where gold held by itself leads us to commodity fetishism.
So basically, what backs any currency? It is the labour that all commodities represent, like keynes' example of digging the hole to find money - the money retroactively redeems the price of this labour. Adam smith even makes similar allusions, which is that it is not gold or land (as per the mercantilist view), but commodities which represent wealth. This is also why smith is credited for his labour theory of Value of course.
But this is why i think the battle in economics is still "legal" vs "regal", where a libertarian puts his faith in some external mechanism that he calls "economics", while the more enlightened person understands that there is always a head to economic privilege in the state.
So economics draws on this view between central banks and private currencies. I support the central bank model since it is theoretically and historically true as far as i can see. Money is currency.
https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/29542.2/tharappel_jj_thesis.pdf?sequence=3A fantastic Dissertation by Jay Tharappel, called: Imperialism: How Declining Currency Hegemony Leads to War.
>>1852697Political Economy, it's in the word. Economics is not locked up in some abstract prison, rather, economy is political, the economy is shaped by politics.
And politics, is not locked up in some abstract prison either, politics is shaped by economics, some may more-so determined.
Together, Politics and Economy make up Political Economy; in a way the dialectical or two-way relationship between Political and Economics making up Political Economy, is like Base and Superstructure, the economic base shapes the political superstructure and vice versa.
Laws in a parliament may constrain or free the ability of capitalists, although the ability of capitalists may constrain or free what laws pass through in a parliament.
Do you see the relationship between Politics and Economy, through the Base and Superstructure model? Hope you understand Political Economy a bit better.
>>1853136This is also why lolberts love crypto such much, since every currency represents a different market (especially black markets). But see here how the "free market" dissolves into factions of competing industries. This is how gangs and cartels form.
Part of marx's analysis of gold is actually his enthusiasm for a "world money" that unites labour in standardisation, for the equal realisation of Value. While libertarians always want to segregate and split up markets (similar to capital's volition to the division of labour).
So see here again the battle reframed between custom currencies and public money.
Ive spoken in part about this before. How consoles represent tribalisms. Like how "microsoft points" paired off against the playstation, and even looped into this was a certain chauvinism, with the "PC Master Race" discourse. So the division of platforms creates this tension.
>>1853137Sadam was invaded for trading his oil in euros and qaddafi was invaded for wanting to build a gold standard to trade in. The free market is only free for me, not for thee. But this is why liberalism is necessarily a sublation of mercantilism and empire. Like how marx criticises adam smith's "simple accumulation" in his own transposition of "primitive accumulation". The reason the british can have such fine economic ideas is because they had a world empire. Lolbertarianism without this outreach leads to somalia. But even recovering lolberts like curtis yarvin is coming around to this reality - that the bottom of everything is the cold hand of political power.
>>1853138"Political economy" is also paired against "economics" which was always considered since aristotle a strategy of housekeeping and saving (which mirrors the simplicity that liberals utilise for their thinking). Political economy is essentially the upkeeping or accounting of the state or nation, which is a modern consideration.
How would a Marxist describe bypassing money in a monetarily-valued transaction?
e,g,
I have some fruit, which are valued around $5
Friend has some honey, I would like to buy $5 worth, and exchange my fruit for the honey.
Neither of us exchange money, but we are still using 'dollars' as a measure of value. Is this distinct from mere trade, since we use money's valuation system to determine the trade's equivalence of value?
>>1853130>like how you cant "buy" dollarsIsn't currency exchange "buying dollars"?
Isn't selling anything for money "buying dollars"?
I realize we don't actually say "buying dollars" in those situations, but why is that not just a semantic difference?
>>1853143Yeah i was unspecific sorry
I meant that you cant buy dollars with dollars
But money markets exist ofc. Thats how fiat works. This is also why every country wants tourism, so you buy their money - or trade yours for theirs. It works because your money (if you can afford to travel) is usually worth more than theirs, so you boost their economy. You also spend at loc business and whatnot.
An example marx might use is to say that you cant "buy" an ounce of gold with another ounce, you can only swap them
>>1853143>trading fruit for honeyTo marx, a "commodity" contains its use-value and exchange-value, but he says that before commodities (before money which allows golds to be exchanged), there would only be use-values.
So marx would call barter a mutual trade of use-values. But if they are traded by money they become commodities so are entered into commodity-exchange (C-M-C) [Commodity-Money-Commodity].
>>1853144>I meant that you cant buy dollars with dollarsAh all good.
>>1853138 (me)
In the second paragraph, I would add politics is also economical.
>>1853110this
>>1853116The gold on a shipwreck from 3000 years ago is still gold just the same as the gold in a commemorative coin made today.
>>1853122>Now, the *intrinsic* qualities of gold allow it to be a *store of value* (by being scarce, light and impervious to corrosion)>lightThe opposite is true. Gold is very dense. An ounce of it takes up a lot less space than an ounce of most materials you might get your hands on.
>This is why gold can be "valuable" but you cant generally trade for goods with gold. Not true at all. if you know the market rate of gold, you can break off a piece of a certain weight that equals whatever value you need to pay. That's another one of gold's most important qualities: its softness.
>>1853143Money is still being used as a medium of exchange, just in the abstract. A true "barter" situation wouldn't use value in this way to mediate between commodities and you'd have to argue over how much honey is worth that amount of fruit.
>>1853151>if you know the market rate of gold, you can break off a piece of a certain weight that equals whatever value you need to pay.Ha! Try and buy a loaf of bread with a gold coin and see if you get any change back lol.
This is like crypto-bros pretending that the kilobytes stored in their wallet has intrinsic Value.
Gold is a good store of Value but it isnt money so cant be traded for its market rate. Thats why it needs to be sold, to realise its Value by being traded for money. Gold is a commodity. You cant buy a sandwhich with a pair of shoes like you can buy a sandwhich with a tin coin.
>>1853152gold on a consumer level isn't a big player but gold has a certain use value derived from its preference in settling international trade balances at central banks - moving gold from one pile to another
>>1853158Yeah i dont doubt Gold is useful (which is why central banks still hoard it like you say), but its still only held as colllateral, where money is objectively paper dollars that are traded in the economy.
Marx makes the point to distinguish between commodities and money in formulation, which is why the position of the universal equivalent is the paradox at the heart of exchange, as a commodity which is also the standard of money.
Marx would also say that the Value of gold is determined by the labour put into extracting it, so at the end of the line, gold is still set against the true standard, labour, the same sentiment that adam smith would declare - that the realisation of Value is in the sale of commodities.
Lots of libertarians like peter schiff fall into the mercantilist trap of assigning intrinsic value to gold which is paired against paper money, but money is socially mediated, where gold's essential use is its scarcity (which is why many imagine that bitcoins could replace it as a standard).
>>1853169To draw a simple history, empires would invest in the extraction of gold to expand operations (this is the cursory capital cicuit [M-C-M+] that used money to "make money"). This system is put under the "mercantilist" strategy of wealth. But during this were liberal thinkers like adam smith who saw that real wealth was not gold or land, but commodities, so saw how money should be put into commodity-production instead. This made countries richer by a high distribution of goods rather than the hoarding of wealth.
Marx also speaks on this schematic, that the transition from mercantilism to liberalism is of the hoarder into the capitalist, or of saving into spending, where you have to "spend money to make money". And this process continues indefintely. In fact, the great depression was caused in part by the gold standard since this didnt allow a sufficient amount of issuing of currency.
So capitalism realises Value at larger and larger scales by enriching nations through abolishing the gold standard. Thats why people are nominally richer today than when we had a gold standard, since it's sales that create wealth.
Goldbugs are literally just old-world thinkers who disregard the last 2 centuries of economic progress. Expanded production requires expanded money supply. A gold standard cant compete.
>>1853182One last point:
Peter Schiff admits this and says that a return to the gold standard would literally destroy the american economy in order to reset the national debt.
So gold expands production much slower than paper. This is why paper money is much more progressive. And again, paper money can only invest in labour like lord keynes' example of digging up piles of money.
So paper money realises Value more effectively and also allows production to better adaot to its crises of overproduction that marx and engels bemoan.
>>1853129>>1853130You are not engaging with what
>>1853122 is saying at all.
>>1853217Its funny cos you have accused me of not responding to my own post when this thread has just been my ramblings for the most part lol
Whats not to understand?
Gold is a commodity that must be transformed into money. A gold piece isnt money, but a gold piece with caesar's face on it is money.
>>1853241Do you believe Marx had a chartalist POV in what you quoted in
>>1853129?
>>1853138>Political Economy, it's in the word.A critique of it, you forgot that word.
>>1852814>>1853110Like you said Marx was not an economist.
>>1853103Lolbert moment.
Economics has long ceased to be a science since the time of Ricardo, so all we're left with is the prevalence of clowns and bullshit theories, worst of all the ones calling themselves "marxist economists".
>>1853279no i dont think marx was a chartalist, but that would be my critique of marx
marx like smith saw barter as the first step in trade which then naturally developed into the trade in money
my historical perspective is that civilisation necessarily begins with the production of a suplus (like the grain silo of agriculture) which centralises itself a monopoly reserve, and this forms the state which controls society, including the issue of money
>> 1853280
>> 1853281
>> 1853282
(Thou)
>>1853183>So gold expands production much slower than paper. This is why paper money is much more progressive.I do agree that the social utility of issued money and its relation to production could be considered progressive but the money is only as strong and secure as the state that prints it - the fact remains that gold as a store of value has outlived all forms of issued currency
>>1853452>the money is only as strong and secure as the state that prints itNo, i disagree
Its not *the state* that "backs" fiat currency. The Value of the dollar is about how many commodities are represented under it (which is why the dollar seeks global hegemony, so that the imperial core is strengthened by monetary imperialism - this is also why USA killed saddam and gaddafi for competing with the dollar). This is also true for gold currency, where having a bunch of gold doesnt make you rich unless the gold is made into money that is traded in a society.
The reason why a gold standard wouldnt work today is because a gold standard "deflates" currencies by limiting its power to be issued by a central bank, which would disallow things like government spending or bank loans (mortgages and college sponsorship) since the gold can be held in private reserve - thats why roosevelt confiscated america's gold during the new deal, to fund stimulation programs. The expansion of trade inherently entails the expansion of the money supply and thus paper money (or even digital credit) is the economical response to this demand. This is why many (including myself) think that the penny shouldnt be made anymore (where i think at least the dime should be the lowest form of denomination - but this would also wreck the "decimal" system which would cause elites to sperg out. This happened in britain where the imperial system of currencies (which included 240 pennies to a pound 🤢 was replaced with 100 pennies for a pound. I think we should chop things up more).
The reason the penny shouldnt be made is because of the costs of production. It literally costs more than a penny to make a penny so it limits productive capabilities by being a drag on the economy. This is the same allusory critique marx makes about gold, that gold itself is not Valuable, but only represents the value made by its extraction.
>the fact remains that gold as a store of value has outlived all forms of issued currencyWell this is only a contingent fact, but at the same time an ounce of gold is only worth like $1500 i think, so its not as scarce as it used to be. I mean see the paradox in a gold market - why would people want to sell their gold if it was such a good investment? Gold as a store of value acts as a device for *saving* but is it worth saving so much money in your life if you arent going to spend it? And if you are then you need to sell the gold to turn it into money, which is what goldsmiths are doing all the time
Also a final note on the gold standard. Germany after ww1 became bankrupt and a slave to international powers because it lost all of its gold by selling war bonds to the citizenry. The currency was the gold mark which had a capped supply obviously which meant that a war was a sort of investment in a necessary victory, but if you lost, you lost for nothing, which is what happened. Later ofc came hyperinflation from speculating bankers. But what saved germany was a keynesian breakthrough, of giving out IOUs to employers to put people to work, and it was LABOUR that allowed any sort of recovery.
This is why the economy works today, because it still puts people to work. Jobs is what matters. This is why even though thatcher intended to fight "unprofitable" mining in england, it lead to even worse inflation by taking away people's jobs.
The fight of labour is the fight for jobs, which simply cannot be had by a gold standard.
i bet the germans of ww1 would have been happier with a bit of inflation rather than lose all of their money in a dysgenic war that left them enslaved
>>1853183>gold expands production much slower than paperImagine being castrated by the modern bourgeois economics' limitations - no direct involvement into production of goods whatsoever, only monetary policies are allowed - this fucking much
>>1853452>money is only as strong and secure as the state that prints itWhat fucking nonsense. The only reason why dollar or euro are/were reserve currencies is because of low inflation. That's it. They became used widely because of trade, though, but this shit is long overstaying it's welcome.
While other currencies lose value over time, dollar loses much less value. If there's inflation to dollar higher than competition, dollar will die.
>>1853466>Germany after ww1 became bankrupt and a slave to international powers because it lost all of its gold by selling war bonds to the citizenry. The currency was the gold mark which had a capped supply obviously which meant that a war was a sort of investment in a necessary victory, but if you lost, you lost for nothing, which is what happened.Germany after the war had reparations slapped onto it, and millions of soldiers coming home and breaking the economy with their unemployment. Military industries were forcefully scaled down waaaaay faster than any other european country, without any phasing out, and this resulted in hyperinflation. Gold played no real fucking role in this
>>1853468>They became used widely because of trade, though, but this shit is long overstaying it's welcome. Why? Europe and America are the biggest consumers so foreign countries want to trade with them all the time. Also what is the real alternative? BRICS? (Although i will admit that europe and america dropped the ball with cutting off russian oil and the ruble seems to be fine).
>>1853470The gold standard is the reason why it had a limited budget so was able to lose its money. Can america today "lose" its money? Its paper. Just print more off. I think i read that the bailout in 2008 was a 16 trillion writeoff to restore accounts in failed banks. Without that it would be another depression, which is what happened in the 20s because of the gold standard's inability to exceed itself beyond a literal reserve of value being used to issue stimulation, the same way the tax rate went up to 90% to get money together
Thats retarded shit. Why limit the money supply? Only if you believe in voodoo economics or are some gold hoarder do you think this is sacred ground.
And yes, reparations were put on germany, but that was an anti-german conspiracy to morally punish them, not to actually pay off debts.
Okay so lets get away from germany. In america with the great depression, america literally lost its money. The banks failed. Where did the money go? It went somewhere, but not back into the american economy. Having a hard currency leads to such absurdities.
>>1853452gold has no particularly special traits over other non-perishable commodities, save its fetishisation. if you hide coal under your bed for 50 years you will likely find that - as with gold - its value has held up better than the face-value of the dollar bill you put down there. you'll find vague correlations with global economic growth and wildly fluctuating spot-prices all the same. nonetheless we see no proposals for a coal standard.
>>1853477The main quality of gold is its scarcity
But also others
But scarcity is the key - thats why you can trade in seashells or big blocks of concrete as long as you dont keep putting too many of them into circulation
I am a brainlet. Why NOT back currency with Gold, or Energy?
>>1853468inflation is the feds biggest nightmare but it's not everything, if it was, the japanese Yen would be king:
>Japan's inflation rate in 1984 was 2.26%. The Japanese yen had an average inflation rate of 0.89% per year between 1980 and 2024, resulting in a cumulative price increase of 47.68%.<The average inflation rate [in the U.S.A] between 1980 and today has been 2.96% per year, resulting in a cumulative price increase of 260.64%.It was american state power (lent to them by dollar dominated trade like you say) that forced the japanese to sign the plaza accords
>>1853477what are some examples of non perishable commodities that don't require an upkeep like gold? i could bury it outside unlike your coal
>>1853490Replace energy with labour and you are correct
Energy is also quite abstract
Gold is a form that Value takes but is limited in its supply by nature and leads to hoarding, and so cannot realise the wealth of social value as effectively as something like paper money can
>>1853492>>1853490Like i say, gold is worthless unless gold is used to give people jobs. Its labour in commodity production that realises Value.
You cant eat gold but you can eat a sandwhich
>>1853492how much energy went into the production of something is infinitely easier than determining the ammount of labour hours it takes in total, i agree with the shortcomings of gold though
>>1853496Isnt energy and labour effectively the same thing when it comes to the cost of production?
Also, is "energy" electricity here or some form of credit? Energy is in food and drink and keeps us alive but its hard to objectify it as a whole substance. Again, it seems abstract.
>>1853479everything is scarce, "dealing with scarcity" is a common answer if you ask what the fundamental purpose of bourgeois economics is.
if we think only of relative scarcity: precious gems are scarce, platinum is scarce, moon rocks are scarce… but no government has ever destroyed itself hewing to the treasury's orthodoxy of protecting the emerald standard.
ultimately, the influence of scarcity is purely on price, determined (in the big picture) by the ratio of scarcity to demand. a drawing by me, for example, is rarer than any commodity you can name - but nobody wants my scrawlings, save perhaps as waste paper to get a campfire going.
>>1853490a) mismatches arise between the general need for money and the general need for the commodity you back it with, leading to fucky monetary policy. if a gold mine shuts during a recession, leading to a price increase in gold, you find yourself havng to put up interest rates - worsening the recession - because an arbitrary commodity went up in price.
b) no major advantages flow from doing it rather than not doing it. you might say "ah, but what about inflation?" but most governments could run a deflationary monetary policy if they wished - they're choosing not to. the only force of a gold standard is vaguely social:
i'm not saying to increase interest rates, this arbitrary measurement we've hooked ourselves to demands it… but of course, that always opens up the question of simply abandoning the arbitrary measure if the demands are too onerous - which is ultimately what everyone did.
as for energy: it's one of those ideas that just never took off. you'd have to do a lot of work and totally rethink how money works to do it in a sane way (i.e. as "energy credits") and you'd get nothing but chaos out of doing it in the same way as gold (i.e. setting your interest rates based on the market rate for electricity, with a view to keeping the price of a kilowatt hour constant)
>>1853505my crackpot idea is that you can somehow calculate socially necessary labour time into kwh. the proposals for labour vouchers i have seen dont seem very convincing
>>1853505Well marx would allude that price (in some schematic of supply and demand) is different from Value, where gold's Value is determined by the labour put into refining it as a commodity. The pricing is the voodoo that haunts people by a commodity fetishism (in the literal sense, of seeing a self-completeness in a commodity which seemingly transcends its social character). Thats why people can be fooled into believing in such an "objective" condition that makes it valuable.
But as the old addage goes: you cant eat gold.
>energy credits>electricityThe issue is that electricity is only one form of energy: you cant eat batteries
Unironically money makes way more sense since it can more diversely represent commodities
An economy of electrical reseves can work though, like the black mirror episode where people go on treadmills
>>1853510SNLT to marx already entails our means of self-reproduction in wages, so theres no need to rethink what works Marx just wants to lower our SNLT, which could also be a problematic course of action of you are striving for a more cybernetic society.
>>1853468If that's the case, then why are other more inflationary currencies used
at all?
>>1853559Some countries share and trade in the same currencies like in the euro, but others also like to have economic independence. Using a foreign currency for your own is a form of colonialism de facto, but some arent worth trading with since they have so little to offer.
And its not about "inflation" like that anon says, its about the Value that the currency has by how many commodities it represents. Inflation or not, a broader currency is generally more valuable since it has been allowed to spread by more trade.
But lets say i have my own country, i can try and trade in my own currency or ask america if i can use dollars. This would mean they would come in and start managing things since they want to open up markets for dollars to be traded in, but if i have nothing to offer then i couldnt become the 51st state.
The power that the british pound had was in britain's global empire which spread its use by exchange all across the world. And its funny because lolberts will cry about a one-world currency but be fine if its achieved through empire.
TL;DR different countries have different currencies. Domestically they trade in these but internationally its usually only euros or dollars, in order to sell to these consumer bases, where if you offer a good product, you will get dollars in return that you can redeem in your own nation - this is why its vital that third-world countries are invested in by the west, so they can grow - and as they grow they will start becoming consumers and the west will have to start producing things again.
>>1853559>>1853587Its not just america that uses the USD for example:
>In addition to five U.S. territories, 11 countries adopted the U.S. dollar as their official currency: Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, The British Virgin Islands, The Turks and Caicos, Timor and Leste, Bonaire, Micronesia, Palau, Marshall Islands, and Panama.https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/040915/countries-use-us-dollar.aspAlso about the Euro:
>You can use the euro in 20 EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.So this is like when british colonies used the pound.
>>1853096it's unsliced pepperoni
>>1853103>>1853281>lolbert momenthe's right tho. gold's value is the socially necessary labor time required to find, mine, and refine gold. That means it has a relatively stable value, and relative to a rapidly inflating fiat currency, it is useful to have gold. Where lolberts fail in their logic is that they all go out and buy
titles to gold that they don't actually own as a physical hoard, so if society ever falls apart the people who sold them those worthless titles to gold can just screw them over in the Hobbesian state of nature. This is why it is better to have guns and food in an apocalyptic situation. Stores of value are bad for a breakdown of society because people will just kill you and take it. You need survival equipment, not economic value.
>>1853623Yeah
I remember one guy saying he keeps a gold coin on him just in case society breaks down, like… its over bro. Back to year zero.
But i guess thats why people say the system is "too big to fail".
>>1853623>he's right tho. gold's value is the socially necessary labor time required to find, mine, and refine gold. That means it has a relatively stable value, and relative to a rapidly inflating fiat currency, it is useful to have gold. Where lolberts fail in their logic is that they all go out and buy titles to gold that they don't actually own as a physical hoard, so if society ever falls apart the people who sold them those worthless titles to gold can just screw them over in the Hobbesian state of nature. This is why it is better to have guns and food in an apocalyptic situation. Stores of value are bad for a breakdown of society because people will just kill you and take it. You need survival equipment, not economic value.do they do that though? there are plenty of right wing preppers hoarding canned food and guns
>>1853587>Domestically they trade in these but internationally its usually only euros or dollarsPretty sure you can buy any kind of stuff with pretty much any currency actually.
>>1853628I have guns, farmland, machine tools, fuel reserves, solar and wind power, vehicles and a collection of books and other knowledge. Plus a couple gold bars that I will remelt into 1/12 oz donut holed nickels just in case the dollar becomes worthless. The only thing I need is more people since I cannot farm by myself.
>>1853965So why do exchange rates exist and why do you need to buy foreign currency before you go on holiday?
>>1854439Good for you living that yeoman farmer life. The founding fathers are smiling.
I think this is also why rural households have a lot of kids too, to act as workers on the land.
>>1853110>without reading any previous thinkers of political economy would be extremely unwisewho or what should I read before capital anon?
>>1854798>exchange ratesProving the point.
>>1854804You should read or watch any general introduction to economic concepts, but a lot it is also intuitive. When i was younger right wing books like henry hazlitt's "economics in one lesson" helped me, or "the bitcoin standard" which makes its point by a monetary history. Milton friedman is another good communicator of economics (from a right wing perspective), but the principles are still grounded. Once you have an idea of how an economy "works" you can read carl menger's "principle of economics" or smith's "wealth of nations". I advise against marx straight away since theres also a lot of philosophical baggage with him, especially hegel. In capital marx is always drawing dialectical distinctions between "quality" and "quantity" (form and content) for example.
And i know a lot of high-minded people here meme on it, but the communist manifesto is a good summary of the politics involved, along with engels' "socialism: utopian and scientific". If you want more meat, you can read "anti-duhring" which lenin called a general handbook to marxism by dispelling common myths. I believe in the second introduction is where marx is described as turning hegel on his head, which then rherorically dispells duhring's criticism of marx as being a hegelian.
So you should only read economics books after a general understanding of the topic, and you should only read marx after a general understanding of his position.
Marx can also be terribly verbose, but once you get past him talking about linen and coats then its fine. And remember, youre allowed to disagree or critique marx too.
>>1854814Of what?
>>1854819>don't read marx, read the austrian school insteadwhy on earth are you recommending this? the austrian school is the most antimarxist school of thought ever. hell, its existence is aimed directly at discrediting marx and the LTV. and they are full of conservative schizo delusions and fascist apologia. schumpeter is really the only austrian economist worth reading.
>>1854804i don't agree with these anons, you should jump into capital right away. reading someone else's interpretation of marx before reading marx is mostly a waste of time. i did this mistake when i started. it'll condition your views and can be potentially misleading, and in the end you'll still have to go back and read marx at once.
>>1854965I expressly said to read marx lol
Jumping straight into capital though is like jumping straight into kant before reading plato
>>1854798This was the whole poimt of having kids.
To be little helpers.
The problem is most adults nowadays dont have any trade skills to pass off to their kids.
They just dump them on schools.
>>1853491But Japanese yen WAS used a lot back in the day
>The special drawing rights (SDR) valuation is an IMF basket of the world's major reserve currencies, including the Japanese yen. Its share of 8.33% as of 2016 has declined from 18% as of 2000.[69]It was a "big brain" move for speculators to exchange USD and yen back and forth
>Since 1973, the Japanese government has maintained a policy of currency intervention, so the yen is under a "dirty float" regime. The Japanese government focused on a competitive export market, and tried to ensure a low exchange rate for the yen through a trade surplus. The Plaza Accord of 1985 temporarily changed this situation; the exchange rate fell from its average of ¥239 per dollar in 1985 to ¥128 in 1988 and led to a peak rate of ¥80 against the US$ in 1995, effectively increasing the value of Japan's GDP in dollar terms to almost that of the United States.[4]Oh lol, why is it, I wonder, Murricans never talk that Japan at one point has surpassed USA in nominal GDP? It's almost like GDP is fake metric, lololol
>>1853559Because those are currencies used within their borders, and while this or that particular good costs a lot on the world market, other local goods don't, and trading ALL goods in USD will be a net drain on the economy. Separation by border and currencies allows for more efficient extraction of profits
>>1853559>>1855063And then the inflation of local currency allows to squeeze even more profits out of selling good on a world market. It's not necessarily a long-term profit, it can be a short-timed trade surplus, and that creates an incentive to continue to devaluate currency further. United Fruit in Latin America and massive inflation go hand in hand because of such a thing: you pay workers in local goods, but sell their product for dollars. In such a scheme, workers don't amass wealth, but you do, you take it from workers.
>>1854965>i don't agree with these anons, you should jump into capital right away.I agree with this.
The intended audience of Capital was the general public. There are four editions of the German version of Capital Volume I (two published by Engels after the death of Marx), each with their own preface, and the English and French versions also have their own preface. SIX fricking prefaces and it never occurs to Marx and Engels to tell the reader which other works you must be familiar with first!
Notice how in this thread and it has been my experience in general whenever that question comes up, people who say you can't straight jump into Marx don't give an explicit example of something in Marx you will completely misunderstand without reading this or that writer first and explain what is missing. Capital is written in a way that criticized positions like the population "law" of Malthus are always described within the text.
If you desire a more long-winded and tedious treatment of those authors before Marx, there is always
Theories of Surplus Value for that, knock yourself out.
>>1852697Political economy is just a older (mercantilist) term for economics proper.
>>1853686there's a genre of goldbug lolbert
>>1855651i dont think his videos are bad but he did gulag rape roleplay with a 16 year old on fbi.gov
>>1855673The worst part is he rp'd the katyn massacre which is like an admission he secretly believes the nkvd did it when in reality it was the einsatzgruppen.
<i deeply regret being shown the transcript of the roleplay on hinkle's disgord
>>1854967Life was simpler back then I guess. However its difficult when it comes to inheritance with many kids
>>1855730Fuck off with this childish nazi logic.
>>1855897>servants of fascist governments don't deserve the bulletno matter who did Katyn, it's good that they did. we should wish a thousand Katyns on our enemies. kill every cop, every officer, every politician, every propagandist that serves porky's interests
>>1855992Never take credit for things you didn't do. There are plenty of executions the soviets did, Katyn wasn't one of them. Also notice how bad the nazis wanted the world to believe their katyn story. You want to know why? Because it was a major violation of international law. You cannot just execute a bunch of citizens of ANOTHER country while they are inside yours. The nazis hoped that agreements between poland and britain (which were still in force by the polish gov in exile) would lead to britain declaring war on ussr for katyn (or at the very least either break the alliance or insure such an event after the war).
>Dumbass would fall for every nazi provocation if he was stalin
>>1853122>I would disagree and say that a commodity only become money proper once it is distributed by a central body like a government (this view is called "chartalism").Litterally chapter 1 of Kapital explain how you're wrong.
>Thats why metal coins have to be given signatures like faces, and why they are only available to be traded in certain regions.Maybe read into relatively recent history my guy. The minting of coins was only done to somewhat easily distinguish coins quickly, as well as just a powermove to show off the power of an empire. Gold coins were traded leagues away from their place of legal minting, often half way around the world, and interchangably. The reason older currencies have so much words for different types of coins (silver dollar, dollar, pound sterling, etc etc in other languages) is because the coins were used far and wide. Often local mints were comparable in gold quantity to existing ones, or at a fixed rate due to having a fixed rate. The use of dominant currencies (such as dutch guilders in the 17th century) was a thing only because it makes accounting much more simple, in reality you could just pay your half guilder bill with any other known coins equal in value, even if they were spanish or german or whatever.
The existance of symbolic currency in western europe is extremely recently, which is due to the inherent instability of the european continent and their governments. Compare to china, which did have paper currency, enforced by a stable central authority.
>This is why gold can be "valuable" but you cant generally trade for goods with gold.An extremely recent development.
>>1856151>You cannot just execute a bunch of citizens of ANOTHER country while they are inside yoursYes you can, and you should. Morals are not real; they are a bourgeois concept. The only question is if you can get away with it. Evidently the Soviets could
When our time comes we should train thousands of assassins to be activated all at once, targeted especially at the haute bourgeoisie
>>1856184Unfortunately for psycopaths such as yourself you still need a system of justice. Why morality may be a duplicitious rationalisation for the order of the world, a system of ethics is needed.
Perhaps constrain your revenge fantasies to your HOI4 matches.
>>1853183I've been working my way through capital and what I was thinking is:
Marx repeatedly, but without going too much further into it, how gold is the universal equivalent, but its properties as a commodity, namely the volatility of its own value due to being a commodity, is in contradiction with its function as a universal equivalent, namely being able to express value.
I don't think it is neccecarily that its something inherent to gold and how fast you can print it that killed the gold standard, because when the gold standard existed it was still represented in paper currency, and repeatedly devalued by the mint(s). It is precisely the fact that the value of gold and the availability of gold can not naturally keep up with the total labour pool that led to it being abolished. By doing away with gold altogether, you enable central banks to use paper currency as an abstract universal equivalent, and artificially keep the value it represents stable in the face of economic changes using fiscal policies of money creation and destruction. Considering an ideal scenario in which gold does have its value changed, a doubling of population and thus double the labour power would lead to a major mismatch between the existing gold supply and the actually needed value to be represented. This would lead tons of people to get into a gold rush rather than actually investing that time into usefull production, leading to major short term inflation unless the gold standard is devalued, which would lead to people buying gold and losing faith in the currency. So the way to resolve the contradiction is to make the universal equivalent abstractly represent value artificially.
To me it is no coincidence that the abolishment of the gold currency by the usa (and by extention the world via breton woods) falls at the same time as extreme global population growth.
>>1856151>You want to know why? Because it was a major violation of international law.Nobody gave a fuck about international law before the liberal US hegemony following ww2. It didn't really exist.
Also you can just execute enemy combatants in a war. Why wouldn't you? Thats the whole reason you go to war, to kill people who pose an existential threat to you and the people of the world (in your eyes).
>>1856187>Why morality may be a duplicitious rationalisation for the order of the world, a system of ethics is needed. Why? My system of ethics is that I want me and the working class to win. There's no need for trials during a war, unless they're about me and my side, in which case I will pretend they are very needed to paint my enemy in a bad light and get the people on my side.
>>1856197>My system of ethicsAgain, unfortunately there are other people in the world besides yourself.
>>1856199Ethics aren't real. You only need to guide your actions in accordance with what other random people's spooks are if they want to convince them that you're some sort of moral superiority.
Why would I not execute nazis if I can get away with it?
Also shut the fuck up about your imaginary massacres this is a thread about economics, you moralist cuck.
>>1856202>Ethics aren't realStrange how societies have produced them since time immemorial.
It's almost as if they have a material basis in the world. But that would be Marxist thinking!
>>1856202>SpooksAh I see, you haven't actually read Marx. You've read his economic theories.
>>1856184>Evidently the Soviets couldDon't you find it weird that the soviets "admitted" to doing it only when they were so compromised and itching to be integrated into the west and abandon communism?
>Ignores evidence of nazi involvement (bullets, binding cords, nazi execution methods adopted only after barbarossa)>Ignores witness testimony of polish pow's working on misk highway in 1941>ignores polish soldiers being suprised they were killed in katyn when getting their pensions>ignores falsified documents of Package Number 1 (weird signatures, stalin sending messages in 1959 etc.)>Ignores testimony of "officers involved" who gave the weirdest testimony (said they used a german woman's pistol and loading up 200 bodies per truck with each polack weighing 14 kg, with a conveyor belt for executions in the basement)>Documents from 1969 made by guy (romanov) who was kicked out of holocaust forums for document forgeryGorbachev was a mistake.
>>1856193They werent combatants you dumbass, that's the whole point. They were foreign citizens interned in another country. It was diplomatic immunity bullshit.
>ignores obvious issue of soviets not doing it
>>1856170>Gold coins were traded leagues away from their place of legal mintingDoes that really contradict what the other guy is saying? Various European governments acted in a certain way that made gold so important. If they had put more energy into making paper money harder to fake, gold would not have become that important. So what about Chartalism is not logically sound and historically true?
>>1856266>Does that really contradict what the other guy is saying?Yes because he is putting historical metal commodity coins and modern symbolic money on the same level of localism. Metal coins were traded continents apart from where it was the original, dominant or tax currency.
>>1856170>Litterally chapter 1 of KapitalIt's a three-volume work, sir. Goldbugs seem to want to ignore that fact for some reason.
>>1856396at 03:12 he's already wrong. it doesn't take B "four times as much SNLT to make the same product as C". this guy is confusing concrete labour with social labour
05:30 he tries to make the case that C is not more exploited than A and B, even though C is paid the same while producing much more
>muh ECPof course
>Marx failed to consider demand>prices just appear on the market with no underlying cause>citing Senior of all peoplelol
he also makes it seem like all production is made speculatively. this is not the case. the futures market is a great counterexample, where the commodity is sold before it's even produced
>pronouncing böhm-bawerk as bomb-bawöörklmao
>>1856409>It's a three-volume work, sirit's more like five volumes (grundrisse, vol I-III, theories of surplus value)
>>1856396found this gold in the comments.
>AA must be a delight when he needs work doing on his car and the garage tells him how much it will cost for parts and labour.
>>1856409>It's a three-volume work, sir. Goldbugs seem to want to ignore that fact for some reason.What the fuck are you on about? What kind of indecipherable terminally online brainrot reply is this?
The opening chapter of Das Kapital, book one, chapter one, explains how the money form comes to be without needing state intervention.
What the fuck is a goldbug? Go outside, touch some grass, organise some protests.
>>1856413>he also makes it seem like all production is made speculativelyStocking distribution is necessarily speculative. A distributor might have to buy a particular voltage regulator in lots of 10k with a 26 week lead time, and might sell 10 all year, or might sell through the lot in 10 days with orders for 100k more if only they had them. Repeat for about a million SKUs, any of which should be available to the prototype engineer and the production procurer alike.
A similar logic applies to each of the ~30k SKUs at the local food store. What do I stock, which begets the question What Is To Be Done with expired cake mix
>>1856464<laughs in jade axes
>>1856502>Stocking distribution is necessarily speculativeno it isn't. if I have a contract to make 10k of a gizmo, each of which needs a regulator, then my buying 10k regulators and making sure there's shelf space for them isn't speculative at all
>A distributordistribution does not create value
take that flag off. you have clearly not read Capital
>>1856503>if I have a contract to make 10k of a gizmo, each of which needs a regulator, then my buying 10k regulators and making sure there's shelf space for them isn't speculative at allBut which regulator?
<Oh no, the factory is going to call you at 2am to inform you that your latest gizmo run is yielding 30% at final test. Apparently that regulator model doesn't work so well with the input capacitor placed so far away from the inputs, as per your design!You didn't build a prototype, because you couldn't order samples, because your distributor didn't stock it. Womp womp
>distribution does not create valueNo, but some form of logistics are materially necessary to any complex production system. Even under total vertical integration, a production run will not necessarily be destined for the same consumption. For example, the oven factory and the conputer factory. Or, the oven factory and the design bureau. Don't you wish you'd had some means to consume those regulators in a prototype first?
I always laugh my ass off when kids reading econ textbooks think they know how to run a production system and, in the process of displaying their BIG MANAGERIAL WILL-PENIS, instead display a perfect example of management's surplus-enjoyment of their studied ignorance of the real conditions and means of production. Can I interest you in
Labor and Monopoly Capital to bring you up to the mid-20th at least?
>>1856413>it's more like five volumes (grundrisse, vol I-III, theories of surplus value)7 considering theories of surplus value has 3 volumes of its own and is very long
http://www.marx2mao.com/PDFs/TSV-Part%201.pdfhttp://www.marx2mao.com/PDFs/TSV-Part%202.pdfhttp://www.marx2mao.com/PDFs/TSV-Part%203.pdf
>>1856502><laughs in jade axesVery skibby gyatt rizzler comrade
>>1856360Dollars and Euros can also be used on different continents. From the Chartalist POV it is not necessary that at least one person in a trade has a tax debt that can be paid with the currency, a connection to such a person going through several links with people is sufficient (they don't need to know that person personally).
>>1856464>The opening chapter of Das Kapital, book one, chapter one, explains how the money form comes to be without needing state intervention.Is that historically accurate or just a
badly written thought experiment though. Counter-though: With prison bartering it does tend to happen that one thing starts to be used as a stand-in for everything. Might have made for a more gripping text.
>>1856666>Is that historically accurate or just a badly written thought experiment though. Counter-though: With prison bartering it does tend to happen that one thing starts to be used as a stand-in for everything.Considering we see it happening irl on a repeating basis while also being able to follow back archeological evidence for the formation of commodity money in several forms (gold, cocao beans, shells, cattle) on the same principle, all without there having been central governments imposing precious metal, cattle, shell or cocaobean currencies on dissipate ununified populations, yes its historically accurate.
Whether or not barter or credit came before money, modern archeology tends towards credit, though this has no impact on the question of the formation of a money concept.
>>1856667You're still alive?
>>1856670Just because YouTube suppresses my videos doesn't mean I'm dead
>>1856670Last addition before I go to bed:
Even if it turned out gold or whatever was imposed by several nations worldwide seperately at the same times, or it all came down pisstrickling from the romans, it wouldnt matter. The seperate bourgoies nation states and their merchantilist predecesors, from china to india to europe, all chose precious metals, gold and silver, as the universal equivalent for international trade. Remember that the opium war happened because the UK was losing too much silver to the Chinese in trade. Not silver coins. Not pound stirling coins. They traded in raw silver, gramme for gramme.
They did not trade in silk. They did not trade in rice or grain, or snapps or baijou, but silver and gold.
So it is, without question, the universal equivalent, not imposed by a single super monarch, but the natural outcome of its physical properties, namely not spoiling, being rare enough that small physical amounts are worth a lot, universally found across the world, easily divisible into smaller parts by means of a sharp knife or some pliers.
Marx wrote this all in the first few chapters of capital, i advice you to read it again. Gold did not become money because all the countries on the planet accross time, from the vikings to the english to the ancient and modern chinese, to indians and japanese, sat around the intertemporal table at the gigaUN to decide to make it so. Gold, unlike paper currency, does not derive its value from government imposed force, but from its simple nature as a rare, easily handleable commodity, fit in all aspects to be money. In the days of old, the money commodity was cattle in herding societies, still is in some parts of africa. In others, it was hard to find shells, in south america, beans from the cacao plant.
Here is some examples of the supposedly "you cant pay with gold as metal, only coins". You are imposing your modern experience onto history, coins, while useful units, were routinely clipped and cut up. This mental error is comparable to having to suddenly drive contrary to road markings. It feels wrong, you are so used to following lines on the ground that the mere act of defying them evokes a deep feeling of rejection. The thought of not seeing coins for their face value is completely alien to modern people, but it was extremely normal back in the day. Coins were routinely melted down if the availability of the coin form and raw metal form didnt match, were routinely cut up into pieces if needed to make a trade work with lack of smaller equivalents, and these cuts were acceptable currency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksilver>Hacksilver was common among the Norsemen or Vikings, as a result of both their raiding and trade. Hacksilver may also have been used by Romans in their dealings with Pictish tribes.[1] The name of the ruble, the basic unit of modern Russian currency, is derived from the Russian verb рубить ('rubit'), meaning "to chop", from the practice of the Rus', described by Ahmad ibn Fadlan visiting the Volga Vikings in 922.>The widespread adoption of Greek silver coinages by c. 480 BC appears to have developed first out of cooperative relations between Greeks and Phoenicians, then partly as a competitive, culturally consolidating response to earlier Phoenician expansion and domination of silver trade, which had been conducted with hacksilver.
>>1856683wasn't china importing silver as a raw commodity ratther than as a money good though?
>>1853152Gold has historically been used as money in exactly that way - as bullion. It sometimes is the case that state-backed currencies lose their legitimacy in which case the most readily available stores of value are precious metals, gold being king among them. In practice of course, the average person tends to have access to cheaper metals like silver and copper. But it's simple enough to plop some pieces of metal on a scale and to the calculation to determine the value being exchanged.
>>1856686No it was selling silk and earthenware and incense and all kinds of other shit. The currency in china was silver and gold.
What would china need to import raw silver for anyway if its for some actual usefull thing if it was in such quantities it bankrupted the global superpower of the world? A solid silver pyramid for Xenu?
>Qing dynasty coinage (traditional Chinese: 清朝貨幣; simplified Chinese: 清朝货币; pinyin: Qīngcháo Huòbì; Manchu: ᡩᠠᡳᠴᡳᠩᠵᡳᡴᠠ; Möllendorff: Daicing jiha) was based on a bimetallic standard of copper and silver coinage. The Manchu-led Qing dynasty was proclaimed in 1636 and ruled over China proper from 1644 until it was overthrown by the Xinhai Revolution in 1912.[1][2] The Qing dynasty saw the transformation of a traditional cash coin based cast coinage monetary system into a modern currency system with machine-struck coins, while the old traditional silver ingots would slowly be replaced by silver coins based on those of the Mexican peso.[3][4] After the Qing dynasty was abolished its currency was replaced by the Chinese yuan of the Republic of China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty_coinage
>A sycee[n 1] (/ˈsaɪsiː, saɪˈsiː/;[2][1] from Cantonese 細絲, Jyutping: Sai3 Si1, lit. 'fine silk')[2][3] or yuanbao (traditional Chinese: 元寶; simplified Chinese: 元宝; pinyin: yuánbǎo; Jyutping: jyun4 bou2; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Goân-pó; lit. 'primary treasure') was a type of gold and silver ingot currency used in imperial China from its founding under the Qin dynasty until the fall of the Qing in the 20th century. Sycee were not made by a central bank or mint but by individual goldsmiths or silversmiths for local exchange; consequently, the shape and amount of extra detail on each ingot were highly variable. Square and oval shapes were common, but boat, flower, tortoise and others are known. Their value—like the value of the various silver coins and little pieces of silver in circulation at the end of the Qing dynasty—was determined by experienced moneyhandlers, who estimated the appropriate discount based on the purity of the silver and evaluated the weight in taels and the progressive decimal subdivisions of the tael (mace, candareen, and cash). >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyceeI think I've posted enough evidence right now to prove that metal money did in fact happen on a weight basis and coins were just a convenient unit that was sometimes but not always used.
>>1856674Hey hello if it's really you, I hope you're doing well. The rise of Maupin/Haz/etc has really made me appreciate you more lol.
>>1856683>countries alongside silk road, and directly adjacent, traded in silver and goldWOW
>>1856711Try making some sort of point any time now.
Marx explained that at some point some commodity or a few commodities become Universal equivalents by social process alone. without needing to be imposed by an overarching state to give it value. This can be seen by the adoption of trade by weight in silver and gold all over the old world, by the fact that the qing era currency was locally manufactured gold and silver bars, the fact that coins get cut up all the time historically, etc.
Quoting something which disproves a vapid disputation of Marx and History by saying
>historic thing happened, wow Doesn't say or prove anything. It's just a chan level brainrot fallacy of repeating what your opponent said in a silly voice.
>>1856711Also the silk Road didn't exist in the time of the Phoenicians.
>>1854439>i'm better off than most people because i have private propertygood for you
>>1856535><Oh no, the factory is going to call you at 2am to inform you that your latest gizmo run is yielding 30% at final test. Apparently that regulator model doesn't work so well with the input capacitor placed so far away from the inputs, as per your design!you don't get an order for 10k of something without having tested that something. have you even worked with electronics in a professional setting?
it's easy to deboonk the Austrians with examples like this, since in real economies producers hang a price on things all the time. but because Austrians are praxeologists they don't believe in pesky things like
evidence so it's largely pointless to argue with them
>>1856464>What the fuck is a goldbug? Go outside, touch some grass, organise some protests.I've heard this term for decades, kid
>>1856464how can you not know about goldbugs? also the hottest new thing is silverbugs
>>1856787>you don't get an order for 10k of something without having tested that something. have you even worked with electronics in a professional setting?You don't get an order for 10k units without having a design, but somehow this other anon did. I have worked enough with electronics professionally to know that you don't ship a design to production based on a mere simulation. The other fool was trying to say that modes of production don't need distribution.
>AustriansThere are no Austrians here to debunk, just idealist "materialists" trying to avoid an understanding of the whole production process, AND because they have clearly never read the Appendix of the Economic Manuscripts lack any idea what they're even talking about.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm
>>1856788>I've heard this term for decades, kidSorry bro, I am not an online weirdo. I actually do shit irl.
>>1856907Many animals do.
>>1856909Kill yourself, derailing filistine.
>>1856911I'd rather kill people who virtue-signal.
Fuck this board fell off so fucking hard.
Its just filled with retarded online weirdos who shout obscure niche meme words or derail the thread constantly, while in depth posts get no replies at all.
And the mods dont do shit anymore.
I should have nuked this site when I had the chance.
>>1856683yeah pretty much. outside powers had nothing to offer but silver in trade which ran up huge trade deficits and guaranteed the opium wars which weren't about opium at all really, if you read the peace treaty they signed opium isn't mentioned until like 15 pages in
>>1856956you think they were gonna put the opium shit on the first page?
>>1857072Opium was just something convenient they could sell en masse. What they really wanted is control over what they could and couldn't sell.
>>1857232Yeah, they wanted the ability to sell opium.
Of course it wasn't 'all' about opium, there was other stuff too, but 'opium war' sounds a lot more damning than 'trade negotiations war'.
Marx should have called Socially Necessary Labor Time "Societal Average Labor Time" because it's less confusing and has a cooler acronym (SALT)
>>1856170>marx proves chartalism is wrongHow? He is just following suit from smith and other economic thinkers as to the "organic" development of currencies from logical bases. Marx does extremely well in his disputation of smith's original accumulation by positing the fact of the *forceful* transition of capitalism's appropriation of land by primitive accumulation, showing how even "freedom" isnt free. Here, marx recognises that no regime is based on peace, but violent class interests. Similarly, he should have recognised that class society is necessarily based in monetary monopoly instituted in the state. The beginnings of class society are the beginning of trade by an organised body, not from the outreach of barter. Civilisation begins in a state managing a surplus which is converted into money.
>minting coins is just for flexing>The existance of symbolic currency in western europe is extremely recently, which is due to the inherent instability of the european continent and their governments. Compare to china, which did have paper currency, enforced by a stable central authority.an issue with this perspective of a "universal" currency is that a state always taxes citizens to give currency a rented value in the first place (where inflation also acts as a tax). Money without taxation makes money increasingly worthless, so money is always tied to the state, as its issuer.
Why does money have to be made in the first place? Why cant we just circulate existing currency? A question lolberts cant answer because they dont qualify the state as *the* economic agent in society. Money is always made by the state, which is why your gold still needs to be minted and taxed. Otherwise you are a counterfieter.
>>1856188>So the way to resolve the contradiction is to make the universal equivalent abstractly represent value artificially.thats not really necessary. All you have to do is measure employment, and give people money to let them work. And consume. The purpose of keynesian measures is to allow for full employment to then have a market able to operate with sufficiency, since commodities are realising Value in their sale (by employment). The only criticism is seeing how you can subsidise "unlprofitable" industries, but like thatcher getting rid of mining, unemployment is way worse than some inflation.
>To me it is no coincidence that the abolishment of the gold currency by the usa (and by extention the world via breton woods) falls at the same time as extreme global population growth.Yes. I would say that government intervention (something unseen in marx's time) mitigates "crises of overproduction" in the market, which marx and engels herad as the "revolutionary" aspects of the social mode of production, and is one of capital's key contradictions (how it makes so much yet cannot sell back its product). Like how some farmers would burn corn in the great depression rather than give it away.
Overpopulation is another crisis of overproduction, where in marxian terms we might say that a "surplus population" is being built, which marx sees as marked with the necessary traits of lumpenisation, which is also true. Thats why i think population control is a rational aspect of central planning, like china has employed in the past, and which many westerners perform through abortion.
In my own anthropology, i see this "surplus humanity" permeating in every society, where in the ancient past, they were treated as human sacrifices to be killed for the good of tribe. Recently it was also common to kill violent criminals (surplus-humanity). This is another necessary measure for progress.
>>1857708"Abstract Labour" is the common term he uses for it, as in "human labour in the abstract".
>communism is when central planning
how do you even read all of marxs works and arrive at this conclusion
>>1857708>>1857842SNLT and abstract labor aren't identical terms.
SNLT = the average amount of labor it takes to make a thing, equivalent to its (exchange) value.
Abstract labor = the generalization of labor through economic exchange, distinguished from concrete labor which is the specific material process of any particular labor activity (eg milling vs cobbling vs nursing).
The two terms are related though: SNLT is a quantity of abstract labor (specific to this or that commodity).
>>1857846Doesnt marx in his inversion of hegel make allusion to an "absolute knowing" being the rational, self-conscious organisation of economic activity by central planning? And the abolition of the value-form means the end of commodity-production by the end of exchange (where commodities are reverted back to use-values like in prehistorical conditions, thus completing the historical dialectic. This is also why stalin's "socialist commodity" is controversial to people).
I have my criticisms of marx, but it still seems clear that we can still interpret him clearly.
>>1857849Doesnt marx say that Value itself is "human labour in the abstract" and then later define this as being disciplined by SNLT, which is then converted into wages for the worker?
>>1857837>This is another necessary measure for progress.Yes, and that works itself out as an explanation for usury and class. Progress is just another mystery we can and should kill, even if only for enabling those institutions.
>>1856690the difference is though that you can trade an ounce of gold for a sandwhich if youre really hungry, but youre not getting any change back (its like retail vs wholesale), because gold as a commodity and gold as commodity-money are different things. Gold as commodity-money is transformed into paper, which makes it money proper, and which actually gives it the fullness of its Value, since it can be spent (rather than bartered for). I remember marx writing somewhere that paper can functionally act as money, when i would just say that paper *is* money today.
You can spend $1500 but you cant spend a gold coin "worth" $1500. This transition of commodities into commodity-money is the key.
>>1857872Progress is the objective geist that lives in the world. You cant "kill" the way reality works. And i find it strange you would defend crime over civic consciousness in the first place. In the end, necessary measures are always met anyway.
>>1857879>Progress is the objective geist that lives in the worldWorlds are actually pretty disposable. There is no need to reify any of that nonsense except to preserve class, money, and the state. You know that makes you the enemy, right?
>crimeAn ideology of class formation that, like every other instrument of bourgeois social reproduction, can be destroyed.
>necessary measures are always metTautological, but true.
>>1857885Well i would be considered an intellectual enemy by many marxists - but a class enemy of the working class? Please.
My position is precisely hegelian. We have fallen from eden and now swim in history, always searching for a new paradise. Being in history means having a state, money and class, unfortunately. Dont forget that it is the liberals today who openly champion "the end of history" while bombing civilians as a black underbelly to their project. What does this stateless, classless and moneyless "society" look like to you, anyway?
>crime can be destroyedBut heed my point about human sacrifice. Crime can only be destroyed by the state's own crime.
>>1857893>My position is precisely hegelianInfantile mythology. You should be embarrassed for repeating the drama that makes class possible. You are an enemy of the abolition of class, therefore you are an enemy of the working class.
>Being in history means having a state, money and classHistory is disposable, then.
>Dont forget that it is the liberals todayGood for them. You think guilt by association is an argument?
>while bombing civilians as a black underbelly to their projectPeople who believe in fictions are collaborators with lies.
>But heed my point about human sacrifice. Crime can only be destroyed by the state's own crime.Crime can be sublated by rejecting moral perfectionism and the subtly named "rule of law". The American indigenous critique of European society contains more than enough merit to reject any allegiance or fidelity to the European social forms as acts of bourgeois sympathy.
>>1857909You dont accept that you are an historical being so i cant help you. Wanting to transcend history is the object of all governments, yet it never suffices. Like how timaeus informs socrates that his ideal republic actually existed 9000 years before his own time. History repeats itself, no?
Your perspective is metaphysical rather than dialectical. You begin with first principles, rather than existing conditions, this is your fault.
The mystery of progress is how things are overcome within their own self-movement. A "posthistorical" landscape would necessarily have the scars of what came before by the same means. Thats why an idealised "communism" represents death, as the plane of absolute negation, with its formless fantasy. Again, you offer no practical image of what this society can look like because it is always near, but never seized. This is properly spectral, but never real. Like plato's republic, or hegel's civil society.
>crime can be sublatedCrime solves itself. You throw a bunch of criminals in a pit together and we figure out who the real tough guys are. Same way a society necessitates law and justice as objective relations. How do you think we got here in the first place? We are real beings, not theoretical characters.
>>1857858Abstract labour is just a term meant to indicate that the economy doesnt really care what kind of labour it is.
SNLT is the specific amount of abstract labour needed to produce something.
>>1857948Well i would disagree again, respectfully
SNLT is what Value becomes by the sale of a commodity (which then becomes the worker's wages). Surplus-Value by contrast to marx is socially-*unnecessary* labour time, and so the social/collective product of labour includes both Value and Surplus-Value, so a commodity is a hybrid of these.
So, SNLT is Value, which is based specifically on the self-reproduction of the proletariat. Thus it isnt merely the time it takes to make something, "labour-time" alone would be this, which doesnt encompass Value since it isnt a directly social product. For example, it takes 5 minutes of labour-time to make this post, but this doesnt exist in relation to my social reproduction.
SNLT by contrast is Value since thats what pays our way through life.
So SNLT is "productive" labour while labour-time is general labour
This is also why the proletariat sells his *labour-power* as a commodity, where his *labour* generally is shared in the production of surplus-value, along with Value.
Abstract Labour to me assumes the form of this "productive labour" (SNLT) by necessity since marx identifies this as Value.
But youre right too that labour only involves the production of commodities as its terminal object - just because someone works "harder" doesnt make him more "productive" necessarily. Like how marx also distinguishes between skilled and unskilled labour. "Abstract Labour" is a good signifier for this, like how marx says that time-wages are much more preferable to the proletariat as compared to piece-wages, since this allows wages to be the object of our survival, rather than the production of commodities (which is supposed to be the capitalist's job).
Interestingly enough i heard that the soviet union introduced piece-wages in many instances, thus reproducing the logic of capital. Another instance of "the revolution betrayed"?
>>1853136Marx being a jew would have condemned Hamas one million times without even anyone asking.
>>1857957But i thought marx was also le based self-hating jew like finklestein?
>>1857956>SNLT is what Value becomes by the sale of a commodity (which then becomes the worker's wages). Surplus-Value by contrast to marx is socially-*unnecessary* labour time, and so the social/collective product of labour includes both Value and Surplus-Value, so a commodity is a hybrid of these.Dude what the fuck are you talking about.
Surplus value and SNLT arent part of each other like that. Surplus value is the amount of value produced by workers not paid in wages to workers.
Marx never used socially unneccecary labour time, except to describe making useless things.
>SNLT is what Value becomes by the sale of a commodity (which then becomes the worker's wages).Value only exists if the labour is used to make commodities, which are by definition sold. Labour performed for non-market purposes has no economic value in capitalism, and has no value because value is a concept emerging from commodity production and exchange of those.
You should read marx again because what you wrote is just a fundamental basic misunderstanding of the terms as used by marx and in marxism. For example, socially neccecary labour time is called as such because it is the average neccecary labour time needed by society to produce one of some commodity.
>>1857961>Surplus value is the amount of value produced by workers not paid in wages to workers.Value and Surplus-Value are created by the capitalist in the sale of commodities. If you work for a company that makes no money, then your labour is by definition unproductive. Only in sale does labour achieve its Value and Surplus-Value. This is one of the contradictions of commodity-production and why the proletariat is tied to this form for its self-reproduction. Capitalists and the proletariat sustain eachother.
>Marx never used socially unneccecary labour time, except to describe making useless things.I swear reading verbatim marx using the term "socially-unnecessary labour time" to describe the time taken to give capitalists profits. But it fits well enough.
>Value only exists if the labour is used to make commodities, which are by definition sold. Labour performed for non-market purposes has no economic value in capitalism, and has no value because value is a concept emerging from commodity production and exchange of those.Yes exactly.
>For example, socially neccecary labour time is called as such because it is the average neccecary labour time needed by society to produce one of some commodity.And whats different in what i said? SNLT is paid back in the form of wages, which is the Value of the worker's labour-power. The average *time* is highlighted to bring distinction to the time it takes to also reap a profit for the capitalist, which is socially-unnecessary labour time (SULT), which would be rendered as surplus-value
Value = SNLT
Surplus = SULT
>>1857917>You dont accept that you are an historical beingDon't care, history (and world history) had a beginning and they can also have an end. I'm here to kill gods, not help them exist.
>>1857965>If you work for a company that makes no money, then your labour is by definition unproductiveWrong, material production still happened, and the company didn't lose money. Is this some sort of weird capitalist religion you're making up, where autistically moving numbers around on a spreadsheet is "materialism"?
>unproductiveMarx doesn't use that term in the moral sense, you know.
>>1857965Marz defines the time required to sustain the worker and the means of production as the socially necessary labor time. The rest—profit— is socially unnecessary for reproduction
>>1858163>unproductive labourI am being marxian in my explanation. Productivity is tied to the production of commodities which must be sold for them to generate Value. If theyre not sold then they are a useless product. Like how i can make youtube videos or write books, but if they gain no traffic then this is a fundamentally useless act. Like how we are producing posts but they arent commodified so dont generate Value. This labour thus is unproductive by the capitalist social relation.
And no, this isnt my capitalist religion, this is standard marxism
If you want to "kill gods", maybe read some books first, kid.
>>1858191Yes i agree.
>>1858205>profit is productivity>money is use-valueLel, your "materialism" doesn't even eat.
>I am being marxian in my explanationYou're being autistic in your apologetics.
<The French term autisme has an older meaning and signifies "abnormal subjectivity, acceptance of fantasy rather than reality". However, post-autistic economists also "assert that neoclassical economics has the characteristics of an autistic child".[4]No, seriously, who told you that numbers were material?
>This labour thus is unproductive by the capitalist social relation.Which is a religion, not a total truth. Other value systems and social relations can exist. Otherwise what would even be the purpose for a REVOLUTIONARY project?
>And no, this isnt my capitalist religion, this is standard marxismWhich is a CRITIQUE of capitalist religion, idiot. If you had actually read the Grundrisse (preparatory materials!) for Capital, rather than using Marx as your father-surrogate and your divine permission slip to reproduce bourgeois economics as an eternity, you wouldn't be creating the need for this conversation.
<Whenever we speak of production, then, what is meant is always production at a definite stage of social development – production by social individuals. It might seem, therefore, that in order to talk about production at all we must either pursue the process of historic development through its different phases, or declare beforehand that we are dealing with a specific historic epoch such as e.g. modern bourgeois production, which is indeed our particular theme.Get treatment for your autism.
>>1858538Youre not making any points
>>1858538If use value lies in using a thing then it's not really wrong though a bit punny to say that money has use value which lies in it being exchanged.
As for the rest of your contribution to this thread, you act like the other poster made some normative statements about their own likes and dislikes in calling this or that productive or unproductive, when that poster has been clear from the beginning these judgments are from the capitalist point of view. How many times do you need to be corrected on this.
>>1857842>>1857849>>1857858>>1857948>>1857956
>be me>make joke about "SALT" being cooler acronym>people start arguingwhoops
>>1857965Dude WHAT the fuck are you talking about?
Value is the TOTALITY of the performed labour in a product on average by society. Surplus does not exist on top of that whatsoever.
Suplus value is an entirely different set of things from value. Value describes the economic cost of producing something in terms of labour for a given society. Meanwhile, surplus value is produced value not paid out in wages.
Surplus value is not unneccecary, there is no such term as socially unneccecary labour time, the term socially neccecary labour time does NOT refer to the amount of time needed for reproduction of labour, but to the average amount of time it takes to produce a given commodity.
Stop making shit up, saying "I swear i read it somewhere" doesnt prove shit, it does not fit, you're misunderstanding the term surplus value, youre misunderstanding the term socially neccecary labour time, youre misunderstanding the world value.
Re-read capital book 1 chapter 1, its all in there my guy. Or watch a short youtube video, because all you're doing is poisoning the well by spouting absolute falsehoods.
>>1858712And just to illustrate, google returns ZERO fucking results for this nonsensical bullshit term you just made up. And no meaningfull matches if looked up without quotations.
No investigation, no right to speak. Go watch an intro into marxian economics on youtube my guy.
>>1858163>Wrong, material production still happened, and the company didn't lose money. Is this some sort of weird capitalist religion you're making up, where autistically moving numbers around on a spreadsheet is "materialism"?Even though the guy you're replying to is completely retarded, this is wrong as well.
Productive labour, as defined by marx, is productive from the perspective of the economic system. Anything that makes some commodity that can be sold at a profit (or rather, any labour that is done that increase capital) via the work of said labour is by definition productive to capitalism, and anything that is work that does not increase capital is per definition unproductive. So socialised healthcare, to capitalism, is unproductive labour, but employing people to make shiny spheres out of poop to sell to dumb hipsters is productive, because it makes profit and that profit becomes more capital.
<That worker is productive who performs productive labour, and that labour is productive which directly creates surplus value, i.e. valorises capital.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htmI didnt make the definitions, marx himself did. So yes, actually, if the numbers on the spreadsheet goes up it is productive labour.
>>1858571>If use value lies in using a thing then it's not really wrong though a bit punny to say that money has use value which lies in it being exchanged.The term use value litterally just means "the concrete thing in itself". The use value of a doughnut is that it is a doughnut and can do doughtnut things or have things done with it that are the properties of it being a doughnut.
IDK why marx used such a retarded definition and then used the word "value" for it, given that its immeasurable and incomprable, but alas.
So in that sense, the use value of money is not really there, because money as money cannot be used. The use value of a 2 euro coin is that it is pretty to look at and could potentially have a funny little drawing of a stick figure on the back. You could chuck it at homeless people too. But the fact that you can buy a loaf of bread with it is not a property of the coin in itself, it is not the use value of the coin, just like how the use value of a car I made to sell is not the fact that I can sell it, but the fact that its a car.
>>1858734
Litterally ZERO mention of UNneccecary labour time there as well.
Perhaps get checked for dyslexia my guy.
>>1858736Legitimately I thought you were saying he made up social necessary labour. I thought I was going to have a brain aneurysm.
I can't read, apologies.
>>1858739Trying to gaslight a board full of communists that Marx never used SNLT would be quite an achievement.
>>1855155>The intended audience of Capital was the general publicYeah, and from their letters around the time Capital Vol I was published we know that Marx wanted the book to be read by the common worker. I think he would've been pissed off to find out that leftists are avoiding the book for one reason or another.
>>1858771>lack of commercial success proving this or that about author's intent…
How about you give an actual example of something you found hard to understand in Capital and that you only got to understand by reading some Aristotle or Hegel or Smith or Ricardo or what.
>>1858773Karl Marx was known to his friends as the Moor, since his college days. If you didn't call him that, you were basically no buddy of his.
>Anyone who knew Moor as he was at home and within his intimate circle, is aware that he was never called Marx there, or even Karl, but only Moor, just as each of us had his own nickname; indeed, at the point where nicknames ceased so too did the closest intimacy. Moor had been his nickname since his university days and on the Neue Rheinische Leitung he was always called Moor. If I had addressed him in any other way he would have thought something was amiss that needed putting right. ~ Engels
>>1858815>How about you give an actual example of something you found hard to understand in CapitalWhere did I say I found capital hard to understand? Why are you asking me to prove an assertion I didn't make?
>lack of commercial success proving this or that about author's intentI'm not making a statement about the author's intent. I'm making a statement about something much more important: There is very little evidence that workers were widely reading capital when it came out. Books of that size and scope were expensive consumer goods. Even if the average German worker in 1867 was educated enough to understand capital, or had enough free time to read it, in all likelyhood they were not spending their limited income on that instead of food, water, shelter, child care, etc. In fact, one of the main points capital drives home again and again is that proletarians barely have any disposable income. The evidence, regardless of Marx's intent, is that Capital was not
widely read by workers until the 20th century, when AES governments made it part of public school curriculum. And even then, it was a subject of special interest. The problem with Capital isn't that workers can't understand it, but that they aren't picking it up in the first place.
>>1858858>Where did I say I found capital hard to understand? Why are you asking me to prove an assertion I didn't make?Then why did you reply to this post
>>1855155 at all? People expect that replies have something to do with what they reply to.
>>1858868Because they said
> SIX fricking prefaces and it never occurs to Marx and Engels to tell the reader which other works you must be familiar with first!And while they never said in the prefaces that they expected anyone to read preliminary material, Engels expressed to Marx in a private letter that there was need for an abridged, shorter, cheaper version of capital that 19th century workers would have the time and money to read. And Marx himself praise Carlo Cafiero's 1879 summary of Capital before dying, despite the fact that others later criticized it. So there is some strong evidence in favor of, to quote Engels, an "urgent necessity" for quote "a popular short presentation of the content" of Capital. The results were at odds with the Authorial intent, and Engels expressed as such while and Marx were still alive. And why would Marx have praised Cafiero's summary otherwise?
>>1858712>there is no such term as socially unneccecary labour time<Just as capital on one side creates surplus labour, surplus labour is at the same time equally the presupposition of the existence of capital. The whole development of wealth rests on the creation of disposable time. The relation of necessary labour time to the superfluous (such it is, initially, from the standpoint of necessary labour) changes with the different stages in the development of the productive forces. In the less productive [16] stages of exchange, people exchange nothing more than their superfluous labour time; this is the measure of their exchange, which therefore extends only to superfluous products. In production resting on capital, the existence of necessary labour time is conditional on the creation of superfluous labour time. In the lowest stages of production, firstly, few human needs have yet been produced, and thus few to be satisfied. Necessary labour is therefore restricted, not because labour is productive, but because it is not very necessary; and secondly, in all stages of production there is a certain common quality [Gemeinsamkeit] of labour, social character of the same, etc. The force of social production develops later etc.
>>1858771>some Moses or other will come along and botch it upPrescient!
>>1858879>Engels expressed to Marx in a private letter that there was need for an abridged, shorter, cheaper version of capitalThe point made by
>>1855155 is that you don't need familiarity with other works in order to understand Capital though. The letter by Engels does not claim otherwise.
>>1858897>you don't need familiarity with other works in order to understand Capital thoughYou do however need the Grundrisse in order to not make dumb, counter-revolutionary mistakes about the purpose of the series. And we have had more than one Moses come along and "botch it up" at the very least!
Perhaps this is a dumb question: Isn't the political struggle of the laboring class, the proletariat, to take power from the bourgeoisie, and restructure society, of central importance? Isn't all the obsession with proving that the labor power of the working class produces value mostly a philosophical exercise? The working class already knows this intuitively, and the ruling class knows it even if they lie to the contrary. The bourgeoisie are not going to give up their power because they hear irrefutable arguments. They spit on Marx and his successors and distort their words.
To me it does not matter if someone reads Grundrisse, then value price and profit, then wage labor and capital, then all 3 volumes of capital, then all 3 volumes of theories of surplus value, etc. etc. It doesn't matter if they digest these voluminous works. What matters is whether they actually take political power in their life time by organizing and working within collective organizations.
Some will always say that a diamond sitting in the ground has no intrinsic value, and that the value realized at the point of purchase came from the labor power used to discover, extract, and refine it. Others will say that the value of the diamond is intrinsic due to its quality of being rare and hard to get, and that it always has this value whether it gets mined or not. It seems a mostly semantic argument. The real issue is that value is never realized by humans without the intervention of labor in acquiring things, whether or not their value is intrinsic, or imparted to them through value-added labor inputs. The workers already know this. The capitalists already know this and lie about it. All that's left is the struggle for power and supremacy.
People shouldn't waste time and effort defending LTV when the basic premise of exploitation of surplus value still holds in modern economics.
>>1858994you don't push for higher wages and better working conditions because it's "enough." You do it so the workers can live longer and fight harder.
>>1858936<You need to read the UNFINISHED ROUGH DRAFT NOT MEANT FOR PUBLICATION to understand this PUBLISHED AND HIGHLY POLISHED WORKCan you give an example for a section of Capital you did not understand, but then you read that other text and after that you could understand the section of Capital.
>>1858970>Isn't all the obsession with proving that the labor power of the working class produces value mostly a philosophical exercise?The critique was necessary. People who are obsessed with the details of the critique are, IMO, trying to avert revolutionary activity by recuperating Marxism into bourgeois politics, just as Marx called out various 19th century seniles for in
Manifesto chapter 3.
>What matters is whether they actually take political power in their life time by organizing and working within collective organizations. That reflex to Christian homilies and romantic sentiments is very much a symptom of petit-bourgeois reaction. Anyone who reads the Bible into Marx is only trying to save their ability to tell others what to do and have society back them up unquestioningly. All of them would be better off deactivated, demoralized, and demobilized, but the Christian empire does not allow for that.
>It seems a mostly semantic argumentQuite to the contrary! Entire societies and cultures evolve from the ramifications of these theories of value as we condition our everyday actions both on and in the real world to accord to them.
>The real issue is that value is never realized by humans without the intervention of labor in acquiring thingsNo, that's social fetishism. Post diploma
>>1859036>bourgeois economics is eternalYou read the Introduction/Appendix because it anticipates and rejects that opinion. The fact that you've built a cult around a bourgeois economics textbook is truly pathetic. Post your soft hands
>>1859254>y-you're christian actually, y-you're reading the bible into marxman people on here will literally just make shit up about what you're saying. I'm done with this Quranic nonsense you're doing.
>>1859251What have you actually read of Marx and why won't you give an actual example that would illustrate your claim?
>>1859256?? Did you mean to reply to another post
>>1859296>What have you actually read of Marx and why won't you give an actual example that would illustrate your claim?Quote the claim I made.
>>1859344>Quote the claim I made.>>1858936>You do however need the Grundrisse in order to not make dumb, counter-revolutionary mistakes about the purpose of the series.So what is such a mistake that you made and corrected after reading Grundrisse?
>>1859356Where did I claim that I made a mistake?
>>1859497
<How big of a problem is financialization for Capitalism? an the over-dominance of finance in neoliberal/late stage capitalism over everything else?
<What I see is that due to the super profits of finance, alot of high brain power workers (ex: scientists, engineers) who in a previous era would have spent their careers inventing or discovering devices or breakthrough scientific theories, instead get sucked into financial services and end up boldly filling out excel spreadsheets and figuring out how jane street can make 1% more on high frequency trading or something. Instead of money financing new businesses, just pushing money around becomes an end in and of itself.
<Why did this happen? Did capitalists just run out of ideas for new shit and so the only thing left to do is speculatively gamble on stocks and derivatives?
>>1859356Your rhetorical gamesa bore me. Economic determinism is a mental illness.
>>1859273I didn't say you were reading the bible into Marx, I said you were reading Marx like a Bible.
>>1859511So are you saying you read Grundrisse before Capital? What is then one of those mistakes you hypothetically would have made if you had tackled Capital without Grundrisse?
>>1859528>I didn't say you were reading the bible into Marx, I said you were reading Marx like a Bible.Except you did:
>>1859254>Anyone who reads the Bible into Marx is only trying to save their ability to tell others what to do and have society back them up unquestioningly.
>>1859578Are you identifying as "anyone"?
>>1858712Okay so i found the source of my discrepancy. Its in the 1st preface of capital vol. 2 where it speaks about "surplus-labour" creating surplus-value, where surplus is defined as the labour unpaid as wages. In the introduction engels also prefaces the point that it is not labour itself which creates Value(s), but labour-power that is employed by the capitalist.
So "socially unnecessary labour-time" can be rendered as "surplus-labour".
Also, here's some context for my claim that SNLT *is* Value in its meaningful (socially-realised) sense.
[Labour-Power = Value = SNLT]
[Surplus-Labour = Surplus-Value]
>It has been correctly formulated by Marx and thereby been answered. It is not labour which has a value. As an activity which creates values it can no more have any special value than gravity can have any special weight, heat any special temperature, electricity any special strength of current. It is not labour which is bought and sold as a commodity, but labour-power. As soon as labour-power becomes a commodity, its value is determined by the labour embodied in this commodity as a social product. This value is equal to the labour socially necessary for the production and reproduction of this commodity. Hence the purchase and sale of labour-power on the basis of its value thus defined does not at all contradict the economic law of value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htm#1885This is also why i say that marx is not a thinker of the LTV, but is a thinker of the labour-power theory of Value. The difference between smith and marx is the discovery of surplus-value as surplus-labour, which is capital (as unliving labour) itself.
U.S.-Saudi Petrodollar Pact Ends after 50 Years
https://archive.ph/A1bnR
>>1853623There was this thing called the Great Depression, I don’t know if you have heard of it. Gold was standard then and shit collapsed hard and governments couldn’t spend because gold wasn’t stable and so fiscal spending on the working class was impossible.
>>1885141Three days later it's a nothingburger
>>1885145>the Great DepressionWhich one, and which century are you living in?
has anyone come up with a marxist theory of FINANCE?
>>1885717We need a business economy course in university focused on marxism leninism praxis in the modern world. Marxism leninism in the era of cybercomunications and advanced simulation models of growth.
/leftybros/ how do you respond to this critique?:
>Marx’s logical error was simple enough: he confused what might be called an ontological question with an economic question. Ultimately—ontologically—it is true that all economic value emerges from human labor. But it does not therefore follow that you can infer economic truths from ontological ones. Economic value is not really a “thing” or a “substance.” Rather, it is a subjective assessment placed on a product by an end consumer. This consumer does not typically care how much labor went into the product, only that the product satisfies a particular need. One pair of shoes may be made entirely by robots, another may be made entirely by men, but an end consumer could still assess both as having the same value.
>>1885765>consumer does not typically care how much labor went into the product…It is not necessary that one cares about that for labor ratios to correlate with price ratios. If markets are competitive, why wouldn't price ratios correlate with input ratios? The onus is on the person who claims otherwise :P
>…only that the product satisfies a particular need.I don't know where that guy buys his shoes and hamburgers, but most of these are mass-produced items. From the POV of the individual consumer, the price is a given fact and not something dependent on their individual motivations.
>One pair of shoes may be made entirely by robots, another may be made entirely by men, but an end consumer could still assess both as having the same value.I don't think the person who wrote that is familiar with Marx, because Marx addressed this in the first chapter of Capital Volume I:
<Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as anyother, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skilland intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value. Unique IPs: 86