Am I fucking insane for finding this dogshit? I'm reading through Capital right now and, while browsing the internet to review a few things, I see this guy claiming that
>Marxist economics is useless and outdated and nonsensical […], use this [marginal theory of value] instead, it's Econ 101 and what everyone uses
Upon reading it, I find this theory extremely poor. It analyses exchange as an element in a set represented by two individuals, instead of taking exchange as an element in a set represented by society at large. It doesn't matter if you're willing to pay 30 dollars for a glass of water when you're thisty, you'll still go for the cheapest option because you're not confined to a single provider. Your subjective need doesn't alter value, as you're not the only buyer and the seller is not the only source of that commodity.
The worst part is: it doesn't even refute Marx's theory of value! That specific advocate of the marginal theory of value argues on the pressuposition that Marx claims that commodities always have this fixed, essentialist exchange value, which is a false assumption clarified by Marx in the first section of the first chapter. Marx doesn't deny the fluctuations of price, he simply proposes (per my understanding) that this fluctiation is biased towards the commodity's value, which is based on the human labor power invested in that commodity throughout the production chain. If one were to tackle this proposition, they should put forward concrete evidence that labor power as a unit of measurement doesn't exist, no?
I realize that I might be preaching to the choir, but I make this post in the hopes that someone educates me on liberal economics, as in: there certainly must be another reason, or at least another angle of critique, which bourgeois intellectuals (as opposed to the specific advocate I referenced) use to justify the marginal theory of value's adoption, no? Then what is it?
Tangentially related: I'm not in economics circles. It seems to me the labor theory of value is dismissed as "outdated" quite often by these types, I wasn't aware of that. I'd like to know what are the arguments that deprecate the labor theory of value.
LTV is dismissed out of necessity by bourgeois economics because muh mudpies
The two screenshots show definitions. There is no conflict whatsoever between a psychological model of individuals trying to maximize utility with diminishing marginal utility the norm and prices that are roughly determined by labor time. Since there is no conflict one can't use the first concept to argue for the implausibility of the second concept or vice versa. You are right that there is a massive gap between using this assumption about psychology and claiming this to be the main factor behind the prices of mass-produced goods.
What dismissive statements you get from most economists are usually not arguments based on misreading Marx because they did not even read Marx. You are asking about a subject belonging to the history of economic thought. But people don't have to read anything by Adam Smith or Karl Marx to become an economist. This is true of their teachers and the teachers of their teachers as well, so it's not even second-hand wisdom. What happens when you show that somebody is making up things about Marx is that you identify yourself as a highly suspect person just for knowing that and you get ostracized. The person who talks shit (like saying Marx claimed the iron law of wages) doesn't suffer in reputation, on the contrary, the ignorance proves him to be a "good guy" from the ruling-class POV.
>>1869199Thank you for the reply, it's as I'd thought. Very keen on your part.
>>1869169marginalism was never intended to refute the LTV, just to replace it. Usually in science if a new theory comes in its because the old one has been empiriclaly debunked or more likely shown to be true but not explain a few edge cases which ARE explained by the new theory (ex: Newtonian mechanics vs relativity). But no such refutation has ever occured. Neoclassical economics is barely more empirical than austrian economics:
>Certainly, there is an enormous difference between what Mises and Rothbard say about the correct methodology of economics and what most neoclassical economists say about methodology. The difference between what they actually do is far narrower. An empirical study of the economics profession would reveal that pure theory plays an enormous role in the judgments of all economists whether they primarily do pure theory or applied empirical research. The pure theorists often live in near-total isolation from empirical work; indeed, even empirical researchers normally only know the empirical work done within their own specialization. How do they form their views on other issues? Largely by combining well-understood economic theory and some plausible empirical assumptions. To many, this shows that economists are unscientific ideologues, but to my mind it shows instead that the practice of neoclassical economics is much sounder than its proclaimed methods. By implication, Austrian methodological criticisms of neoclassical economics are often wide of the mark precisely because mainstream economists don't practice the methods they preach.Economics basically is theology/apologetics of capitalism. While the debates about angels dancing on a pinhead by scholastic philosophers were not understandable by medieval peasants who were illiterate, so modern day neoclassical economic theory which requires understanding of calculus/analysis, linear algebra, optimization, probability and statistics i.e. mathematics on the level of a STEM grad. Considering in the US for example the number of high school graduates taking calculus as around 16% and around 20%, slightly more than that, graduate with a STEM degree, its likely that only around a fifth of the population even has the knowledge of mathematics to even begin to understand neoclassical theory.
<It is widely believed that Marx adapted the labour theory of value from Ricardo as a founding concept for his studies of capital accumulation. Since the labour theory of value has been generally discredited, it is then often authoritatively stated that Marx’s theories are worthless. But nowhere, in fact, did Marx declare his allegiance to the labour theory of value. That theory belonged to Ricardo, who recognized that it was deeply problematic even as he insisted that the question of value was critical to the study of political economy. On the few occasions where Marx comments directly on this matter,1 he refers to “value theory” and not to the labour theory of value. So what, then, was Marx’s distinctive value theory and how does it differ from the labour theory of value?
<The answer is (as usual) complicated in its details but the lineaments of it can be reconstructed from the structure of the first volume of Capital.2
<Marx begins that work with an examination of the surface appearance of use value and exchange value in the material act of commodity exchange and posits the existence of value (an immaterial but objective relation) behind the quantitative aspect of exchange value. This value is initially taken to be a reflection of the social (abstract) labour congealed in commodities (chapter 1). As a regulatory norm in the market place, value can exist, Marx shows, only when and where commodity exchange has become “a normal social act.” This normalization depends upon the existence of private property relations, juridical individuals and perfectly competitive markets (chapter 2). Such a market can only work with the rise of monetary forms (chapter 3) that facilitate and lubricate exchange relations in efficient ways while providing a convenient vehicle for storing value. Money thus enters the picture as a material representation of value. Value cannot exist without its representation. In chapters 4 through 6, Marx shows that it is only in a system where the aim and object of economic activity is commodity production that exchange becomes a necessary as well as a normal social act. It is the circulation of money as capital (chapter 5) that consolidates the conditions for the formation of capital’s distinctive value form as a regulatory norm. But the circulation of capital presupposes the prior existence of wage labour as a commodity that can be bought and sold in the market (chapter 6). How labour became such a commodity before the rise of capitalism is the subject of Part 8 of Capital, which deals with primitive or original accumulation.
<The concept of capital as a process – as value in motion – based on the purchase of labour power and means of production is inextricably interwoven with the emergence of the value form. A simple but crude analogy for Marx’s argument might be this: the human body depends for its vitality upon the circulation of the blood, which has no being outside of the human body. The two phenomena are mutually constitutive of each other. Value formation likewise cannot be understood outside of the circulation process that houses it. The mutual interdependency within the totality of capital circulation is what matters. In capital’s case, however, the process appears as not only self-reproducing (cyclical) but also self-expanding (the spiral form of accumulation). This is so because the search for profit and surplus value propel the commodity exchanges, which in turn promote and sustain the value form. Value thereby becomes an embedded regulatory norm in the sphere of exchange only under conditions of capital accumulation.
>>1869169>It analyses exchange as an element in a set represented by two individuals, instead of taking exchange as an element in a set represented by society at large. individualization of the collective is capitalist dogma because to analyze things at a social scale implies socializing them, which implies socialism, which implies the end of capitalism, which is superstructurally predicated on liberal individualism.
Also bourgeois economists UNTIL MARX used labor theories of value. Marx resolved the contradictions in the bourgeois Labor Theories of Value (which have their capitalist origin in Adam Smith, but actually go back to the feudal Islamic philosopher Ibn Khaldun
at least). Once Marx resolved those contradictions, while simultaneously advocating the end of capitalism, bourgeois economists bailed on the explanatory utility of LTV and went for subjective and marginal theories for propaganda purposes. This of course is never admitted out loud and I'm a conspiracy theorist for implying something as ludicrous as the idea that the bourgeoisie pursue their class interests.
>>1869448<The fraught and contradictory relation between production and realization rests on the fact that value depends on the existence of wants, needs and desires backed by ability to pay in a population of consumers. Such wants, needs and desires are deeply embedded in the world of social reproduction. Without them, as Marx notes in the first chapter of Capital, there is no value. This introduces the idea of “not-value” or “anti-value” into the discussion. It also means that the diminution of wages to almost nothing will be counterproductive to the realization of value and surplus value in the market. Raising wages to ensure “rational consumption” from the standpoint of capital and colonizing everyday life as a field for consumerism are crucial for the value theory.The surplus is divided between the classes. Higher wages can mean higher profits for
some capitalists, but for the capitalist class as a whole it means lower profits. It is that way both in Ricardo and in Marx.
Lousy text. Would have never guessed that it was written by someone who has taught Marx for decades.
>>1869448David Harvey's argument here is semantic. He's saying Marx doesn't advocate "LTV" where by "LTV" he means the specific "LTV" used by his predecessors Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Marx resolved the contradictions in their "LTV" to come up with his own theory of Socially Necessary Labor Time. But Socially Necessary Labor Time can simply be thought of as another
form of LTV that resolves the contradictions of earlier forms. David Harvey has decided to classify it differently, but all this really does is reveal that he has created a separate mental category for what most other Marxists see as an extension of the original LTV. These are arguments over abstractions.
>>1869473>Lousy text. Would have never guessed that it was written by someone who has taught Marx for decades.he wrote that after he started to lose his marbles, people think
>>1869473That paragraph makes perfect sense to me. In fact, US investment banks had a bit of trouble with thinly traded products (home loan derivatives?) and pricing before the GFC. I could see the same phenomenon applying to means of consumption for lack of desire. If nobody can win the prize, and there is nobody willing to envy the winner, is it really a prize?
>the classesThere is no reason to care about what an unnecessray class earns unless you are a bourgeois kid trying to get a job in the industry. I have pitchforks for the bourgeoisie, are you standing in the way?
>>1869475Where does Marx *advocate* for any theory of value not as a tool of analysis, but as an ethic?
>>1869478yeah alot of people thought David Harvey started to go senile with that one
>>1869169An economic system based on artificial scarcity - crypto-whatevers - always amounted to scams and doesn't work in real life. Economic system based on labor theory of value, however, always works, and we have entire real life as a proof
>>1869541>capitalism supporterRetard
>>1869169>Upon reading it, I find this theory extremely poor. It analyses exchange as an element in a set represented by two individuals, instead of taking exchange as an element in a set represented by society at large. It doesn't matter if you're willing to pay 30 dollars for a glass of water when you're thisty, you'll still go for the cheapest option because you're not confined to a single provider. Your subjective need doesn't alter value, as you're not the only buyer and the seller is not the only source of that commodity.Marginal utility is basically "I'm thirsty, so I'm willing to pay up to $30 for a drink, and then I'm willing to pay up to $3/gallon to have a bath, and 30 cents a gallon to water the flowers." You care less about having more of the good once your basic needs are met. The marginal utility of a drink is equivalent to the marginal utility of $30. And that only means it's the MOST you're willing to pay for water. It doesn't talk about the actual price or going rate of water. If you're literally going to die if you don't get a drink, then the marginal utility of water is effectively infinite. "My kingdom for a horse."
>>1869581That "alienation theory of value" tends to be observed by heroic societies, whereas labor theories of value tend to dominate in bureaucratic societies. Unfortunately, we have the worst of both worlds in political economy: heroic politics and bureaucratic exactitude.
>>1869496>Where does Marx *advocate* for any theory of value not as a tool of analysis, but as an ethic?where did I say he advocated it as an ethic?
>>1869496>In fact, US investment banks blahblahblahUS investment banks are not the entire ruling class.
>There is no reason to care about what an unnecessray class earns unless you are a bourgeois kid trying to blahblahblahHere is the point: People work longer and produce more stuff than what would be necessary for mere survival. This surplus is split between different groups of people. What goes to capital ownership
as a whole is something from that pie, what goes to wages is something else. A wage increase means lower profits in aggregate. This is stated by both Ricardo and Marx.
>>1869620In Marxist analysis we work from the general to the specific. I mean, shouldn't you be killing yourself right now for immaterial faggotry like power and money?
>Here is the point: People workYes, and that's a problem.
>This surplus isYes, and if you would kindly get your religious ass out of the way of the pitchforks,, that wouldn't be a problem. But you'd rather have the church power than solve the problem, wouldn't you?
Answer me seriously again: are you going to destroy the very possibility of a ruling class, or should we run you through for trying to extend noxious conditions?
>>1869606>>1869629 (me)
Some might call them "individualists". For that reason, not all symptoms need match exactly.
>>1869626>In Marxist analysis we work from the general to the specific.>weYou replied to a post about the
capitalist class >>1869473 with a statement about
banks in some country >>1869496>your religious ass>church powerWhat.
>Answer me seriously…
Marginal utility is retarded and all that OP said is currect.
>>1869169>Marxist theory of value measures the value of labour based on a socially necessary labour time>socially necessary labour time>socially necessary>necessary<Hurr durr more working hours don make your product better!!!!!!!!11111Tfw Marginalists reading Marx diagonally.
ITT: leftist Arbeit macht Frei
>>1869626>In Marxist analysis we work from the general to the specific.That isn't the Marxist or scientific method at all.
It starts with making observations.
>>1869820I hear the anime version of Capital opens with a tight shot of a penny in a kid's hand at a candy store
>>1869934>so called heroic societies as described still exist in the form ofHey you forgot competitive politics, "landed property" in general, Philhellenism, metaphysics, class itself, and a whole host of other reactionary larps.
>>1869947yeah rich twats fencing each other in their mansion courtyards counts too
>>1869771>ITT: leftist Arbeit macht FreiBait.
>>1869626>In Marxist analysis we work from the general to the specificPretty sure you have it all backwards.
>>1870110>Value to marx is expressly realised in sale, not in the act of (unproductive) labour itselfI'm pretty sure value == SNLT axiomatically in Marx, which isn't dependent on exchange. if you labour on something that is in demand then that labout adds value to the product, regardless of whether that demand is established via exchange or some other mechanism
>a lolbert say once that everyone could be a millionaire if they just had the mindsetthis is entirely possible, it's just a question of what those millions are worth
>>1870125A commodity by definition entails use-value and exchange-value which are mediated by the "Value-form" of money. Yes, SNLT = Value as far as labour is expressed through commodity-production, but Value implies surplus-value by contrast.
Marx wants to "abolish" (sublate) the value-form by an end to exchange through central planning, where commodity-production reverts back to the primitive-communist conditions of the production of use-values alone.
So Value emerges with exchange as a medium for the trade of commodities that also entail a surplus (which is the basis of the state, beginning with the grain silo of agricultural societies).
So Value = SNLT
Surplus-value = surplus-labour
One is the object of the working classes of all ages and the other is of the owning class
>this is entirely possible, it's just a question of what those millions are worthAbsolutely, but this is the progress that smith and the liberals had against the mercantilists. Smith saw wealth in commodity-production, while mercantilists saw wealth in money and land. But as the old addage goes, "you cant eat gold".
>>1870140>Value emerges with exchangeif value == SNLT then value predates exchange, unless you mean to suggest there is no mechanism by which labour achieves a social character in primitive communism
all societies that wish to expand production must produce a surplus, and so we should expect surplus value to exist even in communism. we probably wouldn't call it that however. value takes on another form
>>1870125>I'm pretty sure value == SNLT axiomatically in Marx, which isn't dependent on exchange.it is though? Competition is part of the averaging process?
>>1870167>if value == SNLT then value predates exchange, unless you mean to suggest there is no mechanism by which labour achieves a social character in primitive communismThe thing is that Value only comes into social realisation by the value-form which "alienates" (mediates) Value as something apart from itself. This is how labour becomes converted into money and where surplus can develop from this fundamental contradiction. Here, Value is contracted in the SNLT of a labourer, and so the means of subsistence is determined by our rates of labour and so on.
But this is dialectical, where labour "in itself" has no way to express itself abstractly, but must become mediated so as to have meaning. This to me is one of the primal contradictions of social existence and why we are stuck in History.
And yes, i agree with your conclusions about surplus. But thats also why i call myself a socialist and not a communist. To me, communism means what marx describes as the "negation of negation", in reverting private property to social property and in ending profits all together and thus reproducing primitive communism at a higher stage of development (and thus completing the historical dialectic and ending history).
I feel quite different about what the meaning of History is.
>>1870244SNLT changes according to material conditions; thats what underpins socialism as the progressive outcome of mass production making it possible to work less for self-subsistence.
>>1870285one thing I find myself wondering is what the people who try to claim value is something other than SNLT think that value actually
is>But thats also why i call myself a socialist and not a communistwhy?
>>1870285>I feel quite different about what the meaning of History is.Sounds like a fascist.
>>1870410Because there is more to life than production. You have fetishized the commodity and engaged in even more sincere devotion to bourgeois capitalism than capitalists.
There is an entire social sphere out there, and to ignore it as 4chin Marxists do is to internalize Thatcher's "there is no society".
>>1870633>noooo you have to pass through the ritual ordeal<Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.What larp club are you in that pretends that this hasn't already happened and what religious mental illness makes you think this can be pushed further ad infinitum?
>>1870733socialism isn't poverty. socialism isn't a pity party. socialism (lower-phase communism) is a higher mode of production than capitalism. there are those who seem to think we can move immediately to turning all labour into hobbies, all work into play. that we somehow don't have to rationalize production even moreso than capitalists currently do. the same capitalists who squander labour-power day after day
>You have fetishized the commodityI haven't even talked about commodities
>>1870835I got pushed on for ridiculing the absurd socialist types on twitter who would say shit like "after the revolution I will be a puppy elementary school teacher" or a "tarrot card reader", but that is the belief of people who take up the cause.
There's a wider discussion here that I'm not going to broach, but it comes down to the lack and death of labour and Marxist political movements within the west: with it has atrophyied not just the strength of the socialists, but their basic ability to transmit and communicate ideas with one another, and even rationalise the world into a coherent world view.
That said, the world of today is not the world of 100 years ago. I am typing this to you through one of the, if not the single greatest engineering marvel of the past 40 years: the internet. The degree of revolution that has occured in capital manufacturing has lead to a system of commodity production in which commodites themselves have become material abstractions, to the point that most Marxists quite literally cannot explain how Marx's capital has physical revelance to today (hence the development of the idea of neofeudalism, and the withering of Marxism into idealism).
If the necessary infrastructure were not just nationalised, but globalised, tomorrow, the planet could for the first time in its history engage in a form of central planning that would have been the dream of the early Soviets. The price mechanism, the single greatest argument of the Neoliberal school of bourgeois economists, has quite literally been made redundant.
The entire state of industrial development is such that the social relations of production are going through such a revolution that is directly the result of this development of universalisation. The irrelevance of nations states grows as commerce and the control of monopoly capital moves from what were provincial towns, into multiglobal complexes.
>>1870410>what do others think of Value?People are correct that Value is subjective in one sense, as use-value, but they dont relate a commodity to its essential conditions in the reproduction of society. The classical economists understood that all production is based on the primary "cost of production", which is the instantiation of Value as a mode of self-reproduction. Adam smith is the father of the LTV, which many falsely attribute to marx. But here many anti-marxists like rothbard even blame smith for creating marx and think of him as a proto-socialist of sorts (which isnt wholly untrue). Dont forget that the original utopian socialists based their mode of society on perfecting the medium of exchange via labour vouchers. So the relation of simple commodity-exchange (C-M-C) can be preserved in a socialist context (even by stalin's notorious "socialist commodity production"). Smith was a thinker of "free trade", not capitalism. Smith in many ways was an anticapitalist.
although, marx was critical of the very idea of exchange (which he notes in the grundrisse, i believe) and so was against the utopian socialists, which is why he and engles described themselves as "scientific socialists" against other factions of "reactionary socialists" or social-democrats. Marx also criticises smith's undialectical perspective of wealth by an early criticism of macroeconomics, where in capital he says "the wealth of nations is the poverty of the people", by paraphrase>socialism vs communismSocialism means politically realising the social mode of production through a dictatorship of the proletariat (or otherwise representing the working class). Communism means the end of History by abolition of the value-form, property and the state, which i see as utopian, and i am not a utopian.
>>1870567Well i would certainly be considered a "fascist" by many marxoids because i am an open revisionist.
>>1870963>Socialism means politically realising the social mode of production through a dictatorship of the proletariat (or otherwise representing the working class). Communism means the end of History by abolition of the value-form, property and the state, which i see as utopian, and i am not a utopian.this accurately describes the position of communists jsyk, hence my "communism button" remark
for principled communists communism is an aspiration, something to be struggled towards. but we can't fathom what such a society would be like, if it's even possible, and it's certainly many centuries in the future. what the utopians do is try to come up with grand designs of how the soon-to-be communist society is going to function. that is obviously a fool's errand
>>1870980>we can't fathom what such a society would be like, if it's even possibleFrom On The Jewish Question:
>Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.
>>1870980From The German Ideology
> In history up to the present it is certainly an empirical fact that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity into world-historical activity, become more and more enslaved under a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a dirty trick on the part of the so-called universal spirit, etc.), a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the world market. But it is just as empirically established that, by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of which more below) and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the liberation of each single individual will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history. From the above it is clear that the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them. Now this view can be expressed again in speculative-idealistic, i.e. fantastic, terms as “self-generation of the species” (“society as the subject”), and thereby the consecutive series of interrelated individuals connected with each other can be conceived as a single individual, which accomplishes the mystery of generating itself. It is clear here that individuals certainly make one another, physically and mentally, but do not make themselves.
>>1870980>for principled communists communism is an aspiration, something to be struggled towards. >yet we cant know what communism isThen why call it "communism" to begin with?
This is why i am simply on the side of "progress", because progress has no end and no object, except in reaching itself. But that is the paradox of contradiction at the same time, or of how sublation begets itself through its own self-overcoming.
>>1870994>>1871028Yes, it is this precise "immediacy" of marx that i reject. To me, there is no "individual" as an object. This is an enlightenment invention. Its like how anarchists stress the primacy of individuals, yet always prefer the oppressive social form of the commune where the self is subordinated to the community as a whole. Anyone who's ever been in an online "community" knows the deal. Especially when they get exiled/banned for wrongthink. But this is the way human societies without shades of healthy alienation (like the state) operate.
>>1870835>socialism isn't povertyI tap the "What is wealth" sign pretty often, actually, so I don't think we disagree on that point.
>socialism isn't a pity partyThat is also true.
>socialism (lower-phase communism) is a higher mode of production than capitalismHigher on what? Much of the work you had planned for the lower phase has already been done by capitalism and that you can't "do" it again in the historical sense because you will be operating on different conditions. A swung hammer drives a nail but the nail is now flush and you are only scarring the finish… or there is now a meringue in the way and you are only making a mess.
So I get itchy when people say that direct participation in some class-formation or team-building exercise is required. In the West we have had enough of management cant and are just about ready to cut management up for sausages. It would be better not to allow a neo-PMC the chance to institutionalize themselves as the holders of a bourgeois position in political economy, and to ruthlessly crush their futures for even a single act of arrogance. It would be better to libgen everything they know and write their "expertise" down to zero, frankly. Are you willing to work under those conditions?
>think we can move immediately to turning all labour into hobbies, all work into playLenin's "Marxism" is basically Progressive workist ideology with a Marx-themed capitalism underneath, which is no longer revolutionary. In fact it's quite conservative, starting to shade into reaction.
I assume there is no desire to start because to finish would be fatal to the manager's personal privilege.
>that we somehow don't have to rationalize productionWhile you were off pretending that history stopped moving in 1991,
<The generation entering managerial and professional roles between 1890 and 1920 consciously grasped the roles which they had to play. They understood that their own self-interest was bound up in reforming capitalism, and they articulated their understanding far more persistently and clearly than did the capitalist class itself, The role of the emerging PMC, as they saw it, was to mediate the basic class conflict of capitalist society and create a “rational,” reproducible social order.The "Progressive" movement has been doing exactly that "rationalization" in the key of capitalism for some 100 years. I put it to you that you are bringing coals to Newcastle based on a petit-bourgeois idealistic conviction that you can do capitalist relations better and you wish to be recognized as a superior person for that. What an absolute waste of time and production.
It could be said that we are already in the lower phase of communism, but that through it the bourgeois order will be absolutely preserved rather than withering away. The only real effect of "lower phase" in that case is to protect useless PMC even further from adverse effects or personal accountability for the atrocious conditions they dream up in the name of some "greatness" bullshit.
>>1870862100% material fact
>>1870980>for principled communists communism is an aspirationPrinciple is not material. Thank you for admitting your liberal idealism
>>1871056You quite literally haven't understood the point Marx is making if that is your criticism. Go and read The German Ideology, and then try to read On The Jewish Question.
>>1871154Well, perfectionism is a perfect waste of social surplus, and therefore something to actually abolish, not onanistically conserve under the pretext of reform.
So, op is a succdem? How lame and boring.
>>1870980Why is it many centuries in the future if you can't even imagine a system like that?
You can see something like it in free software programming, where you will not find a commodity nor surplus value is necessary for it's production, nor money is used to buy and sell, it is not sold.
If you look at a factory, there is no commodity exchange internally. It can be that some factories provide meals and housing.
I think that with computers, it can be made possible for every citizen to fully engage in every productive activity of society, not just in programming.
May be it can't be done everywhere, but it is a different thing, saying it is uptopia and listing where and what can't done.
>>1871166No, i understand marx quite clearly.
I'm allowed to disagree.
>>1871501>If you look at a factory, there is no commodity exchange internally. It can be that some factories provide meals and housing. Feudalism moment
>we should all be batteries of the state by feeding it our life forcei wonder why people would be weary of that system…
>>1871542You quite literally do not, because had you understood those works you would understand that Marx sets out to criticise that position.
Again, go and actually read those works.
>>1871542Idk what state have to do with anything I wrote.
Not feud, more like a commune, but organized by bourgeois. The producers inside of the factory do not exchange their products.
>>1871552From the jewish question:
>Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.>The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.Where judaism here stands as the "practical need" of "civil society" apart from the "political society" represented in christianity's sublimity.
Marx's point here is that secularism is a false emancipation because it affirms bourgeois egoism, when we need a new sort of emancipation by the abolition of both political and civic life. No?
Neither the state nor free association, which tracks from the whole cursory outline of the "whithering away of the state" into the self-determination of a new humanity.
My point has been that this is seeking immediacy, i.e:
>the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.Marx seeking the end of the contradiction is the meaning of my criticism.
>>1871562What entity is collecting this power that people would be producing?
>communesLiterally the form of life under feudalism. With industrialisation and urbanisation we then get slums as the update.
>>1871588Communes, you mean serfs? The serfes made grain mostly? The tools were made by individuals, not by serfs? The individuals sold their products on the market. A factory produce items of different complexity and assemble them into a final consumer item, all that done directly in the factory. So it is just complexity. Could not serfes produce grain as free citizens? They could, but it will be for market, by families of individuals. May be they could arrange into communes, idk. Factory workers could produce without bourgeis, but it will not turn into production by individuals.
What do you mean by power or collecting? Idk, may be you can look at how free software is made.
>>1871635>may be you can look at how free software is made.In practice there is quite a bit of production by individuals going on there.
>>1871501>If you look at a factory, there is no commodity exchange internally. It can be that some factories provide meals and housing. >>1871562>Feudalism momentThe other poster is correct. Inside of the firm, there is no commodity exchange. You can say that's like feudalism, but that's missing the point.
>>1871501yes there can be pockets of communism here and there, such as free software as you say, but also the family. but there is as yet no "free labour" movement
free software works partly because you only need to write the software once. very few labour processes are like that. it is also primarily geared towards
other programmers
>>1872089>but also the familySorry, the head of household is definitionally the capitalist.
>>1869639>You replied to a post about the capitalist class >>1869473 with a statement about banks in some country >>1869496tbf financial institutions have long been at the top of capitalism, lenin in his imperialism analysis already recognized this, and thing have only gotten farther in that regard. It would be interesting to see what part of the total surplus value end up in the major investment banks (which all have shares in each other and can be considered as an united whole).
>>1872092only if you have a "head of the household"
>>1870110That's not whan animism means, it's just essentialism. Pretty sure those aren't even compatible with eachother, like, essentialism laid the anthropocentrism and collonial "take shit and leave shit without asking nature for permission" mindsets that would allow for that transition to the 'theisms with their gods (spaggeti kings) instead of other organims and rocks having agency on their own with consequences for denying that agency; thus stripping spirituality to "don't piss off the speggheti kings and you can do whatever you want."
>>1881496The thing is that liberalism necessarily comes out of mercantilism, where wealth is concentrated in empires for the ability of its circulation. Yes, the founders of the economy arent animists, but down the line, the "true believers" of the system eventually believe in the government of things over people. They believe a funko pop figure or an NFT possesses an autonomous Value. It is the regression of people's minds into superstition. Thats why we have an economy largely based on gambling.
>muh essentialisman overused term that hardly denotes anything substantial
>>1881496>rocks having agency on their own<chemistry is a spookAll you Fichtean fake-materialists need to read Theses on Feuerbach 10 times before posting again.
>>1881496Nah animism is fitting. Economists often talk like the things themselves have agency, factors of production "contributing" to production and so on.
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