/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2187573
>because you were critiquing empiricism as "ahistorical" in relation to smith
no im saying that empiricism in general is ahistorical. specifically im saying that empiricism generally and especially british empiricism, that of smith, hume, locke is idealist, vulgar and reductionist, which is why i recommended lenins critique, as it is the most direct. poverty of philosophy is also a good one. iirc chapter 2 even talks about why shifting money around like you suggest doesn't work.
>but only his conception.
thats the entire point lol

>>2187577
>no im saying that empiricism in general is ahistorical
as opposed to what? what is your epistemology?
>specifically im saying that empiricism generally and especially british empiricism, that of smith, hume, locke is idealist, vulgar and reductionist
<which is why i recommended lenins critique, as it is the most direct
and what exactly is this critique?
>thats the entire point
right, so smith deals in facts and figures while marx deals in flowery language. got it.
also, like always, you never actually answered any of my questions, but do keep going.

>>2187586
>so smith deals in facts and figures while marx deals in flowery language. got it.
so you pretend to understand marx's dialectic but also think its just flowery language. got it.
>you never actually answered any of my questions
im not going to do your homework for you

>>2187586
>as opposed to what? what is your epistemology?
not the anon but I've heard a lot of people on here say they embrace dialectical materialism instead of empiricism

>>2187588
>so you pretend to understand marx's dialectic but also think its just flowery language. got it.
wait…
do you actually think marx is a scientist?
>im not going to do your homework for you
its because you know nothing. you make claims then never, ever back them up. you dont want to waste your time with me yet endlessly reply to me. like ive already said, get a life, already.

I wanna thank the argumentative anons for keeping this thread alive. When it's finally full I will archive it and dedicate the 2nd version to Adam Smith.

Smithian Anon, like him or hate him, always answers people, and keeps the thread alive. Respect.

>>2187590
dialectical materialism is an ontology not an epistemology. empiricism is a theory of knowledge, not a theory of what the world is.

>>2187593
yeah for sure i'm just saying what i've heard other anons said. i'm just a dumb guy. be nice.

>>2187591
>you dont want to waste your time with me yet endlessly reply to me
i dont want to waste my time repeating things i have already told you, but replying to you nets gold such as
>do you actually think marx is a scientist?
>marx deals in flowery language
that completely discredits you

remember comrades…

>>2187596
i just wanted to be helpful.
sorry if my tone was wrong.
>>2187592
❤️
>>2187597
>>2187597
>i dont want to waste my time repeating things i have already told you
and what have you told me? you just assert im wrong, but never actually positively affirm anything with evidence
>that completely discredits you
you never actually answered the question. is marx's work scientific or not? if so, what makes it scientific?

>>2187599
You already conceded when you admitted that Marx's problem with Smith was that his concepts are incomplete, but you are still confused about how they could be incomplete if Marx agrees that Smiths concepts are oriented to capitalism, claiming historicity. This is because they are not historically oriented to capitalism, but just happened to be made from within capitalism, so while they do a good job categorizing the concepts of capitalism, they are not historically grounded. That is why Marx's concept of value is. Because Smith does not investigate the history, his analysis takes things as they appear, instead of in their historical determinations through social activity, which is why he misses the essence of value and money and thinks of them as transhistorical immutably fixed objects, just like you do, when you imply that the limit of production is money, elevating it to a law of nature.

>>2187604
>>2187604
>Marx's problem with Smith was that his concepts are incomplete
marx's conceptual disagreement is only in that what smith allocates to wages and profits/rents, marx would rather characterise as value and surplus value, being based in labour-power rather than labour.
>but you are still confused about how they could be incomplete if Marx agrees that Smiths concepts are oriented to capitalism, claiming historicity.
no, my disagreement with marx is that we can observably measure prices while we cannot measure values, therefore value in marxist terms will always remain a useless abstraction; a conceptual parasite.
>This is because they are not historically oriented to capitalism, but just happened to be made from within capitalism
no, marx praises smith for conceiving the 3 revenues of wealth comporting to the 3 classes, which is why marx reproduces smith's analysis in capital vol. 3
>That is why Marx's concept of value is
no, marx's theory of value comes from his unfortunate hegelianisms that treat value as a unity in the commodity and thusly alienated in its functions. okay, this can work philosophically (just oike his early writings on alienation), but economically? no.
>Because Smith does not investigate the history
what history? as ive already explained, both smith and marx agree on the origins of value in barter.
>he misses the essence of value and money and thinks of them as transhistorical immutably fixed objects
not at all. smith recognises that value changes over time.
>when you imply that the limit of production is money
but you already agreed to this, by seeing how capitalist production is determined by exchange. this is marx's own crisis of overproduction put in simple terms.

>>2187611
>but you already agreed to this
no i didn't, the limit of production is labor, the limit of production under capitalism is money, but capitalism is transient. without qualifiers on which production im obviously referring to the former. you said before that the existence of fiat disproves the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, yet here you are saying the crisis of overproduction is real.

>a useless abstraction
so are you a positivist too?

>>2187614
>you said before that the existence of fiat disproves the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, yet here you are saying the crisis of overproduction is real.
the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is real, but marx misdiagnoses it's extremity being tied to "living labour" in production. what causes it is underconsumption (from unemployment, tied to the rise of constant capital replacing jobs), which is why economies grow in proportion to consumption of the social product (and why giving people "free money" actually helps everyone). fiat currency liberates consumption at the expense of commodity money, which is why all gold standard economies are inherently self-destructive. so marx is right, from a particular perspective, but misses its totality. this is shown in his treatment of commodity money as a "measure of value".
>so are you a positivist too?
not all abstractions are useless. just marx's, in displacing prices for values.

>>2187619
>so marx is right, from a particular perspective, but misses its totality.
sounds like the opposite, that you are right from a particular perspective but missing the totality.
>marx misdiagnoses it's extremity being tied to "living labour" in production. what causes it is underconsumption (from unemployment, tied to the rise of constant capital replacing jobs)
how is that not the same thing? what causes underconsumption? loss of jobs = less living labor. you cant have underconsumption without overproduction, you cant consume things if they arent produced.
>this is shown in his treatment of commodity money as a "measure of value".
what makes you think that marx was saying this is how things have to be instead of just a description of how things were at the time?
>not all abstractions are useless.
oh just the ones you dont agree with? like how smith's tautologies cancel out but marx's dont?

>>2187632
>you are right from a particular perspective but missing the totality.
how?
>you cant have underconsumption without overproduction, you cant consume things if they arent produced.
but they *are* produced, just by machines. marx's argument can be summed up as "automation leads to falling rates of profit", but why? i say, its because people dont get enough money to consume what is produced, while marx says that theres not enough "variable capital" or "living labour" implemented. like many things, marx is thinking backwards.
>what makes you think that marx was saying this is how things have to be instead of just a description of how things were at the time?
well marx doesnt say otherwise - and his followers also never say "mard is outdated, we need a new analysis of capitalism", so why would i presume otherwise? marx was right also about "fictitious capital" (credit-money) leading to crises like ths grrat depression. but the regime of fractional reserve banking has been overcome by fiat currency, so we no longer experience these same problems.
>like how smith's tautologies cancel out but marx's dont?
if marx just stuck with values and measured capitalism using values alone, he'd be fine, but he tries to link values with prices, which cause confusion. marx's theory of the falling rate of profit for example makes sense from the perspective of labour-power, but if we broaden the condition of labour-power to machines, then the theory is falsified - but i dont consider labour-powers to be measurable entities either.

>>2187492
>>"The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it. [capital vol. 1, ch. 1]"
Yes, Marx is talking about a widespread change in productivity here. If one small business in a huge market comes up with a secret technique for speeding up its production, the productivity of the business, the number of units, and the value of the sum of its weekly output increases, even if the concrete labor time in the business remains the same. If its output though increased is still a drop in the ocean of the output of all the firms making that commodity, the value of the commodity goes down only slightly. If the secret leaks out and the improvement becomes widespread, the value of the commodity goes down more.

Going through the three phases here (1. before the invention, 2. invention used in secrecy, 3. invention becoming standard) and measuring concrete labor times in all the firms making the commodity tells the development of the value of the commodity, for each phase the value is just the average of concrete labor times going into each unit made.


>SNLT can only be measured by the wage
SNLT should be measured by clocks. And we deal with concrete labor time not being always socially necessary labor time by the scale trick (measuring for many people).

>yet marx is also saying that average prices =/= the value of commodities.
Because of organic composition of capital being different in different industries. If average prices are set by SNLT, there is a systematic advantage for firms with low org. comp. and a systematic disadvantage for firms with high org. comp. So Marx assumes that if there were equal competition everywhere, the prices on average reflecting SNLT would result in advantages of business with low org. comp. and this would attract more investors, the result being more competition for those firms with low org. comp. and this in turn making the profit rates between firms of different org. comp. roughly equal in the long term. If profit rates are roughly equal, Marx reasons, the firms with high org. comp have to sell at higher prices relative to those from firms with lower org. comp. than the price ratio SNLT would predict.

>>2187647
>just by machines
which require human labor to create and maintain
>i say, its because people dont get enough money to consume what is produced, while marx says that theres not enough "variable capital" or "living labour" implemented.
both are true, they dont get enough money because not enough living labour is implimented.
>like many things, marx is thinking backwards.
idk how you think this is the case. production comes first, then consumption. and you dont even have to say production is primary you can just have both.
>well marx doesnt say otherwise
why would he?
>and his followers also never say "mar[x] is outdated, we need a new analysis of capitalism"
why should they, fiat does not change his analysis

>but he tries to link values with prices, which cause confusion
its just a demonstration. the transformation "problem" comes from him doing incomplete napkin math and coming to the conclusion that there must be some constant factor that augments different types of labor and he didn't finish because its obviously true when considering the economy in total as has been now been proven and because it wasn't the object of his study but a trivial "and in addition" to dunk on people strawmanning him. hes giving the general formula for rate of change as exponential function describing its limits and you are trying to debunk it by saying what if it starts at 2 instead of 0, what if it starts at 3, or even 100! surely then it will cross the limit!

but you are ignoring class relations. okay you pay the machines a wage, who owns the machine? is it still a private capitalist? are you giving the machines citizenship? who is going to support that law? you want to have a UBI and you tax the machine wages to pay for it? lets assume the capitalists support this, why would they? they can overturn it as soon as it doesn't benefit them. they can use UBI to accumulate capital until there are no jobs and then implement their techno-fuedal dreams. the only way this works is if you make the machines public property and then you have just recreated communism.

>we no longer experience these same problems.
it makes sense that you believe this and also the above. these tricks only work temporarily. reality has proven you wrong its just kicking the can down the road and crisis are still recurring. baffling that you bring up fractional reserve banking as an example of why recessions dont occur anymore since fiat lmao

For later…

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” ― Adam Smith. Wealth of Nations, book 5, chapter 1, part 2 (Stating the obvious.)

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ” (Sounds an awful lot like the Marxist concept of Alienation.)
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations book 5 chapter 1 part 3

“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” (Capitalists never recognize their negative contribution to society. 100 Corporations cause the majority of carbon emissions for example.)
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Book 1 Chapter 9.

“Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Book 5 chapter 1 part 2


"His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, book 1 chapter conclusion.

>>2187671
> he didn't finish because its obviously true when considering the economy in total
he didn't finish because he died actually

>>2187702
true for the whole book but he spent relatively little time on the "problem"

>Our present analysis does not necessitate a closer examination of this point. It remains true, nevertheless…

>>2187671
>which require human labor to create and maintain
you need animal and plant foods to survive too. also, marx's argument about machine value isnt based in the fact of their maintenance, but that in their "productive consumption" by workers, by wear and tear, they gradually lose their value, like how a mobile phone only lasts so long. marx imagines that the value transferred to the worker is a limited quantity, such as the labour which is embodied in it. now, this is as plainly ridiculous as asserting that just because a worker may only get enough to survive, that he does not produce more than this in total. man lives by means which are exceeded in production, and so is the machine, but how? because it is social labour which creates the machine, yet the machine's own labour is divided into a specific function, which like man's own division of labour, specialises him in production. a mobile phone may last years but it does not take years to make - what then attributes a fixed quantity to this capital? its price. but man also has a price; a price which he exceeds in profits. what makes capital unprofitable then? only that its total product is unsold. and this is the crisis of overproduction coinciding with the falling rate of profit. capital is *too* productive.
>both are true, they dont get enough money because not enough living labour is implimented.
the cost of living labour is a wage, but what happens if you give a man a wage without him supplying living labour? its the same difference. whether a man works behind a counter or not is immaterial to the circulation of commodities.
>you dont even have to say production is primary you can just have both.
i already imply both.
>fiat does not change his analysis
of course it does.
>but you are ignoring class relations
how? by not singing the internationale every 5 seconds like every larper in here?
>the only way this works is if you make the machines public property
not necessarily. you can also redistribute profits (i.e. UBI). remember, we are only talking about what is theoretically possible.
>and then you have just recreated communism.
how? because the government does stuff?
>these tricks only work temporarily
yeah of course. profits are antagonistic to wages, so profit and consumption also enter into immanent contradiction. this is also why adam smith associates wealth with low profits and poverty with high profits. thus, the trend of free markets should be a form of social re-distribution. monopolies disrupt the spread of wealth, which is why rent-seekers make life more expensive while providing no value. have you ever thought, for example, that ~80% of "communists" prefigure the main class struggle as tenants vs landlords? complaining about "the boss" is contrived; the real tension is in rents and mortgages. abolish these and you wont even need communism. thats my classical liberalism; at least capitalists provide jobs and wages. under socialism you just work for big government instead of big business, no? something something "those who dont work shall not eat", as lenin put it.
>reality has proven you wrong
how's that?
>baffling that you bring up fractional reserve banking as an example of why recessions dont occur anymore
fiat currency abolished fractional reserve banking, which was based in holding a "fractional reserve" of commodity money, and the rest serving as credit-money. this state of affairs led to the great depression, since the reserves where emptied out and thus the credit had no backing. marx also in capital vol. 3, chapter 25, speaking on "fictitious capital" sees the contradiction between commodity-money and interest-bearing capital leading to crises, such as that which was precipitated by the crop failure of 1846 in the UK. the great irony of course is that commerce operates swimmingly until the due date of the loan, proving how the real fiction is in the value of money to begin with. marx freely admits that "bills of exchange" in credit operated as money for a time, until gold had to be put in place of it, and this then leads to crisis. of course, the primary case is true, that money is just an IOU. david graeber in his masterpiece "debt: the first 5000 years" also talks about this credit/money relation.

>>2187697
❤️
>>2187650
>Yes, Marx is talking about a widespread change in productivity here.
yes, which consequently changes SNLT, and so makes it an indeterminate quantity.
>If one small business in a huge market comes up with a secret technique for speeding up its production
its not a secret, its just technological innovation, like marx's example of the power-loom; it doubles output and therefore halves the value of its individual product (this inverse relation between labour-time and productivity is the same difference to marx between abstract and concrete labour, or variable and constant capital, or absolute and relative surplus value - therefore, just like schumpeter, in marx's teleology, capitalism fails because it is too productive. the boom-bust cycle generalises this logic, and keynes applies the common cure of stimulation).
>for each phase the value is just the average of concrete labor times going into each unit made.
i would prefer to say that the commodity's scarcity is lowered, which lowers its price in the market; but this is also regulated by a lower cost in production per commodity. its a chicken-and-egg thing once more, where you can attribute low scarcity to low SNLT - but alternatively, this logic ruins itself once we come into sight of purely market goods, like uncultivated land, which marx assigns with "imaginary prices". an imaginary price is still a nominal market price however, and so marx tries to have it both ways;
>"the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation [capital vol. 1, chapter 3]"
i just prefer to say that some goods are purely market goods - like money.
>SNLT should be measured by clocks
it is already measured by the wage.
>measuring for many people
in my last warehouse job, my performance was individually recorded on a database, so capitalism has done very well to make labour as efficient as possible.
>Because of organic composition of capital being different in different industries
yes, but even at different rates of composition, the value of these commodities are still factored by marx as creating values which comport to prices which average across industry (as far as i can see, though i may be wrong). in capital vol. 3 is the dominant formula:
>[C = c + v + s]
in chapter 1 for example, marx calls the "cost-price" of commodities [c + v] the "capitalist price", while calling the commodity-price [c + v + s] the "actual price", since surplus value is included in this final price, producing profits;
>c + v = (k) cost-price of a commodity
>k + s = (C) value of commodity (price)
in chapter 9, marx more systematically explores the rate of capital composition to determine prices and how they relate to values (i'll do my best to give exposition):
marx establishes 5 hypothetical capitals employed to fetch a profit, of which have different cost-prices [k], but all have the same rate of surplus value [s/v], yet due to the rate of organic composition [c/v], they produce different rates of profit [s/c], and so all produce separate prices (to go back to your point). marx then aggregates these figures into a single capital to create an average rate of composition; from this, the average surplus-value of each also becomes shared, and so, prices are dispersed. in this abstraction, marx then says that prices and values lose deviation. this also becomes the basis of a general rate of profit;
>"These different rates of profit are equalized by competition to a single general rate of profit, which is the average of all these different rates of profit."
so considered as a whole, marx still sees average prices emerge. also, on prices of production, marx says this,
>"Hence, the price of production of a commodity is equal to its cost-price plus the profit [capital vol. 3, chapter 9]"
proving smith right, once more. thus, what marx determines as the value of commodities [C = c + v + s] is actually in monetary terms, the cost of production;
<[Cost = Capital + Wages + Profits/Rents]

>>2188671
>marx imagines that the value transferred to the worker
? Marx is saying that the machinery transfers its value to the commodities it helps produce.

>>2188673
>>Yes, Marx is talking about a widespread change in productivity here.
>yes, which consequently changes SNLT, and so makes it an indeterminate quantity.
If it is widespread, we can use the scale trick again, so measuring concrete labor time is good enough for getting to SNLT.

>>If one small business in a huge market comes up with a secret technique for speeding up its production
>its not a secret
…

>>for each phase the value is just the average of concrete labor times going into each unit made.
>i would prefer to say that the commodity's scarcity is lowered, which lowers its price in the market
If the produced amount of something stays the same after an innovation reduces production time, its value drops and likely its price, too. But is it more scarce? You can define scarcity in a way that the answer is yes, but then there is no difference anymore between your scarcity concept and labor as the fundamental cost that other appearances of cost are derived from.

>>SNLT should be measured by clocks
>it is already measured by the wage.
SNLT literally refers to time. Wage is only a proxy for that.

>considered as a whole, marx still sees average prices emerge
Not the contested point. The point is that according to Marx, the value ratios are not the best predictor for what price ratios oscillate around, he assumes the center for the oscillations to be the price ratios at equalized profit rates across industries.

>>2053060
Just watched all these back-to-back over the weekend at 1.25x and feel like my head is going to explode.

>>2188754
would you say you know kung fu?
>>2188744
>Marx is saying that the machinery transfers its value to the commodities it helps produce.
yes true. i misspoke.
>it is widespread
sure, but if we presume SNLT to measurably exist, could we not also directly measure variable changes in its rate of production? or is SNLT to you necessarily an abstraction after the fact? so to say, can we determine values before the act of production, or is value only realised in the constitutive act of exchange? my reading of marx derives from this preliminary understanding of the commodity as a "social use value", as he puts it in capital vol. 1 chapter 1,
>"To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange [.] Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value."
this mirrors what david ricardo writes in chapter 1 of principles of political economy,
>"Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, al-though it is absolutely essential to it. If a commodity were in no way useful,—in other words, if it could in no way con-tribute to our gratification,—it would be destitute of exchange-able value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it."
this unity of the commodity (between its production and exchange) realises value. so then, my issue in the concept of SNLT is that it can only be inferred from prices in the first place.
>If the produced amount of something stays the same after an innovation reduces production time, its value drops and likely its price, too
yes, by relation of production costs. this is where i am speculative of marx's meaning however. if we read this passage for example,
>"If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks [capital vol. 1, ch. 1]"
is this value already actual in the relation to labour-power, or is it only potential, and realised in the sale? to me, it is the same difference; production costs are cheaper.
>SNLT literally refers to time. Wage is only a proxy for that.
but you also cant determine SNLT outside of the wage; for example, to marx, even if you halved the working day, the wage would stay the same. you might say that the minimum working day and minimun wage meet at SNLT, but this is also a speculative quantity. how would we practically determine this? who gets to work less for more?
>he assumes the center for the oscillations to be the price ratios at equalized profit rates across industries.
but these generalised profits are also added to the cost-price of the commodity and as marx says, the prices and values cancel out into costs of production: [k + s].
but maybe i missed your point. if i did, please restate it.

>>2053454
>>2053459
Can this be reviewed and updated?
Literally exactly what I've been looking for, phrased in a way that people can actually understand, and actually makes a point of clearly seperating "the boss" and "the system" so petty-booj don't fliptheirshit and discount it straight away…

>>2188761
>would you say you know kung fu?
soooon…
But I know I need sleep that's for sure.

>>2188671
>you need animal and plant foods to survive too.
right and you could do the same analysis with the common factor being calories or joules instead
>marx's argument about machine value isnt based in the fact of their maintenance, but that in their "productive consumption" by workers, by wear and tear, they gradually lose their value
they dont lose value the value is transferred through use. a certain amount of value is embedded in the machine from the labor it took to build it.
>man lives by means which are exceeded in production, and so is the machine
absurd
>of course it does.
no it doesn't
>how?
by socializing the outputs of production instead of leaving them to private interests
>yeah of course.
then what the fuck is the point of your rambling? you say fiat debunks marx and then after all this you admit its a temporary measure that does not solve the inherent contradiction
>the real tension is in rents
if you mean monopoly then you are just agreeing with marx lol thats literally the conclusion of all his analysis around trpf
>abolish these and you wont even need communism.
except you would because as long as private property remains you are just recreating the same problem
>how's that?
how about the oil shock immediately after introducing fiat? stagflation? the dot com crash? the great recession and the covid crash as well as the current crisis we are in rightnow
>how? by not singing the internationale every 5 seconds
you are literally doing exactly what marx critiques, treating social relations between people as objective relations between things. its just strait up commodity fetishism.

the physical limit of an economy is how much labor goes into it, but you are putting money before labor, treating it as an fact, as a thing, rather than a social relation between people. the limit under capitalism is not money, its the social relation, the permission to work from a person who holds capital, which is why the class struggle is central to marx's theory. the point is to unleash the forces of production to overcome scarcity through rational planning, to overcome the social limit, not to print enough permission slips. its crazy to me that this has been explained over and over and over and over and you still dont get it.

>>2188761
>but you also cant determine SNLT outside of the wage
you cant count how many hours an average person works in a day? youve got a population of 100 and they all work 10 hours so you got 1000 hours per day. so youve got 1000 man-hours total spread out in the economy. whats the problem?

>>2188783
>they dont lose value the value is transferred through use.
to marx, the value is lost from constant capital and transferred into the commodity.
>a certain amount of value is embedded in the machine from the labor it took to build it.
but what is the form of this value? the price
>absurd
once more you are pretending that man is uniquely productive
>then what the fuck is the point of your rambling?
to be academic
>you say fiat debunks marx
it debunks marx's analysis of capital, yes, since he presumes living labour to be tied to the exchange relation of the wage - this is because of the limits of marx's own time.
>if you mean monopoly then you are just agreeing with marx lol
no, marx is agreeing with the classical school.
>as long as private property remains you are just recreating the same problem
you create different problems
>stagflation
that came from price controls on oil, not fiat currency. the price controls tried to mimic the gold standard of 1971, which ended up creating crises, which were only aleviated once fiat currency's floating exchange rate sorted values according to the market. the issue once again was gold.
>the great recession
that had to do with bank credit, not fiat. it was fiat which bailed out the global economy after that however.
>the current crisis we are in rightnow
which one is that?
>the limit under capitalism is not money
yes it is. all economic crises are about this.
>the point is to unleash the forces of production to overcome scarcity through rational planning
you do realise that in a market everything is scarce? overcoming scarcity just means abolishing markets.
>you cant count how many hours an average person works in a day?
you do realise that to marx the working day is divided into "necessary" and "surplus" labour right? and that this is the basis of profits? the difficulty is in determining what amount is necessary, since wages come as a portion of profits in the total product.

>>2188795
if youve got 1000 man-hours and the average wage is x per hour, and the total economy is y then you have 1000 = y. you got x * 10 *100 = y. so where is profit coming from? there must be a third factor z, that we call surplus value, so you have x*10*100-z=y and z=x*10*100/y, or the portion of total labor time not paid out in wages that is appropriated by the capitalist. its really not complicated

>man is uniquely productive
he is, machines dont exist without people to make them
>marx is agreeing with the classical school
except classically monopoly was an aberration, yet marx shows that monopoly is the natural tendency
>that had to do with bank credit, not fiat
it had to do with fractional reserve you dingus
>it was fiat which bailed out the global economy
and now we are in another crisis
>different problems
oh yeah cause a regular recession is different from a great recession lmao
>overcoming scarcity just means abolishing markets.
is that what you are proposing? wont there be a market for robo-wages?

>>2188799
>the portion of total labor time not paid out in wages
but again, this can only be determined *after* profits have already been realised. thus SNLT only has a reality in reference to the price.
>he is, machines dont exist without people to make them
and man doesnt exist without plant and animal foods - is man's power then limited to this? is his productivity limited to his wage?
>except classically monopoly was an aberration, yet marx shows that monopoly is the natural tendency
not really; profit naturally accumulates. that is basic understanding. what is purely "accidental" however is rents. that is the monopoly i was describing.
>it had to do with fractional reserve you dingus
and that differs from credit relations how? i already explained how fractional reserve banking leads to crisis through is mismatch between money and credit. i cited marx's comments on fictitious capital also. fiat abolishes this state of affairs by a central bank which holds no reserves.
>and now we are in another crisis
and what is that crisis?
>is that what you are proposing?
no, that is your suggestion in central planning. scarcity isnt an issue in itself - its just that some people think of it as a "lack" of something rather than a ratio. oxygen is scarce, but also abundant.

>>2188808
>but again, this can only be determined *after* profits have already been realised. thus SNLT only has a reality in reference to the price.
the portion of total labor time
time
and you can determine it in aggregate but you have to measure the total over a period, like a day, because SNLT isn't determined by what one specific worker does but by all of them together. why do you think he talks about how one guy is taller and stronger and all that?
>what is purely "accidental" however is rents. that is the monopoly i was describing
and yet rent happens all the time
>and man doesnt exist without plant and animal foods - is man's power then limited to this?
its limited by output from the sun and how much of that energy humanity can capture through transforming their environment through labor

>>2188813
>the portion of total labor time
yes… a time you expressly measured by the wage
>SNLT isn't determined by what one specific worker does but by all of them together
but if this is the case, SNLT can only be said to be an abstraction borne from existing conditions and not calculated ahead of time; thus it is an indeterminate quantity, as i say (objectively immeasurable). what is measurable however is prices, including wages.
>and yet rent happens all the time
so what? it doesnt have to happen. marx even sees landlords as remnants from the feudal past and thinks industrial capital must outcompete them (since to marx, ground rents affect the price of production, and therefore limits profits).
>inputs of energy
now, think of the wage as representing this input in monetary terms; then think of the price of a machine as the cost of its production, which can be replaced using the machine itself.

>>2188818
>yes… a time you expressly measured by
days, hours, minutes etc. wages are not a price alone, they are a price per hour and you are negating the time to talk about price - but the common factor between all money in circulation and wages is the dollars, which cancel out, leaving the hour part as the remainder with no equivalent
>SNLT can only be said to be an abstraction borne from existing conditions and not calculated ahead of time; thus it is an indeterminate quantity,
sure thats fine, but we can still determine its limits, like in the analogy i gave of an exponential function where you find the asymptote. like you just said its a ratio, when talking about a rate of change across time you plot it out to infinity, which it never reaches, yet there is a definite limit it cannot cross.

>>2188824
>wages are not a price alone, they are a price per hour and you are negating the time to talk about price
to me, time is immaterial to the costs of production in relation to the total output. a marxist will only insist that the price of labour reflects the value of labour-power, but if it is the same difference in the end, then only concrete labours count. for example, if we take the total product and share it equally in wages, we have SNLT as the mean price per hour of labour; so then, SNLT is just the accounting for the wage, not the measure of a real relation. ny issue is only in the fact that marxists want to consider SNLT (value) as an independent entity, but to me, it is entirely derivarive of the wage.
>we can still determine its limits
the limits only have reference to the mean

>>2188833
>the limits only have reference to the mean
which would be the focus of your study if your object is to understand the economy as a whole. you would be focused on individual prices if your object of study is how to more efficiently squeeze profits from labor.
>to me, time is immaterial
lol
>to me, it is entirely derivarive of the wage
is this one of those things where you are stuck on the word "value" and doing the 'what?! time has no value dollars do!' thing. if we call it something other then value would that help you? after all marx probably did steal the word to be inflammatory. why is it a problem if he cares more about labor than money?

>>2188818
Ever heard of real abstractions?

>>2188835
>>2188835
>why is it a problem if he cares more about labor than money?
he doesnt care about "labour". marx thinks labour has no value. marx cares about labour-power, or abstract labour-time.
the issue is that this labour-time only gains economic reality in the wage, and so SNLT is an abstraction made after concrete labour has been sold. thus, abstract labour is derived from concrete labour, not the other way round. if it were the opposite case, you could measure SNLT ahead of time, but you cant, since as marx says, if a commodity is unsold, it has no value.
>>2188837
what about them? im not denying the abstraction, im denying that the abstraction takes precedence.

>>2188849
>he doesnt care about "labour". marx cares about labour-power, or abstract labour-time.
pedantic semantics
>im not denying the abstraction
'real abstractions' not abstractions that are real >>2188839 https://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/grundisse.htm

>>2188853
>pedantic semantics
so marx's theory of value is pedantic semantics? good to know.

<Why labour is the starting point of capital

>It was the publication of Capital 3 in 1894 that spurred Bflhm-Bawerk to pull his various attacks on Marx together. The chapters in this third volume dealing with the formation of the average rate of profit, the famous transformation problem, were, for BOhm-Bawerk, the "Russian campaign" of Marxism. "I cannot help myself," he confesses, "I see here no explanation and reconciliation of a contradiction but the bare contradiction itself. Marx's third volume contradicts the first. The theory of the average rate of profit and of the prices of production cannot be reconciled with the theory of value" (p. 30). Why? Because "the 'great law of value' which is 'immanent in the exchange of commodities'…states and must state that commodities are exchanged according to the socially necessary labour time embodied within them" (p. 12). But although the third volume is the taking-off point of BOhm-Bawerk's critique and his title suggests that his main concern is with the "close" or "completion" of the Marxist "system", the most significant section of his book deals with its "opening". "A firmly rooted system" such as Marxism, he writes, "can only be effectually overthrown by discovering with absolute precision the point in which the error made its way into this system…" (p. 64). And this point is right at the start of Capital 1, where Marx "in the systematic proof of his fundamental doctrine exhibits a logic continuously and palpably wrong" (p. 80). Tracking down and then demonstrating this "error in the Marxist system" is the actual more fruitful and instructive part of the criticism" (p. 65). It has another dimension. The critique of bourgeois economy runs seam-like through the whole of Capital but in the first few pages of Capital 1 against which BOhm-Bawerk directs the main thrust of his attack, it forms the bedrock of the text. For in establishing his own theoretical ground, Marx simultaneously challenged the foundations of bourgeois economics. Whether BOhm-Bawerk was fully aware of the issues at stake, it is hard to say; even if he were not his instinct took him to the heart of the matter. "The theory of value", he recognised, "stands, as it were, in the centre of the entire doctrine of political economy". And once a "labour theory of value" is conceded, Marx' conclusions about surplus value, exploitation and the class struggle follow inexorably. "In the middle part of the Marxian system", Bfthm-Bawerk concedes, "the logical development and connection present a really imposing closeness and intrinsic consistency" (p. 88). This is the first reason why it is so important for him to dismiss once and for all the "hypothesis" on which it is based—the proposition advanced right at the beginning of Capital 1 that the value of commodities is determined by the amount of (abstract) labour socially necessary for their production. The second is that no other theory of value, and particularly the various forms of neo-classical value theory, can claim legitimacy until Marxism has been thoroughly discredited. Thus when BOhm-Bawerk locks horns with the opening pages of Capital it is not merely Marxism that is thrown into the melting-pot but the whole of bourgeois economy[…]

>"The error in the Marxist system" According to BOhm-Bawerk, Marx's method of discovering the nature of value is "a purely logical proof" (p. 63). Starting with an "old-fashioned" idea derived from Aristotle that the exchange of commodities is a quantitative relationship pre-supposing some property they share in common, "Marx searches for the 'common factor' which is characteristic of exchange value in the following way: he passes in review the various properties possessed by objects made equal in exchange, and according to the method of exclusion, separates all those that cannot stand the test until at last only one property remains, that of being the product of labour. This therefore must be the sought-for common property" (p. 69). Although this method of "purely negative proof" does not commend itself to BOhm-Bawerk, he accepts it as "singular but not in itself objectionable", (pp. 68-9). The problem is the way Marx made use of it. And on this point BOhm-Bawerk launches a three-pronged attack. First, he says, Marx rigged the result by leaving certain things out of his "logical sieve". Second, letting this by, there are other common facts than labour that Marx has no right to ignore. And third, Marx' entire logic can be reversed and "value in use could be substituted for labour" (p. 77). These three lines of attack stake out in the clearest possible way the terrain of fundamental theory on which Marxism and neo-classical economics confront each other. The remainder of this section deals with each in turn.

>Marx' commodity is not coterminous with goods that exchange in the market. The "gifts of nature", land, natural resources, trees, minerals and so on, exchange in the same way as commodities but unlike them they do not embody labour. Thus BOhm-Bawerk concludes: "If Marx had not confined his research, at this decisive point, but had sought for the common factor in the exchangeable gifts of nature as well, it would have become obvious that work cannot be the common factor" (p. 73). This is an ingenious gambit. It appears at one stroke to separate Marx's theory from the most obvious and easily verifiable features of reality, while at the same time opening the way for the alternative view that the real common factor of goods, natural as well as man-made, is their utility and scarcity. Furthermore it appears to expose Marx to another criticism that BOhm-Bawerk is quick to press home. Marx was fully aware that non-commodities exchange and their exclusion from the logical sieve can, therefore, be nothing more than a deliberate ommission. "That Marx was truly and honestly convinced of the truth of his thesis I do not doubt", patronises BOhm-Bawerk, "but the grounds of his conviction are not those which he gives in his system. They are in reality opinions rather than thought out conclusions" (p. 78). And later: "he knew the result he wished to obtain, and so he twisted and manipulated the long-suffering ideas with admirable skill and subtlety until they yielded the desired result in a respectable syllogistic form" (p. 79). In the language of modern bourgeois theory, Marx's failure to take account of exchangeable goods not produced by labour is evidence of the ideological nature of his theory, the unacceptable subordination of positive economics to value judgement[…]

>Let us get to the heart of the mattery—the significance of the undisputed fact that non-commodities such as the free gifts of nature exchange as though they were commodities. Trees grown in a virgin forest, for example, can exchange, that is have a price,3 in much the same way as commodities that embody labour. But this exchangeability does not arise out of their natural properties. It is true, as Marx emphasised continually, that only those items that satisfy some human need will enter into human intercourse; but the nature of this intercourse is not determined by the physical and natural characteristics of the items as such: these make the item a use-value not an exchange value. For virgin trees to be exchanged requires that they not only satisfy some human need—construction material or fuel or whatever—but that they are private property. The natural properties of trees that make them suitable for building or burning merely tells us that some men will make use of them: it does not tell us that these users will also be buyers. This requires further specifications: the users of trees must be prevented from appropriating them directly; or, what is to say the same thing, the trees must be the property of some individual whose claim over them is recognised and substantiated socially. For the gifts of nature to enter the market alongside commodities requires the existence of the market and the system of property relations associated with it. The apparent plausibility of BOhm-Bawek's criticism begins to melt away at this point. Consider land and its 'price', money-rent, which is the most important economic transaction involving gifts of nature. Historically the emergence of money-rent, the exchange of the use of land for money, followed the development of commodity production; that is to say, it happened only after a decisive proportion of agricultural production had taken the form of commodities.4 But what is even more to the point here is that not only is rent historically subsequent to commodity production, but it is also dependent upon it. Ricardo demonstrated this in detail and we have here one of the few parts of classical political economy that was assimilated into neo-classical theory. The magnitude of rent does not determine the prices of commodities; on the contrary, it is determined by these prices. Thus in excluding non-commodities from his sieve Marx was pursuing a line perfectly in keeping not only with classical political economy but also with the school of thought which BOhm-Bawerk represents. This part of BOhm-Bawerk's criticism, so plausible at first sight, collapses completely when confronted with the theory of rent and the logic of Marx's position that we can only analyse the exchange of non-commodities once we have analysed commodities stands its ground
with ease[…]

>Marx's argument is not that commodity exchange arises on the basis of a common factor shared by all commodities. It is more substantial and straight-forward: that in exchange labour is the common property that regulates the terms of trade. BOhm-Bawerk does not challenge this. He merely misrepresents Marx's argument as formalist—and this brings us to the crux of the matter[…]

>The final thrust of BOhm-Bawerk's critique is a confrontation of his own theory with that of Marx in an attempt to show that if Marx had used his "purely logical method of deduction" correctly he would have reached the conclusion that labour was not the basis of value. "If Marx had chosen to reverse the order of the examination, the same reasoning that led to the exclusion of value in use would have excluded labour: and then the reasoning that resulted in the crowning of labour might have led him to declare the value in use to be the only property left, and therefore to be the sought-for common property, and value to be the cellular tissue of value in use" (p. 77). At best then, the "negative" approach cannot dismiss use-value, so that Marx's method fails at one and the same time to establish the premises of its own theory upon an unambiguous base and provide a determinate criticism of the neo-classical alternative. At this point BOhm-Bawerk challenges the dialectical method head on.[…]

>We have seen that according to BOhm-Bawerk, Marx's method is "a purely logical proof, a dialectic deduction from the very nature of exchange", (p. 68). The fact that these two expressions are not equivalent does not strike the Austrian. "A dialectic deduction from the very nature of exchange" is not "a purely logical proof": the one refers to a method which is enquiring into a particular phenomenon—i.e. exchange; the other is as it says purely logical, it has no particular object. ''If Marx's method had been of this latter kind it could be represented as follows: imagine a population P consisting of individuals each of which has two characteristics of properties, A and B. In every member of the population, these properties A and B, are present though in specific forms that vary from one individual to the next. Thus the generic property A presents itself as a', a"., .while property B presents itself as b', b"…And under conditions such as these neither Marx nor anyone else could claim that property B is the only common property for it alone can exist in the general form B, while A can only exist in the specific forms a', a"…For in a purely logical analysis there is no reason why one property should have different characteristics to another. Believing that Marx had in fact employed, and abused a logical method of this kind, BOhm-Bawerk claimed there is no reason why the particular types of labour that exist in commodities can be generalised as the common property of abstract labour, while particular use-value cannot be generalised in exactly the same way. He says this because he sees the problem as a logical one in which labour and utility are merely names given to symbols: the two are formal equivalents in a logical system therefore they are real equivalents. No logical method can distinguish the one from the other—hence the need for some positive proof. This brings the differences between the two methods into sharp focus. In neo-classical thought, theory is a purely formalist activity with no real content, and its link with the historical process it attempts to confront must be through a leap into observations which are not and cannot be organically related to the theory. The dialectical method makes no such separation. Its theory is never purely formal, but always has a real content. It is, therefore, never separated from the concrete by an unbridgeable gulf. Thus when Marx claims that the specific concrete labour that creates commodities is reduced to abstract labour, while use-value can only exist in particular forms and is not generalised in the same way; he is making a proposition that has to do with the real nature of labour and use-value. The assymetry between his analysis of labour on the one side and use-value on the other, is not due to a false application of a logic which should treat them as though they were the same: the assymetry follows from the different natures of labour and use-value. In other words, it is the category under examination that determines the path and the movement of logic in the dialectical method. The methodology of Capital, therefore, and here, particularly its opening section, is inseparably linked to its content, since Marx like Hegel, did not make the separation between logic and category that is characteristic of the model-real world separation that we find in the positivism of the social sciences. The issue at stake is the substantial one of discovering the basis of exchange in capitalist society, and Marx knew better than BOhm-Bawerk that this was not a task of pure logic.

>It is therefore the physical body of the commodity itself, for instance, iron, corn, a diamond, which is the use-value or useful thing." (C. p. 126) In other words, for Marx, utility means nothing except when it has a particular material form. As something in general it has no existence and is therefore unreal[…]
[The body was too long.]

[The body was too long.]
>Thus at the very start of Capital, and on a point crucial to the distinction between Marxist and bourgeois theory, we see the close affinity between the methods of Marx and Hegel. In Hegel's objective idealism, the link between the phenomenal world of existence and the reality that stands behind it is indissoluble: in fact, reality is embodied in existence and only becomes real in this way. Thus when Marx says that usefulness has no existence apart from the physical properties of the commodity, he is following Hegel quite closely. For if use-value in general can, by its nature, have no existence, it can also have no reality—except, that is, in the mind of the neo-classical economist. It has the same reality as a dream, for instance, and while a dream might tell us something about the mind of the dreamer it is hardly a reliable guide to the world he inhabits.5 Bfihm-Bawerk does not understand this. He does not understand that Marx dismissed the idea of use-value in general not on logical grounds, but because it has no reality. For Marx it is precisely the fact that use-value can only exist in specific forms that provides the reason for exchange in its most basic form of one commodity for another: i.e. because use-value is specific, commodities differ from each other as use-values and this provides a reason for exchanging them. To insist with BOhm-Bawerk that use-value is not only the reason for exchange in this sense, but also its basis and its measure, posits among other things the category of general utility. But as such a category is incapable by its nature of achieving any form of existence, it is doomed to unreality, and any theory based upon it must be a contentless abstraction[…]

>And as such it exposes itself to exactly the same type of criticism. If abstract labour exists only as concrete labour, if it can have no mode of existence apart from concrete labour in all its various forms; then how is it any different from general utility that can only exist as specific use-values? Thus when Marx claims that "all human labour is an expenditure of human labour-power in a physiological sense and it is in this quality of being equal or abstract that it forms the value of commodities"; (C.p. 137) Bfihm-Bawerk could easily retort that all use-values are use-values in a psychological sense and that it is here that we can discover the secret of value. In which case the method of the two theories is the same and BOhm-Bawerk's contention that the only way to chose between them is on the grounds of "positive proof" apparently rests on firm ground[…]

>It is a purely classificatory category and as such has no existence. In the same way, if we constitute abstract labour as the common property of concrete labour—the expenditure of muscles, brains etc.—we are inventing a mental abstraction and not discovering the real abstraction that Marx was after. In analysing exchange value, Marx remarked that "it cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the form of appearance of a content distinguishable from it." (C.p. 127) The distinguishable content he was referring to here was of course value. Similarly we can talk of concrete labour being the form of appearance of a content distinguishable from it, here meaning abstract labour. But abstract labour defined simply as the common property of concrete labour is not distinguishable at all. It can no more be distinguished from concrete labour than the quality of being a mammal can be distinguished from the feline body of a cat or the canine one of the dog. It cannot be distinguished quite simply because there is nothing to distinguish, because it does not exist.

>Moreover, as the few lines cited above show, this method of procedure leads inexorably towards a dehistoricisation of the categories. For if our abstractions are derived merely as common properties—i.e. from specific form to genus—not only can they have no form of existence at all, but equally they have the same status, the same possibility of non-existence and therefore existence, at all periods in history. As regards our immediate subject, labour: if abstract labour is merely the common property of concrete labour, then as concrete labour indisputably exists in every form of society, it must follow that abstract labour has the same universal presence. And if abstract labour is universally present then its product value cannot be far from the scene, even where we do not find the definite historical form of commodity production. Thus wherever we depart from dialecticism and employ a mode of abstraction that moves from specific form to genus, we inevitably lose the historical dimension which is such a vital element of Marx's theory[…]

>There is no doubt that part of the difficulty in this case arises from the term "abstract", the alternative term that Marx sometimes employs, social labour, is preferable in that it is much less prone to ambiguity. While it can easily appear that abstract labour is somehow the interior essence of concrete labour, so that the two cannot exist together on the same plane so to speak; the terms individual or specific when substituted for concrete labour on the one side, and social for abstract labour on the ot,her, do not present the same confusion.

>Consider an elementary act of exchange where one individual makes a coat and exchanges it for twenty yards of linen made by another individual. In the case of both individuals, the labour is specific and concrete; tailoring in the one case, and weaving in the other. But when they exchange their commodities in order to acquire a different use-value, each individual learns in the most practical way possible that through the expenditure of his own particular type of labour he can acquire the product of another particular type of labour. Through the process of exchange the tailor can by tailoring acquire the product of weaving. When exchange becomes general and all use-values enter the market as commodities, any one type of labour becomes the means to acquire the product of any other type of labour. As Marx puts it: "one use-value is worth just as much as another provided only that it is present in the appropriate quantity." (C.p. 127) Which means that any one type of labour when embodied in a commodity becomes the equivalent in a qualitative sense of every other type of labour that is also embodied in commodities no matter how different they may be. Thus it is not the disappearance of differences among all the various types of concrete labour that provides the form of existence of abstract or social labour; on the contrary it is these differences and their development that provide the necessity for such a form. As concrete labour becomes more varied, that is to say as the division of labour develops and with it commodity production; individual labour ceases to be exclusively individual and increasingly becomes an aspect of social labour. Or to look at it another way, labour remains specific, it is still this or that type of labour, but it does not and cannot operate in isolation. Under a situation of generalised commodity production, even when production is organised on an individual basis, labour is at once individual but also social, at once specific but an organic part of social labour, at once concrete but also abstract. Thus Bflhm-Bawerk's criticism that the existence of different forms of labour, particularly skilled and unskilled labour, excludes the possibility of abstract labour, labour as the common factor, is completely superceded, since these differences far from being ignored by Marx or conjoured away by some trick of dialectical logic, are posited as the very basis for the existence of abstract labour[…]

>We can now pick up an important matter mentioned in passing at the start: BOhm-Bawerk's firmly held conviction that if the law of value means anything it is that the prices of commodities are proportionate to their values. For him there can be no solution to the transformation problem, for any systematic deviation of prices from (relative) values stands in flat contradiction to the theory of value which he finds in Capital 1. There are two aspects to this issue. The first concerns the quantitative relationship between value and price (of production), and here it can be shown with ease that BOhm-Bawerk defined the question too narrowly. He sees the magnitude of value as the sole determinant of price, whereas it is the magnitude of value in conjunction with its composition that in fact determines prices—and, this, of course, is perfectly consistent with the general proposition that the prices of commodities are determined by their values. In so far as the problems raised here exist on the same plain of abstraction they are of little fundamental importance, and in this sense Joan Robinson was right to call the transformation problem "merely an anlytical puzzle which like all puzzles ceases to be of interest once it has been solved."9 The second aspect of BOhm-Bawerk's critique is much more than a puzzle as it comprises what is perhaps the most important point of separation and opposition of Marxism and bourgeois economics—the relationship between quantity and quality. We have seen" that the contentless abstraction is characteristic of the positivist method with the consequence that theory is separated from the historical process by an unbridgeable gulf[…]

>The conclusion that follows from all this is that BOhm-Bawerk's critique does not have a single point of validity. The Marxist need not concede a single thing to him. But paradoxically, this is what makes his book so valuable, for refuting it, as we have tried to show, involves reaching down to the very fundamentals of Marxism. At the same time, Karl Marx and the Close of his System is undoubtedly the most substantive criticism that any bourgeois economist has ever levelled against Capital. It has inspired all other criticisms as Sweezy points out. But more than this, it lays neo-classical theory on the line. For in attempting to attack Marx on what was, if anything his strongest front, the opening of Capital, BOhm-Bawerk revealed the foundations of his own science, and revealed them to be faulty. The Russian retreat of Marxism turns into the Waterloo of neo-classicism, but sadly it has not been banished to obscurity. Its flourishing survival, though, is perhaps the least of problems in itself: more important for the working-class movement is the damaging effect its positivistic method has had upon Marxism from within. With the collapse of neo-classicism under the weight of its misconceptions and inconsistencies, this becomes even more important. Within the realm of economics Marxism can no longer be challenged frontally from a neo-classical perspective; it can however be emasculated from within. The republication of BOhm-Bawerk's book will be a timely and valuable addition to the literature only if it is read with this danger in mind.

>>2188867
Volume III contradicts Volume I because Marx died before he could finish it. Engels put it together by himself and did some heavy editorializing. Cockshott says profit rates do not equalize.

>>2189744
>Cockshott says profit rates do not equalize.
It doesn't matter if they do. That paper equally applies to Cockshotts hobby of calculating input/output tables, which isn't surprising considering that Cockshott rejects dialectics. Its a neat fact, but trivial and inconsequential, misses the point, and implicitly accepts the critique of Marx as valid when its not.

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