/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>Iran Air receives two used Airbus A330s in oil-for-planes deal with China
what is it called when money plays an indirect role in a transaction like this one
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202505258931

>>2298876
evading sanctions

>>2298878
I was told a currency must be involved in a transaction for it to be capitalism. Do China and Iran trade outside of a capitalist framework sometimes?

>>2298887
I don't know what you are talking about, why don't you ask the person that told you that instead of schizoposting

this is an open question to for any anon with half a brain

>>2298887
people regularly trade commodities in kind though

>>2298910
informally and on an individual basis, yes, but not on an international level

>listening to an audiobook of political economy
I'm sure all that information is being absorbed.

>>2298887
After the Roman Empire collapsed people continued to measure the value of things in Roman currency, even if they had none available to physically trade. They would keep ledgers tracking payments and debts. It's just a measurement tool and you don't need the physical stuff to use it that way. We don't physically trade cash in most transactions today either, simply changing numbers in a database that represents money we own.

>>2298939
different people prefer different methods of processing information. When listening to an audiobook it is advisable to rewind for parts if you feel like you weren't paying attention, the same way you might re-read a passage that you skimmed on autopilot. Obviously if you reach a point where there is a chart, table, graph, figure, or image, the audiobook narrator should inform you to consult the real book. Andrew Rightenburg does this in his Capital audiobooks linked in the OP. As for footnotes that is something you should go back and read on your own time but I have encountered some audiobooks that include them (very rarely).

My preferred method is to listen to a book once as an audiobook to "get the big idea" while at work, or doing chores, or whatever, and then go back and read it physically when I have fere time.

As always it is good to take notes, or ask questions, consult other people who have read the book, etc. No single strategy is good in a vacuum but should be combined with other strategies.

>>2298977
Archeology demonstrates that debt records started out as clay cuneiform records (3000s BCE Mesopotamia) long before coinage was invented (~600 BCE Lydia). So the earliest form of banking, which did not use coinage, predates currency by nearly 2,500 years. Storehouses and temples in Uruk held clay records of who owed what to whom. This was actually the primary purpose of early writing. Literature and poetry and religious documents were secondary. As always, superstructure emerges from base.

When Marx was writing in the 1840s–1880s, archaeology of Mesopotamia was in its infancy. The decipherment of cuneiform began in the 1850s, and detailed economic interpretations came much later in the 20th century. So Marx lacked access to this newly available archaeological record when detailing his history of money early in Volume 1. This is not a complaint against Marx so much as it is an additional bit of nuance.

>>2299122
Yeah I actually got the information in that post from Graeber's Debt. You're correct. I shouldn't have called Marx's "Forms" that he elaborates in V1C1S3 a "history." That was wrong on my part. Thanks for the correction.

>>2299139
Is Graeber any good? I don't see much praises of him here

>>2299147
i think hes fine, like hudson. they just sort of decenter marx's critique of capitalism to focus on debt in different MoP

>>2299147
Not those anons but Debt was very good, i'd highly recommend it, also his last book.
He was very active politically in the radical/activist space, for that i will always appreciate him more than any books tbh.

was gonna say transhistorical debt but its not really since it doesn't arise till agriculture. but its more of an analysis(interpret the world, yet correct) then how to change it

How much productive forces is enough for communism?

Would you say 1st world countries like USA/EU/AU are already sufficiently developed for communism?

Is there like a target number, like $30,000 GDP per capita or something?

>>2299139
np
>>2299185
the broader extrapolation of debt is to naturalise its relation as ontological. life is a debt which is constantly being paid for - like karma, or sin. you might otherwise call it "entropy" or "death". society makes debt a meme, which is supppied with by ritual. freud's "death drive" also adds to this. we are driven to self-destruction; which is also the logic of economic value.
>>2299147
i only read graeber's debt book but i thought it was absolutely fabulous. it is a sort of inversion of marxist critique, by analysing the superstructure (or sphere of circulation, rather than production), and seeing how this affects society (other books with this same theme include baudrillard's "symbolic exchange and death", and kojin karatani's "the structure of world history". camille paglia's "sexual personae" may also fit into this category). i find graeber's general view of society being based in credit and debts persuasive. the "bonds" of society are held together by mutual debts and forgiveness. money is simply a circulating debt, which must be forgiven after a certain period, lest the debtors become enslaved.

graeber sees how parental relationships have always been characterised as an unpayable debt, leading to ancestor worship in terms of forgiveness (of course, we still pray to our heavenly "father" for forgiveness). crime in general is seen as a debt against society. we are "charged" with a penalty and "pay a price". if it be the case, we may also be "forgiven" and have our charges "cleared", where the "record" or "slate" is made "clean". this directly refers to the tracking of ancient debts, where tablets were destroyed at the end of each old cycle (the structure of jurisprudence today is also overtly christian, where one pays penance after "confessing" to their crime/sin).

good manners are based in reciprocal relationships of mutual debt. the ceremony of manners is in forgiving interpersonal debts. one pleads to another for permission for something, and they are duly granted it. this is perhaps why any lack of reciprocation in manners makes us furious, since we are held in their debt; the same way we may pettily refuse to thank someone who is inconvenient toward us. we feel like we have "gained" something, which is a social mastery over them; they are unforgiven. problems begin here.

michael hudson in his book, "forgive them their debts" also goes into this, where the christian message was in appealing to the "jubilee" year of the jews, where one may be a slave up to the period of 7 years, where afterwards they were set free (like the shabbat, or new milennium). the lord's prayer includes in it the request for God to forgive debts, as we forgive our own debtors. "sin" then is a concept of debt, as we see in the jewish ritual of yom kippur (which is what the passion of Christ is based on). a scapegoat is sacrificed for the sins of the community. this is present in most pagan communities also, where animals are given to the gods (where animals represent the "totem" of the ancestral cult, and so is an offering to the celestial family and tribe). in every way, debt accumulates and is sought to be erased. this is the general crisis of society, and it has reared its head again today, where rentiers have monopolised our land and property to extract resources they dont deserve. there is debt, but no forgiveness. this only ends in slavery, or revolution. graeber however already sees that we are slaves; wage slaves. the "wage", as he explains, was originally the personal fund given to servants. likewise, the "slaves" of antiquity were servants to the same degree as today, and wage workers also work longer than serfs ever did. serfs had an allotted debt, which was paid for by a certain amount of labour. today, there is an unpayable debt - we are existing in worse conditions than serfs.

its these sorts of insights which are very valuable to me, and which are thankfully bipartisan, common sense concerns, rather than academic nonsense or marxist myopia. the class struggle between worker, capitalist and landlord was explored by adam smith as early as 1776, in light of the revolution, and this inquiry has been pursued by all true liberals. in 1690, locke declared that labour afforded man his rightful property, yet it is the fruit of his labour which affords the property of the landlord. a person who believes in property cannot believe in this system;
<"The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others." [john locke, of civil government, ch. 5, §27]
labour is owed its rightful property.

[an aspect of graeber's book i especially liked was his description of ancient materialism beginning with the coining of money in 600 B.C. - aristotle also sees philosophy beginning in thales by this same materialism in "metaphysics" book 1, where there is a progressive movement from materialism to idealism. graeber likewise sees that in periods of credit money, there is idealism, and in metal money, there is materialism. since 1971, there has been an exponential rise in religious fundamentalism, so perhaps that plays into it; "postmodern conservatism"]

>>2300062
>How much productive forces is enough for communism?
People always argue over this because they say "Marx thought Britain was developed enough for socialism in the 1800s so why are we waiting on China to finish developing the productive forces in the 2020s?"

I think the answer is that the level of development of productive forces is supposed to be relative rather than absolute. Relative to what? Relative to imperialism.

Marx always thought Communism would arise first in the most developed nations of the imperial core. In the 20th century we experienced the contrary trend of nations like Tsarist Russia and Qing China, backwards semi-feudal countries having "proletarian" revolutions (that were paradoxically carried out by a peasant majority merely led by a proletarian vanguard).

Now did history prove Marx wrong or were these merely premature births? Those who say "premature birth" say so because the USSR collapsed and China has become in their eyes revisionist and capitalist. Putting aside that debate, which I don't find as interesting or important as others might, it is noteworthy that alongside these peripheral "premature births" we also have imperial core "abortions" like the Paris Commune and the German Revolution of 1919 that were both suppressed.

China's "reason" or "excuse" (depending on your severity of criticism) for waiting on the "development of productive forces" in this 21st century, is that, even though they are absolutely-speaking far more developed than 19th century England, they are still relatively-speaking far behind the USA, not in terms of manufacturing capacity, but in terms of nominal GDP and military power projection. The China-defending line is this: China's gap with America is closing quickly but to expect China to pivot to full socialism and begin exporting the revolution to other nations before they are the pre-eminent superpower is unrealistic. This is a return to Marx, where socialism emerges from the core rather than the periphery… but the China-attacking line is this: if China has already compromised itself and reverted to bourgeois forms in order to protect itself "until the time is right" then why would they export the revolution instead of simply taking America's place as the hegemon?

There is also the question of unequal development. A peripheral country today may be absolutely-speaking more developed than the 1800s England that Marx was writing Capital in, but relatively-speaking they may be kept underdeveloped through imperialism so they can be exploited for natural resources, be forced at gunpoint to take out IMF loans and adopt union-busting and austerity policies, have coup leaders installed if they become unruly towards the imperial core, suffer from occupation due to their lack of military might, etc. Of course Saddam's Iraq for example and Gaddafi's Libya were both more developed than 1800s England, but they still suffered from occupation and destruction when they dared to step out of line. Can we really say they have enough "productive forces" if they can't resist the imperialists? But then we also saw how Vietnam defeated American occupation (at a huge cost of lives of course). So it's a difficult questin.

>>2300224

>Marx always thought Communism would arise first in the most developed nations of the imperial core.

Actually he began to change his view on this in his later life.

>>2300229
Yeah that's true, I should have made a side note about that

>>2300229
Ignoring my glaring error at that part what are your thoughts on the rest of the post? Thanks.

>>2300224
>why would they export the revolution instead of simply taking America's place as the hegemon?
Because that's impossible. China watchers are not really wrong: China would have failed long ago if it worked as any capitalist country does. Their lower profit margins would have simply made them a bad option to invest into, among many other things. China watchers just don't understand the power that the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism provides.
China may not export any revolution ever, but it's impossible for them to take the spot of the leader of the imperialist world without falling apart very quickly. They would lose all that manufacturing they worked so hard to get.

>>2300244
>>2300247
is there actually any evidence marx changed his mind, or is this another popular myth? remember, we need primary sources!
>>2300229
perhaps i am ignorant, but i dont recall marx ever backtracking his position, which is clearly stated here:
<"It is a question of these laws themselves [of capitalist production], of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future […] in England the process of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must react on the Continent." [capital vol. 1, ch. 1, 1867 preface]
marx perceives a linear causality as it relates to the progress of history. engels, years later, shares the same view:
<"The working of the industrial system of this country, impossible without a constant and rapid extension of production, and therefore of markets, is coming to a dead stop […] The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air." [capital vol. 1, 1886 preface]
engels sees the imminence of revolution.
in regards to a misquotation of marx:
<"The English working class will never accomplish anything…"
it must be read in its context:
<"As to the Irish question….The way I shall put forward the matter next Tuesday is this: that quite apart from all phrases about "international" and "humane" justice for Ireland – which are to be taken for granted in the International Council – it is in the direct and absolute interest of the English working class to get rid of their present connection with Ireland […] The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general." [marx, 1869 letter to engels]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_12_10-abs.htm
now, regarding this "irish question", marx and engels have rather crude sentiments. first is engels:
<"The southern facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness. The temptation is great, he cannot resist it, and so when he has money he gets rid of it down his throat. What else should he do? How can society blame him when it places him in a position in which he almost of necessity becomes a drunkard; when it leaves him to himself, to his savagery? With such a competitor the English working-man has to struggle, with a competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who for this very reason requires less wages than any other. Nothing else is therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-man should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. All such as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane." [engels, condition of the working class, 1845]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm
he is saying that [irish] immigration lowers the wages of a national working class by a general decline of the standard of living.
marx wrote this, also:
<"Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself […] But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class. And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life." [marx, letter to sigfrid meyer, 1870]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm
marx is offering similar feelings. to marx and engels then, there seems to be a ruling class interest in immigration, which leads to antagonisms in the working class. i find no further context to the "irish question" by marx, considering this letter was written a year after his immense declaration that "The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland". was marx simply MAGA?

>>2300318

>is there actually any evidence marx changed his mind, or is this another popular myth? remember, we need primary sources!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/zasulich.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/index.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/reply.htm

I think this idea comes from Karl Marx's correspondence with Vera Zasulich in 1881, two years before his death, over the question of whether Russia could bypass capitalism and move directly to socialism based on the traditional peasant commune.


Zasulich:

> it is a life-and-death question above all for our socialist party. In one way or another, even the personal fate of our revolutionary socialists depends upon your answer to the question. For there are only two possibilities. Either the rural commune, freed of exorbitant tax demands, payment to the nobility and arbitrary administration, is capable of developing in a socialist direction, that is, gradually organising its production and distribution on a collectivist basis. In that case, the revolutionary socialist must devote all his strength to the liberation and development of the commune.

>If, however, the commune is destined to perish, all that remains for the socialist, as such, is more or less ill-founded calculations as to how many decades it will take for the Russian peasant’s land to pass into the hands of the bourgeoisie, and how many centuries it will take for capitalism in Russia to reach something like the level of development already attained in Western Europe. Their task will then be to conduct propaganda solely among the urban workers, while these workers will be continually drowned in the peasant mass which, following the dissolution of the commune, will be thrown on to the streets of the large towns in search of a wage.

Marx drafted several versions of his response (which show his evolving thought), but ultimately sent one final letter. In his letter of March 8, 1881, Marx acknowledged that the Russian peasant commune could be a starting point for socialism, but only if it was preserved from attack.

Marx replying to Zasulich:

>the special study I have made of it, including a search for original source­ material, has convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. But in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development.

So I think it has to do with getting excited about this statement specifically.

Marx was being flexible and context-sensitive, and argued that his theory was not a one-size-fits-all model. The evolution of capitalism in Western Europe wasn't necessarily a universal pattern that all societies had to follow. He recognized that the Russian rural commune contained communal and cooperative elements that, under the right conditions, could serve as the basis for a socialist transition. Marx was cautious.

>>2300069
>the broader extrapolation of debt is to naturalise its relation as ontological.
Yes that is the problem. Pretty sure Greaber agrees that debt didn't exist until sedentary agriculture created surplus food which resulted in the invention of writing.

>>2300069
>this inquiry has been pursued by all true liberals
i wonder why "true liberalism" never works out. did anyone ever write about that?
>marxist myopia
oh well guess not

>>2300704
>>2300704
>i believe he says that there is no accountable origin of debt, since it is just in the structure of society itself
correct, if there is no writing there is no 'account'. similarly if we consider civilization sedentary then nomads are not a society because society implies property relations. the "first 5000 years" starts 5000 ya, which by many accounts is only a couple hundred years after writing

>>2300704
>vulgar anthropocentrism
is it really or is it human supremacy and speciesism? if his concern is human emancipation that makes sense, and non-human liberation would be predicated on humans first.

but really how can you both be a liberal and reject the concept of freedom?

>>2300318
>was marx simply MAGA?

I was the one who gave you the Vera Zasulich sources earlier. I have finished reading this post in its entirety finally and am ready to reply to this question.

I think it is important for contemporary Marxists to neither deny (since that would require lying) nor to incorporate (since that would be reactionary) the "crude sentiments" as you call them in the works and letters of Engels and Marx. They are not merely "of their time" as is sometimes often used as an excuse, they are specifically racist, yes, even the letter about Ferdinand Lassalle, which many assert was penned in anger after Ferdinand Lassalle suggested Marx "pimp" his daughter out. Proof for that assertion is never provided, instead we see Marx saying that Lassalle suggested his daughter hang out with their mutual friend, a rich aristocratic widower and covert funder of the 1st International named Sophie Von Hatzenfeldt, but I digress. My point is, don't deny these crude sentiments, but don't treat them like gospel either. Contemporary Marxists I think should not simply be fantatical devotees and hangers-on of every single word Marx ever wrote, but simply people who find his works, theories, and methods interesting or useful for the labor movement.

As for the question of immigration, a more useful way to frame this issue already exists in Capital: Reserve army of labor, i.e. using a "relative surplus population" (relative to what? to the needs of capital) to drive down real wages. Ignoring whether or not an immigrant population is "criminal" or "drunk" or "lumpen" it is much more important to keep in mind that it is the bourgeoisie who are pitting proles of different nationalities against each other. And proles in an imperial core nation should not treat "imported" workers with hostility any more than they should have contempt for proles who their jobs are "exported" (outsourced) to. The bourgeoisie orchestrate production through their class dictatorship, and therefore are the orchestrators of the misery of the proletarians of all nations. The psychology of nationalism and ingroup preference is a powerful instinct that it is often very difficult to overcome, which is why class consciousness is something that has to cultivated through education, agitation, and organization, rather than something innate. This is most unfortunate because it means our battle is an uphill one.

It is also important that we keep in mind that capitalism is a system and that capital itself as an incentive structure has hijacked and overridden the collective behavior of society. Capital drives the behavior of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat even when individuals within their class defect or try to fight the system. We call capitalism the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but in a very real sense the bourgeoisie are enslaved to capital as a perverse incentive structure.

>>2300704
>>2300747
Cockshott interestingly criticizes Marx along similar lines in this embedded video. I highly recommend watching it.

It is also the 3rd part of a much longer playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKVcO3co5aCBv0m0fAjoOy1U4mOs_Y8QM

>>2300062
While the contradiction with imperialism is primary for defense of the revolution, we can get a good understanding of the actual productive forces required for communism itself and not just defense from Marx and Lenin's discussions on the withering away of the state. You need enough productive forces for a given population for a post scarcity society. You have to build an economic foundation with machines multiplying labor to the point it is capable of providing the resources actually necessary to fulfill "from each, to each". So it would start with things like food and housing and healthcare, which means you need such and such amount of productive agriculture per capita, so many hospitals, this many doctors, universities to train them and so on. Once these are established and nationalized under a workers dictatorship you move on to electricity and trains and roads, and probably nukes and satellites to defend yourself. Or maybe do them simultaneously. You gotta balance this defense with increasing quality of life so people dont become disillusioned. Once you eclipse the imperialist powers you are 90% of the way there but "basic necessities" increase with world technological development so you will also need things like cell phones and especially with climate change air conditioning. Communism would be something like when you get free food and cell phones from the community dispensary and the HVAC techs come install a new AC for you for free within a couple hours of requesting it on an app because they are bored and labor has become lifes prime want.

>>2300783
So much of the remaining "scarcity" is already contrived. See Chapter 3 of Fascism and Social Revolution by Rajani Palme Dutt, especially the section titled "The Deliberate Destruction of the Productive Forces."

Japan could cause a domino and blow up the current financial system, apparently

Which volume of Capital do I need to purchase to become a millionaire?

Also, why hasn't Andrew Tate done a series on these books yet? Feel like he's missing a golden goose here…

>>2300822
>Which volume of Capital do I need to purchase to become a millionaire?
Are you saying you want to use Capital as a guide to becoming a capitalist?

>>2300812
Are you seriously posting the China collapse clickbait thumbnail guy right now

>>2300794
internationally or…?

>>2300769
>direct government organisation and subsiding of such destruction and restriction of production by all the leading imperialist governments.

>in the forefront by the most “progressive” governments, by the Roosevelt Government in the United States

>From Denmark,

>the same way the British Labour Government

>this new type of capitalist company

>The National Coffee Council of Brazil…in December 1931

>The Governors of Texas and Oklahoma

>the inseparable connection of this process of decay with the social and political pheno mena of decay which find their complete expression in Fascism

so it sounds to me like he is talking about imperialist countries, which makes sense. imperialism is characterized by monopoly which results in stagnation and a lower rate of profit as the maximum technology is applied at all parts of the supply chain. imperialism is already moribund capitalism, capitalism in decay, and fascism is one "solution" to this decay, destruction of productive forces domestically to reset the rate of profit, or external territorial expansion to open new avenues for investment, or a combo like in the bombing of iraq.

he also talks about the destruction of commodities in all capitalist countries but this destruction of productive forces is more specific to imperialist governments or comprador regimes working for imperialist governments. i dont think its correct to say scarcity is contrived in underdeveloped nations who have just gained independence for the first time, for example in china immediately following the revolution.

>>2300318
>he is saying that [irish] immigration lowers the wages of a national working class by a general decline of the standard of living.
How is this "crude sentiment"? He is correct.

>was marx simply MAGA?
In what way?

>>2300769
>Contemporary Marxists I think should not simply be fantatical devotees and hangers-on of every single word Marx ever wrote
I dont think this is what people are doing when they quote Marx on the Irish question or in similar situations, its more looking the general analysis of the relation of the proletariat in both countries under a colonial occupation and seeing if it has broader application. The Irish can't be free without national self determination, and the English can't be free while the working class is split into labor aristocracy and immiserated proles whose short term interests are not aligned. You basically have reactionary unions and lumpens and nothing else. Its rescuing the "rational kernel" from a passing comment and seeing how it might relate to the overall thesis, which isn't always possible sometimes its just a comment.

>>2299558
It's all right there in his autobiography if you just read it lmao.
https://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/life-thought-an-autobiography/
>So we had a new analysis of the origins of property, not just individuals grabbing, as Engels had thought. Property was created by the public sector, by the palaces, as assignment of land as needed.
Engels was wrong, it was actually the ebil central government that created private property! This sounds like a "crony capitalism" rant

>This way of getting the economic surplus is not the way that Marx described it as being obtained under capitalism, by employing labor to produce goods to sell at a profit. It was by debt and taking interest in ultimately foreclosing in land, which was the real objective.
Marx was wrong about how surplus value is extracted, capitalist dindu nuffin, it was them evil (((financiers)))

There's also a bunch of stupid bullshit about "jubilees" and "debt cancellation" that no real Marxist should take seriously.

>>2300704
>as benjamin franklin once said:
>>"man is a tool-making animal"
Are you endorsing that view or is it meant as a similar example?
>the negation of personal will in the animal, and the negation of instinct in man's own construction
And what alternative do you propose? Do you believe in "will"? Do you think animals are conscious? And what about humans?

>>2300773
He also maintains that humans are unique because they can write.

Cockshott does deny consciousness, which puts him at odds with communism being dependent on class consciousness. From a hard determinist and physicalist perspective there is no such thing as ideas or the mind and so if communism is possible, it must be inevitable and there is nothing to be done.

Or perhaps communism is impossible and capitalism is just human nature, playing out instincts programmed into the bundle of chemicals and cells we call human. Does a wolf really have intentions? Does it really intend to eat its pray or is that just a byproduct of its genetic material driven to reproduce itself? Do bees and wolves have the capacity for revolution and self emancipation? Or are those words meaningless?

Maybe communism is inevitable and nature spontaneously is self organizing, life being one such example, but that directly contradicts entropy. On a long enough timeline everything ends with the heat death of the universe. That was nick lands conclusion in his attempts to overcome anthropocentrism.

>>2301288
>Cockshott does deny consciousness
???

>>2301290
He says its an illusion. I believe his position is similar to Dennet

>>2300724
dunno about other nomadic societies, but central asian nomads had property relations

the nomadic lifestyle had more to do with grazing animals according to seasonal patterns, they weren't just wandering around aimlessly for no reason

>>2301320
what time period we talking about here? before 3500 BC? i think people might be projecting property relations when they weren't really there. personal property or ownership through use aren't really the same thing as private property or land as productive real estate. like saying trade and barter is the same as capitalism. or saying that gift economies had the same conception of debt as agricultural ones

>>2301324
Would inter-tribal territorial claims and disputes within a broad culture of people who speak the same language and intermingle through marriage count as property relations?

Like, there were no specific land claims within the tribes members (aside form "chief gets to settle in the nice part near the river", or "chief symbolically settles on the north side of the camp"), but between tribes I believe there were bitter struggles over certain territories

>>2301291
Illusions are phenomena which fool conscious beings. There are no illusions without consciousness, since illusions are a relation between consciousness and a misperceived phenomena. What perceives an illusion? Consciousness.

>>2301331
Yeah I think Cockshott is wrong but try telling him or his fanclub that.

>>2301251
>I dont think this is what people are doing when they quote Marx on the Irish question or in similar situations

It depends on the person

>>2301333
Well I'd like a source for Cockshott not believing in consciousness because the reasoning
>it's just a cloud of unrelated phenomena that appears a certain way but doesn't actually exist
is very similar to Mach's reason for rejecting atoms, but Cockshott rejects Machism and accepts atoms. So it doesn't sound like the kind of reasoning he would use for consciousness.

>>2301335
Right he also thinks that Lenin agrees with him in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" when the position(s) Lenin is critiquing are the same as Cockshotts. He will say he is not a Machist or Berkelian idealist so it doesn't count, yet lately he explicitly upholds mechanical materialism over dialectical materialism.

He references Dennet here
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/historical-materialism-and-the-repudiation-of-subjectivism/
and gives him TWO book recommends under his "materialism" section, including Lenins MEC and Turing. Says Dennet continues Lenins work in materialism lol.

and since I know that wont be enough for Cockshott fans who will need a direct quote we have comments in picrel.
lots more from related topics in the threads on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjja-oNyfdI&lc=UgyUuExX9DapVDDvegF4AaABAg

missed the reading list
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2020/05/01/two-reading-lists/

>>2301334
Of course. But I think if we take his comments on the potential for Russia not as gospel, but as an indication that Marx was flexible and context-sensitive, same as with Ireland, we would find that Marx is not "walking back" his position, but instead clarifying it as dependent on material and historical conditions, and it only seems that he is backtracking to people who do take his word as dogma, or alternatively people who take particular policy prescriptions in isolation from their context and hold him to them in different contexts as a cheap gotcha.

>>2301330
>Would inter-tribal territorial claims and disputes within a broad culture of people who speak the same language and intermingle through marriage count as property relations?
idk lol do wolves have property relations?

>>2301353
I don't know either.
Do beavers build infrastructure?
Do herring have culture?

>>2301347
thanks for the answer. I see what you're getting at now. especially image 3. though he still admits experience of sensations through a brain and says consciousness is just a stand in word for that, but… so what? Are we not allowed to group related phenomena with words? Seems silly and arbitrary.

>>2301367
i think it depends. do beavers exist or are they just a chemical soup? if substance is subject then everything is just stuff and objects are temporary forms that matter takes for a period before it takes another form. if we are to make any sense of things at all we have to pretend objects exist, but ground them within their temporal context. so if property relations is a concept that we use to describe a formation of matter under capitalism, is that the same formation that we use to describe tribal territories? what is the purpose of such a concept? isofar as a concept is objective it has to be shared, we can all agree that a tree is a tree or a dog is a dog, given an agreed on set of constraints but what is a property relation? its more ambiguous and harder for people to agree on the set of constraints. for me i think the distinction is a political one, and whether you call them the same or not is a political decision that depends on the consequences of flattening the difference or choosing to distinguish them.

>>2301380
meaning: are property relations something inherent in nature or are they historically transient? one means they are eternal and the other means they can be overcome

>>2301288
>Cockshott does deny consciousness, which puts him at odds with communism being dependent on class consciousness.
Absurd inference. Cockshott finds the way some philosophers talk about consciousness useless, philosophers of the type that does idle speculation without glancing at what biologists, computer scientists, etc. are investigating. He does not claim that people cannot hold information in their heads, cannot change their opinion with experience and maybe some help of propaganda.
>>2301291
He seems similar in that to Daniel Dennett and has said so himself, yes. But I'm not 100 % sure if I want to call theirs a consciousness-as-illusion position, I prefer to say they find it an extremely garbled concept with no clear consequences. (The consequences 2301288 draws are a non sequitur.) Like, what could possibly be a practical consequence of having this or that position on qualia.
>>2301347
What are these screenshots supposed to signify and what are the practical consequences of this for anyone. What better understanding of anything is offered here by comments like
<im talking about the activity of your brain presenting the world to you
This seems to either lead to body-soul dualism or infinite regress (inside the minds, something is presented to a watcher and that watcher's mind works by something being presented to a watcher inside and so on forever).

>>2301404
obviously its supposed to defend dialectical materialism but if you are just interested in proving cockshott correct learning it will be a difficult task. theres lots of elaboration in the linked comments just like there is in every video or blog post where he says something similar. his position is pretty well established at this point and he gets critique every time he brings it up because it completely contradicts and undermines marx

>>2301421
>if you are just interested in proving cockshott correct
Before trying to read between the lines try reading the lines. I said:
1. The consequences 2301288 draws are a non sequitur.
2. What are the practical consequences of this dispute?
3. "Your brain presenting the world to you…" seems to either lead to body-soul dualism or infinite regress.

Make an argument addressing at least a single point of what I said. You may claim that "defending dialectical materialism" meets point 2, but for that you would have to load up the meaning of the DM view with statements that are already perfectly agreeable to people like Rosa Lichtenstein who agree with much of what Marx wrote without them identifying with DM. Do you have something else?

>>2301456
I think I was pretty clear the first time when I said that from a strict physicalist position communism is either inevitable or it is not. That has a lot of practical consequences, and explains why Cockshott thinks he can prove communism true by doing math. Dialectical materialism does not lead to body-soul dualism or infinite regress.

If you dont want me to read between the lines then you are going to need to be more specific. What does " The consequences 2301288 draws" refer to? Dennett says himself that he thinks its an illusion. Maybe you think something else?

>>2301459
What have you read of Dennett?

>>2301462
What have you read of Marx?

>>2301463
I'm old so I don't actually remember everything but of the top of my head Capital I, II, III, "IV"; Manifesto, CotGP, Wage-Labor and Capital, Brumaire, some letters and articles although for some of the articles it isn't quite clear whether they were penned by Marx or Engels. From Engels ABC and Anti-Dühring.

>>2301467 (me)
And Grundrisse; the thing against Proudhon; Value, Price and Profit.

>you need writing for debt account
What if people were just rly good at remembering back then

>>2301480
>he also disputes debts arising from the invention of writing
interesting. its not critical for my point of view. i usually consider money-debt-writing-patriarchy-slavery all as a result of sedentary agriculture leading to surplus food and surplus population. not really sure what order it happens in or whether it matters. its certainly possible that verbal debts came first and they wrote them down later or even that different places adopted them in different orders. the transition from one to the other was a result in a change in the method of reproduction of social life.

i agree more with the state theory of money obviously. but either way my point has been that whatever it is, it is not transhistorical. i think the religion metaphor is something the guy who came up with commodity fetishism would appreciate

>>2301490
>it is not transhistorical
think of it this way. if there was no "debt" (tax) inherent to society, then there would never be a need for a state. however, there is always need for a state, so there is always a debt inherent to society. stateless societies are typically not civilisations, yet in place of the state, they have tribal rule, which likewise offers tributes to idols. there is no free lunch, but always ritual which expends resources, and this acts as a form of social reproduction. in my criticism of carl menger, i cite adam smith in this respect; that the state is unproductive (valueless), yet simultaneously necessary (useful). this is the function of debt/waste. its like how our free time becomes wasted time. we need this negativity to orient ourselves. an original sin.
>>2301288
if the proposition "humans are animals" holds, then we can assume that we behave in the same way they do. the only alternative is to assume otherwise, that humans are somehow "special". as marx says, bees put architects to shame. if we were the size of bees, would we feel superior? i think animals and insects have as much will and instinct as we do. humans are just "the food which speaks", as the cannibals say.
>>2300747
>is it really or is it human supremacy and speciesism?
to me, it just seems like a theoretical error on marx's part. we can read it here:
<"But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality."
this, cockshott criticises as "idealism", as he says in this video: >>2300773
its idealism because it attributes a special status to "imagination", when of course, the ends of production owe little to the substance of its means. it is the same way a machine increases the labour power of a worker, so he is not diminished by this tool, but amplified by it. would a bee become more or less productive with "imagination"? its immaterial, so irrelevant to the topic of legitimising human labour. cockshott also astutely sees the fact that an architect rarely creates anything themselves; so marx in his anthropocentrism also blinds himself from class reality. cockshott instead attributes technical culture like writing to be what makes humanity unique - i would say "speech" instead.
>freedom
like kant's critique of pure reason, we must see the ways in which freedom itself has its preconditions. one man's will opposes another, such as his property intrudes upon another's.

>>2301392

A thing can be inherent in nature and also be possible to overcome

>>2301654
any examples?

>>2301660

Animals exist in a constant state of either being predator or prey or both. Humans can overcome this and become neither.

>>2301660
Polio

>>2301669
is polio "inherent" to nature?
>>2301665
>humans are not predators
look up "factory farming footage"

>>2301719
Cool language game

>>2301869
is this some attempt at a rebuke?
also, where we incur immunity to one disease, we just become victim to another. you cant prevent death, since life is just a process of slowly dying. its funny though, these popular histories of "progress". reminds me of people saying "slavery was abolished", when more slaves exist today than ever did in history. nature is cruel and always has the last word.

>>2301520
>if there was no "debt" (tax) inherent to society, then there would never be a need for a state.
okay but then you are calling different things debt that are not the same.

>there is always need for a state
like how tribal rule is not a state

>this, cockshott criticises as "idealism"
right because of the imagination part. he still says that humans raises his structure on paper which makes them unique.

you didn't answer the question about franklin. marx agrees that humans are unique because they use tools to manipulate their environment, and that tool use changes consciousness.

>like kant's critique of pure reason, we must see the ways in which freedom itself has its preconditions.
Kant distinguishes between negative freedom, one man opposing another, and positive freedom as the capacity to act, in general. Hegel grounds this positive freedom in the development of the state, and Marx critiques Hegel for idealism for assuming the state is natural, but praises him for grounding capacity for action in the material world.

>>2301584
>the lockean axiom is that we possess our own bodies.
and Marx and Hegels critique of freedom also apply here. you only possess your own body insofar as you have a capacity to act towards your own will which is constrained by the material conditions and level of development of society.

>>2301977
>where we incur immunity to one disease, we just become victim to another.
You're retarded.

>>2301195
First and only video I saw from him

>>2302250
>yes, there are different types of debt
right just like there are different types of money and different types of exchange. but we dont call barter capitalism

>>2303048
>who does that?
people who think capitalism is markets and trade and other human nature enjoyers

its similar to how duty, responsibility, obligation, commitments, promises, and vows are not the same thing as the practice of loaning money at interest

>>2302250
>In Orthodox Christianity, original sin refers to the "first" sin of Adam and Eve and the consequences it has on humanity. While all humans bear the consequences of this sin, Orthodox Christians believe they are not personally guilty of Adam and Eve's sin.

so like do you hate marx and communism because you are a protestant or what

>>2303099
why dont you like heglol then?
>Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.
isn't that what marx wants to do?

or is it that you change personalities with each edition of the thread?

>>2303132
>i feel like i have been largely consistent.
i mean you had a big problem with hegel using god to tie up his package

>yes, and no.
well he basically says hegel didn't go far enough and we actually have to ya know build the kingdom first. or did you mean that you like living in 'sin' and think what de sade describes is how it should be

>>2300318
a lot of people mention his studies on the russian empire's economy

>>2301240
This post seems like it was meant for >>2300794 since it quotes some of the text from Dutt. Is that correct?

>>2301240
>i dont think its correct to say scarcity is contrived in underdeveloped nations who have just gained independence for the first time, for example in china immediately following the revolution.
But it is still contrived. Not by the peripheral governments themselves but by the imperialists. There's a reason the imperialists governments are willing to give endless "food aid" and IMF loans to the global south, but they never want to repeat the mistake of selling them means of production and encouraging their development, which is the mistake they made with Japan in the 19th century, USSR in the 20th Century, and PRC in the 21st century: To force development onto a peripheral nation so rapidly that they become an overnight competitor. The point of imperialism is to develop the periphery by exporting capital to them, but not so fast that they outstrip the imperial core. Underdevelopment is relative, not absolute. The "underdeveloped" nations of today are more developed usually than the most imperialist countries of the mid 19th century, but less developed than the most imperialist nations of today. And the "underdeveloped" nations are rich in resources, but they are plundered by the imperialists. So in that sense also the scarcity is artificial. Sankara, Yanukovych, and Evo Morales had somewhat different politics and methods from one another, but they were all targeted over their refusal to accept IMF loans, which are infamous not just for their exorbitant rates of interest, but their demands for privatization, austerity, union busting, natural resource selloff, foreign direct investment, etc.

>>2303436
yeah everyone knows that but it's not like anyone has a real option other than to carry a bunch of dirty ass cash around that can easily be robbed off of them and to do all transactions in cash, which is increasingly considered impractical and undesired by business owners who insist on card transactions.

I know people who insist on doing everything in cash and it seems like a huge pain in the ass vs. direct deposit and use your debit card when you need to buy something. The real mistake people make with non-cash transactions is taking loans and using credit cards.

>>2303545
>well its not even a legal option, really. you need a bank account to transfer your income into. your boss will not be paying you with cash.
depends on the job. in my early 20s I had a job laying carpet and concrete with some tremendously racist rednecks and they paid me about 250/week under the table. This was only about 14 years ago. Of course most "respectable" jobs won't pay you this way, but you'd be suprised how many people are still paid this way, even in the "Developed" countries.

>>2303545
>well the credit system is baked into necessary functions, like mortgage loans.

most people pay rent and don't have a snowball's chance in hell at home ownership. Many default on their mortages. But yes. Not to contradict your point.

>>2303545
>no, not everyone knows that. people assume banks are storage facilities, rather than private businesses. people think they have access "their" accounts, when they are at the mercy of trustees. if they behave in a way against policy, their accounts may even be frozen and seized. its not their money.
While you are correct on this point, it's important to not confuse the legal reality of banking (what you describe) with what is actually practical and enforceable. The ruling class are still the bourgeoisie. To say that the bourgeoisie do not "own" their own liquid capital and that the banks control everything leads to petty bourgeois errors of the American Libertarian variety. It ignores that the banks are an instrument of bourgeois class solidarity and bourgeois class discipline, and that the proles who deposite their wages into banks are much more at the mercy of the banks than the literal billionaires who deposit their capital gains. A billionaire still effectively owns his own capital even if it's in a bank and his capital gains are not in much danger of being seized unless said billionaire tries to pull a Friedrich Engels and start funding communists.

>>2303099
>as a liberal
>[…]
>i am anti-capitalist.
But Black Dynamite, liberalism is the ideology of the bourgeoisie!

>>2303142
>can you refresh my memory?
you said that dialectics were invalid because hegel appeals to god like aristotles prime mover
>as a protestant
yeah okay i cant tell if this is facetious
>many marxists become catholics (and vice versa)
i think so too
>i believe in "grace" through faith
yes that is the biggest difference. protestants believe in faith alone as distinguished from salvation through works

most of the posts are gone but we do have this quote preserved from you
>you are just saying im infected with bourgeois ideology as if i have chosen to worship the wrong God. i do not argue from faith
"largely consistent"
>a man of God and the world
sounds dialectical

>>2303392
yes
>>2303414
>Not by the peripheral governments themselves but by the imperialists.
>>2301209
>internationally or…?
i get what you are saying, but unless you are mean that imperialists should share their surplus, what i meant by "china after the revolution" is that there are places where they dont actually have the productive forces for even basic things like feeding people, even if that situation is contrived in so far as its a result of capitalist/imperialist decisions that preceded it. like its not just a matter of redistribution on a national basis that would overcome the contrivance. uneven development also happens within a nation on the rural-urban divide, and since underdevelopment is relative you can have a population increasing faster then the economic base necessary to support it. i just think the meaning of artificial in artificial scarcity is a bit more narrow, like if you have enough food to feed everyone but you burn the oranges in kerosene to decrease supply and increase prices. but i fully agree with the relative nature of the necessary level of development of productive forces being in comparison and for self defense against the leading imperialist powers.

>>2303758
>i am a bourgeois thinker, and wish to complete the bourgeois revolution. liberté. egalité. fraternité.
for you, how is this "anti-capitalist"?

>>2303833
Thanks for replying, I understand better what you're getting at now, thanks.

>>2303758
>to complete the bourgeois revolution
so did marx lol. except he realized that liberté egalité fraternité are incompatible with private property, where liberals think true freedom is borne from it

>>2304164
>that doesnt seem to be coherent.
yeah i dont think your position is
>my critique of hegel's dialectical logic
okay but this makes sense from a formal logic perspective but ABC relates to eachother by relation to the whole, the absolute. so they are not relations of the same kind.
>you can think of it economically.
you can if you want i guess. im not here to defend catholicism. indulgences are pretty obviously bs and good works is meant as something more like hegels concept of freedom being aligning oneself with rational structures that embody collective freedom, which can be seen as utilization of the laws of nature according to human understanding and science, which is just a secular way to say "following gods plan"

>where is this quote from?
>>2212353

>>2304177
>i dont think marx was a liberal though, but a critic of liberalism
right i dont think hes a liberal either but i do think his critique is meant to fulfill the promises of liberalism

you also said that freedom is slavery so its interesting now that you say you are defending liberty and call yourself a liberal

>>my position then does not necessitate freedom, but only ethics. >>2203802

>what it might mean to you
hes saying that primitive accumulation is the socialization of production but doesn't go far enough because the products of labor remain private which leads to monopoly and stagnation by its own logic

>i am a bourgeois thinker, and wish to complete the bourgeois revolution. liberté. egalité. fraternité
Lurking again and yeah, leftypol really went down the shitter the last few months

>>2304411
4chan going down for a bit was a disaster. But regarding his point, it's actually not uncommon among the left.
I can't pull out the video where a guy is talking about this, but emancipations with Daniel tutt video was talking about this precise thing.

Basically that liberalism is incapable of providing the promises it makes, liberté etc. And that leftism is taking that promise on and trying to overcome liberalism to actually achieve it.

>>2304411
>>2304435
Actually on second thought, I have read nothing except the last 3 posts. Disregard what I said. Probably makes no sense. My apologies.

well yeah that guy is a neokeynesian or something that wants to use mmt to print money for ubi and pay privately owned ai a wage because capital can create value without human labor to make market-notcommunism-notanarchism-liberalism-but-notcapitalism who is also an kantian empiricist and newly converted protestant who thinks the state and communism are slavery and that value and debt and apparently markets are both human nature and transhistorical eternal laws of the universe but marxists are religious dogmatists who dont read dont understand philosophy or science because marx didn't actually make any contributions to humanity and just plagiarized adam smith but also also that communism is an affront to god that disrupts the natural order and always results in a gorillion dead because hegel was a mystical devil worshipper but also we should engage in sin because it feels good

you see its all very coherent and logical unlike marxism

Found this interesting and posting it in every thread where it's relevant (usapol, political economy, prc, isg)

Burgerland petty booj youtuber tries to make a grill brush in burgerland, and it ends up costing 4x as much as standard foreign shit, and even after trying his ass off he still ends up needing to import one of the most important parts (the signature chainmail on the grill brushhead) from India (in order to avoid buying from the dastardly commies), but then later on finds out that the Indians were just reselling Chinese shit anyway.

The video ends with an impassioned plea to p-p-please buy American even if it's not profitable because muh community muh nationalism muh smol biz owners. All in All very delusional petty bourgeois video from a guy who means well but doesn't really seem to understand why capitalism is eviscerating him.

There's also an aside about grill brushes with bristles being really dangerous and the bristles can fuck up your organs

>>2305229
>means well

because what, he wants other people to buy american to escape the commies??

>>2305229
also bro you don't need to post this in three threads

>>2305242
it's not hurting you so comment on it or ignore it. don't make some annoying meta complaint

>>2304177
How can one be a "bourgeois thinker" and a "liberal" but at the same time anti-capitalist? Why would a "bourgeois thinker" oppose the system created by and operated for the benefit of the bourgeosie as a class? When in history has the ruling class destroyed deliberately their own system for being unfair?

>>2305256
>if A=B, and B=C, then A=C.
the relation between A B and C is not the same as the relation between A B C and the absolute, that is the between the parts and other parts and the parts and the whole.
>not in the least. marx describes primitive accumulation here
and also in the chapter you first linked, which describes exactly what I said
why did you even ask?
and tell us what it means to you

>What does the primitive accumulation of capital … resolve itself into?

>Private property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labour and the external conditions of labour belong to private individuals. But according as these private individuals are labourers or not labourers, private property has a different character. The private property of the labourer in his means of production is the foundation of petty industry … is an essential condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality of the labourer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom … This mode of production presupposes parcelling of the soil and scattering of the other means of production.
first he tells us that the character of private property depends on whether it is owned by individual producers or people who do not work

>'As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so also it excludes cooperation, division of labour within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with a system of production, and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primitive bounds. At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution.
now he describes how the property of individual producers brings about its own destruction because it lacks socialization

>Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil … Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring individual with the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property

>this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime.
and that destruction is what marx calls primitive accumulation of capital which socializes the means of production while privitizing the profits

>capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.
then he tells us that this creates an opportunity for communism.

>The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people
and closes out saying it was really violent, but it will be easier for us because there are more workers than borg

>>2305269
>i prefer to let you live in fantasy.
you prefer not holding clear positions so you can change them whenever you get proven wrong

>if i make the simple arithmetic sum: 1+1=2
u a platonist too?

>>2305305
Its strange that you claim to be Christian and do not(or pretend not) to understand when Hegels says the Christian trinity is an mystical occluded representation of his dialectical method. Hegel was also (supposedly) a protestant after all. God the Father (Universal) particularizes in Christ (Particular) and becomes concrete through the Spirit (Individual) in the believer. Hegel stresses the physicality of Christ's incarnation against abstract spirituality, the "Word made flesh". The crucifixion especially shows God's immersion in material finitude. He resolves the apparent contradiction in the Trinity (three persons but one substance) through dialectics, difference preserved within unity. This is the same as the contradiction that I≠U. For Hegel, the Holy Spirit's work in the community completes God's self-realization. God actualized in the community of believers, the Universal returning to itself through the Particular. The Spirit is the living presence of God in the individual consciousness and the collective Church. The Father is not "God" in full actuality apart from the Son and Spirit. The Son (Christ) is the "truth" of the Father made manifest, without the Incarnation, God remains an empty abstraction. The Spirit is God’s return to self through human finitude, completing the syllogism. Christ’s death (particularity negated) is the pivotal moment, the death of God-in-finite-form sublates (aufheben) the separation between divine and human. Finitude ("I") is not annihilated but preserved and elevated into the life of the Spirit ("U"). The "gap" between God (U) and humanity (I) is mediated through Christ’s sacrifice (P). The gap between humanity and God is overcome within material history, not postponed to an afterlife. For Hegel the Trinity’s culmination in the Spirit requires the material community, this is not "idealism" in the subjective sense, it is God constituting himself through the finite, material world.
Its entirely possible if Hegel was more explicit, if he did not write the way he did, he could have been persecuted for athiesm, even fired from his post, the same way Spinoza was excommunicated. And of course Marx does exactly that, Hegelianizing Hegel, he also does not simply overcome him, but merely repeats at a higher level. The Church as a political institution is obvious in Catholicism, but hidden for Protestants, with the invention of the printing press and numerous "interpretations", yet Luther and Calvin were as dogmatic as Rome when challenged. For Orthodox Lutherans (and Catholics), Hegel’s claim that "God is God only insofar as He knows Himself" (through human consciousness/history) collapses transcendence into immanence. This erases the personal, sovereign God of Scripture, the core of "atheism" accusations against philosophers since Socrates. Luther even called reason "the Devil’s whore" when it challenged sola fide, and called for the execution of blasphemers and heretics. What binds these different interpretations together is belief by blind faith, as it is with yourself, rather than reason, as it is with dialectics.

>>2305305
>so to you, the "absolute" is the form of the syllogism itself?
That is what Hegel says.
>do these results owe their construction to a participation in the sum itself? no. here's why.
No, its because 1 and 2 are abstract symbols that dont have a concrete reality prior to or independent from humans using them to do math.
>mediated by what are called "functions" (+, ×, ÷, etc.)
Those are operators not functions.
>this is the hegelian "middle term" which relates variables to each other.
No its not, the "middle term" is the particular which is a concrete determination of a material thing that relates the individual to the universal.
>hegel's false construction is giving (pre)condition to the variables [I-P-U]
Its not a false construction, the terms of I-P-U are not predetermined because they do not exist outside their concrete determinations. Hegels syllogism isn't an abstract form but a description of material reality.
The Individual only becomes concretely individual through its particularization of the Universal. The Universal only becomes concrete through its instantiation in the Particular and Individual. The terms co-constitute each other within the syllogism. Hegel isn't saying the form magically creates pre-existing terms. He's saying Reality (the Absolute Idea) exists only as this process of self-mediation. The syllogism is the dynamic movement from one to the other and back again.
>the issue with this, is that it creates a contradiction
No, thats literally the entire point. The contradiction is essential. Things do not have static identities where I=U, things are determined by the process of overcoming the distinction between I and U as mediated through P. The contradiction I ≠ U is not a flaw but the engine that drives the dialectic forward. P is the necessary bridge because I and U are distinct within their unity. The distinction (I ≠ U) isn't erased, it's preserved within a higher unity achieved through the mediating activity (P).
The "Absolute as Syllogism" is this active process of mediation, not a state where I and U collapse into featureless sameness. The apparent separation is the moment of difference that demands mediation (P). This mediation isn't just a connection, it's the process by which I and U define each other.
The form (I-P-U) isn't the Absolute in isolation. The Absolute is the entire, self-enclosed system of syllogisms (Subjective, Objective, Idea) where every moment mediates every other. It is the self-mediating activity of the concept actualizing itself through its own determinations.
Exactly as has been repeated probably a hundred times you are making a category error conflating formal logic for dialectical logic. Abstract "forms" as in formal logic, are not real. They can be useful, as in math, but they do not represent reality as it actually is, merely an approximation.
You implicitly treat numbers (1, 2) and the operation (+) as pre-existing, self-subsistent entities participating in a relationship. This is idealism. Numbers are only real insofar as they stand in for real objects. There is no 1 existing prior to its participation in relations like + or =. Its identity is constituted through its mediation within the system of arithmetic/logic.
Hegels dialectic is not a formal logic that can be separated from its metaphysical/ontological claims. The "Absolute as syllogism" is the claim that reality is the self-mediating activity of the Concept (Geist/Idea). The form is the content. Hegel isn't mistakenly conflating form and content, he deliberately identifies them as the Absolute. His entire system aims to overcome the very dualism your critique relies upon (subject/object, form/content, universal/particular).
Hegels point is that the very notion of a "pre-given term" independent of relations is a contentless empty abstraction. True concreteness and reality lie only in the self-mediating whole (the Absolute as syllogistic system). The "sophistry" you identify is the radical core of his project, it is the rejection of independent substances in favor of relational processes as ontologically primary.
The Concept is not a disembodied, pre-existing Platonic form hovering above reality. It is the immanent, dynamic logic of reality itself, a logic that necessarily involves its own self-externalization and self-particularization in materiality.
The Universal (Concept/Idea) is not abstract, it achieves its concreteness, its actuality, only by embodying itself in the Particular and the Individual. Conversely, the Individual only has genuine, determinate reality as a particularization of the Universal. They are mutually constitutive moments. Hegel relentlessly criticizes abstract Universals and bare, isolated Individuals/Particulars. Truth and reality lie only in their mediated unity within the dialectical process. Nature is defined as the "Idea in its otherness". It is the realm of externality, space, time, matter, and mechanical/chemical/organic processes.
Nature is a necessary moment in the Idea's self-actualization. The Idea must externalize itself to become concrete. Spirit (including human consciousness and society) emerges from Nature as the "truth" of Nature, the Idea returning to itself.
Within this framework, Material Reality (Nature) is a derivative moment, a stage of self-alienation that the Idea (Geist/Spirit) must pass through and overcome (sublate, aufheben) to achieve its full concrete actuality. The ground and truth of the process is the self-realizing Idea/Spirit. Materiality is essential for this realization.
The "Absolute" is the entire process, including its material moment. You cannot meaningfully separate the "Idea" from its material actualization.
Hegel's analysis of Objective Spirit (law, morality, family, civil society, the state) and even parts of the Phenomenology (Lordship/Bondage, the "Spiritual Animal Kingdom," "Absolute Freedom and Terror") demonstrate that the Concept develops through concrete, materially embedded social and historical practices.
The mutual constitution of U-P-I happens in the real, material world. The "Universal" ("law," "value," "freedom") only gains concrete meaning through its particular instantiations in material institutions and individual actions.
Material reality isn't just a transient "otherness" for Spirit, it is the necessary, constitutive ground within which the dialectic unfolds. The Logic describes the form of this process, but its content and actuality are irreducibly material. The Idea depends on materiality for its concreteness. Hegel's systematic presentation (starting with Logic) is a methodological abstraction, not the ontological primacy of "pure thought."
Ignoring the irreducible necessity of the material moment (Nature, embodiment, labor, social practice) fundamentally misreads Hegel. You vulgarize his method into subjective idealism where he collapses into empty abstraction without this moment of externalization and concrete particularization.
The syllogism (I-P-U) isn't a static form imposed on reality. It is the dynamic process where the Universal (U) becomes actual only by determining itself as Particular (P) and realizing itself in Individuals (I), and where Individuals (I) achieve their true essence only by participating in and actualizing the Universal (U) through their Particular (P) existence, a process occurring in and through material reality. The "middle term" (P) is precisely the realm of concrete determination, including materiality.
The critique of the syllogism form creating an unresolved I ≠ U contradiction misses how the process of mediation (P) is the dynamic overcoming of this distinction within the concrete totality. Again, the "contradiction" is the engine, not a flaw. Any reading that detaches Hegel's dialectic from the concrete material world profoundly misrepresents him.
Youre critique in fact actually mirrors Hegel's own critique of contentless abstraction in syllogism that preceded him as an empty formalism with no relation to reality. Hegel views this form of critique as understanding (Verstand) the rigid, analytical mindset that sees only contradictions without grasping their resolution.
It is similar to Marx and Lenin's critique of vulgar mechanical materialism, or of naive empiricism or positivism in general. Hegel views understanding as a necessary stop on the path to true reason and scientific knowledge, but it falls short without grounding.
As usualy attempts to overcome Hegel in the end simply repeat him. All you have done is echo and highlight his own critique of Kant. Using fixed categories (like the syllogism form) as external frameworks imposed on a passive content, resulting in an unresolved duality (thing-in-itself vs. phenomenon).
He called this "the formalism of an empty schema of dead understanding". Exactly what Engels and Lenin verbalized as "static" "fixed" "unchanging" approach that is opposed to dialectics and therefore incapable of grasping true knowledge.
This priveldging of abstact identity over concrete unity in difference is yet another example of unfounded idealism. To truly understand dialectics is to know that neither moment in the passage from Individual to Universal is priveledged over the other, that knowledge always consists of relating both sides to eachother and to the whole.
The very positing of this contradiction is not the end of dialectics, but its beginning, it is the limit of crude empiricism that is the starting point to launch into a dialectical investigation to uncover the essence behind appearence, it is itself the Hegelian movement that opens up to its own overcoming. Thought encountering its own limit (the contradiction exposed by Verstand), recognizing that limit as inherent to its current form, and thereby transcending that form through a more concrete, dynamic, and materially grounded comprehension is exactly dialectics.

>>2299097
>an economy without money is barter
>>2301330
>Would inter-tribal territorial claims and disputes within a broad culture of people who speak the same language and intermingle through marriage count as property relations?
indigenous economics like the gift economy are interesting and possibly a model which we can use to develop non-alienating business activities.

Gift giving ethics really demonstrates how alienation leads to atomization How can you have solidarity with someone if you only care about buying consumer products in the marketplace from them, and can simply drop your relationship to them on a whim? Like neoliberals who "rationally" are dropping their LGBT pride flags because the 52%/48% democrat majority shifted to a 52% republiacn majority. Kamala Harris is not a friend to anyone, she would abandon transgender people the second the laws change, she isn't a friend to workers, she would even abandon her hot sister Maya if it was "prudent"!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
>Malinowski's debate with the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss quickly established the complexity of "gift exchange" and introduced a series of technical terms such as reciprocity, inalienable possessions, and presentation to distinguish between the different forms of exchange.
>According to anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, it is the unsettled relationship between market and non-market exchange that attracts the most attention. Some authors argue that gift economies build community, while markets harm community relationships.
>Gift exchange is distinguished from other forms of exchange by a number of principles, such as the form of property rights governing the articles exchanged; whether gifting forms a distinct "sphere of exchange" that can be characterized as an "economic system"; and the character of the social relationship that the gift exchange establishes. Gift ideology in highly commercialized societies differs from the "prestations" typical of non-market societies. Gift economies also differ from related phenomena, such as common property regimes and the exchange of non-commodified labour.

Communist economy is like the simplest shit ever.

The basic needs are produced via highly efficient, automated, giant factories. Shit like food, water, electricity, shelter etc.

Even in third world countries like Vietnam, all that shit is like 20 hours of labor per week per worker. In first world countries, its like 5 hours of labor.

So all the basic stuff is guanranteed. Then for additional stuff, people just take whatever is produced. And people produce for the joy and enjoyment of producing, becuase work is their life's prime want.

It's all so simple. I don't know why people find this complicated. All this retarded talk about AGI and economic calculation and shit. Wtf.

Communist society is 1000000% simpler than even feudalism or ancient India or whatever.

>>2309224

Capital, by Karl Marx

>>2309298
economics is a fallacious school of thought created by 19th century industrial ruling/merchant class in order to post-facto justify their own political actions as being "just"

>>2309333
>Denying a ENTIRE field of economics just because it doesn't agree with your ideal political ideas
that's exactly what the rich did with classical political economy

NTA

>>2309298
>Almost zero modern academic economist take Das Kapital seriously
Also
>>2309375
>if you ask a serious academic economist they will outright say that they take things from Marx, Mises and other fringe economist
>Marx
So y r u mad?

>>2309298
modern "economics" be like
>I :transheart: landlords

>>2308648
What a shitty boring response. Its like you didn't even read the post you are responding to. Typical behavior dont know why I expected more.
>are you the same person who couldnt tell me the difference between "formal logic" and "dialectical" logic?
We went over this repeatedly last thread. You can read it again or google it if you are still confused.
>>Luther even called reason "the Devil’s whore" when it challenged sola fide
>he was right, but man must live in sin.
>>What binds these different interpretations together is belief by blind faith, as it is with yourself, rather than reason, as it is with dialectics.
>how do i argue from blind faith rather than reason?
This is meant as a joke right? Like the whole post? Where you repeatedly take statements in isolation when the relations that define them and answers to you rebuttals are right in front of you?

Why should I answer any question from you when you never answer anything of consequence from me. Get a blog if you want to talk to yourself.

>>2309529
You just know a MIGA voter made this one

>>2309632
>so there is in fact, no exclusion between formal logic and dialectical logic after all?
They are different types of logic and have different uses and scope. Its really not difficult to understand. "not meant to replace" means that dialectical logic is not meant to be used instead of formal logic but in addition to it, not that they are the same or one is a replacement for the other. There are times when formal logic is appropriate and there are others where dialectical logic is.
>as i say, list what i failed to respond to
We have already played this game too. Just control+f for "?" and see all the ones you missed. I have even repeated them all in a line for you multiple times and you still pick and choose what to respond to based on how convenient it is for your argument, which is inconsistent anyway because you dont actually have a position and hop from one contrarian view to the other as it pleases you.
>>2305280
>why did you even ask?
>and tell us what it means to you
here is the most recent

sorry that your memory buffer only holds seven words at a time. cant even remember your own posts we have on record let alone the ones that are now deleted

>>2309214
tiny north korea manages to provide a modest but decent standard of living for its citizens despite being sanctioned to all shit. now imagine what would be possible with the resources of the entire world

this means that all the atrocities that happen under capitalism are literally for nothing, all of it is just a waste, senseless destruction of life and resources for literally no reason. that's the monstrous nature of it

>>2309544
>repeatedly take statements in isolation when the relations that define them and answers to you rebuttals are right in front of you?
same trick you do with marx, pulling a chapter that is elaborated on 2 pages later pretending like you have some kind of gotcha
>>2202823
as was said here, which ends with another question i remember you not answering
and here
>>2234775
and here
>>2243926
here
>>2202818
here
>>2203784
and
>>2235701

its obviously deliberate

>>2309632
>what i failed to respond to
>>2309544
>This is meant as a joke right? Like the whole post?
this was also a question by the way. are you a protestant who upholds "sola fide" or do you believe in reason? isn't holding both beliefs a contradiction, which means there is a flaw in your logic? (those are also questions)

>>2309959
if you want people to engage in good faith you are going to have to actually participate in the conversation

>>2310690
i have not lacked any response, and therefore have responded to everything

>>2311437
why do you want to know? you clearly arent interested in corrections to your misunderstandings so theres no point. all of this has already been answered you are either incapable or doing it deliberately. we've long ago abandoned my own positions. ive just been correcting your distortions of marx and hegel.

those weren't even my posts or meant as questions for you to answer they are examples of multiple other people recognizing your game of taking things out of context, a behavior which your current line of questioning repeats. your questions have already been answered and you are either too dense to realize it or not looking because you dont want to know.

what is the "conversation"? indeed. enjoy your blog

>>2311481
>so you are literally too afraid
no i genuinely want to know your goal with all this but everytime i actually try to meet you half way you just start up your bullshit again like
>give one single example of me taking things out of context
you are responding to a post that tells you that there is a list of people accusing you of it, a list i compiled in about 2 minutes without extensive searching. your previous post is responding to a post explaining to you why 1+1 doesn't apply.
you completely ignore the explanation and just repeat the same thing. you ask for a list of questions you haven't answered then i ask you a question you do this childish mocking thing instead of answering the question. whats the point? you cant convince me to change my mind if you dont actually have a position other then being contrary to marx.
your questions are not even meant to understand my explanation of hegels position but to refute a strawman that has already been crucified and resurrected hundreds of times. the worst part is that you seem to truly not understand. its honestly disappointing because a lot of your own critique is deeply hegelian and could be interesting to discuss but you arent even capable of recognizing it despite apparently having read more than most of the board.
the part about kants ethics was originally a response to another one of your outbursts. seems thats how you think others should treat you. so everything i said is right. everything you said is wrong. ive only been transparent and honest and ive already answered all of your questions. too bad you are scared to confront the real dialectic

>>2313743
Brutal

>>2315602
>can someone explain
>*counterfactual with no supporting evidence*
higher productivity = richer
the us for example exports almost as much as china despite having 1/4th the working population
less narratives and more data

>>2315602
imperialism. particularly in the form of currency hegemony and offshore military bases. basically NATO, but especially america, gets to run up endless debt and never has to pay it off because nobody can make them. also all the "international" institutions are run by and for the benefit of the imperial core. America has permanent veto and security council seat at the UN. America uses a combination of CIA coups to to install comprador bourgeois compliant regimes followed by IMF loans to wreck competitor economies. Invasions can be used to balkanize nations too, as was the case with Yugoslavia.

>>2315602
read this excerpt btw

Michael.hudson is a crypto fascist ranting about (((financiers))) vs based productive industrialists

The fundamental thesis of third worldism is wrong. The wealth of advanced industrialized societies is primarily due to high labor productivity of those nations.

It's true that Western imperialism siphoned off massive amounts of wealth from their colonies. However that siphoned off wealth is still quite less than what countries actually produce by themselves through exploitation of homegrown labor.

It's also true that industrialization of 3rd world countries during direct colonization was deliberately hampered to prevent competition with 1st world.

But after decolonisation, most of the fault in lack of economic growth is due to the 3rd world govts themselves. A lot of them failed to develop strong, competent institutions. They were wracked with civil war or ethnic conflicts. There was/is lot of corruption, elite capture, incompetently managed dirigism etc.

It took a while for the bourgeoisie of these countries to get their shit together. And now we are kinda seeing a convergence of first world-third world incomes. It's a very long, arduous process. And I think the impatience and despair of people who thought the situation was hopeless led to ideological cope like Third-Worldism.

Now I'm not saying this as a Western imperialist shill. Western imperialism should still be fought by rejecting Western dominated institutions like IMF, strengthening up military power of 3rd world countries, forming local alliances etc.

But the 3rd world govts should not escape the blame game here, that's my main concern. A lot of them are still incredibly corrupt, extractive, comprador, oppress minorities/women etc, incompetent, bad at planning etc. Third Worldism shouldn't be a shield to uncritically defend the Third World ruling class.

>>2315747
Brutal, third worldist on suicide watch after learning that they have their share of fault on fucking their own countries.

>>2315755

>their share of fault

Unless the aforementioned Third-Worldists are in positions of power, no they can't be blamed

>>2315766
What it meant is people from place that was before exploited got their chance and got into power and yet fuck their own chances too, usually many people will blame other countries for their problems but they almost never blame their own stupid cultural practice or their actual way they manage the country.

>>2315602
this image is meant to answer a different question but I think it contains some of the answer to your question

>>2315747

I wanna add one more thing. The rapid industrialization of the 3rd world is historically progressive because it accelerates the contradictions of capitalism.

So for that reason, ironically, the """socialism""" paraded by some third world countries actually worked to stall historical progressive.

If India adopted standard capitalism instead of Nehruvian socialism back in the 1950s, they would have already been a serious capitalist competitor to the West and destabilized Western hegemony. Instead they wasted 40 years and started serious capitalism only in the 1990s.

It's a similar story in quite a few African, Middle East, South American and SEA countries. What is needed most right now is rapid industrialization of the 3rd world. Look at how China's industrialization is already causing chaos to Western economies. Not because of any active measures taken by the Chinese, but simply because capitalist competition and increase in OCC causes havoc to profit-rates a.k.a the very lifeblood of capitalism.

So since a communist revolution is unlikely in many 3rd world countries, the next best thing is to hope to have an actually competent capitalist govt that brings about 8%+ annual GDP growth to catch up to the 1st world.

>>2315747
>It's also true that industrialization of 3rd world countries during direct colonization was deliberately hampered to prevent competition with 1st world.
>after decolonisation
> A lot of them are still incredibly corrupt, extractive, comprador, oppress minorities/women etc, incompetent, bad at planning
decolonization only happened on paper. thats why a lot of them are corrupt, extractive, comprador

>>2315814
Nehru was a social democrat, not a socialist or communist

This thread should be called proudhonism general

>>2319198
no
>>2319600
no

If you could recommend 5 modern books about economics, what would those books be?

>>2342787
>muh rents
>"""unearned income"""
lol this is so blatantly a dogwhistle for jews

>>2343705
Does Hudson really suggest this? My impression for him is that unearned profit isn't profit received without corresponding productive labour but rather in absence of labour itself, that's why he advocates for taxing land and financial transactions and this also related to the hoarding value of money where people hoard forex to capitalize on exchange rate rather than releasing it to the economy. Ofc we can criticize this about how we differentiate absence of labour to non productive labour used to maintain complex social organizations (like if you're a street janitor)

>>2343705
im glad you agree :^)

>>2343757
in other words the whole of your critique of marx is that value is moral, which is subjective, which as has been pointed out previously, a political choice, and the refusal to clarify or delineate between the two different uses playing word games.
>i sympathise with this view from an opposite end, of lockean homesteading
which is certainly no less delusional than being a modern ancap, and has never historically resulted in genocide or justified atrocities
>and so rights belong to responsible tenants instead
indeed you would


>For him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm

I wrote long posts in reply to some of the anons ITT but the posts I was replying to have been removed, possibly caught in a ban dragnet for when the anons in question broke site rules in a different thread. Now I cannot remember the context of the conversation, particularly my reply to >>2300704

Sigh.

>>2344300
Ah! Thanks. It wasn't about debt but about something else: "Vulgar anthropocentrism" in Marx which is addressed by Cockshott in >>2300773 this video and a different anon than me in this post >>2301520

I repost this here because i had posted it on the previous dead general, sorry for repeating the question

I want to learn economics, but i know i can't learn about the real economy from mainstream economics. This is why I, an ignorant, humbly ask of you people, who are wiser, to provide me some kind of non-bourgeoise manual for the foundations, or some kind of bibliography, and I'll truly bless you in my heart, comrades, i am completely lost in this subject. Some general guidance is also okay. I appreciate the youtube videos, but i like more to read, I am more used to seriousrly learn by studying a book and everyone who really wants to learn eventually must turn to them anyways. I see the bibliograpy also, but i feel like im too stupid to get into smith, ricardo and marx directly, as if i needed some context, but maybe im wrong, is that the first things i should read?

Stay strong and thank you very much for the attention!!!