/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>marxism is when you read marx
but marx said he wasn't a marxist

>If you think bullshit like Unequal Exchange, Dependency Theory, and World Systems Theory are Marxist
The question is if it's correct or incorrect, not if it's Marxist. Make a case either way, I don't care, but stop with this quasi-religious shit.

it's one of these threads

>>2311867
you arent even trying at this point

>>2311869
trying what

>>2311864
Considering communism consists in the abolition of exchange and value altogether, I don't see how it would be communist at all to advocate for reversing unequal exchange and value chains. May as well advocate for the bourgeoisie to provide surplus labour in that case.

>>2311884
think dialectically you moron
equalizing exchange is the first step to abolishing it
how can exchange be abolished with one nation having a superior advantage over others that's just theft

>>2311886
Exchange in bourgeois society is based on equivalence.

>>2311886
Where does profit come from

>>2311890
and yet strong bourgeois nations wreck weak bourgeois nations with coups, invasions, sanctions, IMF loans, or even outright theft of natural resources (US-backed Kuwait slant drilling under Iraqi soil for example) So in our age there are ways outside of exchange to exaggerate advantages and disadvantages. This is the real problem, people talking about "unequal exchange" are really talking about the finer details of imperialism, but then they get rebuffed by some marxists who want to uphold marx's thesis that capitalists exchange equivalents, and therefore unequal exchange is impossible. Also there is confusion about marx here. capitalists don't always exchange equivalents down to the individual transaction. it's that on average, in society, equivalents are exchanged. if someone cheats in an individual exchange that does not affect society's aggregate exchanges.

Not your blog.

>>2311886
>"thinking dialectically" is when supporting petty reform
love leftoid buzzwords

>>2311900
yes it is

>>2311892
property is left howeverbeit

>>2311855
>>2311855
I don't really see how third worldism solves anything except deradicalises first worlders neither is the third world bustling with revolution apart from Cuba and China including its periphery ststes

>>2311960
noble savage

unequal exchange means that labor productivity is different due to different organic compositions of capital in the center and periphery. but calling it unequal exchange obfuscate Marx central thesis that exchange is always exchange of equivalents. the name tends to make people think that somehow value is stolen from the periphery and then they lapse into moralism (third worldism)
just listen to Cockshott ffs

>>2311898
>when the mode of production based on competition inevitably has some countries outcompeting others and using this advantage to maintain it
Should we start supporting small businesses while we're at it too?

>>2311987
>just listen to Cockshott ffs
I'd rather not listen to an academic opportunist who talks about shit like democracy or equality in the name of "marxism" while trying to sell you a book about how the ideal "communist society" ought to look like either.

>>2311989
marx supported fixing regional inequalities between the countryside and urban districts in the communist manifesto but you'd all call him a shitlord reformist if someone suggests expanding that concept to nations especially when certain nations like the ones leftcoms live in happen to be retarding the development of dozens of other, poorer, nations.

>>2312006
>abolishing the distinction between town and country is like #LandBack or reforming unequal exchange or whatever the fuck
You are either illiterate or are pretending to have read something you clearly haven't.

>>2311992
>sell
his books are free for people who can't afford them
>opportunist
he's in a communist party unlike you probably
>democracy
yes communists speak about proletarian democracy. Lenin:
<the workers of the whole world sympathise with the Soviet Republic precisely because they regard it as a proletarian democracy, a democracy for the poor, and not a democracy for the rich that every bourgeois democracy, even the best, actually is.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm
>academic
anti intellectual weasel word used to shame educated workers

>>2312076
you made up some shit they didn't say and also you're arguing with two different people anyway

>>2311989
>anti imperialism is the same as supporting small businesses because peripheral countries are just small businesses
i too can make up shit you didn't say. isn't this fun?

>>2312104
lmfao yes anti imperialism as spouted by morons today is exactly that, do you even understand that nation states operate exactly like businesses under the logic of capital

>>2312078
>he's in a communist party unlike you probably
I'm in a union and strike committee instead of politically inert larping and wanking sessions.

>yes communists speak about proletarian democracy. Lenin:
Pseuds love lying about what this means. Lenin does explicitly talk about proletarian democracy, but of course you retards misunderstand what he means. You think it's some sort of special version of the democratic procedure that automatically produces a 'proletarian' outcome.

>anti intellectual weasel word used to shame educated workers
Nevermind that proletarians are forced to work the most unskilled jobs and worker is not synonymous with proletarian, that faggot is a literal university professor you retarded troglodyte.

Reminder that nobody likes you.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_21.htm

>>2312098
>marx supported fixing regional inequalities between the countryside and urban districts
That's what abolishing the distinction between town and country entails. Disregard that this was written in the 1800s too, back when this difference was much more pronounced and capitalism wasn't even the mode of production everywhere.

>>2311864
>>2311886
>>2311898
>>2312006
Solidarity with bourgeois nation-states isn't a mode of production, it's a narrative. Marxism analyzes structure, not guilt. Marxism does not deny global disparity, it explains it. Unequal conditions within countries don't make up a class.

This redefines the primary contradiction of capitalism (labor against capital) into a moralized binary. This is liberalism dressed to appear revolutionary. There's no explanatory power here, just a static hierarchy of victimhood. Same with similar "theories" like settler-colonial theory.

>>2312123
>That's what abolishing the distinction between town and country entails.
Only based DPRK even attempt this btw.

>>2312121
sorry cuba, wanting the embargo to end and guantanamo bay off your soil is the same as a whining small business owner

>>2311898
(notice how nobody can quote and respond to what is actually being said here)

100% of people who will D E B A T E on this thread do not understand what unequal exchange, dependency theory etc mean
What's the point of these anymore man…

>>2312122
>I'm in a union and strike committee instead of politically inert larping and wanking sessions.
It's good to be a union but there needs to be a vanguard party to carry out revolution. Unions just negotiate for higher wages under the existing system.
>You think it's some sort of special version of the democratic procedure that automatically produces a 'proletarian' outcome.
I didn't say that. Good job making up shit I didn't say and then attacking that.
>Nevermind that proletarians are forced to work the most unskilled jobs and worker is not synonymous with proletarian, that faggot is a literal university professor you retarded troglodyte.
And Marx had a PhD in the classics, Lenin was a lawyer, and so was Castro. Do we dismiss Marxists on the basis of their academic credentials just because they aren't manual laborers? That is anti intellectualism.
>Reminder that nobody likes you.
Not an argument
>https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_21.htm
Umm excuse me sweaty Engels was an intellectual and not a manual laborer so umm I don't have to listen to him

>>2312231
>complains without correcting anyone in particular
contribute or don't

>>2312122
>https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_21.htm
<To begin this reorganization tomorrow, but performing it gradually, seems to me quite feasible.
vindicated

They may not be, but a marxist might find them useful and put a marxist spin on them.

>>2312231
I haven't got around to them in my reading queue yet but eventually I will. That said you're right, you probably can't just figure them out through debates and vibes, like most things reading about it proper is best practice.

dependency theory is real and doesn't contradict anything marx said thoughbeit

>>2312811
btw dependency theory also includes dependent development even under so called "nationalist", "revolutionary" and "anti-imperialist" goverments and is not really a justification to do class collabs

>>2311855
I haven't read unequal exchange yet but I'm pretty sure the deindustrialization of America shows that absolute rent and how high organic composition of capital (basically hi-tech) sectors suck investment out of the low OCC sectors is true.

Basically, Wall Street and Silicon Valley colonized the Rust Belt and the rest of America.

>>2312348
Another banger for the elder scroll

>Unequal Exchange, Dependency Theory, and World Systems Theory are frankfurt school
lmaoing at the audacity of accusing people of not reading when you say this stupid shit.

When you realize all these Unequal Exchange tards are just peddling PB econ trash the kind of shit Marx criticised his whole life it suddenly makes sense why their takes are so fucked up. Their love for third-world nationalism, democracy, and the state it all lines up.

>>2314134
You didn't even read the whole sentence and then manufactured some greentext. Peak channer pseudery.

>World Systems Theory
I found some interesting articles by searching for that phrase and "Nixon" + "China"

this one is great: https://redsails.org/jiang-on-empire/
> The “U.S.-China decoupling” that has been the focus of public discussion in recent years would be better understood as an effort on the part of the U.S. to expel China from the “world imperial system.” Therefore, the U.S.-China struggle is not only about the fate of the two countries, but also about the future of the world order itself, i.e., is the whole world subservient to the U.S.-dominated world empire, or will it establish truly equal international relations between sovereign states? When the U.S. and Soviet superpowers were trying to build two different types of world empires, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that emerged in countries like India and China intended to create a more fair and rational international order. Today’s U.S.-China rivalry represents a struggle over these two world visions and the shared destiny of humanity.

<Controlled economic liberalization nonetheless created conditions for neoliberal thinking. An emphasis on economic growth arguably created a popular misunderstanding of the relationship between politics and economics, in what Wang Hui calls the “depoliticized politics” of the Deng era. Such thinking also coincided with pro-American ideology and a popular belief in the intertwined destinies of China and the United States. In the wake of the 2008 Western financial crisis, slogans such as “to save America is to save China” (救美国就是救中国) and “China-U.S. couple theory” (中美夫妻论) reflected China’s perceived national interest in stabilizing the capitalist world economy from internal collapse, and the belief that ideological and political divergences between China and the Western capitalist world could be resolved by economic cooperation alone.
https://www.qiaocollective.com/articles/end-of-engagement

>>2311987
>but calling it unequal exchange obfuscate Marx central thesis that exchange is always exchange of equivalents.
but thats only referring to value. unequal exchange isn't about value. productivity differences are not inherent they are a result of imperialism and dependency and make the trade structurally unequal. quibbling over "unequal" when its not even referring to value only serves to obscure the structural inequality and is used to say other countries are less productive because they are lazy/stupid/corrupt or to excuse imperialist countries as the source of the problem

cockshott isn't exactly wrong but hes not even talking about the same thing and does not address the above so he is not exactly correct either he just stops at productivity and ignores imperialism.

>>2311855
marx's point about equal exchange isn't even about trade in general but about the production of surplus value as profit. he holds that exchange is equal in the trade of wage for labor power as an average in aggregate so that the source of profit is the difference between the labor power and its product which is appropriated by the capitalist.

this does not mean that individual wage laborers must necessarily be equal, and just like the exchange of commodities marx actually says that in practice it is necessarily unequal, but that this is not the source of profit as it averages out in the total.

in the same way that a capitalist might set up a factory in a shitty part of town to pay people less, or how they might employ migrants who will accept less than the average wage, on a global scale international corporations can do the same, and when they do they in fact to capture more value. but this value is not created in exchanging less for more, it is appropriated from its competitors who pay more for less and washes out in the total.

unequal exchange is real, and marxist. it is not the source of profit, profit is not created in exchange, but it is one strategy used by capitalists to appropriate profit from other capitalists by competing in the market, which is exactly why marx tells us that in practice individual trades are not equal.

by insisting that exchange has to be equal you are actually closer to making a mudpie argument than actually following marx

this is because marx's investigation into capital was not a bourgeois science on how individual capitalists can make more profit, but to uncover how the investigation into that obscures the real conditions of society. its the classical bourgeois idealist who say
>"ah but actually i sold the thing for more than what it is worth because i am so clever and that is the source of my wealth, not exploitation, and therefore marx is wrong and commies are just greedy and envious"
but this misses the point entirely that marx's study is about capitalism as a whole, and not individual exchanges, or how to cheat people better in the market, or how to get good deals.

I really don't understand why these debates are so heated. Whether or not unequal exchange is wrong won't effect the political stances of most marxists anyway.

>>2326222
Nationalism and western supremacy. People in imperialist countries identify with their nation and think that if it is true they are guilty of something their bourgeoisie does.

>>2311884
>>2311892
It's not a moral concept, it's just analysis that says value produced by periphery economies is appropriated by capital from core economies. This is part of imperialism in the economic and not moral sense. And incidentally it's also one of the many reasons why a periphery country (Russia, Iran, etc.) cannot be imperialist.
Obviously if you want socialism to succeed in a periphery country then you should try to overcome this relationship as much as possible by nationalizing industries and moving away from exporting only resources, semi-finished goods and labour power. But if you want to be a comprador porky then unequal exchange should indirectly be your goal.