/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2534712
>right, so capitalists are not evil to you, but are actually progressive, which makes sense, since youre a marxist. you love capitalism because it brings you communism.
The development of capitalism is the inevitable result of technological advancement in the previous mode of production, the formation of the bourgeoisie with large-scale production that cannot exist individually, destroying the petty bourgeoisie and creating the proletariat, which then organizes itself. Eventually, as time passes, with the formation of the capitalist economy, scientific socialism begins to form as a theory, analyzing the society that is forming, uniting the socialist theory that was developed by the previous utopian socialists that was separated from the proletariat, to recognize this class as the revolutionary agent, uniting theory with the practice of class struggle. To wish to return to a mode of production with individualized property is to regress to reactionaryism, just as capitalism produces socially, but with private extraction for the benefit of the capitalist owner, exploiting wage labor to receive profit from surplus value. The revolution will make this property be organized collectively for the needs of the population in its economic planning.

>wait, so the capitalist market is upheld by the state and not a nebulous "competition" that renders humanity propertyless? thanks for proving my point once again.
You're confusing what I wrote. When you have a portion of the population as owners and another without, violence inevitably occurs, leading to the dismantling of this property. This is why the state, as an entity, emerges to maintain this class of owners maintaining its system of exploitation and hypocritical actions. If it benefits this exploitative ruling class, it will create a superstructure of ideas and justifications for its power to try to pacify the masses, along with repression and threats to maintain this subjugation of private property, serving the interests of capital accumulation. If these masses of propertyless workers are armed, which is a sign of the dictatorship of the proletariat being formed, these owners cannot coerce or accumulate capital. The interdependence of workers with one another erodes the capacity of capital circulation, where they begin to organize collectively with the appropriation of the means of production and distribution. The petty bourgeoisie cannot maintain its isolation, except for self-sufficient peasants with some small-scale production in a technologically underdeveloped region isolated from capitalism, as was the case in the backward semi-feudal countries where these peasants lived. This is no longer a problem today, with globalization and the availability of technologies such as electricity and communication, along with the large-scale production of goods for the market already spreading throughout the world. Even in these cases where there are no means of production, it is not a problem to acquire technologies and use state-owned enterprises to industrialize an agrarian country today. Therefore, the socialization of the economy can now be achieved much faster than before to initiate a socialist economy. The dictatorship of the proletariat will use state capitalism if backward modes of production still exist to prepare these isolated peasants for collective labor in cooperatives.

>the definition of slavery is propertylessness, since we also as free men possess ourselves.
Wrong. No one owns himself, the slave only has a relationship as property of an owner, this slave stops being a slave when he abolishes his existence as property and has returned to some society that considers him a member as a person and not property of an owner.

Let's look at the definition of slavery, then, if you want to obfuscate, starting with the Cambridge Dictionary:
<the activity of legally owning other people who are forced to work for or obey you:
<the condition of being legally owned by someone else and forced to work for or obey them:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/slavery

Now let's look at the Encyclopedia Britannica:
<slavery, condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.

<There is no consensus on what a slave was or on how the institution of slavery should be defined. Nevertheless, there is general agreement among historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and others who study slavery that most of the following characteristics should be present in order to term a person a slave. The slave was a species of property; thus, he belonged to someone else. In some societies slaves were considered movable property, in others immovable property, like real estate. They were objects of the law, not its subjects.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/slavery-sociology/The-law-of-slavery

Now let's see the difference between a slave and a proletarian with Engels:

<7 — In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?
<The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.

<The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.

<The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.

<The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.

<The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

<Frederick Engels, 1847, The Principles of Communism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

>>2534712
>capitalists are not evil to you, but are actually progressive, which makes sense, since youre a marxist. you love capitalism because it brings you communism.

This reads like trolling. The Marxist position has always been that while capitalism has historically played a progressive role in developing productive forces, it remains fundamentally exploitative and contradictory. Capitalism is seen as a necessary step in history. It creates the material conditions for socialism and communism. But that doesn’t mean Marxists "love" capitalism. It is a system that is in constant crisis, where wealth and power are hoarded by a few. Communism, by contrast, aims for the sublation of these contradictions, where wealth is distributed according to need rather than profit. Communism doesn’t come from an uncritical acceptance of capitalism, it comes from recognizing that capitalism has reached its historical limits, produced its own grave diggers, and needs to be replaced by a system that prioritizes human needs over profit.

>>2535702
>This reads like trolling.
of course not. you should always treat crypto fash in good faith

I don't think there is a way to build a huge centralized industrial society of millions of people all packed together without destroying human equality and human agency and human dignity in the process. Marx says it can be done, that if you design the right kind of model and everyone sticks to it and plays by the rules we can make this work and make it fair for everyone, but I think he was an idealist and didn't understand the nature of the beast he was dealing with. It's not just capitalism that needs to die; it is the Empire that needs to die, it is cancerous power structures that need to die. Our entire modern imperialist-industrialist civilization with nations and cities and borders, all of that needs to die.

>>2535389
>Wrong. No one owns himself, the slave only has a relationship as property of an owner
Wrong. Everyone is a slave by virtue of being born in Sin. Ever since Eve ate the apple because we are separate from Him. Submission to Gods Will is true freedom. Thats why God invented money when creating the world; to represent the original debt we have to Him for making this perfect place and thats why God made capitalism Human Nature. Jealous commies just want to take my God given birthright. "Money is the jealous God of Israel". Projection! Commies just want everyone to be equally poor digging and filling holes to make mudpies because they think labor makes value even if people dont want to eat your dirt cakes. Rand and Hayek actually made unique contributions to economics unlike Marx and Engels who were merely record keepers of greater men.

Marx wrote to Engels on 2 November 1867: “I once believed the separation of Ireland from England to be impossible. I now regard it as inevitable, although federation may follow upon separation” (MECW 42: 460). He elaborated a few weeks later:

What the Irish need is:

1. Self-government and independence from England.

2. Agrarian revolution …

3. Protective tariffs against England. From 1783–1801 every branch of industry in Ireland flourished. By suppressing the protective tariffs which the Irish parliament had established, the Union destroyed all industrial life in Ireland. The little bit of linen industry is in no way a substitute … As soon as the Irish became independent, necessity would turn them, like Canada, Australia, etc., into protectionists (MECW 42: 486–7).


wait so marx was in favor of protectonism?

>>2535870
>Marx wrote to Engels on 2 November 1867: “I once believed the separation of Ireland from England to be impossible. I now regard it as inevitable, although

Hyperconfident predictions falling flat followed by goalpost repositioning seems to the core of Marxist thought.

>>2523126
>Some might take the idea that Marx predicted revolution would occur first in the advanced countries, you could take this as evidence he is wrong, or you could say you disagree, or you could say the fact that it occurred in underdeveloped backwards nations first proves you right and him wrong.

The funny thing is later marx was increasingly changing his mind about this, slowly recognizing the revolutionary and socialist potential of the undeveloped east (russia)

>>2535882
>increasingly changing his mind about this, slowly recognizing the revolutionary and socialist potential
almost like how the same analysis comes to different conclusions based on different material conditions or how people make different choices when new information becomes available

weird how that happens. i guess thats just like hypocrisy or something

>>2535887
I think you are misunderstanding what the original goalpost was if you think that it moved.

>>2535888
lol

>>2530916
> /acc and NRx twitter
hmmmmmmmmm
>after that i got into hoppeanism
HMMMMMMMMMMM

was park chung hee a proto dengist

>>2535702
no offence, but you sound uneducated. marx didnt merely see capitalism as a necessary evil, but as the very engine of social progress. he admired capitalism. marx's communism is built from capitalism, which is why he preserves all of its essential attributes in his theory of lower phase communism, while rejecting all socialist alternatives.
>>2535389
>The development of capitalism is the inevitable result of technological advancement
look up "primitive accumulation".
>When you have a portion of the population as owners and another without
i am advocating for universal ownership; you are advocating for universal dispossession.
>No one owns himself
does a worker own his labour-power?
>definition of slavery
exactly what i said; to not be in possession of oneself.
>>2536025
this is a better hoppe quote:
<I will present a series of theses that constitute the hard-core of the Marxist theory of history. I claim that all of them are essentially correct.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/marxist-and-austrian-class-analysis

>>2536083
>which is why he preserves all of its essential attributes in his theory of lower phase communism
except he doesn't do that, because for him communism is not an ideal state of affairs to be established

>>2536083
>this is a better hoppe quote:
<I will present a series of theses that constitute the hard-core of the Marxist theory of history. I claim that all of them are essentially correct.
>https://mises.org/mises-wire/marxist-and-austrian-class-analysis

what does ya (ex)boi hoppe go on to say in the very next sentences of that article?

<Then I will show how these true theses are derived in Marxism from a false starting point. Finally, I want to demonstrate how Austrianism in the Mises-Rothbard tradition can give a correct but categorically different explanation of their validity.

>>2536025 everyone who claims to "like the austrian school of economics" is a midwit 100% of the time. they think that mentioning the austrians makes them seem smart for some reason

>>2536083
>look up "primitive accumulation."
With technological advancements for large-scale production, the privatization of common lands that peasants used to become the private property of those who own capital, industrialists obtain labor to be exploited in factories, while landowners can expand, with the inevitable ruin of peasants isolated in competition. Fantasizing about creating a petty-bourgeois utopia is reactionary, because the conditions of backward modes of production created capitalism, and its path is monopolization, following its interests of accumulating more capital when there is market competition, with winners reinvesting this capital to become more capital, and the losers, who have lost their autonomy, eventually becoming, for the most part, common workers. This will occur at an accelerated rate as capitalism's crises occur in the market, with those with greater accumulated capital buying out the losers with less capital. Therefore, its direction will be the consolidation of this capital in fewer hands, as long as the capitalist state can maintain the capitalist class as the ruling class.

>i am advocating for universal ownership; you are advocating for universal dispossession.
It is not possible to have a property owner occupying what is produced for the population's needs without organizing this property collectively. Eventually, blackmail and coercion against the rest of the population occur to exploit those who are propertyless. Even if you transform all properties into cooperatives, there will be conflict over natural resources such as rivers and regional differences that led several of these companies to go bankrupt, unable to compete in the market due to luck, climate, soil differences, and the nature of the environment where each company is located. This occurred in Yugoslavia, creating an unemployed mass of petty-bourgeois who went bankrupt as they became indebted to the more prosperous cooperatives, slowly restoring the relations of subjugation capitalism. The state had to constantly intervene because of the interests of the heads of prosperous cooperatives who had interests against the rest of the consumer population and against the unemployed, along with the impoverished petty-bourgeois. This led to class struggle that eventually built various prejudices that fed opportunists who used nationalism. To manipulate the masses, following the interests of cooperatives competing in the market, seeking to produce for profit. This creates instability with the restoration of all capitalist relations of exploitation or violence until private property is abolished to end the regional inequality that fuels chauvinistic prejudices. The needs produced with the means of production are organized according to the needs of the population, not sold on the market for profit. Therefore, it is necessary to equalize the profits and losses of companies, which will be organized as collective property of society or as cooperatives that do not compete with each other.

The moment you recognize private property, you are already removing access to use from the rest of the population, who will be exploited by those who own the property, who will use the state to maintain capital accumulation through competition, eliminating those who do not follow the logic of intensifying the exploitation of workers to accumulate more capital with the boom and bust crises that will concentrate all this property in the hands of the largest capitalists. Today's society is the result of this. You are not against anything because the big capitalist is not cheating, unlike the reactionaries you imagine. If you pretend to rebel against the capitalist by expropriating his private property, other workers will also expropriate, but only by collectively organizing will the property cease to be controlled by the capitalist. Any isolated individual will be considered just another criminal who will be arrested for going against the order of the capitalist state, which already recognizes the interests of the ruling class of capitalists, aiming to serve the accumulation of capital. You are merely idealizing what current society already is, fantasizing about decentralization, when centralization is what demonstrates the superiority of large-scale production against the petty bourgeoisie. Therefore, you are simply being a reactionary who merely justifies current financial capitalism while pretending to be against it. The capitalist, simply through inequality and capital accumulation, will already, out of self-interest, influence the society where he or she lives for his or her own benefit, giving himself or herself advantages. To deny this is to dishonestly ignore the power relationship and how private property operates in competition. No matter how many reforms you try, any state that conciliates classes will be influenced by these capitalists, so that capital accumulation expropriates the population to exploit the workers, who will have to sell their labor power to meet their needs, which will then be in the hands of the capitalists as commodities in the market.

By abolishing private property, we are democratizing it so that the entire population can collectively organize it, which is a real democracy without slave owners, where all workers, regardless of nationality, can fraternize in solidarity because there is no more competition. While you are merely fantasizing about settlers who constantly needed the state to expropriate the land collectively owned by natives to turn it into private property, which, after this, becomes no different from today's society. Or do you want to restore the old patriarchal control of women to be abused and children to be abused by relatives, instead of everything being the social responsibility of everyone to care for children and the elderly without passing the costs on to others? Where I live, I know of the abuse of older people close to me, where financial control through private property was used to control and abuse women and keep them trapped in the cycle of abuse. I can offer the path forward, with everyone having social equality, abolishing private property just as capitalists undo ancient traditions, ending isolated property that maintained patriarchal relations with private property, while you can only fantasize about returning as a reactionary who does not want property to be social and collective, to return this abuse of men against women and of parents against children, which is the basis of private property and disappears with its end.

>does a worker own his labour-power?
The worker sells his labor power socially, interacting with society, and everything that is produced is produced socially. However, with private extraction in the case of capitalism and socialism, this private relationship of the capitalist will be abolished with what is already socially produced, which should belong to society as a whole. A person's self-ownership is a contradictory oxymoron that ignores social responsibilities such as caring for children until a new worker is formed, the obligation to maintain health by preventing the spread of contagious diseases that requires collective organization, and the need to be informed about food and beverages for consumption, which contradicts the presence of additives and unhealthy substances, coupled with misinformation from those who seek to profit in the market. The worker only has the capacity for freedom through the knowledge acquired collectively in society. Only by organizing collectively with social equality will he or she be able to meet his or her needs and rationally decide collectively on his or her actions with others. Otherwise, he or she will be at the mercy of nature and the class that controls the means of production, which will keep him or her limited. In the case of capitalism, he or she will simply be at the mercy of the logic of capital accumulation. Without a social relationship, property does not exist. This person could be rejected as a member of this society if, instead of being a subject by law, he or she were someone's property, as is the case with a slave, who would be an object to be used as the private property of an owner.

>exactly what i said; to not be in possession of oneself.
Wrong. None of the dictionaries mention being a self-owner in the case of a slave or someone who isn't a slave. In all societies, you can see limits to what a person can do for themselves as a citizen or free subject, from birth until they grow up as an adult. Not to mention the relationship of the serf to a land contract, the indentured servant who is bound by the contract, the worker trapped in debt who is no longer able to pay for the control their owner has over their needs, which keeps the worker trapped in debt bondage. The capitalist state serves only to maintain capital's freedom to accumulate. Private property is what keeps workers subjugated, and they gain more rights as soon as the relationship of private property ownership is dissolved, socializing it. As soon as there are no longer relationships of property owner to a person, collectively dissolving, you are democratizing the economy instead of masquerading as a petty tyrant to threaten others by being in a relationship separated from use.

>>2536757
only a few thousand more words and you will have convinced him

>>2536083
>no offence, but you sound uneducated. marx didnt merely see capitalism as a necessary evil, but as the very engine of social progress.

Let's remind the audience what I said so they don't have to scroll back up:"

<The Marxist position has always been that while capitalism has historically played a progressive role in developing productive forces, it remains fundamentally exploitative and contradictory. Capitalism is seen as a necessary step in history. It creates the material conditions for socialism and communism. But that doesn’t mean Marxists "love" capitalism.

You have not shown me to be wrong you have merely insulted me as uneducated and then ignored the nuance of what I said.

Marx does not see capitalism as "the very engine of social progress" (your words, not his). For Marx, the development of the productive forces (such as technology, labor, and capital) is crucial for the transformation of society, but it is always shaped by the specific mode of production in any given historical era (for instance, slavery, feudalism, capitalism).

For Marx, the productive forces must reach a certain level of development before they can come into conflict with the existing relations of production, leading to social change. So, it isn't "capitalism" drives all social progress universally across time, but the specific ways in which the productive forces develop and interact with the relations of production within different historical contexts and modes of production.

<“No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
- Karl Marx, from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

What else did I say?

<[Capitalism] is a system that is in constant crisis, where wealth and power are hoarded by a few. Communism, by contrast, aims for the sublation of these contradictions, where wealth is distributed according to need rather than profit. Communism doesn’t come from an uncritical acceptance of capitalism, it comes from recognizing that capitalism has reached its historical limits, produced its own grave diggers, and needs to be replaced by a system that prioritizes human needs over profit.

This is completely in line with everything Marx wrote about and I don't know why you are pretending otherwise except maybe as an elaborate troll. Yes communism is supposed to be built on top of the historical progress of capitalism, just like capitalism was built on top of the historical progress of feudalism, but that doesn't mean Communism uncritically accepts capitalism anymore than capitalism uncritically accepts feudalism.

What does Marx say about Capitalism in Chapter 24 of Volume 1 of Capital?

<So long as the laws of exchange are observed in every single act of exchange the mode of appropriation can be completely revolutionised without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production. These same rights remain in force both at the outset, when the product belongs to its producer, who, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, can enrich himself only by his own labour, and also in the period of capitalism, when social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position to appropriate continually and ever afresh the unpaid labour of others.

Marx literally describes Capitalism as a historical period in which social wealth becomes the property of people appropriating unpaid labor.

Chapter 33 of Volume 1:

<the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation of the laborer.

From the afterword of the second edition:

<The peculiar historical development of German society therefore forbids, in that country, all original work in bourgeois economy; but not the criticism of that economy. So far as such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the final abolition of all classes — the proletariat.

Does this sound like someone who is totally uncritical of capitalism and sees it as the eternal engine of social progress? No. He sees the proletariat as having a role in history to overthrow capitalism and abolish classes.

Let's look at Chapter 15 Section 9 of Volume 1:

<What could possibly show better the character of the capitalist mode of production, than the necessity that exists for forcing upon it, by Acts of Parliament, the simplest appliances for maintaining cleanliness and health? In the potteries the Factory Act of 1864 "has whitewashed and cleansed upwards of 200 workshops, after a period of abstinence from any such cleaning, in many cases of 20 years,and in some, entirely," (this is the "abstinence" of the capitalist!) "in which were employed 27,800 artisans, hitherto breathing through protracted days and often nights of labour, a mephitic atmosphere, and which rendered an otherwise comparatively innocuous occupation, pregnant with disease and death. The Act has improved the ventilation very much." [214] At the same time, this portion of the Act strikingly shows that the capitalist mode of production, owing to its very nature, excludes all rational improvement beyond a certain point.

So Marx is saying here that not only must capitalists be forced by law to give a shit about public health, but that capitalism itself, as a mode of production, excludes all rational improvement beyond a certain point or, in other words, is only an engine of social progress up to a certain point. This is totally in line with what I am saying.

>>2536942
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This is financial advice.

>>2536507
read "critique of the gotha programme" (1875)
>>2536557
do you entirely lack a sense of humour?
>>2536757
>With technological advancements for large-scale production
primitive accumulation is a phenomenon divorced from technological development… again, you make up things in your head then delude yourself into believing its true. i list the laws marx discusses here: >>2528411
>industrialists
primitive accumulation occurs in the 16th century; the industrial revolution occurs in the late 18th century…
>yes, i want humanity to be dispossessed of its own property.
right, so you support a regime of universal slavery, the same as the capitalists. youve already said that its againat the interests of workers to possess their own property, so why all this unnecessary yapping?
>The worker sells his labor power socially
does a worker possess their own labour-power? [y/n]
>None of the dictionaries mention being a self-owner in the case of a slave or someone who isn't a slave.
so you can own other people but cant own yourself?
>>2536940
>Marx does not see capitalism as "the very engine of social progress" […] it is always shaped by the specific mode of production in any given historical era
history changes forms of society, but does history "progress" until capitalism? the concept of progress is retroactive, which comes from capital's abstraction of labour as "value". even adam smith sees that the division of labour orients our consciousness with particularity to the form of property considered (wealth of nations, book 5, chapter 1). in the 1844 manuscripts, marx places "progress" in the economy itself (as the antagonism between forms of estrangement; labour and capital), which is an entirely modern (capitalist) idea, as opposed to ancient ways of thinking (e.g. the hellenic poets; homer and hesiod, or the authors of the bible).
>This is completely in line with everything Marx wrote about
read "critique of the gotha programme" (1875)
>communism is supposed to be built on top of the historical progress of capitalism
and what is this progress?
>Marx literally describes Capitalism as a historical period in which social wealth becomes the property of people appropriating unpaid labor
yes… read chapter 32 of capital vol. 1. the dispossession of property by its private concentration spreads social wealth. its this capitalist structure which underpins marx's communist concept, where the state simply replaces the capitalists.
>Does this sound like someone who is totally uncritical of capitalism and sees it as the eternal engine of social progress?
uncritical? marx's only issue with capitalism is that it doesnt go far enough. he is a super-capitalist thinker.
>only an engine of social progress up to a certain point
but why is capitalism progressive in the first place? what are the conditions which make it able to give us communism? the centralisation of property. thats it.

>>2537207
>uncritical? marx's only issue with capitalism is that it doesnt go far enough.
because it socializes production (which enables the creation of more walth) but privatizes profit (which keeps wealth concentrated in few hands). The point is to socialize the results as well as the process. So yes, in terms of socialization capitalism doesn't go far enough. But in terms of total disregard for health and public safety capitalism goes too far. You were literally given quotes in which Marx criticizes the capitalist mode of production, capitalism, for its total disregard of public health and safety as well as its tendency to "exclude all rational improvement beyond a certain point."
>but why is capitalism progressive in the first place?
its progress is relative. relative to what? to feudalism.
>what are the conditions which make it able to give us communism? the centralisation of property. thats it.
No, that's not it at all:
<Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/value-price-profit.pdf
as well as the abolition of inheritance, you know, that process where someone with 500 billion dollars of private property like Elon Musk, more than he could possibly spend on personal consumption in several hundred life times, can just pass it on to children with zero input from society. And how did he get that 500 billion through exploitation of labor and subsidies.

>>2537207
>read "critique of the gotha programme" (1875)
this one?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

he doesn't "preserve" capitalisms "essential attributes" as a matter of decree but hypothesizes necessary stages of development according to material history. its not a checklist of policy ideals. what remains of capitalism depends on the material conditions and not preserved according to your imagined dogma

The myth that Böhm-Bawerk “ended” Marx’s value theory is one of the oldest ghost stories in economics. What he actually did was misunderstand it, and in doing so, exposed the limits of bourgeois economics. In 1896, Böhm-Bawerk published Karl Marx and the Close of His System. It’s often described as the definitive refutation of Marx’s value theory. It was an 80-page polemic, not at all a systematic demolition.

Marx’s defenders also didn’t “change the rules” after 1896. Hilferding refuted Böhm-Bawerk point by point in 1904. Other writere from Bukharin to Sweezy to Yaffe to Kliman and more demonstrated that Marx’s logic is consistent when read on its own terms. The so-called “rule change” of Marxists like Rubin or Heinrich wasn’t evasion either more so than a “deepening.” They returned to Marx’s actual project: to uncover the social mediation of labour through capital-value (money), not to compute equilibrium prices.

Ironically, it was marginalists like Böhm-Bawerk who changed the rules by abandoning coherent theory when their own contradictions emerged. After the Cambridge capital debates, neoclassical economics dropped any measurable concept of “capital” or “utility.” Meanwhile Marx’s framework still explains the world: the tendency of the profit rate to fall, the recurrence of crisis, the structural inequality of value production, the divergence between human need and capital’s logic.

Böhm-Bawerk didn’t close Marx’s system. He failed to grasp it. The TSSI shows that Marx’s value theory is both logically consistent and historically predictive. Value and price differ in form but belong to one total process: the valorization of labour in time. Capitalism itself has rendered the verdict. The crises Böhm-Bawerk’s theory can’t explain are exactly those Marx foresaw. Every breakdown, every cycle, every moment when profit devours life confirms what Marx revealed: capital is a moving contradiction.

Look at the data. Since 1950, machine-made goods (appliances, clothes, telecoms) got cheaper, while labour-intensive sectors (education, health, care) exploded in cost. The difference isn’t “technology,”it’s the relation between living and dead labour. Image Automation transfers old value; it cannot create new. Only living labour produces new value. As capital replaces workers with machines, commodity prices fall while the social services that depend on human labour soar. Marx predicted this dynamic exactly. Mainstream economics calls this “value-added,” meaning what a firm adds to a product. But in Marx’s terms, “value-added” is what workers add, and which capital subtracts. Profit isn’t magical enhancement; it’s the money-form of unpaid labour.

That’s why Böhm-Bawerk’s critique misses the mark: he defined value from the buyer’s satisfaction and the capitalist’s ledger. Marx defined it from social labour itself: the collective human activity every price still presupposes. The empirical record keeps proving Marx right. Prices fall where living labor is expelled, and rise where it remains essential. The law of value is not a relic. It’s the hidden logic behind every curve on that chart. Marx wasn’t refuted in 1896. He was vindicated.

The economic crisis is not caused by overfinancialization but overaccumulation of capital and resultant underproduction of surplus value. "Definancialization" is not only impossible to realize, but even if its promises could be realized it would only extend the lifespan of the system which is causing the collapse of our biosphere. Proponents of this scheme are reactionaries, however they dress up the rhetoric.

>>2538378
this is a good post and I agree with its content, but it seems copy pasted from Cockshott's blog or something, especially here:

>The difference isn’t “technology,”it’s the relation between living and dead labour. Image Automation transfers old value

the "image" inserted randomly in the text must have been a caption from a blog image in the middle of a paragraph, no?

So please share the source if there is one.

>>2537207
>do you entirely lack a sense of humour?
seemed more like a dodge than a joke tbh

>>2538404
https://x.com/ygzgzot/status/1982482608899629301
https://xcancel.com/ygzgzot/status/1982482608899629301

oops

Dohaciel Ygzgzot
@ygzgzot
Neo-Fundamentalist Marxist heretic. Alienated but never resigned. Against capital’s barbarity; for revolutionary & internationalist humanism. A world to win!

seems kinda based ngl

>>2538413
Thanks!

>>2537328
>its progress is relative. relative to what? to feudalism.
what has been progressed from feudalism? again, read chapter 32 of capital vol. 1. what is "progressive" is the alternation of property relations by systematic theft. what is "progressive" to marx is private monopoly.
>>2537644
>its not a wage, its a labour certificate(tm)!
>>2538407
so yes, it seems that no fun is allowed with you.
>>2538378
>The myth that Böhm-Bawerk “ended” Marx’s value theory is one of the oldest ghost stories in economics. What he actually did was misunderstand it…
what exactly does bawerk misunderstand?
>capital-value (money)
you surely mean commodity-value? capital is money "in motion" by the means of its self-expansion (M-C-M').
>Ironically, it was marginalists like Böhm-Bawerk who changed the rules by abandoning coherent theory when their own contradictions emerged.
such as…?
>neoclassical economics
bawerk is part of the austrian school of economics, which differs from the neoclassical school.
>the tendency of the profit rate to fall
which is a concept explicitly affirmed in both neoclassical and austrian thought, and which also has precedence in smith and ricardo, not marx alone.
>the structural inequality of value production
again, this is present in jevons.
>Böhm-Bawerk didn’t close Marx’s system. He failed to grasp it
how?
>Value and price "differ in form"
nope. according to marx, price is simply the form of value of commodities at the stage of money.
>Since 1950, machine-made goods (appliances, clothes, telecoms) got cheaper, while labour-intensive sectors (education, health, care) exploded in cost.
look up "supply and demand".
>The difference isn’t “technology,”it’s the relation between living and dead labour.
so the difference is that men have a soul while machines, slaves, animals and plants dont?
>Only living labour produces new value.
translation: "only souls create new money"
>Prices fall where living labor is expelled, and rise where it remains essential.
you mean that commodities are cheaper where production is cheaper?

Fellas I need help as a 70 I.Q. layman. When an economy has a trade deficit, I'm told that the money flows into the country in the form of capital flows in order to ensure a balance of payments. In essence, what this means is that the outside world net exports capital to the country with a trade deficit. Now I'm reading from economics-understanders on Reddit that this is usually fine depending on the size of the deficit and nature of the capital inflows, but my personal hunch is that trade deficits are always bad and ideally you have a trade surplus or at least balanced trade. Am I right? And if so, why is my hunch right?

>>2538988
>fine depending on the size of the deficit and nature of the capital inflows,
usually people who say this defend the neoliberal deindustrialized structure of western capitalist economies. And while this type of structure can produce "growth" the issue is as this financialized country sits on its increasing money pile, the countries which engage in industrial development keep growing and getting stronger, industry wise. Until finally you reach the point where these industrialized powers can easily beat the shit out of the financial power. (industry creates actual fucking goods that can be used to destroy the opposing power). For example, this happened with britain vs spain, and now is happening with america vs china

>>2538998
That makes sense, thanks.

>>2538988
trade deficit = more imports than exports
trade surplus = more exports than imports
balanced trade = balance of imports and exports

it all depends on what your economic strategy is as to whether or not any of these are good things. for example, china builds its national wealth from a "mercantilist" strategy of creating trade surpluses by exporting commodities across the world in exchange for foreign debt (money). the downside to a trade surplus is that while youre making money, youre spending less, so you also consume less. its the same principle as spending, saving and investing. a trade deficit then has the opposite problem since youre spending all your money, and without any inverse trend to balance trade, you will simply run out eventually.

>>2537207
>primitive accumulation is a phenomenon divorced from technological development…
Wrong again because this isn't connected to what I'm writing. For there to be generalized commodity production, so that capitalism can develop by accumulating capital in an economy, there must be changes in the superstructure of society, with the previous mode of production not adapted to the technological advancement that occurred. This is the case with the structures of feudalism, where with the technological advancement of large-scale production, the bourgeoisie were able to dismantle the control of the guilds, create a state that gives equal rights to men as long as it eliminates the obstacles to capital circulation, and prevents peasants and artisans from achieving self-sufficiency because they are unable to survive against competition in the production of goods in the market. This occurred as the bourgeoisie grew in the cities and technological advancements moved from artisanal production to production with manufacturing workers, to the factory system. As the bourgeoisie gained economic power, they used their influence to change the superstructure of the backward society in alliance with other working classes. As the proletariat developed, the bourgeoisie managed to establish itself as the new ruling class, becoming conservative as the proletariat became a force against it. Primitive accumulation depends on a bourgeoisie that strengthened itself to attempt to change society as organizational techniques were discovered. Wealth was accumulated by these bourgeoisie, which clashed with feudal privileges and the communal rights of peasants to their common lands. This was instrumental in consolidating capitalism, with colonization and mercantilism serving as the basis for generalized commodity production for the exploitation of wage labor, allowing it to spread rather than remain localized.

>primitive accumulation occurs in the 16th century; the industrial revolution occurs in the late 18th century…
Primitive accumulation is a preparation for the conditions that form capitalism, helping it to consolidate or form. British enclosure did not occur specifically in the 16th century, but rather was a process that developed until the 18th and 19th centuries with the Parliamentary Enclosure Acts. The peak of enclosures occurred between the 17th and 19th centuries, and it is this process that Marx refers to as a whole.

>right, so you support a regime of universal slavery, the same as the capitalists. youve already said that its againat the interests of workers to possess their own property, so why all this unnecessary yapping?
Wrong. Slavery needs to have a separation from the worker who is someone's property, all means of production being organized collectively do not have an owner to exploit the work done, again the definition of slavery depends on this person belonging to someone as property or being tied to a contract or property that belongs to another person who uses the legal process to recognize this exploitation of this worker, in the case of not having a legal process, constant force is necessary, which will eventually be part of the state that will maintain this system.

Bonded child labor with debt dependency is the inevitable result if you deny the collective social responsibility of raising children until they are old enough to have an education to form new adult workers for society, out of your desire to defend private property, which will be used to intensify exploitation.

Let's see an example with quotes:

<Machinery also revolutionises out and out the contract between the labourer and the capitalist, which formally fixes their mutual relations. Taking the exchange of commodities as our basis, our first assumption was that capitalist and labourer met as free persons, as independent owners of commodities; the one possessing money and means of production, the other labour-power. But now the capitalist buys children and young persons under age. Previously, the workman sold his own labour-power, which he disposed of nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slave-dealer. [40] The demand for children’s labour often resembles in form the inquiries for negro slaves, such as were formerly to be read among the advertisements in American journals.

<“My attention,” says an English factory inspector, “was drawn to an advertisement in the local paper of one of the most important manufacturing towns of my district, of which the following is a copy: Wanted, 12 to 20 young persons, not younger than what can pass for 13 years. Wages, 4 shillings a week. Apply &c.” [41]

<The phrase “what can pass for 13 years,” has reference to the fact, that by the Factory Act, children under 13 years may work only 6 hours. A surgeon officially appointed must certify their age. The manufacturer, therefore, asks for children who look as if they were already 13 years old. The decrease, often by leaps and bounds in the number of children under 13 years employed in factories, a decrease that is shown in an astonishing manner by the English statistics of the last 20 years, was for the most part, according to the evidence of the factory inspectors themselves, the work of the certifying surgeons, who overstated the age of the children, agreeably to the capitalist’s greed for exploitation, and the sordid trafficking needs of the parents. In the notorious district of Bethnal Green, a public market is held every Monday and Tuesday morning, where children of both sexes from 9 years of age upwards, hire themselves out to the silk manufacturers. "The usual terms are 1s. 8d. a week (this belongs to the parents) and ‘2d. for myself and tea.’ The contract is binding only for the week. The scene and language while this market is going on are quite disgraceful.” [42] It has also occurred in England, that women have taken “children from the workhouse and let any one have them out for 2s. 6d. a week.” [43] In spite of legislation, the number of boys sold in Great Britain by their parents to act as live chimney-sweeping machines (although there exist plenty of machines to replace them) exceeds 2,000. [44] The revolution effected by machinery in the juridical relations between the buyer and the seller of labour-power, causing the transaction as a whole to lose the appearance of a contract between free persons, afforded the English Parliament an excuse, founded on juridical principles, for the interference of the state with factories. Whenever the law limits the labour of children to 6 hours in industries not before interfered with, the complaints of the manufacturers are always renewed. They allege that numbers of the parents withdraw their children from the industry brought under the Act, in order to sell them where “freedom of labour” still rules, i.e., where children under 13 years are compelled to work like grown-up people, and therefore can be got rid of at a higher price. But since capital is by nature a leveller, since it exacts in every sphere of production equality in the conditions of the exploitation of labour, the limitation by law of children’s labour, in one branch of industry, becomes the cause of its limitation in others.

<Karl Marx, 1867, Capital Volume One, Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm

Let's take another quote from Capital, volume one:
<Without considering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a child, in the sheds where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the performance of his work 15-20 miles in every 6 hours! And the work often lasts 14 or 15 hours! In many of these glass works, as in the Moscow spinning mills, the system of 6 hours’ relays is in force. “During the working part of the week six hours is the utmost unbroken period ever attained at any one time for rest, and out of this has to come the time spent in coming and going to and from work, washing, dressing, and meals, leaving a very short period indeed for rest, and none for fresh air and play, unless at the expense of the sleep necessary for young boys, especially at such hot and fatiguing work…. Even the short sleep is obviously liable to be broken by a boy having to wake himself if it is night, or by the noise, if it is day.” Mr. White gives cases where a boy worked 36 consecutive hours; others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morning, and then slept in the works till 5 a.m. (3 hours!) only to resume their work. “The amount of work,” say Tremenheere and Tufnell, who drafted the general report, “done by boys, youths, girls, and women, in the course of their daily or nightly spell of labour, is certainly extraordinary.” (l.c., xliii. and xliv.) Meanwhile, late by night, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reels out of his club homeward droning out idiotically. “Britons never, never shall be slaves!”

<Karl Marx, 1867, Capital Volume One, Chapter Ten: The Working-Day

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#71a

>does a worker possess their own labour-power?
If you're referring to workers having some right superior to what is socially produced, such as commodities, the means of production, and whatever is necessary to meet their needs, which belongs to the capitalist as private property, the answer is no. The proletarian maintains a minimum wage to maintain their subsistence, along with what is necessary for the worker's reproduction, but with the class struggle and the organization of these workers against the capitalist class, this labor wage can increase. The capitalist class will maintain its control over the means of production through its ownership relationship as long as there is no organization of workers organized as a class so that this socially produced property no longer has an owner who extracts surplus value to become capital. This will be achieved with the dictatorship of the proletariat. You have no rights under any natural law because natural law doesn't exist. Your rights come from class struggle, and the proletariat sells its labor power through its social relationship with the capitalist, who owns the means of production and all the necessities of the workers. These necessities are commodities on the market, and these workers need money to access them in a capitalist society. Selling your labor power doesn't give you the right to intellectual property or private property, which requires a state to maintain itself. As long as there is competition that eventually leads to winners who will want to maintain this property to exploit workers, the bourgeois state will always emerge to pursue the interests of the capitalist class. Otherwise, the inevitable violence of the masses will ensure that this property no longer belongs to an owner.

>so you can own other people but cant own yourself?
The relationship of ownership is socially constructed, and with class struggle, it dissolves depending on a historical period and its technological level. As long as slave owners have a state that emerged to defend their economic interests, the slave will remain the property of an owner. This applies to all other groups of workers throughout history, such as the serf subjugated by the feudal lord, the proletarian to the capitalist who holds the property as their own private property. All these relationships are no more "true" or "false" than one another; the difference would be that the slave does not have the right to be an equal subject under the law, but rather as the private property of another person. There is no natural law that prevents all these private property relations from being eventually abolished. Self-ownership is an ideological fantasy that has no social relationship and therefore does not exist, because from its inception, private property arose to maintain control and abuse within a family, of men against women and parents against children, to control the inheritance of this property, which remains separate from the rest of society. Just as private property began, it will have an end.

How does value change when goods move across markets?

For example let's say a ton of steel takes 1000 SNLT hours in country A, while in country B it's 200 SNLT hours due to higher automation.

So if A exports to B, is value being destroyed? Similarly, if B exports to A, is value being added?

>>2538988
trade deficits are good if you have currency hegemony (enforced by military hegemony)

trade deficits are bad if you don't have hegemony

to deindustrialize is the privilege of the imperial core, because they can force less developed countries with lower wages who use currencies with less purchasing power to produce them cheap commodities. These countries then hold massive stockpiles of a hegemonic currency (perhaps even the world reserve currency in the case of the USA) that is always inflating due to the trade deficit and money printer go brr. This is naturally unsustainable in the long term for the nation that does it, but is very good for its ruling class in the short term. A lot of apologetics are therefore built around justifying it.

>>2539303
I'm answering off the dome without citations here, but country B is not going to import a ton of steel from country A where it takes 5x as long to make. That would make no sense and be very expensive. But country B where 1 ton of steel takes 200 hrs to produce will be able to easily export to country A and any other country where it takes longer. This will induce those other countries to adopt country B's methods, since they are not competitive.

>>2539303
Marx usually did calculations in one nation. If you do it internationally with country A and B and there are also countries C,D,E,F and steel making tech is evenly distributed with most countries more like B then A, then the SNLT is ~200 hours and country A is doing socially unnecessary labor.

More precisely it would be an average but that would depend on the output. If only A and B exist and country A produces the most of an unfinished commodity like steel, as is usually the case, then it would be closer to the 1000, but if it were a finished good and the more efficient country produced way more then it would be closer to the lower number.

Either way "socially necessary" takes into account technological advancements, so digging a hole manually isn't more valuable when tractors are widely in use. And if 200 is the average then 800 isn't destroyed, it is appropriated through exchange, and transferred to the more efficient country. You are slower so only make 10 tons while they make 100. You still put in 10000 hours but that labor cost means that 8000 difference that is appropriated is distributed across the 100 tons that each net a profit of +80 hours per ton in superprofits above the 200.