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https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/free-trade/index.htm(The Critique Of) Political Economy After Marx's Death
https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/postmarx.htmRobot slavery is fine. But what to do with 8 billion unemployed people is unclear
>>2547898the robot owners can pay them in company scrip with all the value robots create
>>2547823<The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm>>2547606anti-communist warrior 💪
>>2547885yes, ive read it before. chapter 4 is also worth reading.
>>2547883>markets produce capitalist relationscapitalist relations (private monopoly over the means of production) historically occurs through state intervention via bourgeois dictatorship (i.e. primitive accumulation).
>>2548105>>2547837>receiving education is a lot of work that you're expected to pay for up front. Really higher wages are just paying you back for they ears of tuition and unpaid labor.why are state officials receiving a separate, elite education in a communist society? why are people even paying for university in a communist society?
>>2548414>the evidence for geocentrism and heliocentrism comes from the same phenomena, just interpreted differently. to me, marxism is geocentric. What makes
Marxism "geocentric?"
>>2548414>marxism is a perversion of socialism, which replaces british common sense with german mysticismexplain for us the difference between british common sense and german mysticism, from your perspective.
>>2548414>politics and economics are not the same thing.Class society arises from economic relations, and this has political consequences. Artificially segregating the two might seem like "British common sense" to you but to anyone else its seems like obfuscation of class society which benefits the ruling class politically.
>>2548414>marxism is a perversion of socialism, which replaces british common sense with german mysticism.jesse….
>>2548726It's especially weird that he says this since Marx spent literally over half his life in England, researching in the British museum, reading British political economy, and deriving his own ideas from that. Oh no this dirty stinky German showed up and ruined our perfect British common sense with his weird Hegelian mysticism is such a weird cope. As is the blatant attempt to segregate politics from economics in a thread called political economy.
>>2548731at this point I just view him as a lol cow. I dont like being rude but he kinda is one
>>2548414>marxism is a perversion of socialism, which replaces british common sense with german mysticismThe British Empire, a glorious exercise in "let's see how much of the world we can own before lunch," began with the subtle elegance of piracy and trade. At first, it was all about "spices" and "spices" were, naturally, worth turning a blind eye to any minor ethical dilemmas like, oh, kidnapping, slavery, and the occasional genocide. But that was just the appetizer. Then, like a drunk person stumbling into a buffet, Britain started scooping up territories with the same finesse as a toddler in a toy store. India? "Sure, why not!" The Caribbean? "It's like a tropical vacation… with gold!" Africa? "Let's just call it all of it." The Empire reached its zenith by collecting more territories than a Monopoly player who hasn't read the rules and is too busy yelling "MINE!" to notice they've declared bankruptcy. But, as with all good things that are based on unreasonable greed and excessive pride, cracks began to show. First, there were those pesky colonies with their rebellious ideas like "freedom" and "rights" (what a buzzkill). Then there were the mounting costs of controlling everything, because apparently, sending gunboats to every little skirmish isn't "cost-effective." Oops. Eventually, Britain started shedding colonies the way a person loses keys after a night of drinking: disoriented, confused, and somewhat surprised. The Empire shriveled under the weight of its own absurdity, like a giant inflatable globe with too many holes in it. In the end, what remained was less a global empire and more a series of bitter ex-colonies with grievances, a few tea bags, and a somewhat confusing sense of national identity. Britain now spends its time playing trivia about how it used to run half the world, while everyone else collectively wonders, "What on Earth were they thinking?"
And that, folks, is the rise and fall of the British Empire, a glorious mess of hubris, misplaced nationalism, and the inexplicable need to claim everything within a 100-mile radius.
>>2548307…. if the dumbass asking had just rephrased his question as "what are various reasons for inflation?" he wouldn't have looked so stupid in this clip ….
>>2548706he's making a satirical point by giving an analogy of the wastefulness of gold-digging and how digging up money serves the same end. he qualifies all this by saying that he would much prefer to build houses;
>It is curious how common sense, wriggling for an escape from absurd conclusions, has been apt to reach a preference for wholly “wasteful” forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict “business” principles. For example, unemployment relief financed by loans is more readily accepted than the financing of improvements at a charge below the current rate of interest; whilst the form of digging holes in the ground known as gold-mining, which not only adds nothing whatever to the real wealth of the world but involves the disutility of labour, is the most acceptable of all solutions. If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch10.htm>>2548719lets take engels' praise of adam smith for example:
>Thus even Adam Smith knew “the source of the surplus-value of the capitalist,” and furthermore also of that of the landlord. Marx acknowledged this as early as 1861, while Rodbertus and the swarming mass of his admirers, who grew like mushrooms under the warm summer showers of state socialism, seem to have forgotten all about that.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htmhe does this providing various quotations from smith and marx. lets look at the citations:
<The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced.” […] rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. It seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has the wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest […] profit makes a second deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land…https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htmand with this, marx summarises smith's view:
>Here therefore Adam Smith in plain terms describes rent and profit on capital as mere deductions from the workman’s product or the value of his product, which is equal to the quantity of labour added by him to the material.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htmso then, smith creates the most basic sum in the world. we have the total value of a productive process (e.g. £100). this total value must then be shared between persons as separate revenues corresponding to class positions; "rent" for the landlord, "profit" for the capitalist and "wages" for the worker. thus, the return of total value has its share between these parties (i.e. £20 in rents, £30 in profit and £50 in wages). the total value thus corresponds to total revenue (or costs). we may then formulate the sum of total value: (rent + profit + wages) = total value (what smith terms the "component" prices of commodities). this of course is identical to marx's formula for the value of commodities in vol. 3:
<The value of every commodity produced in the capitalist way is represented in the formula: C = c + v + s.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch01.htmso then, it takes smith a few chapters to say what it takes marx 2 books to conclude, by common sense. marx's "dialectical" method is so unclear and convoluted that its still argued over today. as people say, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." yet in all religious systems, oversimplification causes error, as it does with marx, but not with smith. proof of this is in the lack of baggage; you can accept economic reality without singing the l'internationale.
>>2548731marx was pro-capitalist and anti-socialist:
>>2510749>>2548736if i was wrong about anything, it would have been said.
>>2548751>he writes in english…>>2548723>Class society arises from economic relationsits backwards. power in the state often impresses itself as power in the economy. aristotle understood this. class relations are relations of power in the state. you wouldnt deny this, yet you speak contrarily to it.
>>2548716it presupposes a substance called "value" which exists codependently of price, rather than simply itself being a price, as it is in smith's system (i.e. "natural price"). now, marx's theory of value certainly has sociological intrigue and marx in himself is a world-historical genius, but on the style of his communication, he can be utterly lacking. an issue in his theory of value begins by his misinterpretation of aristotle, where he claims that aristotle saw the form of value, but not value as such; this is false, as we read (ethics, 5.5), where aristotle directly determines money as "measure of value", with value being quantity of "demand" in relation to supply. here, aristotle sees the trade relation underpinned by marginal utility, as we also read in "rhetoric" (1.7) where he introduces the "paradox of value" between water and gold. he resolves it by saying that what is better in gold is its scarcity, despite its (total) useless by comparison. so then, aristotle had a theory of value (of the good), yet it is a value measured in money (price), and by these means do we estimate the relative worth of something. xenophon makes comments on gold and silver here:
<I may note this fact about gold, that, with a sudden influx of this metal, it is the gold itself which is depreciated whilst causing at the same time a rise in the value of silver.https://topostext.org/work/95so then, the greater supply of gold, the less its value in relation to silver, despite the greatness of gold. thus as aristotle says, it is its scarcity which grants its value, or relative price, in relation to all other commodities. so then, to me, value is a function of price, or so to say, money is the "measure of value" (i.e. aristotle, smith). marx agrees, but reverses things, claiming that money itself must have value to measure value. this of course is false, since money is not a commodity. marx and engels speak on the retroactivity of this theoretical derivation here (of deriving value from price):
>>2547392yet its gratuitous, for the forms of which we speak of are still and always prices of one sort or another.
>>2549046>marx was pro-capitalist and anti-socialistsad
>>2548413>why are state officials receiving a separate, elite education in a communist society? why are people even paying for university in a communist society?why is the education elite now? what makes you think people are paying? there is a social cost to having people study instead of work even if that same individual doesnt pay
>>2549176money printer go brrr
>>2549046>where aristotle directly determines money as "measure of value", with value being quantity of "demand" in relation to supply. here, aristotle sees the trade relation underpinned by marginal utilityYou keep implying demand is fundamental and supply is secondary, while I keep saying they are both disequilibrium phenomena that can only predict by how much a commodity's natural price (or value, or equilbrium price) differs from its market price. When the two codependent phenomena are in equilibrium, the price is simply the labor inputs, some of which are direct labor inputs (variable capital) and some of which are indirect labor inputs (constant capital). Surplus value, or profit, is just expropriation of wages by the capitalist which they are able to carry out because they own the constant capital, the i.e. the means of production. It is essentially a rent they charge the worker out of their wages for the privilege of using their private property (the means of production). Some of this they reinvest in expanding production, and some of it they keep for their own secure, lavish, and wealthy lifestyles.
Why I don't think demand is fundamental and is in fact codependent with supply, is because demand can be induced through various means (in fact, in traffic engineering we often talk of induced demand that comes as a result of road widening, but this can also apply to economics, and protection rackets for example thrive on induced demand created by the threat of violence) and rates of supply are simply a reflection of the socially necessary labor time needed to produce a commodity or, in the most simple of circumstances, find, extract, and refine some raw material from the Earth.
>>2549046>marx was pro-capitalist and anti-socialist:this seems like a non sequitur since this was intended to be a reply to someone replying to your previous remark about german mysticism vs. british common sense. it was stated that marx had a lot of influence from the so called british common sense, since he spent over half his life there researching and writing capital while studying the actually existing british economy and the canon of british political economists like Smith, Ricardo, etc.
>>2549046>its backwards. power in the state often impresses itself as power in the economy. aristotle understood this. class relations are relations of power in the state. Class society exists in both the private sector (economy) and in the public sector (state) but bourgeois class power rules over both those sectors, both in and outside of the state. So class society encompasses both the government and non-government sectors.
>>2549046>it presupposes a substance called "value" which exists codependently of price, rather than simply itself being a pricebefore a value becomes a price tag it accumulates in the production process. If iron ore were laying around everywhere you wouldn't pay someone to fetch iron ore. You pay someone to go into the mines and bring the iron back out. The value is in that action, before a price tag is even hung on it. Value is socially necessary labor time. Price is the expression of that socially necessary labor time in measurable quantities of money. But if this is too abstract for you, suffice it to say that value is just the natural price.
>>2547894>>2545190>>2547194I will leave this answer for anyone who has doubts and is falling for the austerity propaganda of neoliberals wanting to blame the unemployed for the decline in productivity in the United Kingdom.
The UK’s long-term productivity crisis is a direct product of capitalist decay such as falling profitability, financialisation, and rent-seeking, not state spending or welfare. Michael Roberts and other Marxist economists have been writing about this for over a decade.
<In the case of the UK, there is another particular problem: the UK is increasingly a rentier economy, relying on finance, business services and real estate. These are unproductive activities that do not boost the productivity of labour, but do reduce available profits for productive investment. Indeed, the relative fall-back in UK productivity compared to Germany and France etc can be particularly discerned from the early 2000s, when the oil revenues dissipated and investment increasingly went into a credit fuelled real estate boom.
<A detailed sectoral analysis by the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence has shown that three-fifths of the drop in productivity growth stems from sectors representing only a fifth of output, including finance, utilities, pharmaceuticals, computing and professional services. The Bank of England did a similar analysis found that it is the top ones that have become the slackers. The most productive groups are “failing to improve on each other at the same rate as their predecessors did”, according to its research. The best companies still improved their productivity faster than the rest, but productivity growth among the best has sharply fallen and this has hurt the UK’s growth rate.
<Investment in a capitalist economy depends on its profitability as I have argued ad nauseam in this blog. And there is still relatively low profitability and a continued overhang of debt, particularly corporate debt, in the major economies. In the case of the UK, the profitability of the non-financial sector is still some 12% below its level in 1997. And in the oil sector, it has fallen 50%.
<Michael Roberts, 2018, The productivity puzzle againhttps://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/06/29/the-productivity-puzzle-againThe socialist solution is to de-financialize the economy by bringing banks under democratic control to channel credit into production, nationalize key sectors (energy, transport, housing, infrastructure), plan investment instead of leaving it to the financial capital short-term unproductive logic, raise workers' wages encouraging consumption and productivity together, not by discipline but by rational coordination of production, this means public investment with state-owned companies to encourage productivity.
>>2549570> the UK is increasingly a rentier economy, relying on finance, business services and real estate.there's a certain anon who calls Michael Hudson antisemitic for noticing these consequences of deindustrialization in the imperial core
>>2549736>anything that's not productive labor will get eliminated by AI at a rapid pace.WHAT ABOUT CEO POSITIONS, MUSKRAT?!
>>2549743the how did a burger survive the 73 oil crash and computers at the same time? didnt think of that huh smarty pants
>>2549172>patricians are paid more than the plebs because of their education<why are patricians getting a separate education from the plebs?this still hasnt been answered. just seems like youre classcucked into supporting bureaucracy. as plato says, state officials should receive minimum wage. thats it.
>>2549260the reply was meant for:
>>2548726and who cares if marx studied in britain? if, as engels says, adam smith already figured things out almost a century earlier than marx, then why do we need marx? thats my point. the british invented liberalism, socialism, the labour theory of value, etc. what does marx offer in particular?
>>2549285>before a value becomes a price tag it accumulates in the production processso value is a physical substance, not a mode of social recognition? as marx says, value is not physical;
>So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmand "production" only has meaning in consumption:
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm >>2549570>unemployment doesnt reduce productivity<says nothing about re-industrialisationworthless commentary.
>>2549736>with technology anything is possible, except employee ownership over the means of production…>>2549733>>2550054rate of profit ≠ absolute profit
as smith and marx explain, the rate of profit declines in proportion to capital stock employed and competition. if i invest £100 and get £110 back, my rate of profit is 10%, while if i invest £1,000 and get £1,010 back, my rate of profit is 1%, but absolute profit is the same: £10. so then, as long as there is absolute profit, its stable.
>>2549255>You keep implying demand is fundamental and supply is secondaryas j.b. say understands, production is limited by the utility of objects, since whatever is sought to be produced must be useful so as to be purchased. similarly, aristotle places the marginal utility of gold as its imperative to be produced, and marx also understands production to be a condition of consumption, with labour only attaining its value by the act of exchange, and without this, there is no labour.
>they are both disequilibrium phenomenaso when supply and demand are in equilibrium, there is no supply and there is no demand? think.
>Why I don't think demand is fundamental and is in fact codependent with supply, is because demand can be induced through various meansthe issue here is misunderstanding terms; when smith speaks of demand, he calls it "effectual demand", or the active ability to purchase a commodity, as opposed to what is ineffective, which is desire without purhase. you can desire anything, but demand only represents money. if you make mudpies, can you call them valuable?
>>2549175you dont know what "political economy" means.
>>2549276capitalists only have economic supremacy becauce of the state. without the state, they would lose it.
>>2548716>>2549046to continue, the presupposition of value causes immanent contradictions. for example, the form of appearance of value (exchange-value) takes on the form of price in a monetary system. thus, appearance gives epistemology to what is essential between things; we come to "know" value by price. this is perfectly consistent until capital vol 1, chapter 3, where marx says that the price-form both reveals and conceals value, since in gaining a price, a product attains the form of value as a commodity, yet this relation may not be one of "real" value, but rather, of "imaginary" value. thus, if commodity (X) has a price the same as (Y), one has a "true" appearance and the other, a "false" appearance. so then, epistemology breaks down and we no longer recognise value by its necessary form of appearance.
the assertion of a "false" appearance appears superstitious and thus an irrational means of explaining how some commodities have "value" while others dont. further, how are we to "know" what has value or not, if the means by which we come to know is the same? this "geocentrism" fails because it abides by sola fide.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2015/12/imaginary-prices-and-marxs-labour.html?m=1 >neema parvini on embracing paul cockshott's view on productive versus unproductive labour
im surprised that parvini, with his austrian background, doesnt explain the difference between primary and secondary goods, and how the price of the goods also corresponds to the time-frame of consumption. as i have shown before, the chain of supply has its cause in the breadth of the economic order, from the merchant to the manufacturer, and so what is secondary implies the primary as a lesser marginal value (i.e. retail versus wholesale). 1 can of coke sold individually costs more than 1 can proportionate to its 24-can bundle, for example, and so the retail sale of the single can of coke influences the wholesale purchase of the 24 cans, and so on. the question of productive and unproductive labour thus has its answer by these means, which is that productivity is not a substance (i.e. "labour"), but is a context, harmonised on an economic scale. and as a basic example, every seller needs a buyer. "productivity" is not determined by a physical act, but by meeting a need in this activity, otherwise your product serves no value and is thus a waste. productivity is only determined in sale (i.e. ricardo, marx), and so if someone is deemed "unproductive" it appears to be as jevons describes smith's paradox of value, that though water has a greater total utility, its marginal utility is less than the diamond. so then, manufacturing has a lower marginal product by having a greater total product, while its opposite for services. this is why manufacturing goods cost more in total, while services cost more in particular (i.e. a single can of coke, or a single cup coffee). less is more, yet the most is not the least.
>>2550289hoppe already says that profit is the interest rewarded to the capitalist for his investment:
>>2460758yet he justifies it by saying that the capitalist gets a positive reward for time-preference. i reverse this by showing that its actually the worker who takes on "risk" with their investment.
>>2550260>so when supply and demand are in equilibrium, there is no supply and there is no demand? think.not what's being said at all. To say something is a disequilibrium phenomenon is not to say that the phenomenon doesn't exist at all. Just saying that when it comes to the price standpoint, supply/demand can only adequately explain the deviation from the natural price, but not the natural price itself. It is an important question to ask why different commodities have different natural prices even though supply and demand are in equilibrium for each of them. One might say
rate of supply explains natural price as if to make supply fundamental, but
rate of supply depends on the production process, specifically the socially necessary labor time. If we're talking about a nonrenewable natural resource, yes scarcity is a permanent feature, but scarcity merely regulates the socially necessary labor time it takes to find, extract, and refine that natural resource. This is why Marx makes socially necessary labor time the locus of his theory of value, because from a perspective of class struggle, which for him is a driving force in human society, the context of all economic activity, scarcity, or rate of supply, is going to regulate the exploitation of labor, and profit is subtracted from what would otherwise be wages. Writing economic theory from the standpoint of exploitation and class struggle doesn't make this perspective less clear or less scientific unless you don't care about how these things relate to economics, or worse, you think these things shouldn't be acknowledged at all in economics. But we already went over ITT how the arbitrary segregation of politics from economics is indeed a deliberate contrivance of the ruling class to reinforce capitalist individualism, where the suffering of the poor is not a result of social murder and exploitation, but merely a failure of individuals to survive in a social darwinist struggle.
>the issue here is misunderstanding terms; when smith speaks of demand, he calls it "effectual demand", or the active ability to purchase a commodity, as opposed to what is ineffective, which is desire without purhase. you can desire anything, but demand only represents money. if you make mudpies, can you call them valuable?Smith Anon, we've been over the mudpies thing countless time. Marx has built into his theory the idea that a commodity must be satisfy a human desire (at a social scale) for it to be a commodity in the first place. Obviously neither Marx nor I put forward the idea that labor which does not produce something demanded in the economy produces commodities. All of this is assumed in the context of commodity production which are assumed to have use value (or, if you like, demand) baked into their definition. But this doesn't make demand more fundamental. You can look at any circuitous activity in the economy and say "this is the starting point and therefore the most fundamental element" but for Marx, it is important to see that it's a circuit, and what is fundamental to people depends on their standpoint, and therefore upon the material interests, and therefore upon their class, and the class struggle.
>>2550303>not what's being said at allthese are your words:
<they are both disequilibrium phenomenasupply and demand are phenomena in equilibrium as well, since there is no concept of "equilibrium" outside of supply and demand… what exactly is equilibrating?
>supply/demand can only adequately explain the deviation from the natural price, but not the natural price itselfwhat is supply measuring, in your opinion?
>the arbitrary segregation of politics from economicsare they different things? yes or no? can you be a communist who rejects the LTV, for example? can you be a communist and not care about economics?
>capitalist individualismcapitalism is not individualistic.
>a commodity must be satisfy a human desireokay, so supply depends upon demand, to marx. they are co-constituted, as he writes in the grundrisse.
>>2550309>supply and demand are phenomena in equilibrium as well, since there is no concept of "equilibrium" outside of supply and demand… what exactly is equilibrating?From the market standpoint what’s equilibrating is price and quantity. The market price adjusts so that quantity demanded equals quantity supplied, and the market price is the same as the natural price. At that point, no buyer or seller has an incentive to change behavior. That’s the equilibrium. From the standpoint of price it is the point at which the production process, rather than the supply and demand, can explain the cause of the price being specifically what it is for that commodity, since different commodities will have different natural prices, despite supply and demand being in equilibrium for each of them.
>are they different things? yes or no? False binary. Ever seen a venn diagram? Things can "overlap." We put forward static notions like "politics" and "economics" and segregate them from the standpoint of categorizing things, but then we overcome our own static notions when we see clear overlaps or ambiguities between our statically conceived categories.
>what is supply measuring, in your opinion?From an economy wide standpoint, how much of a finished commodity is already in circulation in the economy.
>can you be a communist who rejects the LTV, for example? can you be a communist and not care about economics?I suppose an individual could choose to call themselves one thing while at the same time rejecting all the typical characteristics of that thing. Not sure why they would do that, but it happens. This in turn would slightly influence how language is used, and over time could cause semantic drift, which we often see, since not even definitions are static, but contested and contextual.
>capitalism is not individualistic.It very much is. It actively discourages class struggle on the basis that an individual can make it through their own wit in the social darwinist struggle. From the bourgeois perspective, Thatcher remarked that there is no society, only individuals. From the proletarian perspective, Steinbeck remarked that socialism never took off in America because everyone sees themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Marx criticizes the bourgeois apologia that profit is merely the individual capitalist's superior discipline, or his abstinence from using money, or the wages for his managerial acumen.
>okay, so supply depends upon demand, to marx. they are co-constituted, as he writes in the grundrisse.before a human can desire it, they must know that it exists, and for it to exist, it must be produced. The production process is circuitous. You can pick any point in the circuit as the arbitrary and therefore most "fundamental" starting point. Once you get out of the thinking that the production process is merely a linear series of events, and you get into the thinking that it's a circuit with different start/endpoints depending on your subjective standpoint, you can analyze the production process from different standpoints, and see the class struggle in human society as more fundamental than supply or demand.
>>2550317>The market price adjusts so that quantity demanded equals quantity supplied, and the market price is the same as the natural priceyes, precisely. the natural price being the costs of production, which you call "labour inputs".
>False binary>Things can "overlap."okay, so they are different things and so can be spoken of separately.
>I suppose an individual could choose to call themselves one thing while at the same time rejecting all the typical characteristics of that thing. Not sure why they would do that, but it happens.how many self-proclaimed marxists would you estimate have actually read marx? how many anti-marxists do you think have actually read marx? see?
>Thatcher remarked that there is no society, only individualsher policies were a one-sided class war against the workers, including social conservatism, which limits individual freedom. you see the same contradiction in thatcher's mentor, friedman, who is a voluntarist until it comes to labour unions. the capitalist cant believe in the political power of the individual even if they ontologise them as slaves. the claim that society is only a series of individuals is also rhetorically used in rothbard's "for a new liberty" (1973) to prove that blaming "society" simply means blaming everybody else except yourself, which is true. as smith also says, the self-interest of the citizen is substituted with the class interest of capitalists, as "wealth" is falsely identified with profit. wealth means higher wages, not profits. engels also says that "national wealth" (e.g. GDP) is a contradictory metric for the same reason.
>before a human can desire it, they must know that it exists, and for it to exist, it must be produced.we desire things that dont exist all the time. you are again confusing desire for demand. if you dont think that demand constitutes supply, take it up with marx.
>>2550330>yes, precisely. the natural price being the costs of production, which you call "labour inputs".Well considering means of production is the result of past labor inputs, and labor power is the current labor inputs, and profit is just unpaid wages, yes, the cost of production is the result of labor inputs, which explains the natural price. The market price can vary from the natural price, and this variation is explained by supply and demand, but the natural price is the anchor determined by production, which is labor inputs.
>>2550359the natural price is itself a market price, as smith says:
<The actual price at which any commodity is commonly sold is called its market price. It may either be above, or below, or exactly the same with its natural price.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch07.htm>the cost of production is the result of labor inputsagain, if we qualify cost as labour, then we are ambiguous in what is quantified. its here that someone can claim that superintendence adds "labour" to the product for example, and its all indeterminate until we account for these factors by component prices (i.e. wages, rents, profits). once this is accounted for, it can be tallied as the cost of production. as i have said, labour in itself cannot be quantified, but only its representation. when marx derives value from labour for example, he says this:
<The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it. [V = q/p]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmif we substitute "productiveness" for "intensity" then we have the exact same terms as jevons, and thus labour can be measured by its finished product. in the same way, jevons and marx perceive profit over wages to be a result of the duration of labour, and thus marginal product meeting lesser duration equates at higher wages. i have discussed all this before:
>>2495832jevons already contends with the LTV of course:
(1) Cost of production determines supply.
(2) Supply determines final degree of utility.
(3) Final degree of utility determines value.
this simply appears to be the proper formulation of it.
wait is the ai right. Did marx and carey interact with each other? The great american neo mercantalist interacting with karl marx himself is fascinating, if true
No, Henry Carey and Karl Marx did not meet in person, but they corresponded and had a complex professional relationship. Carey sent Marx copies of his books, and Marx wrote critically about Carey's work while also acknowledging his significance in American economics. They were indirectly involved through their writings for the New York Tribune, though their intellectual differences meant their interaction was more of a public and intellectual disagreement than a personal conversation.
Intellectual opponents: Marx considered Carey a rival and wrote about him critically to his collaborator, Friedrich Engels.
Source of material: Carey, an American economist, even cited Marx in his own work, referencing his articles from the New York Tribune.
Indirect interaction: While they did not meet, their engagement with each other's work, especially through the Tribune, created an indirect "dialogue" or "warfare" of ideas.
Mutual respect (with criticism): Marx privately referred to Carey as "the only American economist of importance," but was critical of his views, while Carey expressed respect for Marx's contributions to the Tribune.
>>2550330(sorry I got distracted by something before completing my previous reply which was
>>2550359)
>okay, so they are different things and so can be spoken of separately.yet they interpenetrate, interconnect, and have ambiguity, and shouldn't be thought of as completely separate and not affecting one another. Recall that the stimulus behind this conversation was the following remark:
>>2548414<politics and economics are not the same thing.>how many self-proclaimed marxists would you estimate have actually read marx? how many anti-marxists do you think have actually read marx? see?Not enough of either, evidently, but it never surprises me anymore when people don't do the reading because people are the products of an alienating environment rife with burdens, exploitation, and distractions.
>her policies were a one-sided class war against the workers, including social conservatism, which limits individual freedom.When I hear "individual freedom" my first instinct is to question what that means for the person using the phrase. For someone like you, you would probably include freedom from exploitation as well as freedom to live as you please provided it does not harm anyone else. But for the bourgeoisie, "individual freedom" means the freedom of the individuals in the ruling class to exploit others. So there are mutually contradictory sorts of freedom. The freedom to exploit and the freedom from exploitation mutually exclude one another. The more people are free from being exploited, the fewer people are free to exploit. So you have to decide what kind of freedom, freedom to X, or freedom from X, you want to be available in society.
>you see the same contradiction in thatcher's mentor, friedman, who is a voluntarist until it comes to labour unions. the capitalist cant believe in the political power of the individual even if they ontologise them as slaves. the claim that society is only a series of individuals is also rhetorically used in rothbard's "for a new liberty" (1973) to prove that blaming "society" simply means blaming everybody else except yourself, which is true. Not necessarily, the individual is part of the society in the same way that the heart is part of the body. If the body takes in a lot of endotoxins and the body goes into septic shock from low blood pressure and poor circulation, it's not the heart's fault, the heart is just embedded in a context where it becomes less effective than usual. What uses is there in the heart "blaming itself" for being in a body that has taken in a bunch of endotoxins? Similarly if society is structured in such a way that poverty is endemic, there is not much use in the impoverished individuals blaming themselves. I suppose particularly talented individuals can escape a statistically likely situation, but even having "natural" talent or having the time and resources to cultivate talent through practice is largely the result of luck. People start off as helpless infants long before they reach a point where they are capable of changing society, and once they are capable of changing society, society has already turned them into a product. So there is reciprocal action between the individual and society, but very asymmetrical reciprocal action, and it is a very rare thing that one individual is put in a position to change society a lot, and usually only because they are, by chance, at the center of a powerful network of other individuals, rather than because they are particularly special.
> as smith also says, the self-interest of the citizen is substituted with the class interest of capitalists, as "wealth" is falsely identified with profit. wealth means higher wages, not profits. engels also says that "national wealth" (e.g. GDP) is a contradictory metric for the same reason.I agree with this and have no comments.
>we desire things that dont exist all the time. you are again confusing desire for demand. if you dont think that demand constitutes supply, take it up with marx.OK. no comment.
>>2550387>the natural price is itself a market price, as smith says:the natural price is the market price where the cost of production (labor inputs) are sufficient to explain the price itself. You only need supply and demand to explain deviations, or disequilibrium from that cost of production.
>again, if we qualify cost as labour, then we are ambiguous in what is quantified. its here that someone can claim that superintendence adds "labour" to the product for examplesuperintedence does add labour, but the capitalist is compensated not for that labour. Rather they are compensated through unpaid wages called profit, which they disguise by saying they are merely performing the superior task of superintending. In slavery, for example, we enslaved overseers performing labor of superintendence without compensation. They are more privileged than other slaves usually, but that is a consequence of a tiered hierarchy where they are the minority, rather than their labor-power (which costs their subsistence) being somehow more valuable.
>and its all indeterminate until we account for these factors by component prices (i.e. wages, rents, profits)If you restructure society in a revolutionary manner to no longer allow for rent, profit, or interest, and make what would have been become rent and profit as a collectively owned surplus kept aside for emergencies or for planned expansion of production based on projected population growth, you would, in my estimation, have achieved at least something like a lower stage of socialism. This is me talking, not Marx or Smith. As for the abolition of wages, you would just guarantee people have their needs met. Whether this is through a system of labor vouchers or something more modern is besides the point I think, though implementation details would matter in practice insofar as they could be gamed in a way to reintroduce exploitation. This is all possible insofar as people already produce through their labor, on average, more than they themselves need, at least as long as the sun continues to send Earth its energy. This is why surplus labor was exploited even in slavery and serfdom. Who fed the feudal lord's armies? "His" peasants.
>if we substitute "productiveness" for "intensity" then we have the exact same terms as jevons, and thus labour can be measured by its finished product. in the same way, jevons and marx perceive profit over wages to be a result of the duration of labour, and thus marginal product meeting lesser duration equates at higher wages. i have discussed all this before:OK. No remarks yet. I'll think about that for a while.
>(1) Cost of production determines supply.>(2) Supply determines final degree of utility.>(3) Final degree of utility determines value.>this simply appears to be the proper formulation of it.There is something which determines cost of production, and it is
<The amount of labor time required to produce a commodity under normal conditions of production, with the average degree of skill and intensity of labor prevalent in a given society.This is SNLT. And technology plays a central role in determining SNLT because it changes the average productivity of labor across society.
>>2550443They were both connected through Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, which Marx wrote op-eds for, in English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Charles_Carey#New_York_Tribune >>2550514what a convenient situation. These two men who arguably influenced a lot of economic thought in the future, were writing for the same newspaper
>>2550448>yet they interpenetrateyes… but theyre not the same thing.
>for the bourgeoisie, "individual freedom" means the freedom of the individuals in the ruling class to exploit othersyes, this is smith's point. the self-interest of the capitalist is inherently contrary to that of the citizen, and so the individual as such is suppressed (an example of this tendency would be war, which is poor young men dying for rich old men, even as it was depicted in the iliad nearly 3,000 years ago). i am a true internationalist in this cause. marx makes a finer point, that the capitalist himself is a slave to profit, and so his own individuality is subsumed by an alien subjectivity.
>So there is reciprocal action between the individual and society"society" is not an object (where does it begin and end?)
individuals relate to other individuals. if you dont think so, then you must not think the officer who is "just following orders" has any personal responsibility.
>superintedence does add labourso why doesnt this labour enter into the value? i would say, like marx says about the slave, that this labour simply isnt paid and so cannot be accounted for.
>If you restructure society in a revolutionary manner to no longer allow for rent, profit, or interest…a slave society can also manage without those terms.
>if you tax rent and profit you have socialismtaxing rents make sense, but taxing profits makes less, since rents rise with wages, while profits decline. plus, putting a tax on production raises prices arbitrarily, while a consumption tax for example, raises prices proportionally, especially if there is no income tax (which i have previously advocated for):
>>2525784>There is something which determines cost of production [SNLT]but isnt SNLT measured by costs implicit in the wage (e.g. duration)? so to say, the abstraction of SNLT depends upon standardising labour according to cost, and so the category of labour begins as a cost. i had this discussion in the first thread, where it seems that (SNLT = wage), and not a "physical" relation per se. the importance of considering this is that labour collectively aggregates a median rate of productivity while median wages do not correspond to individual activity. this is why i like marx's idea of allowing harder workers to receive more back in equality with what they give, yet the declaration that people will only get what they "need" in a "higher phase" society seems like a regression. if people are better, let them be better.
>>2550260>production is limited by the utility of objectsbut thats wrong. production is limited by labor
>>2550659what is labour?
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm >>2550571>the abstraction of SNLT depends upon standardising labour according to cost, and so the category of labour begins as a cost. yes… but theyre not the same thing, so they are different things and so can be spoken of separately.
>>2550662how do we define SNLT outside of wages?
>>2550664i think time is usually measured with clocks
>>2550670ah, so this is the peepee poopoo time of the thread
i'll check back in tomorrow
>>2549683This depends on whether the person talking about the financialization of the economy wants to use state capitalism as a temporary solution and a socialist economy in solidarity with the world's workers as the real solution. If the person is fantasizing about returning to capitalism with Fordist class conciliation against "technofeudalism," then this person is ignorant because there is no national capitalist with interests separate from financial capital currently to make any deal. This type of analysis depends on what solution the person will propose or if they understand that current financialized capitalism is a continuation of the previous industrial capitalism that changed as capitalists' profit rates decreased and these capitalists felt comfortable not having an organized threat from radicalized workers against the capitalist ruling class to force the bourgeoisie to make concessions. People who accuse of antisemitism probably don't know the socialist solution, which would involve the use of public enterprises and the democratization of the economy for use value instead of speculation and sale for exchange value to make a profit. This means going against private property and anarchy of production.
>>2548414>the labour theory of value came from british political economy (1662-)Bismillah it comes from Ibn Khaldun
>>2548414>marxism is a perversion of socialism, which replaces british common sense with german mysticism.observe
>>2552890<The specifics of political economy are decidedly *not* my forte, so I'm unqualified to make any informed take on this. However, your summary of what he's claiming appears to me correct. What I would say is that, in the first place, to understand Hegel (or German Idealism as a whole) to be "mystical" would be to mistake metaphysics for theology. The Left-Hegelians were basically all atheists if not Spinozists; a base materialism which cannot account for metaphysics is, in my opinion, doomed to fall into some vulgar materialism which capitalism and capitalist liberalism expressly reinforces. His general defense of Liberalism, however, is certainly beginning to pick up speed within broader academic discourse as it increasingly seems to people that the out-right rejection of Social Democracy, Left-Liberalism, and French Utopian Socialism was perhaps an over-correction (this is what Walter Benjamin himself was arguing in the Arcades Project, and he presents one of the most damning critiques of Social Democracy ever); the claim that these movements (and ones similar to it) necessarily bring about or reinforce capitalism is a claim that is at the moment beginning to be seriously re-challenged. People like Adam Tooze seem to be rather essential in this moment. In my opinion though, it's probably good to reject "British Common Sense" whenever possible, because their approach seems to me to inevitably lead to the reification of categories (see my earlier comments on Pragmatism). My understanding of Hegel and Marx is, basically, that we should almost never trust common sense. >>2552906"observe" what? this entire reply is a non-sequitur.
and its no surprise that we are expected to abandon common sense to make room for teutonic blather.
as regards the actual state of the argument, i have very clearly articulated my empirical (a posteriori) outlook, as opposed to what is a priori in marxism:
>>2549046>>2550261marx is right that "value" has its form of appearance in price, yet he is wrong by stating that there is such a thing as "imaginary" prices. the proof is in the pudding; i can set a price and it doesnt need "permission" to be so self-affirmed. it merely is, as a basic phenomenon. when marxism cant explain the rate of pay for "unproductive" enterprises, it begins to lose legitimacy. now, as i have previously cited, smith indeed posits that unproductive labour is nonetheless still "valuable", which is afforded by its two-fold meaning, as having a "value in use". smith's only argument is that it cannot have an equivalent rate with its output, and so its market rate dictates reward (i.e. supply and demand). so then, smith can conceive of price outside of the strictures of equivalence, while marx appears unable to.
>>2552846i first read that it was ibn khaldun in his "muqaddimah" (1377) who established the LTV in graeber's book on debt (2011). aquinas is sometimes said to have done this earlier in his "summa ii.ii.Q.77" (1274) by instituting a theological "just price" as against usury, and so a price which measures the equivalence of labour in exchange (what in aristotelian terms is also noted by marx as the difference between "economy" and "chrematistics"). in reading the muqaddimah with its various internal references, it makes constant note to chapter 5 being the chapter on labour as the source of value, so i will summarise and review this chapter here (sct. 1):
it begins with a theological justification of property, the same as in locke; that God hath given man dominion over the earth. what is further is khaldun's stipulation of self-ownership as the source of man's self-determination to gain (what is called "profit" generally, and so perhaps incorrectly). this differs in part from locke, since locke says that "property" is a fixed element of ownership which comes from mixing labour and nature, while khaldun sees property as an unconditioned right of abstract man, rather than man in particular. khaldun then says that there is a difference between "sustenance" and "profit" relating to income, with sustenance also being related to rightful ownership (as codefied by the "mu'tazilah", apparently - which is a theological movement which affirms human free will and reason, contrary to popular religion. mu'tazilites also saw the quran as man-made, and so these rationalists may be termed as proto-humanist). khaldun further qualifies by stating that though one may acquire means unrightfully, God may still sustain him, as is his Will. khaldun ends this line of thought by stating that both sustenance and profit require labour.
after this, khaldun speaks on money as "measure of value", once more being scriptural in stating that it is gold and silver which measure value. this also differs from locke, who directly states labour as measure of value. khaldun also makes more clumsy comments, claiming that profit rises with labour and decreases with lack of labour; thus, he says, the more employment you have, the more luxury a civilisation also has. this is a misunderstanding (or mis-categorisation) of "profit" generally, since adam smith saw as early as the tudor period in england, the rate of profit fell in line with the falling rate of interest, which is also paired with a rise in wealth. so then, khaldun is seemingly generalising "profit" as "wealth", rather than "profit" as a lack of social wealth, as per british political economy.
moving onto section 2, we see a further generalisation. he states that the vocation of labour, "livelihood" (ma'ash), seeks sustenance as its end. he then appears to further synonymise sustenance and profit, giving different means of obtaining profit: taxation, hunting, fishing, agriculture, craftsmanship and commerce. he claims for example that "profit" in this case comes from appropriating the product of somebody else (i.e. taxation and commerce).
of these livelihoods, he sees agriculture as the original, which is also part of xenophon's praise of agriculture as the essential craft of a nation, in "the economist". this physiocratic thought was also present in quesnay. after this, he sees craftsmanship develop historically and finally, commerce. on commerce he plainly states that profit is made by selling above the price of purchase, and khaldun also stating an inherent gambling inscribed into it, yet of which is legal, since one still gets something in return. so then, profits here are defined by private appropriation, not surplus production (this he repeats in section 9, where the commercial venture is described as buying low and selling high, not selling at an equivalent rate of a surplus product). in section 3, he quickly states that service work is unbecoming of a man and that receiving a wage is undignified. section 4 is not relevant as to any fruitful discussion.
in section 5, he comes upon a truth as to the source of profit, as uncompensated labour. he states that a man of "rank" will naturally have those who serve without want of payment and that this accumulates profit. khaldun relates this to "political power" (imarah) and its means of utilising free labour, in the difference between (as khaldun states) what is produced and what is paid for. so then, we see the way in which this form of profit is constituted by realising value over labour costs. thus he concludes that one may grow rich without working. jumping to section 9, we see supply and demand at work to achieve a gain by disequilibrium (here also however is a slight discourse on "storage" and "travel" and thus the notion of time-preference in the market).
in section 12 he makes a proper distinction between "profit" (ribh) and "profit" (kasb). looking online, it appears that "riba" refers to usury (haram) and kasb refers generally to proper acquisition; sustenance (halal). in section 15, khaldun gives an aristotelian lesson on the habituation of craft; that it is something essentially practiced, not theorised. in section 18, there is the acknowledgement of the value of craft corresponding to its social demand, and thus the price for which is only granted by its sale to customers. in section 21, he discusses the division of labour as qualities and colours of the soul, which are able to be formed from early on, but as they are fixed, they remain. in section 22 he lists all the crafts, from most basic (necessary) to most splendid: agriculture, architecture, tailoring, carpentry, weaving, midwifery, writing, printing, singing and medicine. he appears to make a similar conclusion as antoine montchretien, that all crafts (arts) make up the integral body politic, but what is equal in montchretien's consideration (of liberal and mechanical arts), is subordinate in the division of labour to khaldun. thus, he makes an austrian inference as to order of economic goods and presumably, their economic value. after this, he concludes the chapter by detailing each craft, yet not by adding anything more to a concept of an LTV.
to conclude thus, the attestation of ibn khaldun's supposed founding of the LTV appears flimsy, since it essentially differs with later modern notions.
>>2553678> when marxism cant explain the rate of pay for "unproductive" enterprises, it begins to lose legitimacy.unproductive isn't a pejorative, so I don't understand why you're putting it in scare quotes. Marx is pretty clear that they're paid a portion of the surplus value expropriated from commodity production.
>>2554266ah, but we shan't praise the saxon too keenly, for the scottish enlightenment was celtic. it was originally the saxons who sought to overthrow the "norman yoke" by returning to the "ancient liberties" of england, but it was only in the next century that we got smith and hume from the north, after the english parliament gave the throne to a dutchman.
>>2554691>unproductive isn't a pejorative, so I don't understand why you're putting it in scare quotes.it isnt descriptive either, as ive explained. "productivity" is determined by purchase. the difference between marginal and total product serve to illustrate this point:
>>2550291in the classical theory, "productive labour" translates to (TP), while "unproductive labour" translates to (MP). this is why as jevons says, total utility (TU) and marginal utility (MU) are in antagonism, between what smith calls "value in use" (TU) and "value in exchange" (MU).
>Marx is pretty clear that they're paid a portion of the surplus value expropriated from commodity productionthis is irrelevant to determing the price of commodities and the legitimacy of the price thereof. what makes a price either "real" or "imaginary"? thats the question.
>>2555140>ah, but we shan't praise the saxon too keenly, for the scottish enlightenment was celtic. it was originally the saxons who sought to overthrow the "norman yoke" by returning to the "ancient liberties" of england, but it was only in the next century that we got smith and hume from the north, after the english parliament gave the throne to a dutchman.it's kind of funny saxons wanted to overthrow the norman yoke, but the saxons were themselves once invaders of england, and before them the romans. are english people even indigenous to england? the framework of indigenous-ness (indigeneity?) is used to a lot on the left because of settler colonialism in places like the USA and Israel, but the further back in history you go, the less clear this framework becomes
>>2555450>are english people even indigenous to england?pedantically, probably not, though I think settler-colonialism is more useful as a model of how states instrumentalize demographics as a means of social control.
on the one hand, colonialism may be extractive, like how Spain co-opted the feudal structures in Mesoamerica and the Andes to exploit the labor that was already present–though replacing them with Spaniards and West Africans as well, obvs
on the other, colonialism may be exterminative, like with the United States, which underwent an extremely extensive settlerist process of destroying the societies of aboriginal peoples (who were not typically yeomen or proletarians) with a stock of europeans who were of the right class character to start scaling up a society for early capitalist exploitation.
both extraction and extermination are processes that may occur in colonial enterprises, and I can imagine this also occurred in colonial projects before the 15th century. IIRC the crusades that aimed to establish a Christian Israeli realm were motivated by some aristocrats wanting to co-opt a realm far away from the wars and squabbles of feudal Europe (though my knowledge on this is very limited)
>>2555450i don't think anyone would seriously argue the modern english aren't "indigenous" because of some 1500 year old feud, larping academics maybe
>>2556788well they have been conquered 3 separate occasions by outlanders
>>2556811Nobody is native with the rare exception of African San-people.
>>2555450ive discussed in different threads the reputation of the saxons in relation to the britons (celts/gaels), which is something still contentious and politicised today, as it always has been. i'll provide a short literary history…
the founding of britain has its mythical origins in "brutus of troy", a contemporary of "aeneas" (t. virgil's "aeneid", 20 B.C.). this is first discussed in "historia brittonum" (828 A.D.) where the name "britain" comes from "brutus" (such that in virgil's aeneid, "rome" also comes from "romulus"). this origin is also spoken of by geoffrey of monmouth in his "historia regum britanniae" (1136 A.D.), which is also where we first get detail of the king arthur myth - yet, the first ever reference to arthur is in the text "annales cambriae" (~980 A.D.). the date given for his conquest against the saxons is 516 A.D. while his death is recorded in 537 A.D. in the same text however there is a seeming contradiction with later canon, since "merlin" (myrddin wyllt; a real figure in welsh folklore) is described as only becoming merlin "the wizard" after 573 A.D., decades after arthur's death, which is why geoffrey of monmouth mythologises (re-historicises) him as "merlin ambrosius" (historia, book 6), a syncretism between myrddin and "ambrosius aurelianus" (a romano-british soldier who fought the saxons). whats confusing however is that geoffrey inserts ambrosius aurelianus into the story, being uther pendragon's (arthur's father's) brother. the blood relation between arthur and merlin is here then implied, while it only becomes an adoptive relationship in sir thomas malroy's definitive "morte d'arthur" (1485). geoffrey's arthurian literature began a bit earlier though, where he wrote "prophitiæ merlini" (1130) which is expanded and grafted into his "historia", book 7. the prophecy given is the origin of the battle between the red dragon (britons) and the white dragon (saxons), with the saxons gaining temporary victory, yet merlin states that arthur shall have a second coming from avilion (glastonbury) to genocide and expel the saxons. historically, it appears that the norman conquest (1066) serves as the event to propagandise this post-hoc (in the same way that Christ "prophecies" the temple in jerusalem to fall, by authors writing after this event). something which points to the contemporary politics of the prophecy is that in later canonisation, this particular narrative appears absent, and it is only rather that arthur is sent to avilion by his sister morgan la-fey (the celtic triple-goddess "morrigan", composite with the greek "fates", norse "norns" or anglo-saxon "wyrd"). he says that he will be healed, but that he may never be heard from again. it is also claimed that king arthur is indeed dead and buried (t. "morte d'arthur", bk. 21.4-6). so then, within the passing centuries, the adaptation of the myth by french, german and anglo-saxon influence gives it a different character than it originally had. the original welsh myth clearly has the angle of racial vengeance, the same as we read retroactively in the book of genesis concerning the origins of the canaanites from the curse of ham, and to what is later fulfilled in the book of joshua by their genocide. the britons are clearly not a people concerned with racial purity however, since they have no qualms choosing a trojan forefather, a roman guardian and a norman conquerer as representatives. in fact, if you see the largely canonical "celtic nationalism" of today, it is not racialist, but only really anti-english (e.g. all celtic "independence" movements dont want to form a new union, but want to join the EU). in the UK, it is also mostly england and northern ireland whose nationalism is about racial purity (the same as their cousins on the continent). there is a sort of precedence in this as we may read in tacitus' "germania" (98 A.D.), where the germans were said to be untouched by immigrants, and so they clear had never gained a cosmopolitan worldview, such that we see more clearly in the alexandrian and roman empires. ive written previously this historical dichotomy also:
>>2543097 now, coming out of these original polemics against the saxons, we may move onto the view of the saxons themselves. british common law first begins in the "assize of clarendon" (1166), and the later "magna carter" (1215/97). the magna carta establishes many things, including the "ancient liberties" of the city of london and "habeas corpus" (freedom from false imprisonment), a theme which becomes propagandised later on. the first to dig up and emphasise this document is "edward coke", where in his "petition of rights" (1628), he invokes the "great charter" to petition for the right of habeas corpus (what only officially becomes law in 1679), to regulate the king's power, in what is later termed "the rule of law" (or the supremacy of the legislative branch of government, e.g. the house of commons, as opposed to the judicial house of lords or executive monarchy). the magna carta is also invoked by later radicals, such as "the levellers" (1641) including "john lilburne" in his "england's birth-right justified" (1645). the levellers were voluminous in their propaganda, as de facto representatives of the parliamentary forces (roundheads) during the english civil war, despite being persecuted by them later on. it is also the levellers who speak about the "norman yoke", such as in richard overton's "remonstrance of many thousand citizens" (1646). the english civil war of course ends with oliver cromwell establishing an english republic in 1649 (abolishing the monarchy and house of lords), which would have been maintained if his heir had any promise, yet he didnt. afrter cronwell's death, there was a restoration, which also never lasted long and britain finally got a constitutional monarchy in 1688 with the "glorious revolution" of william of orange leading to the "bill of rights" (1688) along with the later publishing of john locke's treatises of government (1690). this is often said to be where liberalism begins, as an anglo-saxon project, leading to the US revolution of 1776…
now, on the fact and fiction of 17th century propaganda, there are some things to be considered, the "norman yoke" itself can be said to have given right to the "ancient liberties" in the first place, not merely by statute of the magna carta but also by precedent of "the writ of william" (1067), in which william the conquerer offers security that he shall maintain the same rights in place as were present under edward the confessor. this appears to be the meaning of the "ancient liberties" aforementioned. of anglo-saxon law, hardly anything remains (since it was mostly custom), besides "the laws of æthelbert" (560-616 A.D.) which is simply a series of fines applied by multiplication based on the rank of the injured. this is in germanic law is understood as "wergild" (man-price) and is also in the shariah law of "diyah" (e.g. quran 4:92). so then, all we know of "ancient liberty" is the rigid class structure of various legal penalties, and so it appears that this was simply a fantasy (i.e. the "free-born" rights of the english). however, the cause of right is not simply in englishness, but as "the diggers" (1649) or "true levellers" had it, the right of land held in common ought to belong to those who work in common (what is later individualised by john locke's theory of property, t. 1680). we may in fact read a perfect polemic by gerald winstanley against the levellers on this point (1649):
<O what mighty Delusion, do you, who are the powers of England live in! That while you pretend to throw down that Norman yoke, and Babylonish power, and have promised to make the groaning people of England a Free People; yet you still lift up that Norman yoke, and slavish Tyranny, and holds the People as much in bondage, as the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War. Take notice, That England is not a Free People, till the Poor that have no Land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the Commons, and so live as Comfortably as the Landlords that live in their Inclosures.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/winstanley/1649/levellers-standard.htmlocke's own "labour theory of property", as i have previously demonstrated, appears to be a subsequent notion from william petty's composite theory of wealth, where in his "treatise of taxes", chapter 10 (1662) he designates labour as the active principle and nature the passive principle, the same as locke assigning property as a fixity given by mixing one's labour with nature, with locke further stating that labour is the measure of value of commodities, leading to adam smith's contributions…
so, the britons hated the saxons, and saw the normans as a means to suppress them. the saxons hated the normans for denying them their "free-born" rights, which it turns out didnt exist, and that the rights one may speak of are contemporary, and pertain to his property.
>>2556819>nobody is nativebut some are more native than others.
>>2557150> the original welsh myth clearly has the angle of racial vengeance, the same as we read retroactively in the book of genesis concerning the origins of the canaanites from the curse of ham, and to what is later fulfilled in the book of joshua by their genocide. kind of how Mormonism has evolved in the US to reject their original 1800s assertion that black people were descendants of Cain, which they had to do for the sake of keeping up with culture, especially now that there are more and more black Mormons
>>2557151Nope. Fuck your culture and natives. Immigration is historically progressive.
>>2550291You can live without your haircuts, but can't live without electricity. Productive labor is shared by all the society, including by the providers of unproductive labor, while unproductive labor is superfluous and not strictly necessary for survival of civilization. More often than not productive labor is manifested as a physical good, while unproductive as a service for other people, and unproductive labor cannot be accumulated
So, in short, every productive labor worker has to provide for himself and also pay wages for unproductive labor workers. The only way towards tangible improvement of a society is to invest into productive labor - as opposed to much more profitable unproductive one, because it's much easier to redistribute than to create
>>2557830> Productive labor is shared by all the society, including by the providers of unproductive labor, while unproductive labor is superfluous and not strictly necessary for survival of civilization. More often than not productive labor is manifested as a physical good, while unproductive as a service for other people, and unproductive labor cannot be accumulated
>So, in short, every productive labor worker has to provide for himself and also pay wages for unproductive labor workers. The only way towards tangible improvement of a society is to invest into productive labor - as opposed to much more profitable unproductive one, because it's much easier to redistribute than to createyou contradict yourself. how is unproductive labor more profitable if it must be paid from the unpaid wages of productive labor? clearly by that logic productive labor is more profitable, since profit is unpaid wages. And unproductive labor isn't profitable at all, but simply subsidized by profit that has already been realized. If anything the profit rate in a society would be zero if there were no production of commodities from raw materials.
>>2557970Dude, unproductive labor doesn't even necessarily requires any inputs except wages. Tthis means that unproductive labor's profits are more profitable
Again, creation of value vs redistribution - while creation has physical limits, redistribution is limited only by total creation.
>>2558062but for Marx, profit is specifically the unpaid wages of productive labor, right? For Marx, the wages of unproductive labor are paid out of the profits made on productive labor, but do not in and of themselves generate profit, right? Unproductive labor, for Marx, is defined as labor which does not produce surplus value, i.e. profit.
Marx contends that while the wages of unproductive labor are paid from the profits generated by productive labor, these workers do not contribute to the creation of new profit. Their role is more about facilitating the system of capitalist production and ensuring that the surplus value generated by productive workers can be realized and distributed. Or, in some cases like health care workers, simply performing part of the maintenance of the working class.
>>2554266If anything Oswald M. was super into teutonic nonsense since he was fuck buddies with Adolf
>>2555458"productive labour" = greater total profit
"unproductive labour" = greater marginal profit
>>2557813in romans 9 we see paul use an odd device to say that there are two children of abraham; ishmael and israel. he claims that believers in Christ are israelites, while unbelievers (i.e. "synagogue of satan") are "children of the flesh". in islam, we may also read in the hadith "Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2276" that mohammed is a descendant of ishmael, thus connecting him with the line of abraham. so being a "seed of abraham" is the line of succession to be sought (e.g. royal bloodlines). the "black israelites" also do this, by some claiming legitimacy through moses' wife zipporah, for example.
>>2557830this is far too simplistic. as labour divides, it inevitably becomes occupied in different positions, and this differentiation allows for greater social wealth (i.e. markets). marginal production attains marginal utility. this is why i say communists have no theory of luxury.
>>2558163to marx, only productive labour has surplus value, yet unproductive labour still helps to realise this surplus.
>>2559905i think the idea of SEZs can be used more often in the west - but did you know that the concept of SEZs actually come from ireland's "shannon" zone (1959)?
>>2557828rambling nonsense.
>>2549046>so then, the greater supply of gold, the less its value in relation to silver, despite the greatness of gold. thus as aristotle says, it is its scarcity which grants its value, or relative price, in relation to all other commodities.scarcity simply implies a greater amount of socially necessary labor time to procure a useful quantity of something
>>2562826the value of gold in relation to silver is purely a function of their relative scarcity to one another. this exchange ratio is commented on as early as the 4th century B.C. by xenophon. as aristotle also says, the labour entailed in mining gold is the effect, not the cause, of its value. its value is determined by its scarcity, as a natural quality. similarly, ricardo and marx comment that a commodity only has value in exchange if it has a value in use, and that without this, labour has no recognition:
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmthis relates to jevons' causation of production costs:
(i) Cost of production determines supply.
(ii) Supply determines final degree of utility.
(iii) Final degree of utility determines value.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-theory-of-political-economy >>2563933>(i) Cost of production determines supply.>(ii) Supply determines final degree of utility.>(iii) Final degree of utility determines value.doesn't supply determine cost of production? doesn't it cost more to produce gold from a mine if it is in low supply? you have to find it before you can extract it, and needing to spend more time to find it increases its cost of production.
>>2564846"supply" refers to what is brought to market, not what is produced per se.
who the fuck is jevons and why should anyone care
>>2565272yes but why is he posting about him constantly now despite never mentioning him in over a year? is this a cope fad for AI retards?
>>2565278idk, i think smith anon just posts here about whatever he is reading and has taken an interest in jevons lately, that is my charitable interpretation
>>2565390well jevons has become popular lately for his paradox that technological improvements in efficiency can lead to an overall increase in the consumption of a resource, not a decrease, and is popular in the context of AI being a bubble and stealing jobs.
and mr smith is obsessed with robot powered UBI and saving capitalist from communist revolution.
this of course ignores the TRPF and that robots dont produce value.
and he is way beyond deserving charitability at this point, but he keeps "according to jevons" as if this is some kind of important thing everyone should know and care about. so basically hes laundering techno-fascist nonsense
>>2565403>and he is way beyond deserving charitability at this point, but he keeps "according to jevons" as if this is some kind of important thing everyone should know and care about. so basically hes laundering techno-fascist nonsensewell yeah, he's a self admitted centrist lib but he's not going to save capitalism from communism by posting any more than we're going to defeat capitalism by posting.
>well jevons has become popular lately for his paradox that technological improvements in efficiency can lead to an overall increase in the consumption of a resource, not a decrease, and is popular in the context of AI being a bubble and stealing jobs. I don't even see how that's a paradox. isn't it obvious that automation increases consumption of resource? A man with a chainsaw can process more wood than a man with a steel axe, and a man with a steel axe can process more wood than a man with a stone axe. This is why advancements in technology that increase the speed at which we process natural resources usually end up getting supplemented by other advancements in technology that increase the efficiency of our resource usage. Like miniaturization of transistors for example allow for more computing power to be packed into smaller and smaller chips, which is the principle by which Moore's law operated for decades. We're constantly working with changing situations.
>this of course ignores the TRPF and that robots dont produce value.I forget what his response to this one was. Something about Marx making up anthropocentric rules I guess
>>2565418the idea was that an increase in the efficiency of steam engines would result in less coal use, but instead the increased efficiency led to the deployment of more and more steam power driving a demand for more coal. so as computers and AI become more powerful instead of needing less computers to do the same work we will increasingly use computers for more and more things,
presumably they think the increased demand overcomes infinite growth in a finite universe and you dont have to address the contradiction of private ownership
to me it just seems like an adjacent argument to the idea that while new technology like the loom destroys seamstresses it creates job for loom repairs, which as i said ignores the trpf, and of course also ignores that the transition to a service economy relies on imperialist extraction that boomerangs back around to the domestic economy eventually as capital returns to suck the remaining juices that are left in the husk they previously destroyed
>>2565252after gossen, he is the founder of "marginal utility" theory. his influence is absolutely immense.
>>2565390i provided a review of his work "the theory of political economy" (1871) in one of the older threads, which people clearly never read. he's interesting to read since his findings are compatible with the classical labour theory of value, hence him and marshall are dubbed "neoclassical" economists in their defence of ricardo (e.g. keynes' general theory, japanese preface).
>>2565403here's a question: why are you even in a political economy thread when you are intentionally ignorant of economic history? you are proudly idiotic, claiming to not know or care about jevons, as if this makes you superior. so, why are you here?
>>2565881>intentionally ignorant of economic historyIs that worse than being unintentionally ignorant? Aren't you that retard who thinks exchange value is the same as value in Marxist theory.
And what's the point of projecting this pychobabble about marginally decreasing utility of tendies for you into how firms operate. Some science you got there.
>>2566778>sagepostoff to a very bad start
>yes, i am intentionally ignorantwhy are you in this thread, then?
>Aren't you that retard who thinks exchange value is the same as value in Marxist theory.if youre trying to make a point, then make it.
>what's the point of projecting this pychobabble about marginally decreasing utility i repeat, why are you in this thread?
>>2567239The post says you are ignorant because you think in Marxist theory exchange value is the same as value; which if true, means you are pretty ignorant of the history of economic thought yourself.
>>2567314>another sagepostfrom bad to worse.
>The post says you are ignorantbut youre a proud idiot, so why would i care what your opinion on economics is, especially when you openly deny having any actual interest in it? just stop posting.
>>2567390not being "interested" in charlatans is not the same thing
>>2567737how is jevons a charlatan? you know nothing.
reviewing philip henry wicksteed's criticism of marx's capital (1884):
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/today/1884/10/wicksteed-capital.htmas a preliminary, wickstreed began his economic study with henry george's "progress and poverty" (1879) and later moved on to jevons in 1882. this original criticism in 1884 caused a reply by george bernard shaw (the founder of fabian socialism) who soon converted to marginalism, as we see in his writings by 1885…
the article begins by a slightly irrelevant section on wages. i'll begin after this, where wicksteed seeks to describe marx's theory. he describes it adequately, with direct reference to the text, and then finally says this:
<A few pages, then, after we have been told that wares regarded as "valuables" must be stripped of all their physical attributes, i.e. of everything that gives them their value in use, and reduced to one identical spectral objectivity, as mere jellies of undistinguishable abstract human labour, and that it is this abstract human labour which constitutes them valuables, we find the important statement that the labour does not count unless it is useful (pp.15, 16, 64 [16a, 35a]). Simple and obvious as this seems, it in reality surrenders the whole of the previous analysis, for if it is only useful labour that counts, then in stripping the wares of all the specific properties conferred upon them by specific kinds of useful work, we must not be supposed to have stripped them of the abstract utility, conferred upon them by abstractly useful work. If only useful labour counts then when the wares are reduced to mere indifferent products of such labour in the abstract, they are still useful in the abstract, and therefore it is not true that "nothing remains to them but the one attribute of being products of labour (p.12 [14b]), for the attribute of being useful also remains to them. In this all wares are alike.this is an extremely piercing observation, and which is similarly true in the case of ricardo, as jevons had previously identified; that labour, to be valuable in exchange, must also be labour which is valuable in use. continuing, wicksteed further observes:
<The exchange of two wares implies a heterogeneity (Verschiedenheit) and a homogeneity (Gleichheit). This is implied in the fact that they are exchangeable […] his analysis is based on the bare fact of exchangeability […] Now the "common something," which all exchangeable things contain, is neither more nor less than abstract utility, i.e., power of satisfying human desires.thus, wicksteed sees that if "value" as abstract labour only attains its status in exchange (so as to be useful), then value as such must be defined by abstract utility:
<It cannot be urged that there is no common measure […] If I am willing to give the same sum of money for a family Bible and for a dozen of brandy, it is because I have reduced the respective satisfactions their possession will afford me to a common measure, and have found them equivalent. In economic phrase, the two things have equal abstract utility for me.wicksteed is slightly lacking in this explanation however, since what is measuring value is not utility directly, but money. now, marginalists have a theoretical issue with money. we may read in jevons for example that money only possesses an "acquired utility", which is to say that it only attains a value in what it may exchange for, but is in itself valueless - this is seemingly incorrect, since the desire for money shows how it is something with an inherent utility, which is why people will exchange their labour for it, for example (this utility function i have previously described by comparing money against "vouchers" - the mercantile concept of money as "store of value" must also have truth to it, if people desire it for its own sake). money also appears to lack the same laws of diminishing returns as with other products, since money is not "consumed" in the same way. carl menger is more sophisticated than jevons on money since he implies that money (as a "commodity") is subject to the same laws of economic rationality, and so, the more money one has, the less "economical" one becomes, explaining why the rich "waste" their money. thus we might say that at least in jevonian terms, the total utility of money declines at the greater purchase of value in exchange (marginal utility), and so what diminishes with money is total utility, whilst to a marginalist, "value" is only measured at its margin - thus, when wicksteed invokes "abstract utility" he speaks rather fallaciously, since utility itself is divided, in the same way that value in use and exchange is for the classical economists. if we take money to be our measure of value as a means to assess abstract utility, such that we may quote wicksteed…
<If I am willing to give the same sum of money for a family Bible and for a dozen of brandy […] the two things have equal abstract utility for me.then we confuse the issue by not clarifying the point, especially when we dont compare the utility of money to what its able to purchase, but rather simply presume a common "measure" with money as a medium, like jevons does… money itself must have a utility function, not simply an acquired utility (in fact, a keynesian blogger i read has made the same point in relation to MMT). so i would say that wicksteed is exceedingly clever in his primary observation, but fails in his secondary revision of marx - not for the sake of the task itself, but by means of indefinite terms, such as "abstract utility". nevertheless, we may continue:
<Under [jevons'] guidance we shall be able to account for the coincidence, in the case of ordinary manufactured articles, between "exchange value" and "amount of labour contained," while clearly perceiving that exchange value itself is always immediately dependent, not upon "amount of labour," but upon abstract utility.i would say that wicksteed is both correct, but may also become incorrect by what is overstated. labour to jevons plays a role crucial to the value of commodities, since only labour can possess disutility, in proportion to its marginal product, which equates at the wage. this is also the model by which jevons proves the intersection of the wage to marginal productivity, so as to supplement marx's theory of the surplus utility of labour by means of extended duration of the working day. jevons is supremely consistent here, as opposed to other marginalists such as hoppe, who has tried to say that capitalist profit acts as rightful interest on the time-preference of the labourer, when marx shows the opposite. moreover…
<Thus the abstract utility of the last available increment of any commodity determines the ratio of exchange of the whole of it. here, wicksteed defines "abstract utility", but qualifies it as jevonian "final degree of utility", which is not an incorrect economic sum, but its simply ipso facto. next, wicksteed explains the rate of exchange for commodities, but fails to directly relate it to costs of production by causation - such as jevons does, and finally, he encounters marx's theory of surplus value, and simply says that there is no surplus utility to be consumed by the purchase of labour. in the jevonian analysis, this is also true (but only from a particular perspective). wages meet at the equilibrium of labour to its marginal product, yet we precisely see that in the increased duration of the working day, the marginal product decreases, while the total product increases. thus, the product of the labourer increases as the price of labour falls, by proportion of labour's duration (thus, we can relate total product to marginal product in the final analysis, as the difference between value in use and value in exchange, as jevons likewise stipulates). wicksteed's abandonment of this insight shows either his ignorance of jevons' argument, or an unwarranted hostility to marx. either way, he fails on this point.
to conclude, wicksteed is correct that "value" can only be determined by utility, yet he is false by being indefinite in the relations of utility (value) to itself, and its this which causes him to ultimately abandon jevons' "neoclassical" and marginalist compatibility with marx on the theory of surplus value (or, surplus utility).
>>2568305such profound illiteracy. as i stated, it was gossen who first formalised the theory of marginal utility, then jevons. it was wieser who actually came up with the term, and wicksteed who first used it in english.
and what is further implicated in this post? that the theory of marginal utility is itself in the character of charlatanship? why? now that we've come to it, explain your opposition to it.
>>2568308i see you are awake early these days mr smith
>and what is further implicated in this post? that the theory of marginal utility is itself in the character of charlatanship?of course. it does not overcome marx's theory it merely sidesteps it. it is obscurantism and misdirection.
>>2568314>it is obscurantism and misdirection.how? explain.
>>2568317>it does not overcome marx's theory it merely sidesteps it.presumably you think its an advancement or some kind of response but it is really just changing the terms of the conversation in order to not address what marx is saying
>>2568319how is marginal utility theory incorrect?
youve claimed its incorrect. explain how.
>>2568320>youve claimed its incorrecti have?
or have you invented another lie? liar! caught again mr smith!
>>2568321here are your words:
>>2567737>jevons is a charlatannext:
>>2568314>it is obscurantism and misdirectionyouve refused to explain these statements, and now you deny them in the same breath. as i have asked, why are you in this thread?
>>2568323being a misdirecting obscurantist charlatan is not the same as being "incorrect" which i did not say. i explained how it does not address marx but merely changes the terms of the conversation… and you call others illiterate
marginal utility is not "special knowledge" in regards to economics. it does not advance the field or improve understanding, its just a new way of accounting for what was already known, if anything it is a step back from marx. the purpose of subjective theories of value is not understanding, but apologetics for private ownership over the means of production.
>>2568327>never said marginal utility is incorrectso is marginal utility theory correct?
>>2568329of course it is, on its own terms. but redefining value does not debunk other definitions of value, hence misdirection and obscurantism. if your intent is merely accounting for what is instead of understanding how to change it then a surface level simplification is probably just fine for you
>>2568335>of course it isif the marginal utility theory of value is correct, then whats the issue? whats all this fuss and namecalling about? why is jevons a charlatan, exactly? you are entirely contradictory and idiotic.
>changeas i have already presented, english socialism appears to begin with inspiration from adam smith (1816-32) and it caps off with jevons via the fabian socialists by means of george bernard shaw (1884-), who are also the founders of the labour party (1900-)… so two people i take economic inspiration from have had a great influence on political movements as well. what now? more contradiction and confusion, i presume.
>>2568352all right man i cant read the words for you. good luck
>>2568354so jevons was right, but he was a charlatan?
thats your final word on the issue?
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/not-even-wrong/By the classical theory, we mean the theory that labour is the source of value. This was generally accepted from the time of Ibn Kaldun through Adam Smith down to that of Karl Marx1.
But if you have had an economics course at school or college, this is unlikely to be the theory you were taught. Instead you would have been taught the neo-classical theory which was developed in the late 19th century by writers like Jevons or Marshall. It is arguable that this theory gained its popularity because the classical theory, having by then been adapted by socialist writers, had a rather disreputable image in polite society. The neo-classical theory appeared considerably more sophisticated. It was more mathematical and had a sciency feel2. Its plausibility to young students is enhanced by a beguiling use of diagrams. For those of you who did not do an economics course at school, Figure 1 is what millions of school students have been given as the theory of price.
There are two lines, sometimes they are drawn slightly curved, one is called the supply function the other the demand function. The demand function rests on the commonsense notion that if something is cheap, people will buy more of it, so it slopes down. Teachers have little difficulty getting this idea across to their class.
The other line, called the supply function is shown sloping the other way. What it purports to show is that as more is supplied, the cost of each item goes up. Teachers have more difficulty with this, as common knowledge and experience will have taught students that actually the reverse is the case: as industries ramp up production they find they can produce more efficiently and supply the output at a lower cost. Such objections provoke some hand waving at the blackboard and excuses3.
The great thing about a classic diagram is that it is both memorable and intuitively understandable. If you can present maths this way you leverage the processing ability of our visual cortex to understand it. That is why Venn diagrams are so much easier for students to grasp than axiomatic set theory[Lakoff and Nunez, 2001]. Our brains tell us that if it looks right, it not only is right, but it is real. So having seen the diagrams students come out thinking that supply and demand functions are real things, after all they have seen them. Not only that, one can see that the intersection of these functions exactly predicts both the quantity of the commodity sold q, and its price p.
Had the theory been presented entirely in algebraic form it would be both more confusing, less appealing, and more subject to critical analysis. We will demonstrate that once you convert it to algebraic notation it is evident that the theory violates two cardinal principles of the scientific method. Its sciency feel is faked.
Occam’s razor is the principle widely credited to the monk William of Ockham in the middle ages, who is supposed to have said that in an explanation entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or entities must not be multiplied without cause. His dictum has been widely adopted by scientists who interpret it to mean that when constructing a hypothesis you should keep it simple4.
Why is this a good principle for science?
Beyond philosophical beliefs that the laws of nature are simple and elegant, there are pragmatic reasons why sticking to Occam’s razor is good scientific practice.
The main one is that if you make your theory complicated enough you can make it fit any particular set of observations, but this is at a cost of loss of generality predictive ability. A famous example is the way that the Greek geocentric theory of astronomy was extended by adding epicycles to account for the retrograde apparent movement of Mars5. Ptolemy was able to get good predictions, something that classical economists signally fail to do, but he got them at the cost of a theory with little inner logic, and which, we now know was totally inside out.
The neoclassical supply and demand theory does multiply entities without cause. Each of the functions has at least two parameters specifying its slope and and position6. But the real observed data only has two parameters : a price and quantity on a particular day. So the theory attempts to explain two numbers and in the process introduces four new numbers – entities lacking necessity.
For Ptolemy the epicyclic complexity bought precision in predicting planetary motion, and in the sense that there were no more epicycles than was necessary to achieve that precision, Ptolemy’s theory obeyed Occam’s razor. But the profligacy with which the economists strew free variables around, brings the opposite effect. Their price theory is underdetermined and makes no testable predictions at all.
Testability is another cornerstone of the scientific method. A causal theory should be testable to see if it is true. For that to work, the entities you use have to be measurable. But what testable predictions does the neoclassical theory make about the structure of industrial prices in, for example, the US economy?
It can make none, since the supply and demand functions for the various commodities are not only contingently unknown, but are in principle unknowable.
The theory says that the two functions uniquely define the price and quantity that will be sold on a particular day, but there are infinitely many pairs of lines that could be so drawn as to intersect at the point (q,p) in Figure 1. It is no good trying to look at how the prices and quantities sold vary from day to day, since
the theory itself holds than any changes in price or quantity must be brought about by ‘shifts’ in the functions. What this means is that the economics teacher goes to the board with her ruler and draws two more lines intersecting at the new price and quantity. This, she tells the class, is what happens in a real market, prices change because the supply and demand functions move about.But splatter any arbitrary set of points on the price quantity graph, and you can obviously draw intersecting lines through each an every one of them. Let these points be prices on successive days, there could never be a sequence of these price value measurements that could not be ‘explained’ by suitably shifting a ruler about and drawing pairs of intersecting lines. So the theory is unfalsifiable. It makes no specific operational predictions about prices and quantities. It is true by definition and vacuous by definition. It is not even wrong[Woit, 2002].
(Finding mentions of Jevons in Dickblast articles)https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/did-marx-have-a-labour-theory-of-value/Did Marx have a labor theory of value? It seems absurd that one has to answer this question.
It was so thoroughly answered by previous generations of economists in the affirmative[12], that it would seem unnecessary even to examine the issue. But David Harvey has recently posted a short article[6] claiming that Marx was an opponent of the labour theory:
>It is widely believed that Marx adapted the labour theory of value from Ricardo as a founding concept for his studies of capital accumulation. Since the labour theory of value has been generally discredited, it is then often authoritatively stated that Marx's theories are worthless. But nowhere, in fact, did Marx declare his allegiance to the labour theory of value. That theory belonged to Ricardo, who recognized that it was deeply problematic even as he insisted that the question of value was critical to the study of political economy. On the few occasions where Marx comments directly on this matter,1 he refers to value theory and not to the labour theory of value. So what, then, was Marx's distinctive value theory and how does it differ from the labour theory of value?( [6])It is difficult to take this seriously but as Mike Roberts has done a reply, I probably should do likewise and type a brief response.
Harvey claims that the labour theory of value is generally discredited. But in what sense?
It is correct to say that the theory is not viewed with favour in economics departments, but that is for political reasons – the labour theory of value, since Gray and Marx, came to be associated with socialism. Since academic economists, in general, did not want to be tainted with the socialist label they were at pains to distance themselves from the theory. But none of them ever adduced any empirical evidence to refute it. It was socially discredited but not empirically refuted.
If one wants to refute a theory about the world you have to show that the theory makes incorrect empirical predictions. Eratosthenes refuted the theory that the Earth was flat and confirmed the theory that it is round by observing that when the sun was overhead in Syene it was at an angle of 7°12′ to the vertical in Alexandria, implying that the earth was curved with a circumference of 25,000 miles. If the earth had been flat the angle of the sun would not have varied as you went north.
The labour theory of value predicts that the prices of commodities will vary proportionately with their labour content. Refuting this should be easy, just show that in fact their prices do not vary with labour content in this way. Did the economists opposed to the labour theory of value do this?They did not even bother to collect the data to do the tests. So for a century after Marx, the theory was ‘discredited’, but never empirically refuted.As soon as economists started to collect data to test the theory, which depended on reasonably good economic statistics of whole economies, what did they find?
They found the Ricardo and Marx had been right all along. A whole bunch of studies[18,17,5,13,15,19,1,4,2] since the 1980s have shown that the labour theory of value is very good at predicting prices. Far from being refuted by the evidence, it has been confirmed.Harvey is like a flat-earther after Erastosthenes, denying the Earth is round on theological grounds.
Harvey next complains that Marx nowhere declares his allegiance to the labour theory of value. True enough, since at the time Marx was writing, that was the only theory going. It simply was the theory of value. It was only afterwards that the alternative marginal utility or neo-classical theory of value was established.
After Jevons[8] economists distinguished between the classical or labour theory of value and the neoclassical or marginalist theory of value. But it is ridiculous to expect Marx to have taken sides in a debate that only started after Capital was published(1867). At the time he was writing it was widely accepted that labour was the source of value. Even Jevons the founder of marginalism still accepted that prices were proportional to labour, thinking that his marginal utility theory gave further support to this time honoured assumption.Harvey promises to explain what Marx’s theory of value actually is, but nowhere in his article does he do this. That is because it would be impossible to do this without revealing that
the theory of value in Marx is identical in all major predictions to that of Ricardo.What did Ricardo’s theory say?
Did Marx agree with him?
When comparing theorists, especially ones who originally wrote in distinct languages, you should not pay too much attention to the precise vocabulary that they use. What is important is the relations between the concepts they deploy and the relationships that the theorists predict will hold in the real world. When you look at this you see that Marx followed Ricardo’s value theory very closely.There are 4 key components to their value theory on which both authors agree:
<One: The exchangeable value of commodities varies with their direct labour content2,3.<Two: The indirect labour used to make raw materials and equipment also contribute proportionately to the exchange value4,5.<Three: It is the labour actually expended not the level of pay of the workers that determines value6,7.<Four*: The variation of price with labour will be modified by the formation of an equal rate of profit on stock.8,9The theories are therefore substantially identical in the empirical predictions they make, differing only slightly in terminology. Points 1,2,3 are validated by the empirical data in the studies cited earlier. Point 4
* is poorly supported by or refuted by the empirical data [5,19,3] .
Marx and Ricardo say the same thing where they are both right and say the same thing where they are both wrong.So yes Marx has a labour theory of value as Ricardo had.
The greater part of this theory is not refuted by the evidence, it is confirmed by it.This does not mean that Marx made no contributions. Major innovations in his thought were:
<The point that labour only gets represented as exchange value in societies with private ownership and atomised production. Marx says exchange was absent in traditional Indian communities or the communism of the Incas. The prior economists had assumed that all societies produce commodities.<The distinction between labour and labour power.<The introduction of the concept of surplus value as something functionally prior to the division of surplus value between profit, interest and rent.<A new theory to explain the falling rate of profit.<A repudiation of Say’s law.<The concept of absolute ground rent.<The introduction of more modes of production than the ones Adam Smith recognised.<The idea that the class struggle leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.These are all significant innovations that did distinguish him from his predecessors.
There is no need to pretend innovation by Marx in value theory, a topic where he just rigorously used Ricardo’s concepts.But what about abstract/concrete labour?
Was this distinction not an innovation on Marx’s part?
Well the specific phrase ‘concrete labour’ was different, but the relevant conceptual distinction between the two was present in Adam Smith’s work.Smith simply uses the term ‘labour’ unqualified where Marx sometimes says abstract labour10. Smith specifically says that when he is talking of labour in this way he is talking of labour in the abstract11. When Smith discusses the division of labour, he is discussing the division of the abstract labour into what he terms ‘varieties’ of labour12 or ‘sorts’ of labour13. This is the same distinction that Marx is making when, using the slightly different term, he talks of abstracting from concrete labours or kinds of labour14.
An interesting comment from the above article:
<Jurriaan Bendien
<August 17, 2019 at 8:39 pm
<Dear Paul,
<I read your article “Did Marx have a labour theory of value”, written in response to David Harvey. I just want to point out, that the real scientific dispute is not really about whether Marx had an LTV or a VTL.
<Marx never referred to his own theory as a labour theory of value for a very good reason, namely he understood quite well, and says so, that there are many assets in society whose value is not determined by labour time or labour costs, and whose value cannot be predicted by related labour costs (such as real estate and financial assets – stocks, securities, deposits, derivative contracts etc.).
<In brief, Marx understood, that NOT ALL value is determined by labour time. The labour theory of value applied only to the production and exchange of commodities as labour products. It did not refer to financial assets and land values, even if labour costs could influence their value to some or other extent.
<It was therefore quite logical, that Marx did not refer to his own theory as a labour theory of value, because that would imply that labour determined the magnitudes of ALL (economic) value. It doesn’t. If Marx really did subscribe to a labour theory of ALL value, this would be an scientific error.
<This simple point has rarely been understood in Marxist circles (I found only one scholarly article so far which explicitly acknowledges that, other than the Harvey/Elson line), which has the consequence that Marxists are at a loss to explain the financial economy, in terms of the LTV. All they can do is talk about “fictitious capital”.
<When the so-called “fictitious capital” is responsible for running a third or more of the economy, with real and large consequences for people’s lives, then calling this capital “fictitious” is just not very plausible. Even Michel Aglietta understands that.
<Best regards,
<Jurriaan Bendien
I thought "fictitious capital" simply refers to the shenanigans caused by things like quantiative easing, fractional reserve banking, messing with money supply an interest rates at a governmental level, and other things that are basically done through bourgeois dictatorship and don't actually correlate with value produced through commodity production. Specifically I thought it was capital that exists not as a direct claim on actual productive resources but as claims on future value. It’s essentially money that represents future profits or dividends rather than anything grounded in present-day productive activity.
>>2568453>After Jevons economists distinguished between the classical or labour theory of value and the neoclassical or marginalist theory of value.in actual fact, the term "neoclassical" was chosen by critics, and was popularised by keynesians. there were however "schools" of thought, such as the austrian school (menger) and lausanne school (walras). the very term "classical" political economy also comes from marx himself, to describe the british tradition of thought, culminating in ricardo (yet marx never identified with it). what may surprise cockshott is that keynes considered marshall (and by extension, jevons) defenders of ricardo. this is what "(neo)classical" referred to (with keynes invoking marginal theories into his explanation of the "classical" theory of unemployment, via pigou).
>Even Jevons the founder of marginalism still accepted that prices were proportional to labour, thinking that his marginal utility theory gave further support to this time honoured assumption.glad to see cockshott have sense on this issue.
>>2568444>By the classical theory, we mean the theory that labour is the source of value. This was generally accepted from the time of Ibn Kaldun through Adam Smith down to that of Karl Marx.i address the supposed canonicity of ibn khaldun within the thought of the LTV here:
>>2554036and show that what ibn khaldun believes is not the same as what is later given in the british tradition.
>It is arguable that this theory [marginalism] gained its popularity because the classical theory, having by then been adapted by socialist writers, had a rather disreputable image in polite society.this is part of the same nonsense conspiratorial thinking as what michael hudson peddles. as jevons shows in his second preface (1879), it was gossen (1854) who first expounded the marginal theory, 4 years before marx even wrote the grundrisse (1858). further, jevons says that his own theory was given in outline in 1862, 5 years before the first edition of marx's capital (1867). if we actually read jevons, we can also see his total loyalty to ricardo (1817) and j.s. mill (1848), who are the formalisers of the labour theory of value (otherwise characterised as "cost of production" theories of value), so jevons was not attempting to distance himself from the LTV (which indeed had influence on socialist politics via smith, 1816-48), but was trying to contextualise it. we can decipher this best in "the theory of political economy" (1871), chapter 4, section 25. as i have also been at labours to explain, jevons has compatibility with marx's theory of the surplus utility of labour, by showing the equilibrium of the wage to its marginal product:
>Evidence to the like effect is found in the general tendency to reduce the hours of labour at the present day, owing to the improved real wages now enjoyed by those employed in mills and factories.<the theory of political economy - chapter 5, section 5whilst the total product is the source of capitalist profit. hence, the longer a worker labours, the more he produces at the expense of his wage, the same as what marx says; that the source of profit is in surplus labour. as for jevons' politics, he was a liberal, but promoted worker co-operatives (the same as murray rothbard and ronald regan). we may read this in "trades societies: their objectives and policy" (1870), sections 9 and 10:
>I wish to see workmen becoming by degrees their own capitalists—sharers in all the profits and all the advantages which capital confers […] I hope for the working-men of this country more than they generally hope for themselves: that they may become in a great degree their own capitalists, and may be the builders of their own fortunes.<"methods of social reform and other papers" (1883).https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-methods-of-social-reform-and-other-papersand as i have also shown, a jevonian writer, philip henry wicksteed, had influence over george bernard shaw, the founder of the fabian socialist society (1884-), which is an organisaton that founded the labour party (1900-).
>>2566339jevons discusses this notion in "the rationale of free public libraries" (1862):
>If a beautiful picture be hung in the dining-room of a private house, it may perhaps be gazed at by a few guests a score or two of times in the year. Its real utility is too often that of ministering to the selfish pride of its owner. If it be hung in the National Gallery, it will be enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of persons, whose glances, it need hardly be said, do not tend to wear out the canvas. The same principle applies to books in common ownership. If a man possesses a library of a few thousand volumes, by far the greater part of them must lie for years untouched upon the shelves; he cannot possibly use more than a fraction of the whole in any one year. But a library of five or ten thousand volumes opened free to the population of a town may be used a thousand times as much. It is a striking case of what I propose to call the principle of the multiplication of utility, a principle which lies at the base of some of the most important processes of political economy, including the division of labour.<"methods of social reform and other papers" (1883).https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-methods-of-social-reform-and-other-papersthus, public access to an object may multiply its total utility, which jevons compares to the division of labour. i would say that various libertarian arguments against copyright have the same idea. in my own time, i have bemoaned the privatisation of literature, since public access could only add to human wealth, never subtract. so, free stuff is often more utilitarian than the method of trade (contra the austrian school's idea of mutual interest… although, if we gave out free money, then we could say that we are necessarily increasing utility from an austrian standpoint, but are perhaps being "irrational" in allocation; but as rothbard says, he would rather give out free money to the public than have wasted money on public services. a lot of UBI stuff today is also libertarian). so, we return to the cancer of capitalist profit, which as smith says, is a tax against the nation. this is also an issue i disagree with kant on, where he attempts to defend intellectual property (1785):
<Now the counterfeiter is he who transacts another's business (the author's) against the other's will. Therefore the counterfeiter is obliged to give up to the author or to his attorney (or the editor) [any profits from the transaction].https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46060/46060-h/46060-h.htmthe dichotomy between the subject and object of literature is eventually resolved by roland barthes (1967). this has its economic analog between use-value and exchange-value, or the object and subject.
>>2567390I'm a different poster than the one you called ignorant.
Back to the question: In the writings of Marx, what is the difference between value and exchange value?
>>2569967>>2569973thanks anon, I found these interesting but don't have much to add. :)
<i address the supposed canonicity of ibn khaldun within the thought of the LTV here:I will read this one later
Coming back to /leftypol/, optimistically finding there's finally a political economy thread, only to find it largely filled with people arguing in a circle in relation to another series of identifiable personalities that encasulte the worst pseudo-intellectual qualities of /leftypol/ (like it always has), is a despondency I cannot describe.
>>2570852well anon, for what it's worth i made these threads for likely the same reason you envisioned, only to watch it go to shit very quickly. The main "body" of the site seems to congregate in the /usapol/ and geopolitical flashpoint (/ukr/ /palestine/) threads. Tell me what you would like this thread to be more like and I will try my best to oblige, within reason, but I am just one person.
>>2570855I respect your effort, I do still think it's a noble thing to do. I'll mention when I can think of something, but I also know I don't have any expertise in addressing something like this and should probably leave more room for those that do. And unfortunately, there's also nothing you can do if it's a garbage in - garbage out situation. If I could say something I would like though, it's for us to discuss things in a context that is useful and relevant to analyzing things as they are or how we may inform/refute the basics to others. Respectfully, this kvetching about Jevon for what looks like 3 threads is useless, it provides no suitable analysis or investigation into how things are, which is what we need when discussing this outside the bottomless nothing pit that is leftypol. Otherwise were just typing words who's only purpose is to wait on a conveyor belt till it disappears forever.
>>2570873youre free to illuminate us with your wisdom any time you like, instead of complaining that the people who contribute to the thread arent doing what you want.
>>2570602>still sagepostingshameful.
>Back to the questionyou never asked me a question; you accused me of taking a position, remember?
>In the writings of Marx, what is the difference between value and exchange value?value is abstract labour (which can only be abstracted in the act of exchange). exchange-value is the quantity of abstract labour, measured in labour-time. as yet, labour in itself has no value, since its not a commodity. this is the further point; that the form of value to marx is only between two commodities which polarise each other, and so takes a necessarily social existence; hence, value is not a natural relation (e.g. physical). "value" as a term generally refers to exchange-value, as james steuart writes (1767), and marx says the same:
<When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and a value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmso, the terms can be substituted for one another. also, the "fully developed" value-form to marx is money, and thus, value is expressed by price. thus he writes:
<Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmthis is why someone like michael heinrich claims that marx had a "monetary" theory of value.
>>2570972>youre free to illuminate us with your wisdom any time you like, instead of complaining that the people who contribute to the thread arent doing what you want.I'd hardly call this discussion a contribution to anything. This isn't a constructive group discussion, it's one online personality and the responses to him. None of this can be turned into praxis, you talking about value is about the only useful thing remarked on here to discuss about.
>>2570873> Respectfully, this kvetching about Jevon for what looks like 3 threads is useless, it provides no suitable analysis or investigation into how things are, which is what we need when discussing this outside the bottomless nothing pit that is leftypol. Otherwise were just typing words who's only purpose is to wait on a conveyor belt till it disappears forever.I do sometimes take what I learn from others on here into real life conversations, albeit imperfectly since It's easier to type things and look up references in open tabs than it is to carry on conversations IRL where things flow much differently
>>2570602>In the writings of Marx, what is the difference between value and exchange value?>>2570972>value is abstract labour (which can only be abstracted in the act of exchange). exchange-value is the quantity of abstract labour, measured in labour-time.You say here the ratios of abstract labor going into commodities is equal to their exchange ratios
and equal to the labor-time input ratios. Are you sure that's what you want to say.
>"value" as a term generally refers to exchange-value, as james steuart writes (1767)…The question was about Marx as you understand him.
>…and marx says the same:<When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and a value.<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm<so, the terms can be substituted for one another.The following is literally from the beginning of the next paragraph after your quote:
<Our analysis has shown, that the form or expression of the value of a commodity originates in the nature of value, and not that value and its magnitude originate in the mode of their expression as exchange value.Does Marx not distinguish here between value and exchange value.
>also, the "fully developed" value-form to marx is money, and thus, value is expressed by price. thus he writes:<Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.Again, what is the context. Look at the sentences right before it:
<Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp products as commodities, and whose establishment is a necessary preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning.Marx talks here about how
other people see the world.
>>2571291if the thread is so bad, then stop browsing it.
what can i tell you? 🤷🏻♂️
>>2571815>You say here the ratios of abstract labor going into commodities is equal to their exchange ratios and equal to the labor-time input ratiostheyre the same thing: Ax = By
>Does Marx not distinguish here between value and exchange value.he does, between "value and its magnitude"; quality and quantity. we may also read footnote 11A:
<Now we know the substance of value. It is labour. We know the measure of its magnitude. It is labour time. The form, which stamps value as exchange-value, remains to be analysed.>Marx talks here about how other people see the world.he is making an inference that value as something socially recognised is retroactive of its actuality - this is a point of contention in the marxist theory, since marx appears to say that value is an autonomous entity which is present even where it is unrecognised (such as in his example of aristotle), yet at once, he reduces value to the exchange of commodities, socially recognised as values:
>There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things […] So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm<In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognise in each other the rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economic relation between the two.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htmso then, value is a "stamp" of equality, mediated by two subjects in mutual exchange, yet to marx, it is also self-realising and to engels, it is inherent:
<Thus, the Marxian law of value has general economic validity for a period lasting from the beginning of exchange, which transforms products into commodities, down to the 15th century of the present era. But the exchange of commodities dates from a time before all written history — which in Egypt goes back to at least 2500 B.C., and perhaps 5000 B.C., and in Babylon to 4000 B.C., perhaps to 6000 B.C.; thus, the law of value has prevailed during a period of from five to seven thousand years.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/supp.htmyet, marx affirms that the "concept" of value did not exist in antiquity, so as to be socially realised:
>The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch15.htm<Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmso value as an "abstraction" existed, yet it had no concept? this is the hegelian gobbledygook one is forced to reckon with. from what i can determine, money (as the concrete form of value) predominates until capitalism, at which point, money is overcome by capital (which marx especially relates to credit, such as in the case of the bank of england. he also calls usury an antediluvian form of capital, or elsewise relates it to "chrematistics", an aristotelian term). here, value turns to surplus value, and thus, value comes into conception (begriff), just as it is fading away (e.g. political economy). the hegelian concept is the substance become subject, and we see this in marx's description, where "dead labour" and "living labour" mix as the objective and subjective aspect, to realise capital, or "money in motion", which mirrors hegel's "idea" of the absolute. i criticise this view by showing that indeed, aristotle did possess a concept of value, and marx's omission of this appears rather suspicious.
>>2571906>if the thread is so bad, its bad because of you
>then stop browsing it.is that your goal here?
>>2571927idk dude, i might not agree with him on much but he certainly cites sources and contributes more than you. Your posts here are pretty low quality. Just counter argue and cite sources if you disagree with something he says. That increases the quality of the thread and gives it more voices. If that's not your style then maybe this isn't the right thread for you. This thread isn't meant for low effort shitflinging. Back in version 3 we had a guy who rejected the entire premise of the thread outright, saying something like "Marx critiqued political economy therefore any continuation of it is bourgeois" but he still stayed in the thread and repeatedly argued this point instead of just leaving. Ended up wasting a bunch of vertical space in the thread on nothing.
>>2571815>>2571906to further explain the point on quality (substance), quantity (magnitude) and measure (form), we may read from the first edition of marx's capital (1867):
<What was decisively important, however, was to discover the inner, necessary connection between value-form, value-substance, and value-amount; i.e., expressed conceptually, to prove that the value form arises out of the value-concept.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htmdavid harvey presents a similar trilateral diagram in "companion to marx's capital" (2010), but incorrectly labels its internal attributes as "use-value", "exchange-value" and "value" (p. 23), since he misinterprets marx:
>value is socially necessary labor time (p. 22)value in itself is not SNLT; SNLT is "value-amount", which must relate to its substance and form.
paul cockshott has previously attempted to explain it in aristotelian terms, of substance being a unity of form and matter, which marx assigns between the poles of a commodity's "natural form" (use-value; concrete) and its "social form" (exchange-value; abstract). an issue with this view is that "substance" is positively identified with use-value by marx, yet is likewise abstracted by exchange, while in the aristotelian model, the actuality of substance comports with form, not matter. i feel that some marxian theorists attempt to resolve this dialectically (such as harvey), by positing production as a factor of exchange (e.g. "socially necessary"), which is not wholly incorrect, although i do think marx had a general sense of causation, such as the syllogism in the grundrisse between universal production, particular distribution and singluar consumption; a chain which has a beginning and end - although, when he gets to supply and demand (production/consumption) he does say that each is the cause of the other. of social necessity, he also takes the ricardian line that for labour to "count", it must be exchanged for, so we cant quite blame interpreters of marx, but marx himself for being so confusing. all in all, i think hegel's "doctrine of being" works best to understand it, as a relation between quality-quantity-measure, which marx intentionally subtitles in the chapter. the doctrine of essence is also present, between value and its form of appearance. as i have also shown, the doctrine of the concept (begriff) is clearly shown by the development of capital, where being and essence (objectivity) become joined to the subject of value (living labour). its this conjoinment which is the source of surplus.
>>2571927the point still stands; if you dont like it, then stop forcing yourself to be malcontented. if you have anything to actually contribute however, then go ahead.
>>2571930they can never actually explain why im wrong or why i ought to be despised, yet i live rent free in their heads anyway. i think its something to do with marxist cultists encountering heretics or unbelievers. of course, it only ends for them with concentration camps where they get to "re-educate" you into following their opinions, otherwise you deserve to die or be enslaved.
>>2571930>>2571950That's a totally different anon, the only posts I've made have been in regards to how effectual discussion is in relation to how it may be applied to praxis. That should have been obvious with the writing style.
>>2571950>they can never actually explain why im wrong or why i ought to be despised, yet i live rent free in their heads anyway. I wrote a longer post that I despise having lost when I clicked a link to double check a reference, but to shorten and summarize what I guess my issues are, it's that you tend to easily go off on side tangents that aren't very useful and are more a practice in onanism, and that you tend to overcomplicate things beyond what they are by taking the most uncharitable view of it, while inserting some assumptions into the small details that then add up. Just now, your writing about Marx and Aristotle is easily addressed by looking at the context of his critique, of how Aristotle only goes half way in his theory but is unable to recognize the uniting feature of his comparisons, and the social context of why that might be. Marx seems to be using "concept" (even when referring to antiquity, though this may be wholly separate as well) in a very different way then you are, and I don't see how it's a contradiction to value (as he defines it) being an emergent "abstraction" dependent on social relations. And from that, I further do not see the necessity of getting into the weeds with Hegel, when much of what you refer to Marx here doesn't bother with such, with Marx using Hegel at the most as a framing model/diagram then using it outright. Complexity can be useful, but not when its unnecessary. You seem to also add more confusion by taking early Marx (Grundrisse) and trying to reckon it with his far less "Hegelian" influenced works 10 or 20 years later, when I found Marx to more heavily "Darwinian" in his framing as time went on. Using terms like the "economic cell form" is a lot less of a hegalian framing.
>think its something to do with marxist cultists encountering heretics or unbelievers. of course, it only ends for them with concentration camps where they get to "re-educate" you into following their opinions, otherwise you deserve to die or be enslaved.Lots of assumptions here.
In general though, I don't like Kaustsky-esc personality debates. It becomes a process of who has the time and who can type more in response to a singular individual, rather then a collaborative effort in engaging in learning that can they be made into meaningful IRL praxis. There is very little actual political economy happening here in regards to our current capitalist relations.
>>2571989>praxiswhat is the thread topic, again? dont you think its weird how the guy who talks about political economy in a political economy thread is constantly demonised?
>side tangents that aren't very useful and are more a practice in onanismsuch as?
>tend to overcomplicate thingsany examples?
>Just now, your writing about Marx and Aristotle is easily addressed by looking at the context of his critique, of how Aristotle only goes half way in his theory but is unable to recognize the uniting feature of his comparisons, and the social context of why that might bebut its a false analysis, as i have previously demonstrated. aristotle has a theory of value and indeed, commensuration, which marx obscures. he doesnt even provide a source for his quotations, which says a lot.
>I don't see how it's a contradictionbecause value as a social construct must have recognition to have validity. if it is unrecognised, then how does it persist?
>I further do not see the necessity of getting into the weeds with Hegelbecause marx is using hegel's logic to describe the development of capitalism… you appear utterly incurious as to the contents of the text, so why have loyalty to a man you dont even want to understand?
>You seem to also add more confusion by taking early Marx (Grundrisse) and trying to reckon it with his far less "Hegelian" influenced works 10 or 20 years latermarx in the 1873 preface to capital says this:
<I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker [hegel], and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htmyou are running on fumes.
>Lots of assumptions here. its the lived reality of whoever combats marxists. its a cult which breeds more cults.
>collaborative effort in engaging in learningyes, hopefully you have learned something from me.
>There is very little actual political economy happening here in regards to our current capitalist relations.nothing's stopping you from writing about it. 🤷🏻♂️
>>2571930>he certainly cites sources and contributes more than youlol you dont know who i am. i stopped in round two after going in circles with this guy for over six months with heavy citations. he openly contradicts himself constantly and posts things that are objectively false and when corrected ignores it. his position has been completely exhausted and he just comes back to repeat it despite being proven wrong repeatedly
opinions on shimomuran economics.
Mainstream economics suggests that investment should equal savings. Shimomuran economics suggests investment should be greater than savings.
Shimomuran econmics suggest doing this by using the central bank to create money out of "nothing". For example, the central bank buys assets in local banks and then puts a debt (I owe you) towards these local banks, in its balance sheets. The central bank then sends this literal "free" bank credit to the local banks. The local banks then send it to key industries for the central bank guides the local bank to do that. (more credit to those local banks that follow the central banks guidance).
Japan, sk, taiwan, and maybe china did this. It lead to an economic boom
>>2571906>>You say here the ratios of abstract labor going into commodities is equal to their exchange ratios and equal to the labor-time input ratios>theyre the same thing: Ax = ByMarx explicitly says it is the labor time in what you quote right after asserting this:
<We know the measure of its magnitude. It is labour time. The form, which stamps value as exchange-value, remains to be analysed.>marx appears to say that value is an autonomous entity which is present even where it is unrecognisedYeah he appears to say that because he
is saying that.
>marx affirms that the "concept" of value did not exist in antiquity, so as to be socially realised:The quote that follows is from his earlier scribblings not meant for publication and not from Capital. Why would you put much weight into that. Then you quote Capital:
<Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value.>https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmAgain, context. What is Marx saying just a few sentences after this:
<The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice.About Aristotle:
<What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle (…) The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality. Marx is talking about value as something that somebody living in antiquity cannot see, but somebody looking back at antiquity
can see.
>so value as an "abstraction" existed, yet it had no concept? this is the hegelian gobbledygook one is forced to reckon with.Something can exist without you, me, or a famous philosopher, seeing it. Marx in Capital says Aristotle didn't have
the mindset for seeing value because he lived in a slave-owner society.
>>2571989>your writing about Marx and Aristotle is easily addressed by looking at the context of his critique, of how Aristotle only goes half way in his theory but is unable to recognize the uniting feature of his comparisons, and the social context of why that might be. Marx seems to be using "concept" (even when referring to antiquity, though this may be wholly separate as well) in a very different way then you are, and I don't see how it's a contradiction to value (as he defines it) being an emergent "abstraction" dependent on social relations. And from that, I further do not see the necessity of getting into the weeds with Hegel, when much of what you refer to Marx here doesn't bother with such, with Marx using Hegel at the most as a framing model/diagram then using it outright. Complexity can be useful, but not when its unnecessary. You seem to also add more confusion by taking early Marx (Grundrisse) and trying to reckon it with his far less "Hegelian" influenced works 10 or 20 years later, when I found Marx to more heavily "Darwinian" in his framing as time went on. Using terms like the "economic cell form" is a lot less of a hegalian framing. Yes, exactly.
And getting back to my original question for Smith Anon: I do not believe that Marx thought that value ratios are equal to exchange-value ratios.
SmithAnon, you were responded to in the immigration thread.
>>2572946i responded 👍
>>2572384>he openly contradicts himself constantly and posts things that are objectively false and when corrected ignores it. any examples? 🥱
>>2572884>I do not believe that Marx thought that value ratios are equal to exchange-value ratios.whats the difference? 🤔
exchange-value is "value in exchange" (Ax=By)
>>2572406unfortunately, there are no primary sources i can find from shimomuran himself, but from secondary sources, he's described as a keynesian, so your description makes sense. the mainstream view is that savings represent future spending and so the increase of savings is an increase in future value. this is true, but only so far as it concerns its marginal and total content. the individual saver benefits by saving, yet if everyone saved, the individual would suffer, since the economy would shrink and thus there would be less to save for. in keynesian terms, this often refers to the "paradox of thrift":
<Every such attempt to save more by reducing consumption will so affect incomes that the attempt necessarily defeats itself. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch07.htmwe may then see keynes' view on the relationship between saving and investment:
>[i] Income = value of output = consumption + investment. [ii] Saving = income - consumption. [iii] Therefore saving = investment. [quantitatively]<Thus the act of investment in itself cannot help causing the residual or margin, which we call saving, to increase by a corresponding amount.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch06.htmso, investment can increase saving, but saving cannot increase investment. he presents this chapter as a case of equilibrium however, and explains disequilibrium (excess) in the next:
<change in the excess of investment over saving was the motive force governing changes in the volume of output […] the expectation of an increased excess of Investment over Saving, given the former volume of employment and output, will induce entrepreneurs to increase the volume of employment and output.thus, as shimomuran is described as believing, so too does keynes believe the same, that spending on investment boosts economies, more than saving can.
>>2573131>>2573131thank you for your opinion on shimomuran economics.
Also I recommend reading prince of yen, or other works by richard werner. Hes the primary scholar who studies shimomuran economics
>>2573131>any examples?just the hundreds in all the previous threads
>>2573807>hundreds of examplespick one.
>>2573578no prob, bob. 👍
highlighting a difference between ancient economic conception versus the modern, as a difference between the role of the mechanical arts in relation to liberal arts.
first is the earliest text on formal economics, xenophon's "the economist" (360 B.C):
<Well, then, we agreed that economy was the proper title of a branch of knowledge, and this branch of knowledge appeared to be that whereby men are enabled to enhance the value of their houses or estates; and by this word "house or estate" we understood the whole of a man's possessions; and "possessions" again we defined to include those things which the possessor should find advantageous for the purposes of his life; and things advantageous finally were discovered to mean all that a man knows how to use and turn to good account. Further, for a man to learn all branches of knowledge not only seemed to us an impossibility, but we thought we might well follow the example of civil communties in rejecting the base mechanic arts so called, on the ground that they destroy the bodies of the artisans, as far as we can see, and crush their spirits.https://www.fulltextarchive.com/book/The-Economist/we may thusly compare this to the first modern text of formal political economy, antoine montchretien's "treatise" (1615):
<Among these three kinds of men are practised the effective arts, commonly called mechanical, having more regard to the hands that exercise them than to their own dignity… We note in mechanics the representations and images of the same prudence that shines in the liberal arts, in proportion to their greater or lesser merit… These are streams flowing from the same source and spreading incessantly through the necessities of human life […] Let us then consider the liberal and mechanical arts, where its light shines most brightly in so many rays; we will find them so necessary, useful and pleasant that the one we look at most will seem the most preferable […] I say this to shut the mouths of those who would accuse me of speaking to such high and exalted Majesties about things which they consider to be so low and mechanical…>>>/edu/25139what is present in montchretien is the esteem of equality between the liberal and mechanical arts as forms of making wealth. only at a higher stage do we see adam smith declare that the practitioners of the liberal arts are in fact "unproductive" and that expense on their part diminishes the wealth of the nation (1776):
<The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch03.htmkarl marx also comments upon this (1863):
<The great mass of so-called “higher grade” workers—such as state officials, military people, artists, doctors, priests, judges, lawyers, etc.—some of whom are not only not productive but in essence destructive, but who know how to appropriate to themselves a very great part of the “material” wealth partly through the sale of their “immaterial” commodities and partly by forcibly imposing the latter on other people—found it not at all pleasant to be relegated economically to the same class as clowns and menial servants and to appear merely as people partaking in the consumption, parasites on the actual producers (or rather agents of production).https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htmthus we see that as the economic mediates society more and more, the mechanical is esteemed above the liberal.
>>2572884>I do not believe that Marx thought that value ratios are equal to exchange-value ratios.>>2573131>whats the difference? 🤔>exchange-value is "value in exchange" (Ax=By)In Volume I, Marx presented his model with the simplifying assumption value ratios = exchange value ratios. He did that for a pedagogical reason, since the first book was supposed to be the introduction. He explicitly told the readers:
<We have in fact. assumed that prices = values. We shall, however, see, in Book III., that even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm#9 >>2570602>In the writings of Marx, what is the difference between value and exchange value?>>2570972 (Smith Anon)
>the terms can be substituted for one another>>2572884>I do not believe that Marx thought that value ratios are equal to exchange-value ratios.>>2573131 (Smith Anon)
>whats the difference? 🤔>exchange-value is "value in exchange" (Ax=By)>>2577125>In Volume I, Marx presented his model with the simplifying assumption value ratios = exchange value ratios. He did that for a pedagogical reason, since the first book was supposed to be the introduction. He explicitly told the readers:<We have in fact. assumed that prices = values. We shall, however, see, in Book III., that even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner.>>2577916 (Smith Anon)
>you havent explained the difference between value ratios and exchange-value ratios>theyre the same thingYour argument is:
This hasn't been explained to me, therefore it doesn't exist.The current state of the thread is that we now have confirmation in writing by Marx that the assumed equivalence is only a simplification used in the earlier part of his exposition, and to be dropped later.
We can go into what the difference is, but first please admit:
1. Marx claimed there to be a difference.
2. You were not aware of it.
>>2578013no, there is no difference, and marx never says there is a difference between the value of a commodity and its value in exchange. value as abstract labour only appears in exchange, so its an inseparable attribute.
you are imagining a difference, asserting it, yet never proving it. im bored of this cat and mouse nonsense.
>>2578042 (Smith Anon)
>no, there is no differenceAgain, Marx:
<We have in fact. assumed that prices = values. We shall, however, see, in Book III., that even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner.Quoted now for the third time. How many times does Smith Anon have to read this?
>marx never says there is a difference between the value of a commodity and its value in exchangeAnd how would Smith Anon know that without having reading Book III?
>>2578085if the exchange value of X = £2,
how do we determine its value?
What I mean is the information is not in the individual price. You have to go from macro to micro to figure out SNLT. Because we live in a society.
>>2578130so we know the value of a commodity in the act of exchange, where concrete labour is abstracted as a quantity of homogenous labour-time so as to produce equivalence in a ratio of substance (i.e. A = £2), but we must consider a ratio beyond this, which is both indefinable and unknowable? this is your conclusion?
>>2578139SNLT is measured in exchange-value as marx said, so why invoke this when you are talking about a mystical "value" beyond the realms of knowledge?
>>2578143>SNLT is measured in exchange-value as marx said, so why invoke this when you are talking about a mystical "value" beyond the realms of knowledge?SNLT is a more general concept than something that only happens in capitalism. We live in capitalism. In capitalism, we look at SNLT through the dirty lens of exchange ratios. Or we could say it's like looking at a shadow.
Or we could say it's like this: Suppose
1. I regularly fuck Smith Anon's mother.
2. Sometimes she gets more excited than other times.
3. When she gets more excited her moans get louder proportionally.
But it cannot be directly inferred from these three points that how loud she seems to Smith Anon must be proportional to how excited she is, because depending on where I fuck her and where Smith Anon is also affects how loud he perceives her to be. But Smith Anon does not grasp that and thinks it must be the walls themselves that are fucking and saying anything else is "mystical gobbledygook".
>>2578185so, is this you explaining the difference between value ratios and exchange value ratios, then? or have you given up on that?
>>2578185>>2578236read this carefully:
<the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed […] When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and a value. It manifests itself as this two-fold thing, that it is, as soon as its value assumes an independent form – viz., the form of exchange value. It never assumes this form when isolated, but only when placed in a value or exchange relation with another commodity of a different kind. When once we know this, such a mode of expression does no harm; it simply serves as an abbreviation.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmso exchange-value is the only mode of expression for the value of commodities. value cannot be expressed outside of this quantitative relationship to marx, which may be represented as a ratio between commodities:
<the ratio of the value of silver to that of gold…https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htmagain, this is all entirely uncontroversial to most.
>>2578085>How many times does Smith Anon have to read this?He doesn't read he only lies.
>>2578738lies about what? 🤔
>>2578085>>2578738here are some more resources to help your confusion:
<The prices which obtain as the average of the various rates of profit in the different spheres of production added to the cost-prices of the different spheres of production, constitute the prices of production […] And in the same way the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society — the totality of all branches of production — is equal to the sum of their values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmso, the average price is still reflective of the value given in production, the same as in pre-capitalist relations, and in fact, the total average is equal to the total value. so as marx says, total value = total price, which if you measure as exchange-value, comes to the same conclusion: [Ax = By]. hope this helps. 🙂
>>2578738Smith Anon believes exchange ratios equate to value (SNLT) ratios. Smith Anon missed the announcement in Capital Book I that this is not so and that this point will be developed in Book III of Capital.
>>2578042<The grouping of the various value portions of a commodity which only replace the value of the capital expended in its production under the head of cost-price expresses, on the one hand, the specific character of capitalist production. The capitalist cost of the commodity is measured by the expenditure of capital, while the actual cost of the commodity is measured by the expenditure of labour. Thus, the capitalist cost-price of the commodity differs in quantity from its value, or its actual cost-price.Chapter one.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch01.htmSmith Anon hasn't read Book III. Not even the first chapter. (By the way I also don't believe he read Book I. He has attention deficit disorder. He just poked around in it, pulled some quotes, and stored them for later use together with some key words. Since then his mind has deteriorated even further and now he just goes through these "conversations" with his NPC graph. Not only does he not remember the broader context of these quotes, he doesn't even remember the context window of the sentences right before and after. Actually, he doesn't even read the quotes he copy-pastes. He sees a trigger word and seeks to retrieve something with that label. What's next in his intellectual development? I suppose he will streamline the process by not reading whole trigger words and just go by the first letter.)
>>2580366so… what is the argument? 🤔
what is the difference between exchange-value ratios and value ratios? oh wait, you already said that you dont know. as i have perfectly demonstrated, the ratio between values in exchange (SNLT) is their price. if A = B = £2, this is its amount in SNLT.
>Thus, the capitalist cost-price of the commodity differs in quantity from its value, or its actual cost-price.yes… what the cost is to the capitalist (c+v) is not the cost of total production, which is its "actual cost-price", or value (c+v+s):
<The value of every commodity produced in the capitalist way is represented in the formula: C = c + v + s.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch01.htmthus, the value of the total commodity is factored by surplus value, which may equalise a rate of profit by combining capitals, as i have already shown: total price = total value. you can read this here if youre still confused:
>>2578826here's an explanation of the chart:
<Taken together, the commodities are sold at 2 + 7 + 17 = 26 above, and 8 + 18 = 26 below their value, so that the deviations of price from value balance out one another through the uniform distribution of surplus-value, or through addition of the average profit of 22 per 100 units of advanced capital to the respective cost-prices of the commodities I to V.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmtotal price = total value. hope this helps 🙂
>>2549046The point Marx is making is about abstract labor and "abstract value", i.e. what does it mean to value something, rather than regarding value merely as a convenience for exchange in some token. Even if you didn't have money as such in any form, you'd still have the same problem of value presented as something different. The planner of a socialist economy still has to deal with value, exploitation, and all of the things that are required to get something out of labor.
>>2578826>here are some more resources to help your confusion:<The prices which obtain as the average of the various rates of profit in the different spheres of production added to the cost-prices of the different spheres of production, constitute the prices of production […] And in the same way the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society — the totality of all branches of production — is equal to the sum of their values.>https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmIf you ever get around, for the first time in your life, to read a whole paragraph of Marx, let it be the one that you just quoted from here. Note that the deviations in the following do not refer to temporary supply-demand fluctuations, but how parts systematically diverge from the total average:
<Taken together, the commodities are sold at 2 + 7 + 17 = 26 above, and 8 + 18 = 26 below their value, so that the deviations of price from value balance out one another through the uniform distribution of surplus-value, or through addition of the average profit of 22 per 100 units of advanced capital to the respective cost-prices of the commodities I to V. One portion of the commodities is sold above its value in the same proportion in which the other is sold below it. And it is only the sale of the commodities at such prices that enables the rate of profit for capitals I to V to be uniformly 22%, regardless of their different organic composition. The prices which obtain as the average of the various rates of profit in the different spheres of production added to the cost-prices of the different spheres of production, constitute the prices of production. They have as their prerequisite the existence of a general rate of profit, and this, again, presupposes that the rates of profit in every individual sphere of production taken by itself have previously been reduced to just as many average rates. These particular rates of profit = s/C in every sphere of production, and must, as occurs in Part I of this book, be deduced out of the values of the commodities. Without such deduction the general rate of profit (and consequently the price of production of commodities) remains a vague and senseless conception. Hence, the price of production of a commodity is equal to its cost-price plus the profit, allotted to it in per cent, in accordance with the general rate of profit, or, in other words, to its cost-price plus the average profit.
>as marx says, total value = total priceSuppose an elevator has a weight maximum of 500 kilo. Smith Anon and four other people are riding the elevator. The elevator operates normally. Smith Anon takes that as proof each person on the elevator has a weight of 100 kilo or less. The four other people leave. Smith Anon's mother enters. The elevator crashes. Smith Anon's final thoughts are that this must be all a bad dream because 100 times two is less than 500.
>>2581998marx wants to overcome the concept of value by overcoming the abstraction of labour in exchange (e.g. via central planning). thats why he doesnt consider labour certificates "money", and so we can call them coupons. of course, you would call it slavery to be paid a salary in coupons, but in communism, this is "freedom", apparently. marx also states directly that labour must be exploited by the state in the form of surplus labour and taxation to expand production. thus, i call marx's communism "state capitalism".
>>2582003price = exchange-value = SNLT
an easy marxist formula. lets read this:
<the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society — the totality of all branches of production — is equal to the sum of their values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmi.e. total price = total value
this is why as marx says, whatever is sold above value must be balanced by what is sold below. when considered totally of capital composition therefore, the rate of surplus value is able to be determined so as to measure the value of commodities:
<C = c + v + sas regards your elevator analogy, its still true that the average is affected by varying quantities, so the rate of profit still equalises at the division of its total sum. but i will ask you - if 5 people are weighed, and the total is 500 kilograms, what is the average weight of the persons? what is true is that a larger sample size creates better results, but averages exist nonetheless.
so, by reading marx's words directly (i.e. total price = total value), have you accepted that the ratio of values in exchange are measured by SNLT in prices, and that this is how marx intended himself to be interpreted? if not, may you explain why? thanks. 🙂
>>2548723Workers power within capitalism has very little to do with communism in that case. If this is true, why do MLs insist on political capture before the development of new economic relations?
>>2582249>whatever is sold above value must be balanced by what is sold below.You said things are sold
at value here:
>>2570972>value is abstract labour>exchange-value is the quantity of abstract labourJust to make sure that you really intended to say that, you got asked by post
>>2571815 this:
>You say here the ratios of abstract labor going into commodities is equal to their exchange ratiosAnd you replied:
>>2571906>theyre the same thingAnd later on, you said:
>>2582249>price = exchange-value = SNLTYep, this is literally the same post where you then go on to say things exchange above their value and below it. By the value definition you gave (and have given again and again), this is impossible. Do you want to change your definition?
>>2583248>You said things are sold at valueto marx, they are, as a component of total price matching total value, by the equalisation of the rate of profit. he writes this explicitly, and you havent denied it yet, so you must be growing in your reason.
>Do you want to change your definition?its not my definition, its marx's. you have failed to give an alternative definition of "value" from exchange-value. i repeat:
<the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society […] is equal to the sum of their values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmso then, total value = total price.
what can be more clear? (C = c + v + s)
but please, state your specific criticisms of what im writing, because i want to help you learn. 😮💨
>>2583336>>2583336>to marx, they are, as a component of total price matching total value, by the equalisation of the rate of profit. he writes this explicitly,lol no he doesn't
please start saying "my interpretation of marx, who i havent read"
I HAVE REALIZED THE TRUTH OF HOW OUR WORLD WORKS
MAXIMUM POWER PRINCIPLE CAUSES THE RISE OF NATIONS
CATABOLLIC COLLAPSE CUASES THE FALL OF NATIONS
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION CAUSES THE REBIRTH OF NATIONS.
I REALIZE NOW I SEE
>>2584191Im being unironic btw. (seriously I think this explains how the world kinda works)
>>2584191maximum power principle
the nations who produce the most maximized and efficent energy usage and capture will be the ones who dominate
we saw this with rome, victorian era britain and modern usa
the industrial revolution for example being a great example of energy usage
then this keeps going
jevon paradox happens where the rise of more efficent and better energy usages
ends up causing more and more energy usage until finally reaching limits
then catabolic collapse happens
the only way such energy usage can be done is through complexliuty
complexity of political, economic and social institutions
this leads to losts of costs (corruption, maintenance or other costs)
eventually as growth reaches the limits, costs will now become greater than growth
and thus the nation starts decaying
it starts collapsing
and then finally creative destruction
as old socio political economic institutions and ideas die off, new ones will take their place
and thus the cycle begins anew with new nations that have new ideas and instritutions replacing old nations and their old ideas plus institutions
the cycle repeats
>>2584203>>2584191in "econophysics" terms, we can say that productive labour conserves energy, while unproductive labour expends free energy. creating complexity requires a closed system to regenerate itself, while also increasing energy transfer. if we put too much energy into one sector (e.g. invest too much capital), it burns out (loses profit) and causes the system to shut down (like how watering one plant kills the garden, and the plant itself). if we transfer energy to different sectors we generate greater complexity (division of labour, or in keynesian terms, the marginal efficiency of capital) which is able to catalyse energy. so then, a closed system is necessary, but not too closed, since it breaks the circuit. creating more circuits creates a positive feedback loop which amplifies efficiency.
>>2584174interpret this statement for me:
<the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society […] is equal to the sum of their values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmtotal price = total value
it shouldnt be controversial, since this is the prevailing conclusion of smith, ricardo and jevons. its also economic common sense to austrian economists, since one cannot produce without means of creating value (i.e. utility is the limit of production - j.b. say, 1802) due to economic faculties. so you appear to be denying something every economist is forced to agree on, including marx, yet you do this to defend marx? as i say, you are confused, but not just confused; irrational.
>>2584174You see, Smith Anon does not distinguish how different averages work. It's all a big mess in his head. Here is the solution (not very complicated, but he probably won't read it because he is a seething butthurt narcissist): There are time averages and parts averages.
Time average: We follow something over time and look at its average state (conceptually such always exists, but it might not be an actually happening state you can point at and say "now").
Parts average: We divide some sum between components that in aggregate make up the sum to get the average part (again it conceptually exists, but not necessarily in the sense of something you can point at).
If we imagine a very stupid person, we can imagine that person to be stunned by this distinction, because
sometimes making the distinction is not necessary. Suppose a thousand people are all doing coin flips. Assuming unbiased coins, whether we check the time average of one guy doing the experiments or check a snapshot of the group, we can expect the data to look about the same. (By the way, processes that have the property that both checks amount to the same are called
ergodic processes. Is capitalism ergodic? No.)
The average Marx talked about in the bit that perplexes Smith Anon is a parts average (as was gracefully and tastefully alluded to in post
>>2582003 with the elevator story).
In Capital III, Marx worked with a model that assumes that profit rates equalize. It's a good question how strong the tendency of profit to equalize really is and so it's also a good question how useful that model is. Either way, the parts average exists, irrespective of how strong or weak the profit-rate equalizing tendency is because it is a MOTHAFUKEN PARTS AVERAGE.
Now, how does the model with the equalized profit rates fit together with assuming prices proportional to value? In short, these two do not fit together well and Marx did not believe they do. The stronger the tendency of profit rates to equalize, the more price ratios diverge from labor-input ratios. This is due to different organic composition of capital in different firms. If we counterfactually assume equal organic composition everywhere, we can have equalized profit rates and prices proportional to value. And this is how what is presented in Capital I fits into the model of analysis in Capital III.
>>2584653>it shouldnt be controversialbut thats not what things sell at their value means, and things(individual commodities) do not sell at their value as reflected in price. total price = total value means that while they have a price, which is an average, they still sell above or below their value, but in the aggregate these deviations wash out.
this is really easy to understand if you dont incorrectly conflate price and value
>>2585182>Now, how does the model with the equalized profit rates fit together with assuming prices proportional to value? In short, these two do not fit together well and Marx did not believe they do. The stronger the tendency of profit rates to equalize, the more price ratios diverge from labor-input ratiosinterpret this statement from marx:
<the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society […] is equal to the sum of their values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htmwhat does this mean to you?
>>2585425>conflate price and valuetotal price and value are the same thing to marx, the same as every other economist. we cant progress until this fact is admitted.
>>2585425>>2585891to skip ahead, since total price = total value,
the exchange-value (price) of commodities is equal to the ratio of the values of commodities, which is what this entire dispute is about. to marx, values are able to be measured by SNLT, but
>>2585182 disagrees, claiming that the ratios of value (which he doesnt define) is different from the ratio of values in exchange (Ax = By). as i have endlessly demonstrated, this is an unfounded perspective. he rejects the words of marx in order to defend marx from himself - its pathological, and you seem to be feeding into it. sad.
>>2585891>total price and value are the same thing to marxwhich is not the same thing as individual price and individual value
>>2586025who invoked individual prices and values?
the theory of value is inherently macroeconomic, since it attests to the prices of production regulating the equilibrium, by market competition within a selected time-frame. if we read smith, he says that the market price ought to coincide with the natural price given a certain amount of time where competition levels out fluctuation. this would require "commodity" considered generally. marx attests to the soundness of this idea by his reference to thomas tooke's "history of prices" (1857) in "value, price and profit" (1865), where he says that smith's hypothesis proves correct. in murray rothbard's critique of smith , he submits to the notion of general equilibrium by what he calls "long-term normal price". so the inclusion of duration into the concept shows its macroeconomic focus. jevons (1871) considers economy in the same macroeconomic fashion, and its only the austrians by their "microeconomic" or "individualist" methodology that converts empirical proofs for rational axioms. rothbard shows particular frustration at smith for claiming that diamonds inexplicably sell higher than water, and rothbard includes the individual case of a man dying in a desert. an issue in this line of reasoning (which is implicitly humorous) is that rothbard is in some way always assuming disequilibrium, and so an inherently chaotic market. yes, water can sell higher than diamonds, but never in the general sense. its this refusal of the general commodity which is ridiculous.
Why does porky pretend deflation is bad?
>>2595926Why does porky pretend 100% employment is bad?
>>2563763I need some economic help. How the FUCK DOES MONEY SUPPLY INCREASE.
Assuming theres a set of money, and companies pay their workers with it, how does this money get bigger?
The thing I suspect so far is that banks produce more money, but how do they do that? Like I know banks loan out money from deposits but wouldnt that just be loaning out preexisting money? Or does the deposit remain the same and banks just loan out money that never existed before?
Also once that loaned out money gets deposited back into the bank and other banks (once spent), does that increase reserves? Which allows for more lending? HELP IM CONFUSED
>>2585891>total price and value are the same thing to marxand yet 20 yards of linen are not a coat
>>2597483As values they are same. Yeah?
>>2597483Only as use values
>>2597484>As values they are samebut that is not what anon said
>total price and value are the same thing >>2597489Price is value. Money is commodity of value with no use value so just value, or something
>>2597483If they are exchanged they are le same. Even le aristotle knew this. But then again le aristotle was le genius
>>2597492>Price is value. >>2585425> if you dont incorrectly conflate price and valueplease read the thread before posting
>>2595963You print money to buy stuff but only if you dont have stuff to sell back
>>2585425Everything is sold at their value.
>>2585425Price and value are same tho
>>2585425>In agregate these differences wash outLe socially average price?
>>2595963>The thing I suspect so far is that banks produce more money, but how do they do that? Like I know banks loan out money from deposits but wouldnt that just be loaning out preexisting money? Or does the deposit remain the same and banks just loan out money that never existed before?most banks have "fractional reserves", which means that they lend more money than they have in capital assets. in the US, cash deposits had to be held at least up to 10% of all loans until 2020, where the fed switched to a minimum capital requirement system, such as in the UK - this means that banks can lend as much money as they want, but only relative to the equity they hold in reserve (e.g. 10%). so banks can give more money than they have in storage, is basically the answer. the way money often get out of circulation is taxation, and so this regulates rates of deposits.
>>2597643wait so banks just create money literally out of thin air?
>>2597646yes, and no.
they are only permitted to create it in proportion to minimum capital requirements (i.e. the rate of equity), but effectively, yes, money is deposited into accounts by the press of a button, often automatically. accprding to the bank of england website, 80% of all money is digital, with only 3% being cash.
>>2597483>and yet 20 yards of linen are not a coatthey have the same magnitude of value, is marx's point. the value-form (Ax = By) operates on two poles; A and B are the use-value of a commodity (e.g. linen and coats), x and y are their quantities (e.g. 20 and 1). the reason why 20 of A equates with 1 of B in exchange (e.g. why they have the same price) is because to marx, they have the same amount of SNLT, which is expressed by their exchange-value (i.e. "value").
>>2597502to marx, only in the macro do values and prices equate, by the general rate of profit.
>>2597649The other 17% is in my ass
>>2597649and was this the case too before digitization? Like before 1850s, did banks do something simmilar?
>>2597655yes. bank notes have been used in europe since the 17th century, which is also when we first get central banking (1668, 1694). its notes in exchange for gold and silver that allows for fractional reserves, since notes circulate at a greater rate than they would be exchanged for their equity (e.g. precious metal), so lending can be expanded beyond deposits. joseph story ("commentary on the law of bailments", 1832) comments that fractional reserve banking was the norm by the 19th century. the only risk associated with this practice was "bank runs", where withdrawal would outpace depositing, leading to a lack of reserves. this also occured in 1929.
>>2597651>they have the same magnitude of valueso they are not the same thing?
>>2599271does having the same magnitude mean two different objects are
the same thing?
>>2599373In economics one is concerned with their exchange and not their metaphysical essence, or something
>>2599373yes, and no.
to marx, labour is two-fold, in being both heterogeneous and homogenous. in being heterogeneous, it is "concrete labour" and in being homogenous, it is "abstract labour". commodity A and B are both results of different concrete labours, yet are compared as quantities of the same kind (i.e. abstract labour). to marx, concrete labours produce use-values, while abstract labour is measured in exchange-value. if two commodities possess the same magnitude of value (i.e. they have the same exchange-value), then marx would say that they possess the same amount of SNLT (i.e. abstract labour).
labour = heterogeneous and homogeneous
heterogeneous = use-value (different)
homogeneous = exchange-value (the same)
so commodities which possess different values in use may nonetheless possess the same value in exchange. in the example of quantities of weight, we can say that two separate objects both possess equal amounts of mass, despite being different forms of matter. marx also says however that abstract labour cannot be extrapolated as a natural relation, but only as a social relation (i.e. exchange, where labour is recognised as such). here, we may read a mysterious comment:
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmhere, "(abstract) labour" is only a condition of a commodity's ability to be exchanged, since to marx, labour can only be abstracted by this very act:
<the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value […] As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmmarx further stresses the immateriality of value:
< The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition […] the value of commodities has a purely social reality […] So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamondhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmthis is to say that abstract labour only appears in exchange, whereby products attain values as commodities, and without this, there is no labour. here, engels remarks that "labour" ought to be separated from "work":
<The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates use value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour, that which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Workhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmso then, to marx and engels, "labour" is an economic category, while "work" is a natural category. in an economy, all commodities are made of labour, but in nature, all things are made of separate works. now, the logistical point is not lost; SNLT is a capitalist concept to marx, but is still a way to measure productivity in his hypothetical lower-phase communism (t. "critique of the gotha program", 1875).
so to answer your question again; yes, and no.
to marx, economic exchange forces commodities to be quantitatively compared as values by abstract labour, while in reality, this is simply a social construct, and all products of work have separate existences. of course, all material objects share common modes of measurement, but this common substance would be matter itself (e.g. since matter is defined by anything possessing mass and volume).
no price and value are not the same thing. that is why they are different words.
>>2600328to marx, the money-form of value is expressed in price
i.e. exchange-value = price
this is why in capital vol. 3, he affirms that total price is equivalent to the total value of commodities. the value-form (Ax = By) is a relationship of relative prices (e.g. 20 yards of linen = 1 coat = £10). so, price is expressed as a relationship of value. in hegelian terms, value is the essence, while price is the appearance:
<The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmthus, to marx, value does not exist outside of prices.
>>2601154>thus, to marx, value does not exist outside of prices.no, to you, value does not exist outside of prices, to marx, value is ontologically prior to price, as things have to be produced to actually exist before they can be sold. in the future please say "according to my interpretation of marx, who i do not understand…"
>>2602016>value is prior to priceto marx, production and exchange create each other - remember when marx wrote that if an object is not sold it has no value? marx further writes this in the grundrisse, that production and consumption define each other. they are self-relating concepts.
there is no such thing as "value" outside of the market; remember when marx writes that a scientist cannot discover "value" as a natural attribute of objects, or when he says that value is an atomless abstraction?
to marx, value only appears in exchange by the value-form (Ax = By), where two commodities polarise each other as values. outside of this, there is no value. if it were the case that value was an inherent fact of production, then this very sentence would possess "value", but it doesnt. why?
further, remember when marx said that value cannot appear outside of price?
<The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htminterpret this statement for me.
in terms of causation, marx only attributes potential existence to products, and sees that they only attain actuality in their use, same as how value only appears by sale:
<A railway on which no trains run, hence which is not used up, not consumed, is a railway only [potentially] and not in reality.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm Uhh, uhhh, value only exists of there is exchange. Without exchange there is no value, or something. Didnt read marks btw. Law of value or something. There will be no value in communism
>>2602016You should reread The Book, carefully
>>2601154Key word "total"? Are exchanged values equal in an individual exchange when i buy stuff?
>>2603128according to marx, no, since capitalist makets inherently diverge prices from values in particular, but in total, they are the same quantity, which means that marx sees price and value as expressing the same thing in the macro (i.e. value can only exist within the expression of price, as he writes in vol. 1, chapter 1).
>>2603147So all the dollars are equal all the american stuff? Does money and commodity existing double the value since they are equal? Is money a debt?
>>2603147How does money have a value?
>>2603162can you rephrase this, please?
>>2603175in the marxian sense, money doesnt have "value" today.
the reason why it has a certain amount of purchasing power is based on the productivity of society; e.g. a poorer country has a less valuable currency because less can be purchased by it within this territory. there is an antagonism here however, since if a currency is too valuable, then less can be purchased with it (see: the paradox of thrift). this is why roman society had different denomination of coins based in different classes (e.g. copper, silver, gold), until fiat. so, increasing the social product should increase supply, leading to an increase in total wealth by a decrease in marginal value (the same way societies become richer by their cheapness).
Smithanon, life is tough but never call your mother a whore. She brought up a smart person like you, she has been a good mother.
>>2603294Is money a debt? And is all the money equal to all the stuff in value?
>>2603299>is money is a debt?to marx, no - but to others, yes.
>And is all the money equal to all the stuff in value?it depends what you mean. in marxian terms, no, since there are valueless commodities (such as land), which may nonetheless be paid for. if you reverse the question to ask if all values which have a price are equal to the money given for them, marx would say yes. so, to marx, not all money is spent on valuable things, yet all valuable things are spent on with money.
so the quantity of all prices and values in society do not match, but to marx, all "real prices" of commodities do match with the money given for them.
>>2603093>if it were the case that value was an inherent fact of productionbecause that is not what he says. value is created in production and realized later
>production and exchange create each otheryes, its dialectical, which means that it is both/and not either/or. you cannot use this as evidence that there is no value until an object is sold because marx does not actually say that. what he does say is that value is created in production(value is ontologically prior to price) and that it is realized in exchange.
>marx said that value cannot appear outside of priceis appearance the same as existence? are those the same words or does marx use different words for a reason?
>marx only attributes potential existence to productsnow you are conflating existence and appearance again
>only attain actuality in their useis use value the same as value? for marx, no
>value only appears by salewhich is not the same as value existing
try to be more precise with your language so you dont keep making these mistakes
What resources - books, video essays, whatever - would you recommend for understanding the economic model we see in China and Vietnam today, which utilises markets (and at least in Vietnam's case I know coops, etc) to attempt to build the conditions for a transition to socialism?
Likewise for Titoism? I know Yugoslavia was different, but it also had this concept of using markets to socialist ends.
Ngl I haven't seriously studied politics for long. I read a lot of the entry level class theory stuff, Wage Labour and Capital, stuff like that, and then just kind of got sucked into left communist and trot meme pipelines and I have realised that was incredibly retarded and owe it to myself not just to say "commodity production is bad, full stop!" but actually to read what China and so on are trying to do here and to evaluate the evidence on how well it is working.
>>2603698>value is created in production and realized laterwhat does it mean for value to have existence but to not have reality?
>yes, its dialectical, which means that it is both/and not either/or. you cannot use this as evidence that there is no value until an object is soldyou are contradicting yourself. if value requires both production and exchange, then without exchange, there is no value. again, "value" means "value in exchange".
>is appearance the same as existence? lets read marx again:
<The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmvalue does not exist outside of price
>is use value the same as value? for marx, noagain, are you actually reading marx?
<A railway on which no trains run, hence which is not used up, not consumed, is a railway only [potentially] and not in reality.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htmhow can a railway have existence if it has no reality? how can it have value without possessing its being as a product of labour?
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore CREATES NO VALUE.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm >>2604376>you are contradicting yourself.no you just have no idea what you are talking about
>if value requires both production and exchange, then without exchange, there is no value.no it requires exchange to be measured, its created in production
>"value" means "value in exchange".no thats use-value, value is created in production
>value does not exist outside of pricefor marx, it certainly does
>are you actually reading marx?are you?
>>2605070lets read from the first chapter;
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmif no one buys the product, it has no value - it does not even acount as labour, as marx says. so if you create something that cannot be sold, it has no value. thus, value does not exist outside of commodity exchange. this is basic reading comprehension:
<A commodity proves that it is a commodity in exchange.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/ch01.htmvalue does not exist outside of price:
<The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmsimple stuff.
>>2606183>total price = total valueyes, these are marx's exact words:
<the sum of the prices of production of all commodities produced in society […] is equal to the sum of their values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch09.htm>value does not exist outside exchangeyes, lets read marx:
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm>surplus valuemarx/engels see smith as the discoverer;
<Thus even Adam Smith knew “the source of the surplus-value of the capitalist,” and furthermore also of that of the landlord. Marx acknowledged this as early as 1861, while Rodbertus and the swarming mass of his admirers, who grew like mushrooms under the warm summer showers of state socialism, seem to have forgotten all about that.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htm>obsessing over jevonsa great economist, which no socialist has ever offered a criticism of themselves.
>abstractionhow exactly do you think labour is abstracted as a quantity? lets read marx:
<the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value […] As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value […] As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value. If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour […] there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract […] When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmvalue (abstract labour) only exists in exchange.
>price ≠ valueto marx, they equate in the macro
>jevons is an enemy of the LTVhow? he says the LTV is basically correct in its context; even cockshott admits this.
>marginal utilitymarginal utility is ultimately determined (caused) by the costs of production, hence jevons writes:
(i) Cost of production determines supply.
(ii) Supply determines final degree of utility.
(iii) Final degree of utility determines value.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-theory-of-political-economy>marxists are theological essentialistsat least this conclusion is correct.
>>2604376>how can a railway have existence if it has no reality?You really think a railway doesn't exist until its sold?
Why are you conflating realization of value with existence in reality? The actual term used is "Verwertung" more accurately translated as "valorisation". Valor comes from latin and it literally means value, in this sense, valuation of, that is giving, or measuring its value, a thing that it already has, that is then measured in exchange. Since value is expressed in socially necessary labor time, not in dollars, it is obviously a different thing than price, which is why its called value and not called price.
>>2603093>in terms of causationIf you actually had the slightest idea what you are reading, or were not a dishonest charlatan, you would know that dialectics works by retroactively, as the famous Hegel quote about the owl of Minerva. Value is created in exchange, and validated as socially necessary through the market. If it is validated then it always already was socially necessary, and if it is not then it always already was not socially necessary. Its a record of something that already happened.
If your issue is with dialectical logic then you should simply say Marx is wrong because dialectics is wrong, instead of distorting and misrepresenting Marx, whom you clearly are having difficulty to grasp, while presenting yourself as if you are some kind of authority, which you clearly are not.
>>2606621>You really think a railway doesn't exist until its sold? its literally what marx writes:
>A railway on which no trains run, hence which is not used up, not consumed, is a railway only δυνάμει, and not in reality […] For example, a garment becomes a real garment only in the act of being worn; a house where no one lives is in fact not a real house; thus the product, unlike a mere natural object, proves itself to be, becomes, a product only through consumption.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htmhegelian gobbledygook, obviously. to marx, a house in which no one lives is "not a real house".
>Since value is expressed in socially necessary labor time, not in dollars…money is the "measure of value", no?
<Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm>Value is created in exchangeright, so we agree as to marx's meaning.
>>2606795>>2606621also, marx is just appropriating ricardo's common sense in a needlessly complicated way (1817):
<Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it. If a commodity were in no way useful, - in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, - it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htmthus, if something has no use, it has no ability to be an exchangeable value, since it cannot be sold.
>>2606795conveniently left out, immediately before your quote
>Production, then, is also immediately consumption, consumption is also immediately production. Each is immediately its oppositewhich is exactly what i said
>it is both/and not either/orwhich you rejected as contradictory
if a railway is produced, and then consumed, then its consumption validates the value that was already produced in production, that already existed prior to the act of consumption
>its literally what marx writes:no he doesn't, you are conflating realization with existence
>hegelian gobbledygookjust stick to this instead of spouting nonsense
>right, so we agree as to marx's meaning.value is created in production, marx explicitly says value is not created in exchange
>>2606805>if something has no use, it has no ability to be an exchangeable valuefor the third time exchange value is not value
>>2607213
Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao
>>2607213
You will never let go of idpol and will die a dumbass
>>2607145>you are conflating realization with existencewhat is the difference? you havent explained.
>exchange value is not valuewhat is the difference? you havent explained.
>>2607319have you considered just not posting when you dont understand something
>>2548716I find it funny that the image uses falsifiablility as a gotcha, when most of the core precepts of Marxism are themselves unfalsifiable.
>>2608328what is the difference between value and exchange-value?
what is the difference between existence and reality?
>>2609799my boy?
i am criticising rothbard in that post.
>>2613213> you can use this as a polemic in mainstream economic circles to prove that profit comes from surplus labour in production. 🙂👍one could, but why would one need to convince the bourgeoisie (from whom economists usually are descended or enter into) what they already know by examining the accumulation of money in their own bank accounts from the mere act of privately owning means of production or shares of companies?
>>2613247>why would one strive to be academic?i'll let you ponder on it.
>>2613252Why did you pretend my question was a different question?
>>2613255pretend?
i was being openly combative against your cynicism, by recontextualising your response with a reappraisal of the academic integrity of economics. since marx's postulates can be formally demonstrated by mathematical models accepted by mainstream institutions, i would expect enthusiasm. the reason to convince economists is to show the objectivity of claims rather than relying on the brutish theology of an undead religion like marxism via sola fide.
>>2613279economics has no academic integrity and does not respond to objectivity. the entire purpose of the field is to serve as a priestly class to justify capitalism
>sola fidedoubly ironic coming from the likes of you mr smith
>>2613471i dont know why are in a political economy thread if you think its an inherently false field of research 🤷🏻♂️
What do you think about Robert Owen, is he worth reading?
>>2613963owen was an early pioneer of the 8-hour work day and his followers established the co-operative society:
>In 1810, Owen had instituted an eight-hour day at the mill with the slogan ‘eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest’.https://www.rct.uk/collection/1047040/an-address-delivered-on-the-first-of-january-1816-at-new-lanark-on-opening-the<Owen put his ideas into practice at his model villages, beginning with New Lanark in Scotland in 1799. There he raised wages, shortened hours, improved housing and social conditions, and even refused to employ very young children, unlike other mill owners, opening schools for them instead. He set up a co-operative shop which sold quality goods at a reasonable cost.https://ilovemanchester.com/co-operative-movement-robert-owenthe notion of co-operation has been part of an anglo-saxon canon of thought from owen to jevons to reagan, and is often seen as an alternative to state socialism. owen in his theoretical work affirms the same idea in his mature work "the revolution in the mind and practice of the human race" (1849). at this time he had become involved in spiritualism, deviating from an earlier atheism, with the book itself being heavily theological in its precepts. he criticises socialism here:
>An excitement has arisen between the old aristocracy which has hitherto prevailed throughout europe, and a new democracy which has arisen under the name of republicans and socialists […] both advocate measures founded on this most fatal fundamental error; namely on the supposition that individual man forms his own qualities […] but when the eternal truth, that the natural qualities and acquired character, and the will and conduct of society, are formed by God and society, shall be consistently applied to practice, all will be trained from birth to be rational beings…<"revolution", introductionin the first chapter he says very plainly that all societies proceed from the principle of evil besides his own experiment of new lanark, which is based in the principle of good. his plan for transformation is described in chapter 3 by various points. basically, he wants the government to buy land from sellers to convert it into public property, then establish townships which are entirely self-governing, self-sufficient and self-improving. all of these townships, he explains, will be be federatively united. in the preface and in chapter 3, he also says that participation must be entirely voluntary. he further states that a great surplus of wealth will be generated so as to reinvest in expanding the franchise (adding that this will end unemployment). he also says that the system of poverty induced by the properties of money is entirely absurd, fit for a lunatic asylum; he rails against the idea of metal money, stating that it has caused more desolation than any army could:
>to limit the creatuon of real wealth by the amount of these comparatively useless and worthless metals, is to sacrifice the progress of society, the sanity of man, and the happiness of the human race…<"revolution", chapter 3here, owen distinguishes between "real" wealth and money, the same as smith, ricardo and marx, in the same distinction between value in use and exchange. after this, owen states directly that a nation should only make money for itself, produced by a national bank, based on national debt, with no interest added to it. owen also says that gold and silver are worthless compared to iron and steel, "the true precious metals of the world". he proclaims thus that with the substitution of metal money with national money, abundance of wealth will take place. he then concludes chapter 3 by stating that the very existence of unemployment is irrational, since it deprives society of wealth, which he says comes from labour.
chapter 4 of this work is the constitution of this rational system laid out, which aspires toward international federation. he says that the sole purpose of government is to provide happiness for its population. happiness he says, is in the freedom of the capacities of man according to his being. he lays out the conditions of happiness as being those which expand man's powers to the fullness of their capacity, including codefied rights, like freedom of speech. he then lays out 36 laws in 6 different sections; a document he must have supposed would be the future of organisation. in it, he lays out the structure of government, as being led by councils of elders in home departments for the townships. after this, he speaks on transitionary governments. these governments he suggests should be committees of around 7 wise men, who will organise the populace into civil armies and will re-educate the masses. he says that they will not overthrow existing governments, but will only naturally supersede them, as superior ways of life. chapter 5 is a discourse upon preceding writings (the 36 laws and transition governments). in the concluding chapter, owen asks directly, "what is to be done?" (a prophetic allusion to lenin). for this, he emphasises peace and self-government, to replace evil with virtue and reason. in his appendix he includes a list of charges to determine how much a township of 1,000 people would cost; he comes up with the figure of £45,000 (around £5 million today). this work then i would say is his most detailed concept of society.
>>2613471>economics>>2613828>political economygee i guess we will never know
>>2614043I discovered that most of his books are unavailable in Russian.
Is "A New View of Society" a good book?
https://www.phantastike.com/social_science_and_social_studies/obrazovaniye_kharaktera/pdf/ >>2614419did you post this in the wrong thread?
>>2614829no that is smith anon being quoted in a now deleted post saying that Martin Luther was correct to say reason is bad and sola fide is good. you can scroll up to see him now accusing marxists of believing in communism sola fide(by faith alone). he also told us he was a protestant before
https://archive.ph/GZj20#2309544 >>2614836the objects of faith are not the objects of reason.
>>2614746there is a robert owen archive on marxists.org here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/index.htmi'll summarise the contents of "a new view of society" (1816):
we have 4 essays with separate dedications to them, extending to different classes of society, begging for reform. the first essay begins with a description of the state of the british and irish population; 3/4 of britain and ireland (15,000,000+) are poor. owen states that due to this condition, the poor are basically trained to be criminals, for which they are later punished; its a vicious circle of irrationality. the first "principle" of the work is laid out:
<This principle is, that 'Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the most ignorant to the most enlightened, may be given to any community, even to the world at large, by the application of proper means,' which means are to a great extent at the command and under the control of those who have influence in the affairs of men,' […] That principle is the happiness of self, clearly understood and uniformly practised; which can only be attained by conduct that must promote the happiness of the community.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/society/ch01.htmin further description, what he appears to be describing is an adequate division of labour, paired with jevons' utility maximisation for the good of community:
<his individual happiness can be increased and extended only in proportion as he actively endeavours to increase and extend the happiness of all around him. this can be related to mandeville's "fable of the bees" (1714) in the sense that one's role in society is most sufficient where it benefits everyone from its particularity (e.g. "private vices, public virtue"), which is said to be the basis of smith's "invisible hand"; of course, smith qualifies this principle by stating that while the self-interest of the labourer is beneficial to society, the capitalists' is destructive. freud speaks on this phenomena in part in his "civilisation and its discontents" (1930), where he says that love can only exist where it is limited to particular persons, and that universal love is impossible; as yet, love can spread from its selfishness, but selflessness makes love impossible. so then, owen's "proper means" may accord with this general notion of function, rather than marx's allusions as to the disbanding of the division of labour (1875):
<In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime wanthttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htmnow, smith did in fact criticise the division of labour taken absolutely, saying that one ought to possess a general skill and education alongside his specialisation - i take this analogically to refer to a private and public sector working in tandem, which appears most rational to me.
continuing, owens then turns to the notion of inclusiveness (what as per robert peel's great reform act of 1832, i would see as "enfranchisement", or elsewise, the broadening of the civic order):
<If, however, owing to the irrational principles by which the world has been hitherto governed, individuals, or sects, or parties, shall yet by their plans of exclusion attempt to retard the amelioration of society, and prevent the introduction into PRACTICE of that truly just spirit which knows no exclusion, such facts shall yet be brought forward as cannot fail to render all their efforts vain.we may then read this contemporarily from a queer perspective, where owen assigns the poor as othered ("bereft of friends"). this loneliness of poverty is also spoken of by "working class hero" john lennon, in his cover of "nobody loves you (when youre down and out)". this is refreshing, as against the typical myth of self-sufficient, noble savagery projected onto the lower classes (particularly where class is racialised, and so treated as an essentially different relation). owen states that its also in the self-interest of the wealthy to promote the development of the poor.
the second essay begins by an explanation that while the first was only theoretical, the second will be practical:
<Some of the most important benefits to be derived from the introduction of those principles into practice are, that they will create the most cogent reasons to induce each man 'to have charity for all men'.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/society/ch02.htmowens then states that any deficiency of human character cannot be given blame from the person themself, but only from the condition of their upbringing. this seems to be a lockean argument of the tabula rasa (blank slate):
<Children are, without exception, passive and wonderfully contrived compounds; which, by an accurate previous and subsequent attention, founded on a correct knowledge of the subject, may be formed collectively to have any human character […] Thus shortly, directly, and certainly may mankind be taught the essence, and to attain the ultimate object, of all former moral and religious instruction.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/society/ch02.htmits for this reason that owen in his entire career does not believe in punishing errors, but rather correcting them by education:
<For to explain that which is true may permanently improve, without creating even temporary evil; whereas to attack that which is false, is often productive of very fatal consequences […] The present race of men have also instructed their children as they had been previously instructed, and are equally unblameable for any defects which their systems contain.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/society/ch02.htmhe speaks again on criminality:
<How much longer shall we continue to allow generation after generation to be taught crime from their infancy, and, when so taught, hunt them like beasts of the forest, until they are entangled beyond escape in the toils and nets of the law?https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/society/ch02.htmthe rest of the second essay is a description of how new lanark prevailed in its application to improve the lives of its inhabitants. as for instruction to the present time, he says that all people should be optimally educated, with the additional imperative for full employment (what is systematically laid out in his later "revolution in the mind and practice of mankind", 1849). so we see that owen is extremely consistent in his vision and writings from 1816 to 1849.
the third essay is simply a series of policy suggestions for his projects and the fourth is conclusive. he begins with this:
<It is beyond all comparison better to prevent than to punish crimehttps://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/owen/society/ch04.htmwhat is interesting is that british prime minister, robert peel, had the exact same idea in his establishment of the metropolitan police in 1829. i write on this development here:
>>2587120peel also reformed prisons to be less punitive. the PM was preceded by his father, the MP sir robert peel, who actually collaborated with owen, leading to laws such as the factory act of 1819, which regulated child labour… next, owen says:
<The end of government is to make the governed and the governors happy.a proclomation equally consistent in his messaging. further on, he promotes religious tolerance by disbanding any loyalty to the church of england. as another suggestion, he promotes a high duty (or consumption tax) on alcohol to discourage its use (what we would call a "sin tax" today, such as on cigarettes). he also suggests abolishing the state lottery. after this, owen looks at the poor laws of his time, which he casts derision upon in the like fashion as one would upon policies of welfare which perpetuate poverty, rather than transcends it. owen indulges in turgid repetition, but affirms the blairist vision that what matters most is "education, education, education", a power he sees as omnipotent since it is the first principle of all further social existence, in his mind.
so this is a summary of the work, which bears an essential resemblance to his more mature text, as a plan to improve society, by education, full employment, abundant wealth and proper morality.
marx sees the form of the commodity (e.g. alienated labour) as entering mystical discourses, entirely comparable to religion (where he also states that the church has chosen money over Christ, since mammon appears more miraculous than virtue). the form of the commodity obscures what it simultaneously reveals in the spectre of "value"; social labour. we see in this scene from harry potter (vidrel), the automatic carriage, which is revealed to be pulled by invisible creatures called "thestrals". luna lovegood explains to harry later on that only those who have encountered death may see them, while everyone else is blind.
ron and hermione as conformed subjects look upon luna as mad, yet she is the one who perceives reality most fully. the labour of the carriage is automatic to hermione, but is given appearance to luna. there is no magic, then, there is only the obscurity of a hidden cause to the social phenomena. this is the same attribution of the various miracles credited to technology and the like; artificial intelligence is not a force of nature, but is a social construct of exploited labourers who work to sustain the magical illusion. this is compartmentalised according to class, internationally and domestically, where labourers work behind solid walls in industrial estates, while the public is a tidy zone of consumption. waste is thrown into bins, hidden from view and shipped away, or elsewise pressured through pipes into a netherworld of civilised ignorance. of course, as mechanics tell us, there is no action without an equal and opposite reaction. there is no magic solution to this, there is only the denial of causation by an epistemic detachment (or what in psychoanalysis is called "disavowal"). what interrupts this is the "return of the repressed", like a blocked toilet that reveals its waste.
so then, harry sees what others dont, because he has experienced "death", or the underbelly of social reality, which props up the illusion of magic and abundance. 🧙🏻♂️🙂
>>2614951>well here is the screenshot of his full post. no that post is also responding to him thats why the post number has a strikethrough.. he was banned and his posts were deleted before they could be archived
>>2615298the context for the discussion was that i was taking the kantian position, that reason itself is subject, and so we exist within the domain of faith, which is a prerequisite for reason (e.g. reason is a condition of the irrational, or the unconditioned. the example of the categorical imperative is that as a mode of ethical necessity, it is self-regulating, and so becomes its own condition - this bears symmetry to a theological argument made by aquinas, that God can violate the moral law, but chooses not to; thus, his power is absolute, by the means of its restriction). when we trust in reason alone, we then come under the illusion that reason itself is what is original of its own being, rather than the subjectivity of the rational will. reason is a condition, that was my point.
another example is the reformed theology of predestination in calvinist soteriology, that one has faith by means of his election, and so he decides what has been decided for him (or what kiekegaard says, that one may only be convicted by faith, if he already possesses election; thus, the faithful is self-conditioned by the reason he perceives in what is originally irrational; i.e. faith). in sexual identity it is the same idea, where one makes a confession of faith (e.g. "i am gay"), which is a purely subjective position, as yet, necessary to one's being. it is also unconscious, and so irrationally encoded, not causally located (it is not a condition of intuition, but is the subjectivity by which there is intuition; its this particularity which also allows plurality). the unconscious is kant's idea of the will, as opposed to the ego, which reaches the mind of freud through nietzsche, who gets it from schopenhauer, who gets it from kant. kant also says that reason is not merely instructed, but inuited, and so ethics is a personal inquiry, like one's faith in God.
>>2615298>>2615351an ancient example of necessity would be "fate" or "destiny". in the oldest piece of extant literature of our species, "the epic of gilgamesh", the narrative plays out as a tragedy, where gilgamesh attempts to fight death yet fails. in homer's iliad, achilles chooses glory over life by the decision to meet his destiny in troy. in greek plays like oedipus rex, oedipus fulfills his destiny by the attempt of his parents to subvert it; here then, it is the abandonment of fate which leads to one's confrontation with it (this is the same narrative as in shakespeare's "macbeth", with the 3 witches representing the powers of cruel fate, like the arthurian morgan le fay). plato in politiea says that the highest principles are the fates (past, present and future) who bind together the "chain of necessity". these fates are the aryan goddess of time, synonymous with the norns and the morrigan; also the anglo-saxon concept of "wyrd" (e.g. the arthurian text "gawain and the green knight"). this consciousness of destiny then ignites protestant theology, particularly soteriology and eschatology. here i would rebuke both nietzsche and various marxists who historicise the tragic (i.e. apocalypse, or revealed necessity) in two ways. niwtzsche says that tragedy as a genre in greece begins with "socratism", but as we see from older texts, it was always there (such as odysseus' meeting with the trojan ghosts, where achilles as an undead "shade" laments his condition, stating that he would rather be a living slave than a dead hero. the consciousness of death was already here). some marxists have attempted to say that capitalism with its periodic crises spawns catastrophic or apocalyptic thinking as a superstructural effect, with engels also comparing smith's "invisible hand" to the protestant hand of providence, i believe. its of course true that protestantism is the religion of capitalism, but even Jesus preached that the end was nigh. so then, necessity in narrative is an ancient device to illustrate the bind which man incurs in his condition to mortality. everything is conditioned to its end.
>>2615368Not that much, having debt isn't inherently bad, but obviously having 280% debt to GDP isn't great either.
>>2615369It's great for the loaners!
>>2615351yes we all know you defend capitalism from a religious viewpoint that much is obvious
>>2616091
Yes, but why would you want to?
>>2616091
it depends on how you define either of them. capitalism as a term was popularised by communists, to refer to the political rule of capital, which as per classical political science, would be a plutocracy, or rule of the wealthy. there is also capitalism understood as a mode of production, which entails the majority of a population being wage labourers for a minority of property owners, which employ capital to extract profits from labour.
socialism as a term was coined by pierre leroux around 1834 to uphold republican values (liberty, equality, fraternity), while also combatting the saint-simonists, or industrial collectivists. father of anarchy, proudhon (1840), also called himself a socialist, but wasnt very rigorous in his meaning, generally applying it to the republican milieu of the time. he at least makes a political proclomation, "property is robbery!" as yet, he situates "property" as against "possession" (t. "letter to m. blanqui", 1841), which is the same dynamic between marx's dichotomy of the means of consumption and means of production, each held as private property. thus the socialist appears to want to hold the means of production as public property, while preserving private rights in the articles of consumption. the capitalist sees private means of production as best, while the socialist sees that they ought to belong to the collective.
there are intermediary schools of thought which see that the state should possess some means of production as public property, while others may be possessed privately. these so-called public and private sectors of the economy work in tandem, in the social-democratic model. there are even further ideas, such as co-operation, an idea originating from the owenites, where workers are the direct owners of their own means of production. various liberals such as jevons, rothbard and reagan have seen the virtue in this - this was also the model of much of the yugoslavian economy, often calle "socialist".
>>2616091
functionally no because in the current mode of production there are only two classes, so any ideas you espouse, and any actions you take, work in favor of one class or another.
you can be a self-proclaimed "monarchist", but since returning to monarchy is practically impossible at this historical stage, in your everyday, concrete activity, you will just be an anti-communist.
>>2616091>>2616133it should also be noted that marx himself was a critic of the various kinds of socialism which were promoted in his time:
<reactionary socialism, feudal socialism, clerical socialism, christian socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, german socialism, conservative socialism, bourgeois socialism, utopian socialism…https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htmso the anti-capitalist movement has never been unified. marx also speaks upon various forms of property relations, seeing how individual and artisinal property is "feudal" in character, for which reason, he perceives capitalist property relations as "progressive", by breaking up "mediocrity":
<To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, “to decree universal mediocrity". At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organisation fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. 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, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htmmarx himself perceiving his communism as a development of capitalism, not an opposition to its structure of power.
>>2616151communism is not in the interest of workers; its a politics made for intellectuals.
>>2616133>in the social-democratic modelthis broke down decades ago. social democracy just reverts to full capitalism when the rate of profit falls it can only exist as a transient bandaid on contradictions and must be supported by imperialism when it lacks a dictatorship of the proletariat. its been proven again and again
>>2616115
i would suggest you look into liberalism and its various developments. what is important to remember is that freedom is not unconditional, but is a condition of reason (what we may call "agency"). socially also, "trust" is a prerequisite, since if for example, murder and theft become common in a society, one is made less free, despite a lack of condition for liberty.
gerrard winstanley (1653) also said that the rights of property are necessary to have a concept of freedom, further advanced by locke (1680), attributing labour as the source of legitimate right. even murray rotbard (1969-73), attributes labour as the source of property, saying for example that the descendants of US slaves deserve reparations. here then, where one is owed his property, he lives in a state of bondage, til he receives what is rightfully his own. to possess what one has by right we may call "fairness", which is in effect, an equality between what one gives, and takes in return. for there to be reward without equivalent effort we may call "theft" (e.g. taxation), without the condition of voluntary payment (e.g. charity). thus, if one agrees to share what he has, it is the disposal of one's property by his own will, which has no controversy.
we can thus say that as the violation of property in society occurs, there is more injustice, more unfairness, and less trust. so then, the individual as a property owner (his principle property being his body) is considered in relation to this contraction. i would further add also, that profit can be seen as theft from a certain point of view, and so liberalism is not necessarily a capitalist politics. various "voluntarists" in fact reject the label of "capitalism" for this very reason. as others have also said, "anarcho-capitalism" is a misnomer, since capitalism requires the state to uphold its illegitimate property relations, and so an anarchy entails a negation of capitalism (a practical example being the lockean "homestead principle", which says that only those who use property have rights to it; this is a polemic used by libertarians such as rothbard and hoppe, and it is also the basis of squatter's rights, as a means to repossess abandoned property by its occupants). so then, the political subject of the individual is that of the possessor of property, and the liberal discourse is in establishing what is most fair and just (i.e. what people deserve).
>>2616206yeah freedom is just a matter of willpower and has nothing to do with material conditions!
>>2616453i suppose you measure freedom by how many funko pops you can afford?
>>2616479obviously it comes from a societies production. freedom is measured by a capacity for action which has a real material basis. you are not very free if you have to farm every day or starve
>>2616494>freedom is measured by a capacity for action then everyone is already free; its just that the limits of action is the rights of other people's capacity for action.
>you are not very free if you have to farm every day or starvethat is a paradox of civilisation; poverty is a result of abundance. farming is something we chose to suffer to do.
Smith Anon, thoughts on worker-owned cooperatives?
>>2616206The problem with "Freedom" in general is it's a vague bourgeois thought-terminating-cliché. It's almost never clarified whether they mean positive freedom (i.e. freedom to do things, including oppress others) or negative freedom (i.e. freedom from things, like poverty and starvation). Capitalism is very good at promoting individualist positive freedom (like the freedom to own property and exploit others) but very bad at promoting collective negative freedom (like the freedom from exploitation). With socialism it's the other way around. Collective Negative Freedom is upheld at the direct expense of Individualist Positive Freedom. Because that benefits the working class who necessarily make up a majority of the planet, and a majority of most societies on the planet.
The specific problem with Freedom of speech, which is treated as an individualist positive freedom, is it very quickly devolves into the freeedom to spread misinformation (Saddam has weapons of mass destruction), and freedom to stir up hatred (pick your scapegoat). This is why it is important in a society that values Collective Negative Freedom to treat information as the result of scientific investigation, rather than completely subjective matter. In the US it is treated as completely subjective which is why there are "debates" treating Young Earth Creationism and Science with equal "validity." Mao Zedong said "No Investigation, No Right To Speak" for a reason!
>>2616512i think that if a worker had equity in the company he worked for, he would be loyal to it, rather than be detached from it. its the same way that i dont think you can have a democracy without property-owning citizens, otherwise (just like in ancient democracies), you get a class of slaves that push for tyrannies, due to their disenfranchisement. aristotle once said that the expansion of the middle class by a distribution of property is healthy for the promotion of a democracy. i would agree.
>>2616515>freedom is nebuloussure, but its like anything else; you dont think about it when you have it, but you would realise if you lost it. people dont feel very free in the west, but would quickly feel un-free if we actually lost our liberal values.
>>2616537I think negative freedom matters more for the survival of humanity than positive freedom even if people more keenly desire positive freedom.
>>2616502>then everyone is already freenope
>its just that the limits of action is the rights of other people's capacity for action.more incoherence
>>2616557if freedom is action, then action is only conditioned by reaction. quite simple. you are free to murder, but not free to escape the police. it is right versus right.
>>2616540at the current moment, the UK government spends over £1,000,000,000,000 every year in tax revenue. this is more money than what the world's richest man could possibly be worth; as yet, the conditions in the UK are declining and we are told that the government needs even more money.
what i find unbelievable is that even within this compromise there can be no solution from our rulers to fix the issues in society which we task them to solve. here, incompetence is institutional, all while the public citizen is paid less, and is of greater risk of being arrested (kidnapped) by our corrupt police force, assigning a higher agency upon a minimum wage worker than the managers of the country, who rake in over £90,000 a year.
to illustrate the point, the capacity for radical transformation (such as you suggest) already exists in the infrastructure, and is even compatible within a liberal framework, but is denied at every turn. the citizen is made powerless in proportion to their growing responsibility (to conform), while politicians are given more power by proportion to their very irresponsibility (from duty). to make a point from the austrian school, the issue is that the government is not economising its resources, and so nothing is possible.
i think we can have the best of both worlds, but only where government is seen as a means and not an end in itself. i dont think its the selfishness of the citizen which threatens our survival, personally. people will compromise if there's anything to compromise for.
>>2616613>if freedom is actionno freedom is capacity for action, not action. please read what you are responding and not make up your own interpretation. more freedom means more degrees of freedom not the capacity to act in general.
>>2616613Did you swap post numbers in the reply by accident?
>if freedom is action, then action is only conditioned by reaction. quite simple. you are free to murder, but not free to escape the police. it is right versus right.ok but negative freedom subtracts from positive freedom and vice-versa. You can either be free to exploit, or free from exploitation.
>>2616631>freedom is not action, it is the capacity to act>freedom means more degrees of freedom>freedom is NOT the capacity to acthow am i supposed to follow this, exactly?
>>2616632if you had £1,000,000,000,000 im sure you could figure things out
>>2616637>how am i supposed to follow this, exactly?capacities are different. if i have arms i have the capacity to raise my hand. if i lack legs i dont have the capacity to walk.
if there is a lack of abundant food i dont have the capacity to read because i have to tend to the soil
>>2616644but its all the same difference. why are you in a field to begin with? you dont actually have to do anything. in terms of physical ability, there is no direct restriction, there is only the threat of force in the future.
the capacity to act then has its immediate and mediated form, where in a lawful context, the right of both parties are restricted by mutual agreement, the violation of which we may call "crime", and so is the effect of one asserting their capacity of ability over another, whether in the form of theft, rape or murder. in the contest for action thus, there is what is fair and unfair, or what is equal and unequal.
>>2616663some guy wrote an interesting paper about this whole rights being granted by states through laws thing you should check it out
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ >>2616674yes but the point of the critique is that both spirit and law are conditioned by material production
>>2616667>>2616677but the act of revolution is preceded by a legal claim to property or right which is found to be insufficient of contemporary conditions. if people didnt believe in their rights, they would have no revolutionary idea. so as i say, revolution is not the negation of law, but is its supreme defence, yet this is a law which is not granted by the state, since its clearly not the state which grants right; it is nature. as locke says, the state only exists to defend your rights, not to administer your rights (your rights are not your privileges or permissions). this is obviously part of american revolutionary thought, but its really part of universal thought. as albert camus writes in his essay "the rebel" (1951), the act of self-defence is an ethical claim to the dignity of oneself, and so the rights of this property from others. the difference between a free man and a slave then is precisely in this revolutionary contest, where (as plotinus writes), it is only just that the cowardly should be ruled over by the wicked, if it be so, since this is a contraction of submission to a master (a man must believe he is a slave to be enslaved). the free man is thus inherently revolutionary, since he believes in his equality with those who rule over him, which is a position totally unfounded if you think rights come from government. governments either defend or violate our rights. thus, as robespierre says (1789):
<Regretfully I speak this fatal truth, [the king] must die because the nation must live […] I propose that you take immediate legal action on the fate of Louis XVI. . . . I ask that the National Convention state that from this moment on he is a traitor to the French nation and a criminal against humanity.https://revolution.chnm.org/d/324a king can only be a criminal if the law is not decided by the state, but is rather the natural basis of the state. the progress of right in history appeals to what hegel sees as the tract of history, as the consciousness of freedom. thus as fukuyama says, liberalism is the end (with marx even appealing to "bourgeois right" in his first phase of communism, but immanent to this equality is his criticism, that fairness isnt fair, and so his vision of higher communism is one where property is shared, not possessed. sure, but the real question is, who decides? if man is forced to forfeit his property, he cannot be good, as kant would say. further, he is not even a man, but is a slave, since he is tasked as being inherently irresponsible. i feel that communists often feel this way toward the public, such as the blame on the decline of society put on private citizens rather than public politicians. a citizen has the right to be irresponsible, a politician does not).
>>2616637>if you had £1,000,000,000,000 im sure you could figure things outI mean as a society, either you protect the freedom to exploit, or the freedom from exploitation. Of course a lucky
individual can be both free to exploit and free from exploitation. But socially, negative and positive freedoms compete.
>>2617770the focus on ownership is key.
as j.s. mill said, labour-saving devices have not saved on labour, but in fact, have only increased the need for labour. technology is liberating where it is possessed, and enslaving where it is dispossessed.
>>2617773>I mean as a society, either you protect the freedom to exploit, or the freedom from exploitation.income tax is a form of exploitation against workers to benefit the capitalist state; do you support abolishing this? i do (income tax was introduced in the UK following the napoleonic wars to pay off war debts; same way income tax in the US was first implemented to fund the civil war effort - somehow, it never want away)…
>Of course a lucky individual can be both free to exploit and free from exploitationlets think about this, what is exploitation? the theft of the rightful property of someone. when there is a petition for worker's rights, it is simply the repossession of what is deemed to belong to those who worked for it, and so the rights to not be exploited are the individual property rights of the worker, represented in the form of income, which can be seen to be reduced by various causes; e.g. rents and taxation. thus, gross income can be seen in relation to net income via theft.
>But socially, negative and positive freedoms compete.no, classes compete for property; the right to a house is the right to a full salary, etc. i was once debating a marxist to explain this basic proposition, and they cowered because i was suggesting that the claims of exploitation are claims of theft, and the claims of compensation are the claims of repossessing what was stolen by thieves, but the logic is entirely continuous.
>>2618721>the focus on ownership is key.>as j.s. mill said, labour-saving devices have not saved on labour, but in fact, have only increased the need for labour. yes, from the standpoint of society as a whole
>technology is liberating where it is possessed, and enslaving where it is dispossessed.now you have changed the subject, for the individual owner of technology it is liberating when possessed, and for everyone else who lacks this ownership they are dispossessed, owning only their labor. the obvious solution is common ownership of the means of production.
>lets think about this, what is exploitation? the theft of the rightful property of someone. exploitation isnt theft. it means to make use of, like how a forest can be exploited for timber, a mountain for its ore, or a person for its labor. the moral part of this comes from Kants ethics which refers to using people as means to an end.
>when there is a petition for worker's rights, it is simply the repossession of what is deemed to belong to those who worked for it, and so the rights to not be exploited are the individual property rights of the worker, if i create a tool, and you use the tool to make a product, am i not entitled to some of the value of that product? wouldn't it be theft to not compensate me for my tool and the work i put in to creating it?
>>2618993>from the standpoint of society as a wholeno, from the standpoint of workers.
>the obvious solution is common ownership of the means of production.yes, of course.
>exploitation isnt theftokay, so you are not entitled to the profit of capitalists, then. 🤷🏻♂️
>if i create a tool, and you use the tool to make a product, am i not entitled to some of the value of that product?i dont believe in intellectual property rights.
the rate of income tax is set from 0-45% based on scaled income. according to UK government, around 37 million people (4/7 of the population) paid income tax this year: 30 million paying (20%), 6 million paying (40%) and 1 million paying (45%). if we measure this by minimum salary per income tax bracket (12.5k, 50k and 125k), we can multiply the income tax payers by this rate. for the lower bracket, total revenue = £75B, higher bracket = £120B, and the additional bracket = ~£55B. total revenue = £250B. now, this is off from the official numbers by £50B, which can be adjusted by raising the median of one of the brackets (e.g. £20,000 for the lowest bracket). this adjusts to official figures. what we find then is that around 80% of workers make ~£20,000, 18% make ~£50,000 and 2% make ~£125,000. adding this all together, we find that total income for UK workers is around £1.1 trillion. now, if we look at median salaries for workers from other sources, the claim is that they make ~£40,000 for full-time employment and ~£31,000 including part-time, which adjusts figures between £1.6T to £1.2 trillion. so then, in the simplified model of arithmetic i used, we can assume general diversity of incomes in brackets, which are given beyond their minimum threshold.
according to the UK government, corporation tax (a tax rate on the profits of companies, from 19-25%) generated around £100 billion in tax receipts last year, meaning that if the tax rate was 100% then the value of all profits would be around £400-500 billion. looking at quarterly reports, this seems to be accurate. adding up both wages and profits as economic revenues then, we get a figure around £2,000,000,000,000. looking at GDP, government spending was reportedly 44% of the total UK economy, with a budget of £1.2 trillion. this means that every 44p per £1 spent in the UK economy, was spent from government allocation, obviously including services like pensions and benefits. according to further stats, 13 million people receive state pensions, while 7 million are on universal credit (with further benefits being claimed in the millions). these redistributions of wages and profits (~£400 billion) do map onto the funding for "social security" (£334 billion), with 55% of claimants being pensioners. so then, those who do work, pay for those who dont, by an almost equal proportion (4/7 contra 3/7).
>>2619273>yes, of course.communism?
>i dont believe in intellectual property rights.based
>>2619796>communismcommunism is typically understood as a totalitarian system of government which erases property rights:
<In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htmthe idea of common "ownership" implies common owners, not non-owners. i remember in an old debate between stefan molyneux and douglas lain, stefan rightly asserted that personal computers were means of production. we particularly see in the development of technology, its commercial mobility as domestic appliance, like how food can be prepared by portable microwaves. information can be transferred by computers, and work can even be remote. the means of transport is given by bicycles and automobiles, including public services like buses and trains. so the means of production and transport can be spread in their ownership by their personal possession, and also by their shared possession, if it need be so. in terms of business, i think workers should have equity in their place of employment, since this way, losses are shared as well as gains, but this is a qualified issue also; for example, a new employee shouldnt possess the same share in a company than someone who has greater loyalty. this can be sorted in different ways, but maybe not all businesses need this model either.
>basedthe history of copyright is interesting. the first unofficial copyright law was the crown copyright put on the KJV bible in 1611. the first official copyright law was the "statute of anne" in 1710. this movement can be represented by the motion from the contents of the text (i.e. an "authorised" translation) to the author themselves. kant attempts to defend copyright in 1785. i speak upon it here, defending barthes (1961):
>>2569973i also cite jevons (1862), who says that the freedom of information multiplies utility, and so is only beneficial to the public good. you can think of copyright as a regulation akin to what produces artificial scarcity.
here in episode 3 of "race - the power of an illusion", there is an exploration of "redlining" (racial segregation of housing by real estate agencies) which immediately occured in the post-war era, as an incubator of an integrated concept of "whiteness" (e.g. suburbia). this as we see, was artificially, and unfairly constructed, pushing blacks into ghettos, and fostering generational wealth inequality (since the suburbs themselves were subsidised by government aid, not available to black buyers, due to concerns for the drop in property value). only in 1968 was housing lifted from racial regulations. following this we saw "reverse redlining" (inflating assets for minorities) and "white flight", following attempts at integration. as some interviewers claim, this is due to concerns over property value decreasing, and new lines of credit opening up elsewhere. this is a form of effective segregation which reinforces the racialisation of class, particularly in the US. what is also narrated is that buying markets also became "white", while renting markets were mostly for minorities. thus, one group appreciates in value, while the other diminishes, in its form of housing, with the net worth of different racial groups apparently being accounted for in the equity they hold in assets like housing.
so then, the racial divide in america by class appears intrinsically linked to asset valuation, and a relationship to rent vs buying. according to the narration of the episode, other factors are relatively equal (e.g. rate of employment, education, etc.)
>>2619273>i dont believe in intellectual property rights.is ownership of a physical tool intellectual ownership?
>>2620067no, but "creating" a tool has certain connotations. in terms of the further implications, the value of fixed capital, like various tools, is accounted for by its costs, so if i buy a hammer from you, then use it to build something, the cost of the hammer is included in total product by a marginal loss. this is also why marx sees that as more capital is invested, the costs of this outcompete the profits from sale.
>>2620071>is common ownership the same as non-ownership?no, which is why i say that to seek the abolition of property is not the same as the aims of common ownership. its a semiotic device to illustrate the contradiction of some communist ideas (e.g. "we the people" are not "the state").
>or is it public ownership, as opposed to private ownership which is to be abolished?according to marx? as he writes more extensively in "critique of the gotha programme" (1875), the means of production will be commanded by the state (e.g. the party leadership, initiating a "bureaucracy"). the public will all work for the party and receive coupons as payment for articles of consumption. you can compare it to today's EBT cards in the US. i have previously characterised this as a form of slavery, since private property is denied to the citizenry, and all assets are rented from a group with a monopoly of power.
>>2619816><In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.>erases property rights:>the idea of common "ownership" implies common owners, not non-owners.is common ownership the same as non-ownership? or is it public ownership, as opposed to private ownership which is to be abolished?
>>2620105>so if i buy a hammer from youok but what if you borrow the hammer, say with a contract for half the proceeds of the work you do with it? what if i want to rent a hammer?
>no, which is why i say that to seek the abolition of property is not the same as the aims of common ownership. what is the difference?
>e.g. "we the people" are not "the state"so you dont believe in democracy? does that apply to just representative democracy in republicanism or also direct democracy? what would you have to replace a democracy with that would be able to ensure the right of common ownership?
>e.g. the party leadership, initiating a "bureaucracy">the public will all work for the party what page of gotha does marx say this part? im having trouble finding it
>>2620131>what if you borrow the hammer, say with a contract for half the proceeds of the work you do with it? what if i want to rent a hammer? if the terms of the contract are agreed upon, then i dont think there would be much controversy, whatever the specifications.
>what is the difference?fundamentally, the difference is that the claims of property can never be erased, but only prioritised. what we call "public property" has certain public license, but it doesnt really "belong" to the citizenry. if it did, we would have the right to trespass on military bases. so then, when "the state" owns something, it competes with our right over it. a lockean point which is maintained in the american revolution, by jefferson and paine is the "consent of the governed", particularly in the legitimacy of revolution, or the transfer of the property of the state to members of the public. if the public stormed the white house, or whitehall, it would be considered a revolution - but who would stop them? the military and the police; agents of a class which holds contrary claims to that of public right. so then, when is a revolution legitimate? that is the question.
>so you dont believe in democracy? i do believe in democracy, but a citizenry from the time of ancient greece to 1653, to 1776, has been defined by property ownership (i.e. equity in society), so we need a redistribution of property, otherwise we have a slave society, which as aristotle says, leads to tyranny.
>what page of gotha does marx say this part?its implied in the discourse. if everyone works for the state, and its "administration" decides what goes…
<Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htmthen thats who is in charge; the party leadership. marx proclaims many things about the way things will go; how does he know, unless he presumes authority?
>>2620175>if the terms of the contract are agreed upon, then i dont think there would be much controversy, whatever the specifications.how is that different from a labor contract at a factory? if i own a factory to make linen shirts, and you sign a contract to make shirts at my factory, and i pay you for you labor, where is the theft?
>but it doesnt really "belong" to the citizenrywhy not?
>if it did, we would have the right to trespass on military basesis that universal or an aspect of particular state formations?
>if the public stormed the white house, or whitehall, it would be considered a revolution - but who would stop them? the military and the police; agents of a class which holds contrary claims to that of public rightwell what do you mean by "the public stormed". would 350 million americans even fit in the white house? that sounds like misclassification. under what justification does a couple thousand people in a mob represent "the public"? wouldn't the military and police be representing the majority of the public against a minority of rioters?
>but a citizenry from the time of ancient greece … otherwise we have a slave societybut greece was a slave society
>its implied in the discourse. but isn't the discourse about the very redistribution of property you want to happen?
>then thats who is in charge; the party leadershipwell yeah but they are elected representatives that are subject to recall. i dont think marx calls for a bureaucracy i only remember him saying that he wants to expand democracy to everyone by redistributing property to the public instead of letting a private minority own everything
>marx proclaims many things about the way things will go; how does he know, unless he presumes authority?i can know a river flows downhill without presuming authority over it
>>2620188>where is the theft?the theft is in the undervaluation of labour which leads to profit.
>why not?i already explained; you cannot walk into the white house even if you help pay for it. in fact, its segregated from the public, and you will be murdered for trying to walk in.
>under what justification does a couple thousand people in a mob represent "the public"?that is the question. we can call it rousseau's "general will" if you like.
>wouldn't the military and police be representing the majority of the public against a minority of rioters? the military and police are mercenaries of the capitalist state whose class enemy is the proletariat. i have spoken on the idealism of the invention of the metropolitan police force before (1829), as a tool to prevent crime, but as samuel francis has written about, the raison d'etre of the contemporary police force is to promote crime to get a quota. #ACAB
>but isn't the discourse about the very redistribution of property you want to happen? no, communism is the theft of property from the working class to enrich bureaucrats.
>>2620200>the theft is in the undervaluation of labour which leads to profit.but the value of labor is mutually agreed upon by the contract how can it be undervalued?
>i already explained; you cannot walk into the white house even if you help pay for it. of course, but thats specifically about the white house, in the united states, which is a liberal capitalist dictatorship. you didn't explain how public property is universally a secretly exclusive property of a bureaucracy class that is separate from the masses.
>the military and police are mercenaries of the capitalist state whose class enemy is the proletariatunder capitalism that is certainly true, but i thought you were talking about a communist society as described by marx in gotha. i dont think he is talking about a capitalist state
>communism is the theft of property from the working class to enrich bureaucrats.where does marx or even lenin stalin or mao say that? i dont think they do
>>2620206>but the value of labor is mutually agreed upon by the contract how can it be undervalued?so where does profit come from?
>you didn't explain how public property is universally a secretly exclusive property of a bureaucracy class that is separate from the masses.by definition, the property of "the state" is not the property of the citizenry. do you agree with this?
>under capitalism that is certainly truethe police and military are scum in all societies
>where does marx or even lenin stalin or mao say that?is north korea a "democratic people's republic"?
>>2620229>so where does profit come from?i think i remember you saying it comes from subjective differences in valuation. why dont you explain because youve presented multiple conflicting versions
>by definition, the property of "the state" is not the property of the citizenry. do you agree with this?it depends on the state
>is north korea a "democratic people's republic"?yeah. would you like to provide a citation from one of the kims saying juche is the theft of property from the working class to enrich bureaucrats?
>>2620237>i think i remember you saying it comes from subjective differences in valuationyou must have been hallucinating.
>why dont you explaini already have. read:
>>2613213its the difference between marginal and total product
>it depends on the stategive an example to the contrary.
>yeahso you would like to live in north korea? pure slave.
>>2620243>you must have been hallucinating.>its the difference between marginal and total productmarginalism is based on subjective value theory
>give an example to the contrary.communist states
>so you would like to live in north korea? no i dont think it would be good to live in a state subject to imperialist aggression and isolation
>>2620246>marginalism is based on subjective value theoryjevons was a neo-ricardian
>communist statesthe soviet bureaucrats lived in better properties than the general public, perfectly demonstrating the class antagonism which was present in that society.
>noof course not. no one wants to live there, especially the poor slaves kim jong un keeps fenced in that human zoo.
>>2620253a double subjectivist! and an idealist! wow
>class antagonismand what do you think class means?
>fenced in that human zooyou gotta source for that one radio free liberty doesn't count
>>2620273i have explained jevons' sympathy for the labour theory of value too many times now:
(i) Cost of production determines supply.
(ii) Supply determines final degree of utility.
(iii) Final degree of utility determines value.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-theory-of-political-economy#lf0237_head_054>and what do you think class means?class is based on power, principally, by a claim to forms of property. why are the bourgeoisie a separate class to the proletariat? because of property relations. i would otherwise say that every ruling class has been a gang of thieves which rules by injustice.
>you gotta source for that onenorth korea doesnt let its people leave. thats obvious. the soviet union also limited emigration, like a typical slave master.
>>2620288> Final degree of utility determines value.and how do you measure that "Final degree of utility"? for jevons, subjectively
>principally, by a claim to forms of property. correct, so in a representative workers democracy, publicly owned property belongs to the public, not to bureaucrats.
>>2620291>and how do you measure that "Final degree of utility"? for jevons, subjectivelyby the law of diminishing marginal returns
basically, the more of something there is, the less valuable that thing is, per consumable unit added. ricardo even says this in his own way (1817):
<value […] lowered by an increased supply. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm>in a representative workers democracy, publicly owned property belongs to the public, not to bureaucrats.is north korea a "representative worker's democracy"?
>>2620297>basically, the more of something there is, the less valuable that thing isthis says nothing about the actual measure of value, only relative value. for jevons, the actual value is still subjective
>>2620327>this says nothing about the actual measure of valueread this again:
>>2620288<Final degree of utility determines value.https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-theory-of-political-economy#lf0237_head_054 >>2620484why are you afraid to admit you are a subjectivist?
>>2620703you are claiming that jevons has no measure of value, when he does, so i am correcting your ignorance.
>subjectivisthow much value do mudpies have?
>>2620734>you are claiming that jevons has no measure of valueno im saying his measure of value is subjective but for some reason you wont admit it and are trying to invent some kind of hybrid value theory
you said
>>2620243>you must have been hallucinating.the first time i said it was subjective
and here
>>2620229you implied profit comes somewhere but you didn't explain where you think it comes from
if LTV is correct then it comes from exploitation, surplus value, which is an objective measure based in labor time
but then you turn around and say it comes from the law of diminishing marginal returns, which is a subjective theory of value
here
>>2620297>the more of something there is, the less valuable that thing is, you claim that value is based in supply and demand, but thats not a measure of value itself, its relative
if i have 100 cars and then make 900 more and now there are 1000 cars on the market, each car is relatively less valuable, but if there are 1000 linen shirts, 1 car does not equal 1 shirt.
do you see now how that description is relative and not a measure of value itself?
it seems like you are just switching what you think from post to post and mashing a bunch of different theories together that may or may not be mutually exclusive without explaining how you think they all tie together
>>2620954>no im saying his measure of value is subjectivehis measure of value is marginal utility.
>you implied profit comes somewhere but you didn't explain where you think it comes fromdo you have amnesia? read:
>>2613213>>2620243>if LTV is correct then it comes from exploitation, surplus value, which is an objective measure based in labor time but then you turn around and say it comes from the law of diminishing marginal returns, which is a subjective theory of valueall theories of value are "subjective". thats why marx says utility is necessary for value.
>you claim that value is based in supply and demand, but thats not a measure of value itself, its relativevalue is relative. that is also the point of marx's "value form". value is not measured by value; as marx says, this is an absurd tautology.
>do you see now how that description is relative and not a measure of value itself?the law of diminishing marginal returns is applicable to non-economic activity too.
>without explaining how you think they all tie togetheri explained many threads ago how jevons proves the exploitation of labour. you are are just illiterate, imposing your marxist pathologies onto people youve never read. such an ugly prejudice made public, but you are virtue signaling your your cult. i get it.
>>2620035>bourgeois minority supports the bourgeoisieok
>>2621158>his measure of value is marginal utility.which is subjective
>thats why marx says utility is necessary for value.necessary but not sufficient nor determinative of magnitude
>value is relativenope
>that is also the point of marx's "value form"Marx doesn't have a "value form"
>the law of diminishing marginal returns is applicable to non-economic activity too.and what does that have to do with value in economic activity?
>i explained many threads agoi mean you explained why you think that, but that doesn't mean its coherent or justified
>>2621562>which is subjective if we measure utility by output, is this unquantifiable?
>value necessitates utilityright, so value is "subjective", yes?
>value isnt relative>Marx doesn't have a "value form"okay, so youre admitting to never reading the first chapter of marx's capital. why are you even talking?
>i mean you explained why you think thatno, i reviewed jevons' entire book in many parts, citing details from the text to elaborate his arguments. the same way i expounded the text of antoine montchretien's "treatise of political economy" (1615) and menger's "principles of economics" (1871) for the sake of general education. you could learn something.
>>2621608>>value necessitates utilityhey just want to point you might notice that this is not a quote. try going back and reading the text as it was written
>>2621608>>2621562Both of you are horribly wrong and misinterpret Marx's critique of political economy.
Value is an objective measure based from accumulated homogeneous human labor-power which is expressed as socially necessary labor-time produced in a commodity.
Socially necessary because of the standard necessary to make a profit without losing money from high costs of labor.
Therefore; value is a social relation. A social relation of the produced commodity that requires the sale of human labor-power initiated to labor-time for each commodity.
"The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labour time required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour. This productiveness is determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production, and by physical conditions. For example, the same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four. The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal than from poor mines. Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth’s surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years’ average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore represented more value"- Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One
And most importantly just as value is produced from use-value, it must contain a use-value as such to produce it objectively.
"Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value."- Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One
>>2621657>this is not a quoteits called a paraphrase. but lets read verbatim:
>>2621562>"[utlity is] necessary".whats the problem? 🤷🏻♂️
>>2621662>Value is an objective measurevalue does not exist outside of subjects.
>>2621679Ah yes, production is just an imagination then, and you can sell a block of iron by selling an entire deposit.
Such nonsense
>>2621684does value exist outside of subjects?
>>2621679>its called a paraphrase. usually when a person paraphrases they keep the original meaning
>but lets read verbatim:>>"[utlity is] necessary".now you are quoting what you said, not what i said
>>2621662>Marx's critique of political economyThat is because they are not describing Marx's critique of political economy but some bullshit they made up
>>2622063>not what i saidyes it is. you said utility is "necessary" for value.
>>2622073>but not sufficient nor determinative of magnitudein other words, Marx does not measure value with utility
>>2622080>does value necessitate utility?<yes>okay, so you say value necessitates utility<uhh, thats not a quote>yes it is, look.<no it isnt>yes it is.<okay fine - but its not a complete quote.its impossible to talk to scoundrels like you.
>Marx does not measure value with utilitydoes value require utility to have magnitude?
>>2622082>does value require utility to have magnitude?nope
>>2622085no?
lets read marx:
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htminterpret this statement for me, please.
>>2622095>nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing "nothing" "the thing"
what is he talking about here? is he saying value has utility?
>>2622098>what is he talking about here? you are a marxist, right? you should know.
what is it which possesses value? commodities.
>is he saying value has utility?he is saying that value is a function of utility.
he is adapting this from david ricardo (1817):
<If a commodity were in no way useful, - in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, - it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htmthe simple proof is to imagine creating something which no one wants (i.e. mudpies). since no one wants them, they have no value. thus as marx says, if you try to sell something thats useless, it creates no value.
>>2622101>what is it which possesses value? commodities.oh so commodities have to have a use? utility isn't a property of value?
you keep mixing things up its hard to keep track
>marx sayslets just stick to what you say i dont think you are qualified to speak for marx
>>2622102>oh so commodities have to have a use?to marx, a commodity possesses a use-value and exchange-value. as engels says, a commodity becomes a commodity in the act of being sold.
>utility isn't a property of value? no, since marx says that use-values can exist independently from exchange-values (e.g. "value"). for a commodity to be exchanged, it requires utility however.
>i dont think you are qualified to speak for marxi am quoting him directly.
>>2622107>i am quoting him directly.where does he say exchange-value is value
>>2622111<When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and a value. It manifests itself as this two-fold thing, that it is, as soon as its value assumes an independent form – viz., the form of exchange value. It never assumes this form when isolated, but only when placed in a value or exchange relation with another commodity of a different kind. When once we know this, such a mode of expression does no harm; it simply serves as an abbreviation.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3 >>2622118oh i see now, he does not. thanks mr smith!
>>2622134i would suggest you read karl marx's capital vol. 1, chapter 1 for more information. i cant help you help yourself.
reviewing jean-jacques rousseau's "discourse on political economy" (1755):
rousseau begins by the aristotelian presumption between the teleology of the state from the common household, as yet interrupting this movement by that of patriarchal immediacy in the oikos (home) and the medium of law in the polis (state). i would here reference further ancient sources, such as plutarch (~100 AD) on the illusion of patriarchy in the oikos, which has immament to its function, the mediation of the interests of those which the patriarchal will is subordinated to (e.g. the man's wife and children), which inverts power, as the bondage of the master by the servant, in a precisely hegelian style:
<Discoursing on the power of women, he said: “All other men rule their wives; we rule all other men, and our wives rule us.” This, however, is a translation from the sayings of Themistocles. He, finding himself much under his son’s orders through the lad’s mother, said: “Wife, the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians, thou rulest me, and thy son thee. Therefore let him make sparing use of that authority which makes him, child though he is, the most powerful of the Hellenes.”https://lexundria.com/plut_cat_ma/8/prrthus, rousseau is originally incorrect by assuming the distance between state and household being the procedure of law, as opposed to a "natural" relation of strength. rousseau, like aristotle, also considers the household to be most properly considered a monarchy, but a relation of mutual gain (this mirrors the "enlightened despotism" in french political thought at the time, such as quesnay's appraisal of china's rulership in 1767, paired with "lasseiz-faire" trade). rousseau says that the father ought to provide for children, and children are then to provide for the father later in life, comparing this relationship to servants - as yet, stating slavery to be "unnatural". this breaks from the ancient thought of aristotle, and the modern thought of locke, who both perceived slavery to be a state of nature, with children being "natural slaves". indeed, rousseau considers children to be "property" of the father, so is there perhaps a contradiction in his thinking here? but as for further distinctions between the oikos and polis, rousseau says that the private interest is best received by personal consultation, while the state is inherently corrupted by its personality. thus, a family is personal, while a state is impersonal.
rousseau then states that by "public economy" he refers to "government", which as yet is not the seat of "sovereignty". sovereignty, he says, is the motive power behind legislation, while the government is only able to execute what has been proposed (here then, the law is inwardly divided, between its spirit and its flesh). roussea then makes demonstration of the body politic, by its functions and faculties, all empowered by the life-blood of public expense. he says that like a good body, the blood ought to flow to all necessary sectors, reminding me of montchretien's body politic, in his 'invention' of political economy (1615). similarly, petty (1662-90) as a physician, was keen to compare the economy to a body (e.g. "anatomy"), with terms like "circulation" being common. rousseau then continues in this thinking. he concludes by seeing the "head of state" as the source of sovereignty, which seeks the health of the body politic, and is thus itself endowed with a will; a "general will", from which all law and order descends - "vox populi, vox dei" (what is written by rousseau in this text, but what is itself preceded as a whig tract, from 1709-10, with further precedence in the legacy of the archbishop walter reynolds, in 1327). of this general will, rousseau appears to stumble upon a concept of class, where he sees that the general will may become particular to a group, which substitutes private interests for that of the society. this reminds me of smith's polemic against the capitalists, that the interest of the worker and landlord accords to the interest of society, while the capitalist in his pursuit of profit, seeks to persuade the public that their interest is in his own. it is known that hume and rousseau had correspondence, and that hume and smith were also friends. rousseau then sees that there are only two forms of government (or "public economy"); the popular and the tyrannical.
after this lengthy introduction, he begins with the first part, wherein he attributes the establishment of civil government to purely lockean explanations, for the protections of life, liberty and property. he further sees that what secures these rights is law, which is based in human equality. here, he again distinguishes between the state of society (law) and that of nature, referring each to a separate will; the civil being manifest of public reason, while the private is that of natural necessity, but as mandeville (1714) and smith (1776) both demonstrate, private vices can become public virtues without certain interruption. rousseau further states the supremacy of legislation, and seeks its strictness in regard to obedience. here, i would refer to kant's legalism, as yet with the condition of "enlightenment" (e.g. independent reason), as opposed to external measures of conformity, since, as kant would understand it, one cannot be good by force, since one is not moved from within. an irrational being (i.e. a slave) requires force to be moved, and so is like an object rather than a subject (e.g. a rational soul). so, as a kantian, i see that the law must begin from within, in the same sense that civic law depends upon moral, or natural law (e.g. the spirit vs the letter of the law). rousseau is actually quite wise here however, since he sees that those who wish to impose the most penalties on crime, create the most amount of crime, such as cicero once remarked (44 BC):
<"More law, less justice"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47001/47001-h/47001-h.htmthus, justice does not begin in the state, but necessarily begins as order, from nature. as rousseau has written, the state does not make the law, it only enforces it. he concludes by seeing that legislation must be conformed to the general will.
on identifying the general will, rousseau associates it with attributes of well-being:
<the rulers well know that the general will is always on the side which is most favourable to the public interest, that is to say, most equitable; so that it is needful only to act justly, to be certain of following the general will.so then, good government can never be disagreeable to the general interest of society, and thus, revolt is unconditionally justified where it has popular appeal. civil disobedience is really just conformity to the general will, as the true sovereignty. rousseau finishes this chapter by a praise of china's governance, same as quesnay.
chapter 2 begins with the proclomation that once the general will is established, it is best to conform all particular wills to this end, since this is the source of virtue. he promotes patriotism as the "miracle" of virtue, where honour and duty reign. on the notion of universal embrace, he speaks wisely again, that love is enfeebled by its abstraction (such as freud also says, that libidinal economy is based on scarcity);
<The more I love mankind in general, the less I love man in particular [fyodor dostoevsky, 1880]the boundary of love as an object then appears pragmatic, but also empirical, to his concerns for virtue.
for chapter 3, rousseau focuses on property, which he considers the most sacred right of civil society (above life and liberty), and for which the greatest concern must be employed (since he says that property is a right most sensitive to injustice, since its easier to steal than to kill, for example. he also says that though the property of an individual is tied to his life, it may still be inherited by his family, for example, thus property is sustained beyond life, in civil society). he then moves on to public finance, which he proclaims is caught between two tragic realities, that the voluntary contributions bring in little, and forced contributions are illegitimate. this he says, is a conflict between the state perishing, and property being violated. rousseau suggests a fixed budget which is agreed upon, and the perversion of justice in regards to these funds being an act of treason (something i would agree with). it was also socrates who attempted to economise the state apparatus for the purposes of virtue, by stating that politicians ought to receive a minimum salary for their activity, since only the dutiful would take a vow of poverty for the sake of guardianship. i agree, and would also treat the violation of this trust as treasonous, punishable by death. rousseau sees that as states diminish in justice, their expenses also increase. this appears to be a universal trend in history, where diminishing returns are given from increased investment. for example, 44% of the UK's GDP is made up of public spending, yet public services are failing. rousseau also says that as nations conquer and expand, they necessarily become more miserable by this burden of public expense. he is also inferring the diversion of a general will to a particular (class) will again, seeing that war does not enrich nations, but only enriches the rulers.
rousseau then discusses different forms of taxation, stating that the tax most suited to freedom is "real tax" (property tax), while the one most suited to slavery is a capitation tax (or "poll tax", a tax given as a fixed sum for each citizen, regardless of position). of course, rousseau never considered income taxes, since such a concept was far too slavish for his imagination. he does state however that a poll tax given equitably, according to proportion of income would be best, showing rousseau's concerns for wealth equality;
<what the poor pay is lost to them for ever, and remains in, or returns to, the hands of the richrousseau does look at the issue of imposing too great a tax on land however, showing that the countries with the lowest taxes have the best cultivation, while it is ths opposite elsewise. he supposes this is due to the lack of reward for labour given in the case where its product is stolen from him anyway. we might then say that people work harder where there is a greater incentive to do so (e.g. income). the solution he comes up with is duties imposed on exports, to receive more for what is sold, by relative monopoly, but also a duty on luxury items, while leaving the necessaries of life uncharged (here again, rousseau looks to china for solutions). here, rousseau makes an insightful argument, that if duties are only imposed on luxuries, then the rich will either fund the state by their consumption, or they will invest into necessary activities, thus relieving the state of more responsibility. this appears to be a finely economic point. rousseau also suggests sin taxes on things suggested as relatively prohibitable.
>>2622174btw, you never actually interpreted this for me:
<Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmyou can have one more chance, if you like.
>>2622188if P then Q =/= if Q then P
>>2622195so, when you wrote this:
>>2622085>nope [value does NOT require utility to have magnitude]would you retract this, since its a contradiction against marx's own words?
>>2622214we have been over this. commodities and value are different things. you should probably learn english before tackling such a big book
>>2622226>we have been over thisoh, so you have accepted your contradictions against marx before. i must have forgotten.
>commodities and value are different thingsto marx, value does not exist outside of commodity exchange. do you accept this?
>>2622237>to marxbut what about you, you said value was transhistorical
>>2622243to marx, value does not exist outside of commodity exchange. do you accept this? (y/n)
>>2622244im pretty sure you said value existed in athens despite there being a lack of commodity exchange. do you accept this? (y/n)
>>2622246>im pretty sure you said value existed in athens despite there being a lack of commodity exchangeits marx who said commodity exchange existed in athens, and that value existed as an intrinsic relation:
<In the first place, [aristotle] clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value – i.e., of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at random; for he says: 5 beds = 1 house […] What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is – human labour […] The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmbut once again we return to marxism 101:
to marx, value does not exist outside of commodity exchange. do you accept this?
>>2622267i think there is supposed to be a qualifier of "generalized", since that is why aristotle was prevented from discovering the truth
this is why precision is important
>>2622330so, now that we have discovered that it was marx who did the thing you accused me of doing, we can move on.
marxism 101:
to marx, value does not exist outside of commodity exchange. do you accept this?
>>2622361a dialogue is between two people. thats what the prefix "di" means. if you want to talk to yourself start a blog
>>2622493you are talking to me right now.
if youre too scared to answer basic questions then stop replying. but i'll ask again anyway in case you want to grow some balls:
to marx, value does not exist outside of commodity exchange. do you accept this?
>>2622513that statement is incomplete as already pointed out use your context clues and figure it out
>>2622539>that statement is incompletewhat? the value relation is entirely self-contained within commodity exchange. value has no existence outside of this, so how is it an incomplete statement?
oh wait, youre waffling, as per usual.
serious question: why do you call yourself a marxist when youve never read marx? i dont get it. why do you accuse me of things that marx did, but dont get mad at marx? you are under a spell. break free from the cult, anon.
>>2622859the exchange of commodities has to be generalized
>>2622944what? marx makes distinction between the 4 forms of value, remember? stating that the most simple form, "the elementary form" is individual, and occurs at an "early date in history", with engels also stating that the "marxian law of value" holds from a time to possibly 6,000 years ago. the final form of value, money, occurs milennia ago, as marx says, so value is present, according to marx - hence, his example of aristotle.
in john bates clark's "distribution of wealth" (1899), he brings up the question of the "exploitation" of labour (ch. xxi):
<The last unit of labor gets its product, it may be admitted; but do the earlier ones get their full product? Does the income of the whole body of laborers tend at all, under natural law, to equal what they produce? Is there not an exploitation of all early increments of labor, if the law of final productivity works in perfection? […] If one man produces the value of a dollar and a half a day, while another produces the value of a dollar, and if each gets a dollar, there is a clear case of exploitation of labor.
clark footnotes this by attributing the controversy to heinrich von thünen, in his work "der isolirte staat" (1826) and his theory of "final productivity".
clark himself does not view any existence of exploitation, since he claims that the diminishing rate of final productivity is due to labour being multiplied by a lesser share in capital in its utilisation, seeing that all productivity apart from the final rate of wages (e.g. M0) is the work of capital, and so labour receives its full price in the end, while the product of capital is returned as profit. he would also then see that an increase in marginal wages is due to labour exploiting capital, by an appropriation of its fund. what clark fails to do however, is hypothesise this situation in a case where capital is not employed, or at least, has a limited employment. what he would find is that the curve of diminishing marginal returns would still apply, and so in this case, the labour of the former product would be "exploited" by the latter. this is rather contradictory however, since labour's product is constant, and so what is measured is not its total product, but the marginal rate of productivity. this resolve's clark's rhetoric then, by introducing an inverse quantity of TP to MP. here, we also discover the true source of profit.
put more arithmetically, clark perceives that the area of the curve BCE is the product of capital (returned as profit), while the final product of labour is at point C, which equates to the area of AECD as the fund for wages. what is immediately contradictory is that labour is assumed to have a fixed product, while capital has a variable product (reversing marx). its contradictory, since clark is supposedly measuring output, not input costs. he elsewhere sees that wages develop in quantity as the rate of interest declines, but this is doubly contradictory, since interest declines with the employment of capital, meaning that wages increase with the greater product of capital, leading to less profit - this is impossible, since if profit is due to capital, then more capital should mean more profit, not less. as yet, clark sees declining profits with more capital, the same way jevons and marx did.
to mend this diagram then, we need to introduce another area, in the space CXB, which we call "total product" as against "final product" (BCE). final product is variable, inverse to total product. we also have a constant quantity, which is the area AECD. we can see this as the wage, which equates with C, which is measured as against X, which now represents profit. thus, we reverse the quantities, where the the blue area is labour, and the red is profit. thus, profit increases as wages decline to their costs of production. we can see that profit declines in proportion to its employment because the product of labour multiplies, which must increase in duration to diminish its value. so then, labour must increase in value as capital is employed, appearing to contradict clark's notion that the product of labour is constant, rather than variable. what clark would say then, is that capital exploits itself, by tranferring its productivity into labour, which is not unfounded, since society surely grows in wealth with more capital consumption (the jevons paradox). this is rather curious then, that the capitalist undercuts his profits in the natural development of labour - just as marx sees, and so we can also suppose that the capitalist may destroy his capital to raise his profits.
this rhetorical "transference" of capital into labour can also serve as a legitimate basis for co-operative ownership of business, since labour becomes entangled within the processes of production in its income (e.g. cyborgs). of course, the truth is that this self-exploitation of capital is really just the maximum profit threshold, and what it signals is the rate of unemployment being at this margin, proving that unemployment is necessary in a capitalist system, and that capital is unable to develop beyond this point. thus, a post-capitalist system is able to be even more productive, since it would measure wealth from TP rather than MP (or piece work, rather than time-wages, such as what was implemented in the USSR).
piece work is also a practical example of the "narrow horizon" of bourgeois right, as marx has it; that each man receives what he gives, rather than getting paid the final product of the last worker employed (M0), which as heinrich von thünen (1826) has it, is exploitative, and so, time-wages are inherently exploiting, since the most is degraded by the least. so then, wage labour can only be practically abolished by paying persons by what they produce, not what the least person of a group of labourers produces, just like the inherent injustices of a group project in school.
>>2626848do you post anywhere else? i dont want to keep having to come to this commie website for good posts
>>2627433>do you post anywhere else?no, and im just about ready to stop posting here tbh.
>good postsmy advice to everyone is to just read books.
in terms of my own posting, i can sum it up:
i was first persecuted in a das kapital thread over a year ago, where i stated that marx may be outdated due to his consideration of "money" as a commodity, particularly the precious metals, which contradicts MMT. attempting to prove this to stubborn dogmatists took hundreds of posts. in the midst of this also was an explanation of marx's "value-form" (i.e. A,B,C and D, which are all described in capital vol. 1, ch. 1, sct. 3). here, i was accused of interpreting marx by a revisionist lense called "value form theory", but as per usual, i was simply quoting marx directly.
looking at the thread archives (#1), i appear to then fall into a dispute as to the metaphysics of value, criticising the "superstitions" of marxists, and further highlighting the anthropocentrism of the theory. here, i quote marx again (capital vol. 1, ch. 7, sct. 1), where he states that the reason man has "value" while an animal (or machine) does not, is due to his "imagination"; a nonsense claim, even criticised by someone like cockshott. i make an analogy between men and machines (e.g. slaves), saying that the only difference is the social relation of the wage, which purchases labour-power as a commodity, not as any particular "substance" - thus, if a machine or animal could be paid a wage, its labour would also have "value", since its a social construct, mediated by commodity exchange. this controversy is still misunderstood today, but is totally affirmed by marx's own words.
related to these ontological discussions is also the place of value in relation to price. marxists generally maintain a relation of essence and appearance (e.g. prices can diverge from values, but are ultimately regulated by them, and so are conformed to this tendency, like a centre of gravity). i am not bewildered by this assertion, but only find it epistemologically unsatisfying, since value here appears as an effect (e.g. of equilibrium) not a cause, if we are to attribute a quantity to it, especially if it is measured by labour-time, something immanent to wage labour, as a calculation. for this purpose, i empiricise value as a dual price, smith's natural and market price, as we may read from thread #1:
>>2057796>marx's "value" is just smith's "natural price" of labour compared to the "market price" of goods, so value in marx's framework is still a factor of price.<04-12-24my position remains unchanged (from almost exactly a year ago); "value" is itself a price, not an "essence" underlying prices.
a smaller point i make in (#1) is that the devaluation of currency is not a devaluation of the "economy", its a devaluation of the wage, since the prices of all goods rise with "inflation" except labour. keynes makes the exact same point in a "a tract on monetary reform" (1923). thus, "inflation" is just income tax. the superstitions around the "value" of money disappear once we introduce class. you can also just use smith's distinction between nominal and real prices; real prices being measured from real income. at the end of (#1) enough people appeared to be persuaded that adam smith was a viable critic of capitalism, not a supporter of it, including OP, who dedicated (#2) to adam smith and his criticism of landlords.
unfortunately, the mods deleted all my posts site-wide before the archive, but it appears that a debate between dialectics and positivism takes centre-stage, with accusations that i was a follower of the austrian school being spread (of course, without a shred of evidence, like today). from what i can gather, the claim was that dialectics are superior to "formal logic", so i asked for a comparison, which was never given. i only received vain repetitions as the the "idealism" of believing that A=A, and so this discussion went nowhere. if i remember correctly, this also related to the contention over price and value, since i saw price as self-grounding (A=A=A…), while the assertion of essence (i.e. value) acts as a hegelian medium between prices.
after this, the question of value returns, where i qualify value as requiring utility, to which some respond by stating that utility can have a potential existence, making value present in commodities, before they are realised in exchange. this is a similar conversation i had with someone in (#5), concerning existence as opposed to reality. discussion then turns back to prior controversies, such as they always do, with the same vain repetitions and coarse misunderstanding, but all things are made for good, and eventually, truth prevails.
my posts seem to re-appear with a ferocious and systematic reply to many criticisms (2221541), even mirroring a discussion i had very recently in (#5), such as the historicity of value, with an equal plea at the end of the post, to see marx as the one writing what i am accused of:
>What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.<ecclesiastes 1:9more historical questions appear, such as whether "commodities" existed before capitalism… now that i think about it, arent i just talking to the same person, continually proving his ignorance of marx, as he lambasts me for quoting his idol? i finally get "blood from a stone" (2234129) with an undying wish to have honour from my opponents in this verbal contest, yet it never comes, and apparently never will. in this nightmare blunt rotation, we then pass back into a discussion of fiat money.
after this, i am accused of conflating "exchange-value" with "value", an accusation continued in (#5) with the exact same rhetoric, that i have apparently misunderstood marx's argument in vol. 3 of capital; something i have already resolved by showing total the total price of production equalling the total value. it must be the same idiot pestering me after all this time; someone who proves to know nothing by their hypocritical babbling. i suppose you can judge someone by looking at the state of their critics. if i am hated by liars and fools, i must be honest. after this, i then elaborate marx's comments in vol. 3 (such as his decomposition of the value of capitalist commodities) and show it to correspond to smith's own components of price. after this is more hot air blown my way from people who seek a personal vengeance against my education of them. you can understand fascism by looking at these types, where they would rather burn books than be threatened by knowledge. the fact-checker and expert is the sworn enemy of the irrational mob, insulated by passion… after a time, i come to fact-check various claims about keynes, offering source material from his own work, also. once again, the issue of commodity money is brought up and this is where it is cut off.
now, in (#3) i speak a lot upon the topic of debt, especially from david graeber's work. my posts were once again mass-deleted here, so the archive is limited. another debate over philosophy appears to erupt in a thread concerning political economy, which is either concerning or encouraging. at a certain point, the question of michael hudson's supposed "antisemitism" is brought up, which due to my own philosemitism, causes me to sympathise with the inference, but i speak against any direct offence being committed. for this notion, i reference the nazi rudolf jung (1919) and his praising of silvio gesell (1916) by situating "interest" as the cause of exploitation (rather than profit). this is key, since it justifies capitalism by a form of antisemitism, and so gives us an insight into the nazi psyche. the attribution of "debt" as the main cause of social suffering then has its dangerous diagnosis.
after a time, my posts return, and i produce an impressive list of references for ancient economic thought (2378214, 2378239), with various sociological appendixes. here, i become more general in my education, citing historical and theoretical pieces, and beginning to review entire books and articles, even creating the first and only english translation of antoine montchretien's "treatise of political economy", book 1 (1615). this act of comprehending and reviewing full texts i find much more enjoyable than petty squabbling. the discussion also begins to turn more political, as i oppose marxist totalitarianism with liberalism.
we can actually read my first post on jevons here:
>>2494847dated (25-09-25), or just over 3 months ago. i provide a comprehensive review, and really become invested in his sections on the LTV and his theory of wages. its here that i see the validity of his work. i then attempt to show jevons' continuity with the classical school; all fallen on deaf ears. i then keep writing about the theory of marginal utility, which has never ceased. my review of jevons is presented in 4 parts:
>>2499556i then review menger's work in 5 parts:
>>2506577and this ends thread (#3), but the last post (presumably by OP), speaks on my ideas:
>>2507152>I noticed Smith anon that your strongest opinions seem to be: 1. Machines can create value rather than just transfer it. 2. Value is a social construct and not a magnitude of SNLTi respond to this in (#4):
>>2507508 (#4) begins by a hodgepodge of treaded-over apologies of all these former positions, which still echo out today. i shan't bore you with the details. the thread turns political, and i proclaim:
>>2510247>i generally consider myself a centre-left liberalwhich is not an inaccurate statement. i then give people a basic education in classical liberal theory; something continued today, such as with:
>>2622165as an ambitious post, i then claim that marxism is opposed to socialism, and the left (by actually being pro-capitalist), a severely minority opinion:
>>2510749another banger was me proving that the private/personal property distinction was theoretically unfounded. most of the thread was centred around these sorts of bombastic controversies.
this current thread (#5) has been productive where i have been able to review texts or answer queries, but unproductive where i am forced to engage in the same old, settled arguments against bad-faith actors who reject evidence, and lack all sense of humility or dignity. as i say, i am basically incapable of meaningful input at this point, since i have basically said everything i have wanted to say. so, i hope some people have learned some things, since thats all i ever wanted.
consider this my last post.
… and thank you for consuming my labour.
😏🫡
>>2627683Thank you, comrade Smithanon. I just recently found out about who you were and the lore etc like a month ago but I appreciate any sincere effort posters. You're a bright fellow, and I think that any marxist who believes they are "scientific" in their thought should welcome good faith disagreements. Science relies on refutation to strengthen claims, so the same should be applied to marxian views as well.
o7. I'm sorry to see you go.
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