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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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I haven't really been much of a marxist throughout my life because of its somewhat "continental" nature. In essence my thought system has been articulated around the idea of non-domination/non-coercion, similar to most neo-republicans nowadays. Yet, whilst discussing with a friend of mine yesterday, she described marxism as essentially that, except with a broader picture than the individual. Thus my question is, how do you respond to these critiques without falling into some form of left-libertarianism or kantian ethical (like Rawls or Pettit) system ?

>LTV

From my understanding, alienation occurs because the worker doesn't enjoy the full value of his labor, determined by his labor. Without going into economic debates about which paradigm is true, how do you resolve the LTV being arguably false with the alienation incumbent on the workers ? Alternatively, if labor is presumed to not have innate value, how does alienation come about ?

>Historical materialism

Similarly, how does the marxist critique interprets the potential errors that Marx made. If class conflict is the sole driver of history, how do you explain Napoleon or feudal reconfiguration. Furthermore, if the superstructure can affect and influence the base structure, doesn't this negate the broad "justification" of a revolution and that the roles of production aren't everything in a society (perhaps this lies on me, but I hardly see how marxism can be non-work centered).

>Falling rates of profit/crisis theory

It is my understanding that Marx argued that capitalism would inevitably result in crisis which would weaken the working class and express its contradiction. However, the keynesian framework allows for a more robust understanding of these crisis aswell as an integration of consideration for the workers in its system. Similarly, the TRPF has been disproved by Okshio's theory and has been somewhat proven empirically false. If both are true, what requirement is there to fundamentally change system and free ourselves from the free market "constraint" ?

>Empirical cases of "marxist-leninist" states & the ECP

Lastly, how do MLs adress the issue of domination in marxists societies. Essentially, why haven't marxist utopias produced long-lasting results and individual satisfaction ?
And if it's purely due to historical conjunctures, how do marxists adress the issue of the ECP ?

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>>2565531
>LTV being arguably false
???
>TRPF has been disproved by Okshio's theory and has been somewhat proven empirically false
???
>doesn't understand Historical materialism
>Economic Calculation problem never existed
Congratulations on being slightly more intelligent than the average lolbert. Have a (you).

You're not an ultraliberal, Harry. Get the fuck out of here. Don't be a retard.

>>2565541
What's the point of denying the marginalist conception or the Okshio's theory. I'm not super well versed into economics but it seems a bit apparent that, if you genuinely argued for such theories, that you ground them on solid arguments

>doesn't understand Historical materialism

>Economic Calculation problem never existed
Tell me, then. What more to it is there that I haven't understood ?

>You're not an ultraliberal

That would be correct.

>>2565544
>denying the marginalist conception
>ground them on solid arguments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emnYMfjYh1Q
Here's scientific proof of LTV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmbm3u2r_Cs
Here's clowning on Marshall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BkMiZze4ak
And Okishio.
Total watch time is… 51 minutes. So I better not see a fucking reply from you before then. Got it?

How does historical materialism fail to explain Napoleon or feudal reconfiguration? Huh? Marx talks about both at length.

Marx never once uttered the words "labor theory of value," and never once claimed that his theory of value (which posited a relationship between labor-power and socially necessary labor time) could perfectly predict market prices. What research from the 1990s ended up demonstrating however, is that market prices did in fact correlate closely with socially necessary labor time, about 95%. Even so, value as socially necessary labor time abstracts away the market price, and specifically the post-production effects of supply and demand, which Marx never denied, but simply noted were besides the point when it came to analyzing exploitation. Rate of supply, or scarcity, is merely a reflection of labor time anyway, especially in regards to the labor time required to find and extract raw materials. It was bourgeois economists who lumped Marx in with Smith and Ricardo as "Classicals," and called what they had in common a "Labor Theory of Value" even though Marx differs from Smith and Ricardo on some specifics.


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>>2565544
>marginalism
does this $800 dollar SUPREME brick have more value than the ones used in construction?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/304834279483

those are all playing out in real time with ai and robots.
The only valid criticism is the lack of efficiency without it turning into a gulag fest.

>>2565531
>If class conflict is the sole driver of history,
it isnt nor was it ever claimed to be
>how do you explain Napoleon or feudal reconfiguration.
both marx and engels have written about it. you can just read man

>>2565531
I shrug. I tend to treat the whole thing like Newtonian physics, where a bunch of generalities are correct and it's practically irrelevant in most cases whether the underlying economics are sound. One should read broadly and apply ideas as is useful, not stick to a handful as articles of faith.
Let's say the LTV is false - does that mean you shouldn't organize unions or go on strike? Let's say there are many drivers of conflict - well, fine, you're surely going to have to engage with every actually-existing conflict relevant to you in the present day anyway, and a class lens is a useful rule of thumb to figure out what the balance of forces is / who stands to gain. If there's no TPRF, that just means you've got to do extra work to displace the existing system instead of sitting on your ass and waiting for it to fail. empirical proof that there's no TPRF would in some ways be a godsend. though for what it's worth, i take a position that would annoy everyone: there's a TPRF in competitive markets because "profit" is just producer surplus, and competition should reduce both consumer and producer surplus to a marginal level. of course, not all markets are competitive… and ML states seem mostly a question of historical LARPing. I generally see their successes and failures as owing much more to the structure of state-lead industrialization than to socialism specifically. The structure of any future state of affairs would be radically different. When capitalists proposed the liberalization of Eastern Europe, they did not suggest that it did so in the fashion of the French Revolution.

Finally, regarding the ECP, I'm inclined to shrug. I see no reason that central planning is by-necessity part of a socialist society, or (if it is) that it need cover all sectors. Even when you make the most negative assumptions possible, it is usually possible to work back to a socialist position. One does not need a fully-worked-out plan for how things will be to have ideas for immediate alterations to the status quo. (And one would do better to test their notions of how things will ultimately be against several different sets of economic assumptions…)
Most Marxists treat the whole thing more like religion than politics. The point is not to change the world, it is to be the truest believer.

>>2565531
>alienation
the theory of alienation is present in marx's 1844 manuscripts, and does not refer to "exploitation", but rather, the social abstraction of labour as such. that is to say, when labour is taken as something in-itself (rather than part of nature), then we establish society in relation to the subject of "labour" (e.g. class society). exploitation also occurs via alienation, since capital is "dead labour" which oppresses "living labour". thus, economic relations are the relations of labour to itself; in possession and dispossession. marx's solution is to abolish the category of labour itself.
>exploitation
the exploitation of labour also doesnt refer to the product of labour which is owed to the worker (since to marx, the wage is the value of labour), but rather, that the surplus labour is categorically dispossessed by the employment contract. the worker does not own his labour by right, but rather, he owns his "labour-power" (capacity to work) and sells it as a commodity. if you reduced the working day to only what was necessary, exploitation would not occur.
>if labor is presumed to not have innate value
to marx, value is not an "innate" or natural relationship, but is a social relationship defined by commodity exchange. thus, only commodities have value, and attain values in being purchased for money.
>falling rate of profit
this theory appears to originate in the work of adam smith, as recorded by the historical rate of interest, which decreases over time. smith stipulates that profits may only fall in relation to higher wages in the context of competition (which ricardo also situates as the precondition for the law of value), and without this, these conditions may be indefinitely suspended, as in the case of keynesian "imperfect competition" (monopoly) which may lead to higher profits by raising prices, for example.
>>2565618
>Marx differs from Smith and Ricardo on some specifics.
any "specific" examples?
>>2565863
marx claims that the economic relations of labour in class society determines history

>>2565868
The tools for economic planning are being made by capitalists themselves. Things like demand forecasting and resource allocation ai. The thing is theyll hold on to those…

>>2565870
>marx claims that the economic relations of labour in class society determines history
and it does, but its not the sole driver of history

>>2565871
Capitalists play a different game in that it is permissible for them to fail. If Amazon bet wrong (say, the price of oil goes up to a million dollars a barrel and their logistics collapse) they go out of business and someone else moves in on their territory. When "Amazon" is the entirety of society, you've got a problem.
Not necessarily an intractable problem, but an underexamined one. The real engine of capitalism so far has not been in that it has successful firms (all systems have successful firms), it is that more than most systems it allows unsuccessful firms to fail. The short term costs hurt, sure, but the long term benefit is that we're no longer pouring social resources into Sears and Blockbuster.
(This says little about economic planning in principle, but it should in broad strokes indicate why decentralized, semi-centralized, or merely indicative planning is preferable to rigid central planning, and why allowing plans to fail is often preferable to trying to salvage them once they go south.)

the lack of a strong failure state is incidentally also why there are so many communist microparties. if a new socdem party can't get elected, it usually gives up pretty quickly because it has obviously failed at its goal. a communist org on the other hand can drift along for 50 years with 15 members masturbating to how they're the one true vanguard who truly understood marxism-leninism-stalinism-maoism-gonzaloism-johnsmithism, because they don't set themselves any serious tests. no communist revolution? of course not, not yet, read theory! sell newspapers! no electoral success? the proletariat has no need for bourgeois electoralism! no new members? as the great stalin said: better fewer, but better!

>>2565863
marx definitely does claim it is the sole driver of history, and he is right about that


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