/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

I like how this general has been colonized by a British guy and no one can do anything about it

>>2816236
Who invented political economy, again? 🇬🇧

>>2816241
Wrong!

>>2816247
Khaldun (1377 CE) was late to the party. He is actually the last in line of the ancient and medieval sources of economic literature (400 BCE - 1400 CE), which you may read here. 🙂👍

>>2816209
>Communism is not a proletarian movement, it is a priestly project of intellectuals. The proletariat lack any meaningful self-consciousness, and the communist has always found an astonishing frustration with the reactionary masses for these reasons
its true this has been the case historically, but you cannot be sure this will be the case in the future years, since there is really no subjacent logic to history, anything may happen
>Animals are often more rational than human beings.
we see a rationality in their behaviour, thats true, but they don't need "justifications" for what they do
Do you need a justification to breathe? Do you need a legal case for your heart to pump blood? No, it just happens, and if communism and the proletariat become one and the same and an international revolution is realized the same will apply to it, it will just happen, doesn't really need a justification
>It just sounds like you are being wilfully ignorant to avoid ethical responsibility.
and you are avoiding answering to whom am I or the proletariat or anyone supposed to "justify" anything if its not to the delusions of progress you (correctly) ask marxists to abandon

>>2816279
>its true this has been the case historically, but you cannot be sure this will be the case in the future years
Its not in the class interest of workers to have the government take all their stuff, so why would they be communists? Trade union consciousness is immediate to the interests of workers (e.g. higher wages), but the interests of labour are also an impedement to the larger communist struggle. Thus, Marx, Engels and Lenin complain of the anti-immigrant attitude of workers (indeed, Fascism is begun by proletarian violence against Italian immigrants in France; t. the Aigues-Mortes Massacre of 1893, which as Kevin Passmore tells us, inspires Maurice Barrès in his politics, to later call himself a "National Socialist", in 1898, 21 years before Rudolf Jung's "Nationalsozialismus"). Moishe Postone also tells us of the proletarian character of Fascism, where it regards the spectre of finance capital versus industrial capital. His ultimate point relates to Marx's Critique of Political Economy, that "labour" as substance of value, is spiritualised as capital, and so the problem begins in its original abstraction. The reason the proletariat is reactionary, is because they identify with the abstraction, when labour in and for itself is capital, as I demonstrate here: >>2803677
So, this is the criticism of the politics of labour generally, which is lost on most communists, who think that the working class is the subject of liberation, rather than Humanity generally. The "worker" is already dehumanised as "labour". The politics of labour is the basis of Liberalism however, by right of private property, for as Locke tells us, right is first granted by means of mixing labour and nature (with alienable property henceforth being the germ of capital). Marx himself cannot quite escape the justice of labour, by suggesting its compensation under communism, according to measure, and so labour as political subject remains inherently problematised, yet all politics depends upon it, since all politics is class warfare, and class is based in the ownership of property, instituted by laws. So, all politics is simply a question of law - this is why some say that communism is a sort of anti-politics (e.g. the withering away of the state), but the state is really just preserved under different titles.
>It will just happen, doesn't really need a justification
This is immaterial of the object of discussion. We are discussing political belief and support, and all belief must be justified. You are saying that you are not a communist when you say it requires no internal justice, so I would hope that you are at least honest about that.
>to whom am I or the proletariat or anyone supposed to "justify" anything
We can answer this negatively; are there things you would not do? If so, why not? What would stop you from hurting others for selfish gain? The fact that our behaviour is internally regulated means we have an inherent standard of morality.

watch this and tell me things are the same now

>>2816311
>Its not in the class interest of workers to have the government take all their stuff
what stuff?

>>2816680
gimme that toothbrush crackkka

was thinking today about modern economic input output systems like the ISIC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Industrial_Classification

ISIC Revision 4 (2008) broad structure
Section A – Agriculture, forestry and fishing
Section B – Mining and quarrying
Section C – Manufacturing
Section D – Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply
Section E – Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities
Section F – Construction
Section G – Wholesale and retail trade; repair and selling of motor vehicles and motorcycles
Section H – Transportation and storage
Section I – Accommodation and food service activities
Section J – Information and communication
Section K – Financial and insurance activities
Section L – Real estate activities
Section M – Professional, scientific and technical activities
Section N – Administrative and support service activities
Section O – Public administration and defence; compulsory social security
Section P – Education
Section Q – Human health and social work activities
Section R – Arts, entertainment and recreation
Section S – Other service activities
Section T – Activities of households as employers; undifferentiated goods- and services-producing activities of households for own use
Section U – Activities of extraterritorial organizations and bodies

And whether these could be mapped on to Marx's two departments (Means of production and Articles of consumption) or whether the entire question is flawed and bourgeois input-output systems exist specifically to mask this distinction.

There has always been this tension between "leftcom ultra" and "dengoid opportunist" interpretations of Communism. You can always quote a young version of Stalin (or whoever) and see a more "pure" version of Communism that hasn't yet been "betrayed," because you are looking at the writings of a young communist who has not yet seized power, has not yet had to deal with the contradictions of wielding power, has not yet become a world-historical figure dealing with bourgeois encirclement and geopolitical diplomacy. As Parenti tells us:

<The pure socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, 1997

Also it is always easy to quote those who never had to wield power on the scale of something like a nation, people like Marx, Engels, Bordiga, pure theoreticians, and wax poetic about internationalism, the proletariat having no nation, etc. But even in Marx you see a tension between this idea of the proletariat having no nation, with the idea that the proletariat must necessarily seize power on a case-by-case basis in existing nations. We also know of the law of uneven development: Cpitalism does not develop societies at the same pace or in the same way. Some countries, regions, or industries industrialize rapidly, while others remain economically dependent or underdeveloped.

I think one of the chief tensions within Marxist theory is it tries to give the proletariat this heroic, moral, world-historical role of abolishing its own oppression, while at the same time trying to sound less philosophical and more scientific, placing things like development of the productive forces and the accumulation of capital at the center of its theory. Young Lenin writes:

<Marx and Engels were the first to show that the working class and its demands are a necessary outcome of the present economic system, which together with the bourgeoisie inevitably creates and organises the proletariat. They showed that it is not the well-meaning efforts of noble-minded individuals, but the class struggle of the organised proletariat that will deliver humanity from the evils which now oppress it. In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society.

- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, [Eulogy for] Frederick Engels (1895)

You can see this tension even within 24 year old Lenin. Which is it? Is socialism the result of "the class struggle" of the "organized proletariat" which "deliver humanity from the evils" or is it "not the invention of dreamers" but "the development of the productive forces."

Depending on the rhetorical tact being taken at any given moment by any given Marxist, either the class struggle, or the productive forces, is centered as the real mechanism of action for societal change. We know the development of the productive forces and the class struggle are not literally identical, since the ruling class compels the working class to develop productive forces, and the working class has often resisted the development of productive forces.

So this is the reason I think for the "split" between the "ruthless realist" Marxists who center the development of the productive forces, and the "proletarian supremacist" Marxists who center class struggle. Because early theory wasn't always clear which should be the most important. It oscillated based on the topic being discussed. What I would like is for these two groups to harmonize so that victory can be achieved. This is not intended as an anti-Communist critique.

>>2820852
>Which is it? Is socialism the result of "the class struggle" of the "organized proletariat" which "deliver humanity from the evils" or is it "not the invention of dreamers" but "the development of the productive forces."
A slightly more mature Lenin gives an explanation (1902):
<We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. In the period under discussion, the middle nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
Thus, there are thinkers and there are actors, and the working classes have never of their own self-consciousness bloomed with the dreams of communism, or even social democracy. Indeed, the vast majority of socialist intellectuals had no belonging to the working class, and so exist in sympathy, but ultimate antagonism to them. Marx himself realises the disconnect of Communists proper from the working class as such (1848):
<The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
A working class party such as the Chartists had their own literature, yet they never invoked the calls of communism; even Robert Owen criticised the Chartists, and so sectarianism sprang up early. Indeed, we see Marx's criticism of currently existing socialist movements:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm
So then, I think it is most wise to view Communists as having an inevitable separation from the proletariat as such, and so their movement must be considered too universalist. I relate the immanent particularism and fascism of the proletariat here: >>2816311
Indeed, Marx's great trouble with the working class from 1869 onwards was their national chauvinism, as we may read:
<The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general. […] And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_12_10-abs.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm
Engels already identifies this competition as early as 1845:
<it is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm
As yet, we may go further back to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, where we see English guilds terrorise and murder Flemish immigrants in London, just like the Aigues-Mortes Massacre of 1893, which sparked the neologism of "national socialism". What is common between both events "trade union consciousness" as Lenin says. So then, at least, the working class is extraordinarily disappointing to the communist, and at most, they are an enemy. It's difficult for a communist to not be an elitist, since they are not merely patrician, but Caesarian, in attempting to save the plebs from themselves. In all things, as Kant says, "honesty is the best policy, but honesty is better than policy", so that is where the fifth international must begin.

>>2816630
I would first substitute Schor's quote with J.S. Mill's from 1848, that he doubts whether "labour-saving devices" have saved anyone labour, but rather, that labour has a greater demand because of their supppication. We see this with the cotton gin in the 1790s, that the demand for slave labour increased with the additions of tools and capital. So then, saving labour by advanced technique actually increases labour. Marx's further point is that the productivity of labour is inverse to its returned product, and so the more that man makes, the more impoverished he becomes. Lao Tzu makes comment on this, that where there is nothing done, there is nothing left to be completed - Democritus also tells us that poverty is not the lack of goods, but is rather the increase of demand. Thus, as Christ said, the poor may be rich in spirit by their lack of worldly goods. The system of capital accumulation (M-C'-M') presupposes the expansion of production by the expansion of consumption, and thus a cycle of eternal poverty, or prospectivity unto future production. The central issue of both capitalism and communism is thus what Baudrillard sees as the System of Production, since Marx's basic criticism of capital is its inhibiting faculty for production based in the profit motive. The political consequences of Productivism is as Mao described it; the bluntness of a gun pointed at your head, with the final social incentive being this fatality (like the whip which commands the service of slaves). Thus as Marx writes, communism is born from capitalism, and to me, that is precisely its original sin. So, to return to the original idea of the video; it is the compulsion to production in general, not in particular, which creates the slavery, poverty and misery of labour.

Upon the content creator's claim that there is a "natural" working day (4-6 hours), doesn't he find it suspicious that only humans have this imperative to calculate labour according to a plan of production? Why don't other primates or mammals similarly work according to a reliable pattern? Because the working day is a product of class society, of course, not a "natural" phenomenon. If there is any "labour" in nature, it is from the sun.

The idea of leisure coinciding with wages is present in economic literature, that the more people are paid, the less they feel they have to work, giving a baseline salary. Thus, the lowering of wages gives incentive for longer hours, and this is clearly strategic of capital. We see the first labour laws in England, The Statutes of Labourers (1349-51) set a wage cap for workers and also revoke retirement, so that people would work longer and harder for less (since the wage here is clearly proportional to marginal output, and inverse to total output). 30 years later we get the Peasants' Revolt (1381), and some see the Statute as momentous of this, although it was moreso the poll taxes imposed on the public meanwhile.

On the segmentation of workdays and non-workdays, the maximum difference between a modern wage slave and a feudal peasant is between 40% and 50% of days off in a year, which is less severe than first imagined. Now, this is avoiding the gruesome context of the struggles labour during the industrial revolution, which subjected people from 12-16 hour work days, and which was only relieved over a century by legal battles. As Marx comments, the Statute of 1496 set the working day from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. (15 hours), whilst also offering a total of 4 hour breaks, leading to 11 hours - he uses this as a polemic that the 15th century worker displayed a greater liberty than the industrial worker, who toiled without breaks. So, from the genesis of capitalism in England (e.g. ~1450, according to Marx and Engels) to the industrial revolution and beyond (1850), working conditions have gotten longer and the means of leisure have been abolished in 400 years. By comparing today's situation to the medieval, it ignores the rise of capitalism from before the 20th century, yet we see the positive power of capital arrest labour from 1350, and so this period of decline for labour can be measured since then, for a length of time of 500 years, which afterwards had its struggle and partial success since (1850 being the year of the Factory Act, which limited labour for women and children, from around 72 hours to 60 hours a week). The video creator is still correct however that even 700 years later, leisure has never been reclaimed to its former status, except for the exceedingly wealthy. Even the archetypal period of consumerism and the suburb was present in the UK and US from 1950-80, and afterwards, there has been compulsory austerity and class warfare against the working class. So, the era of lifestyle leisure lasted 30 years in the present saga of 700 years.

The video creator's insight into the mechanical clock orienting production by the abstraction of time is quite interesting, since it shifts perspective from quality to quantity, the same movement Guenon describes as essentially modern. The video creator sees 1611 as the genesis of this "clock-mania", which is also when the KJV Bible was published, which as an "authorised" translation, imposed "crown copyright" for printers, effectively creating an important piece of intellectual property (which is still in effect today). The first official legal case of copyright was in 1710 (The Statute of Anne). Copyright has historical precedence in ancient and medieval society however, which mainly concerned holy texts. We may read of the treatment of Shudras in the Gautama Dharmasutra, XII.iv-v (400 BCE):
<Now if he listens intentionally to (a recitation of) the Veda, his ears shall be filled with (molten) tin or lac. If he recites (Vedic texts), his tongue shall be cut out.
https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/gautama-dharmasutra/d/doc116312.html
Here, having unauthorised access to knowledge leads to extreme punishment. We see this in the west as well, such as the censoring of the Wycliffe Bible (1395) due to its ability to reach the masses, since the Bible was still mainly written in the Latin Vulgate. The Bible then was considered the property of the Catholic Church, and later on, King James considered "his" translation to be property of the Church of England.

The video creator then properly speaks upon capital as a state-sponsored entity, which has an overt partnership, yet jumps to "industrial capitalism", rather than giving notice to the previous "agrarian capitalism" (e.g. 1450-1750) which also operated its class war by primitive accumulation. This is more original and more relevant to the question of corruption generally. Further on clocks, the creator makes a strange comment that the capitalist had a psychological motivation to control labour rather than to merely instrumentalise it in production - this is an unnecessary and irrelevant speculation of material history. He digs himself deeper when he says that "it wasn't about profits, it was about power", which is completely ignorant - it reduces a global system to a psychodrama; far too personal.  Night labour is also discussed, which Marx makes note of also; that capital requires a 24-hour feast.

The video creator pinpoints the year 1664 as the shift in the culture of work, beginning with Palmer's payment of the church to ring their bells from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. I should also note Marx's comments:
<Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays, plays an important part in the genesis of capital.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#92a
In the 17th century, we see Christmas become illegal in Scotland (1640) and England (1647-60). Puritans in America also banned Christmas, such as in Massachusetts (1659). Jevons (1878) comments upon the misery England has suffered since the time of the 16th century, when medieval fairs and amusements were overtaken. Only in the late 19th century and 20th century onwards do we see a consideration for cultural amusement, such as the officiation of sports like Football (1863-), Tennis (1874-), Olympics (1896-), etc. Now, all of these had previous forms in one way or another, but now they were made official and commercial. We see the first Olympic Games in history, in 776 BCE, which bears resemblance to traditional "funeral games", such as we read in The Iliad (800 BCE), and so we see this transhistorical and intervening period of human history bound within a single continuum, such that people openly compared Babylon to Rome, and now Rome to America. There is no new thing under the sun.

On newspapers, the system of knowledge-production already serves class interests, as I relate. Even most privately, priesthoods often begin as cults, like Pythagoras, who in his tutelage, gave abstinences to his followers, and heretics were also murdered. The promise of the esoteric is inherently exclusive, and guarded by loyalty in power. Of course, the most common form of knowledge today is fictional, and we see so many communities orient themselves around these manifestations; esoterically and exoterically. Indeed, every thing creates its own knowledge and ignorance, whether spoken or written, and so the titular "renaissance man" is only hopelessly romantic, but this brings up a more interesting point; if knowledge-production expands itself by "surplus knowledge" (t. Zizek), then the system of knowledge leads to its incommensurate divisions; of culture into subculture, and so we lose "Society" in place of "societies", but this is how its always been…

>>2820912
>As yet, we may go further back to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, where we see English guilds terrorise and murder Flemish immigrants in London, just like the Aigues-Mortes Massacre of 1893, which sparked the neologism of "national socialism". What is common between both events "trade union consciousness" as Lenin says. So then, at least, the working class is extraordinarily disappointing to the communist, and at most, they are an enemy. It's difficult for a communist to not be an elitist, since they are not merely patrician, but Caesarian, in attempting to save the plebs from themselves.
Most disappointingly of all, I have seen people on here accuse you of fascism for noticing these things, and treating them as a real problem to deal with, as opposed to letting them be ignored, so they can fester, and metastasize.

>>2820933
Well, I certainly have a reminiscent fascism in my ardent anti-communism, and liberals are most often associated with fascists in communist spaces, so its understandable. 😛 In any case, let's forgive those who know not what they do. 🙏

I do struggle with the politics of labour, since to me, an enlightened Marxism is about overcoming the abstraction of labour as such, while the state (as class dictatorship) inherently relates to labour by property, and so all politics is a politics of labour, essentially. Only liberalism and socialism formalise this, such as in Locke (1690), who sees the right of property being based in labour, and even Proudhon (1840) later on, who declares that "property is theft!" still holds to the principle of "possession", which is essentially directly-used property. Marx (1848) of course struggles with property, by seeing how communism both negates and affirms property, along the identical lines of capitalism. I offer my thoughts on Tawney (1920) who sees politics as a matter of right, yet this is not a modern manifestation either, but ancient, such as we read in Cicero (44 BCE):
<For the chief purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. 
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Officiis/2B*.html
The notion of politics being based in property (e.g. class) goes back theoretically to Plato, then Aristotle and then Polybius, who see the basic political science concerning the ordering of classes (e.g. monarchy, oligarchy, democracy) based in the class which rules the state. So, all politics is class politics, which then presupposes classes, and a state. I resign myself to the social contract upon this concern, that the polis will always exist in antagonism to the oikos (with ancient themes upon this struggle of civil society as early as Sophocles' Antigone, 440 BCE), and so the public and private distinction will always exist in civil society, and thus, labour retains its abstraction in politics and law. But life shouldn't just be politics.

Politics is a lesser theory and practice upon the world, since it is circular (e.g. anacyclosis). It is circular upon the same problem of the social contract; mutual self-interest and mutual opposition; prerequisite trust and inherent suspicion, etc. Plato resolves the question of politics in its very proposition; a benevolent dictatorship is by definition the best form of politics, since it is also an absolute anti-politics. He extends this to also comprise the invisible hand of Justice. Lao Tzu makes the same comment; that the good emporer rules so that the people may imagine to rule themselves. While the law may only be a pale reflection of righteousness (道), there is still the spirit working within the written law: ἀναρχία = νόμος. 🙂👍

>>2821010
If history is perfectly cyclical with no variations, then why discuss anything?

I have heard it said that outsourcing is not only a conspiracy of the bourgeoisie looking for the cheapest source of labor power abroad, but that it is also a conspiracy of the bourgeoisie in the shipping industry to increase their profits, since the more commodities need to cross an ocean to reach their consumers, the better off they are.

>>2822318
> it is also a conspiracy of the bourgeoisie in the shipping industry to increase their profits, since the more commodities need to cross an ocean to reach their consumers, the better off they are.
believe it

>>2821013
do you really expect me to watch a video from some avatarfag chud who draws himself as a soyjak wearing a fez and a bismarck suit

Can anyone summarise Marx's argument in the chapter on the conversion of surplus value into capital?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm

I've read the entire chapter and have walked away feeling as though I've stared into a black hole

<Did Stalin and Mao differ on commodity production under socialism (so what was planned to take place following the Cultural Revolution?)
<Did Mao reference M&E Critique of the Gotha Programme and/or labor vouchers or was the limited chinese agricultural work-point system initiated independently of Mao/Cultural Revolution Group?
Longer exposition of question seen in original question in the ML-MZT / MLM thread, yet to be answered:
>>2825634

>>2826930
The chapter explains how a capitalist turns surplus value into more capital. This process is called accumulation of capital. A capitalist gets surplus value from the workers' unpaid labor. The capitalist can use part of the surplus value for his own enjoyment. He can turn the rest into new capital. The new capital buys more machines and more workers. Those workers then create even more surplus value. Over time, the original money the capitalist started with becomes very small. Almost all of his capital comes from unpaid labor. The laws of buying and selling seem fair at first. But under capitalism, these laws change. The capitalist ends up owning everything. The worker ends up owning nothing but his own labor power. The chapter also says some economists made mistakes. They thought all capital goes to pay wages. That is wrong. Some capital buys machines and materials too. Other economists said capitalists save by giving up pleasure. This is called the abstinence theory. Marx says that is silly. The real source of capital is the worker's unpaid labor. Many things affect how fast capital grows. These include how hard workers work, how productive machines are, and how much capital is already in use. The last part of the chapter attacks the idea of a fixed labor fund. That idea says there is a set amount of money for wages. Marx says that is not true. The labor fund can change. Capitalists can send their money to other countries too. So the worker has no fixed limit on his wages from nature. The limit comes from the capitalist's need for profit.

Section one explains how surplus value turns into new capital. A capitalist gets surplus value from workers. He does not eat up all of it. He uses part of it to buy more machines and more workers. The new workers then make more surplus value. Over time, almost all of a capitalist's money comes from unpaid labor. The old laws of fair exchange get turned around. The capitalist ends up owning everything. The worker ends up owning nothing but his ability to work.

Section two describes a mistake made by old economists like Adam Smith. They thought all capital is spent on wages. They said workers eat up everything that is saved. That is wrong. Some capital buys machines and raw materials. Those are not wages. The economists got lost because they did not look closely at how things move through the market. Marx says he will fix this mistake later in his book.

Section three talks about how a capitalist divides surplus value. One part he spends on himself. The other part he saves and turns into new capital. The capitalist feels a fight inside himself. He wants to enjoy life. He also wants to get richer. Old economists said saving is a kind of suffering or abstinence. Marx says that is a silly idea. The real job of the capitalist is to make production grow. He forces workers to produce more and more. The capitalist's own fun does not stop him from getting richer.

Section four lists things that help capital grow faster. These things are separate from how much the capitalist saves or spends. One thing is how hard the workers are made to work. Another thing is how productive the machines are. Nature also gives free help, like land and minerals. When machines get better, old capital acts like new capital without extra cost. Science and technology give capital more power to grow. The more capital there is, the bigger the difference between what is used up and what is still there.

Section five attacks the idea of a fixed labor fund. Some economists said there is a set pile of money for wages. That pile cannot grow. Marx says that is not true. The labor fund changes all the time. Capital can grow fast or slow. Capital can even be sent to other countries. The worker has no fixed limit set by nature. The only limit comes from the capitalist's need for profit. So the so called labor fund is just a trick to make capitalism look natural and fair.

>>2827012
Thanks

>>2826494
the US is juggling like six potential crises right now:

1. running out of strategic reserves of oil
   
2. AI bubble popping (biggest and most flimsiest bubble in US history, accounting for over 90% of claimed GDP growth)
   
3. losing taiwan to china
   
4. losing ukraine to russia
   
5. being unable to stop iran from blocking hormuz
   
6. the domestic crisis of poverty and cost of living

An individual price may deviate from a value, but collectively…

thinking about u today

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKcwEC4jDwiN5sOIay2qkpjTuvRTvkdso

Trying to learn how to research better lately

>>2816311
>Its not in the class interest of workers to have the government take all their stuff

What stuff uygha? We talkin about proletariat or petit bourgeoise?

The problemn of your analysis of class interests is that is merely based on (some cherry picked examples of) historic class behaviour. But all hitherto behaviour does not exhaust a given entity's capabilities, and in the case of rational agents it does not necessarily reflect it's real interests. Rational agents get constantly stuck in local optimums, and a given local optimum doesn't become the summum bonum just because it ends up iterating itself indefinitely. I don't think that you also include in your analysis historical working class behaviour that does coincide with Marxism. But any given data can be interpreted in so many ways, and I don't think Marxism is any least compatible with the available data than your liberal view, which cheats itself into applicability by abstracting away all the relevant concrete conditions with notions such as "universal humanity", but more on that later.

On the other hand Lenin himself acknowledges the fact that the labour movement by itself only reaches economism, but the fact that the direction of the labour movement comes from without through the communist party does not erase the fact that the problems of the working class have to do with the constitution of capitalism and not only some of its effects. Therefore, the interest of the working class will always lie in the abolition of capital, not its reform, regardless of the success or lack thereof the communist party finds in its goals, for the sheer entropic force of capital will do away with all of the patches and overrule conscious management. The abolition of the former is non-negotiable for the rising of the latter as society's organizing force.

It is not at all surprising that the working class in itself has difficullties reaching this conceptual level since it has no time left for highly technical intellectual endeavours. Myself as a student of philosophy had hardly any energy left to study after working when I did both things at the same time, and I don't think the notorious enshittening effects of wage labour need any introduction.

Which goes to show, these problems are not merely economical even though political economy forms its most fundamental and determinant dimension. The full range of human development, the maximum amount of information, not only in the sense of data, but also in the sense of form, can only be achieved by superseding capital as the main societal force. It is not that labour is the subject of liberation as opposed to, and in spite of, other sections of humanity, but rather, labour, due to its material and concrete conditions, is the only section of humanity whose interests and constitution CAN lead to a liberation extending to, and for the sake of, humanity in general. It is the subject of liberation not in the sense that it is the entity to be liberated, that ought to receive the liberation, but in the sense that it is the liberating entity, the agent of liberation which by liberating itself abolishes all forms of slavery alltogether. To put it in other words: given the heterogeneity and conflicting interests in the concrete (fundamentally determinant) economic divisions of society, that is, classes, the labouring class is the only one with an initial condition that CAN generate a behavioural pattern able to demiurgically reconfigure the whole system, since all other divisions are either impotent or inherently stuck in local optimums (lumpens, petit bourgeoise) or have a vested interest in the present state of the system (capitalists, as in grand bourgeoisie, rentiere class). So it turns out the working class is not the privileged point of view due to it being the unprivileged moral subject, as in Christian axiology, but rather because of the privileged potential capabilities for optimization it naturally is equipped with due to its place in the system. Even an hypothetical, miraculously enlightened bourgeoise would have difficulties establishing a new social order due to the fact that its inertial interests will fight against their own conscious behaviour, a friction the working class doesn't have to grind through at all, since it's interest are completely compatible with the goal.

You are also wrong in regards to the Marxist account of "universal humanity", which has a Hegelian root. In its origin, Marxism is a heterodox deviation of hegelianism, and I consider some Hegelian elements it maintained far from dysfunctional atavisms, but fully functional organs carried through the new philosophical taxa. Human form can only be said to develop in partaking in the universal culture, that is, science, art, philosophy, even crafty know-hows (when linked to intrinsic interest of its operator and not done in the alienating wage-labour manner), for a human really actualizes its potentialities by roaming outside its local, immediate medium, first by sustaining its present form through economical activity, and then reaching for the global medium through culturization. A human individual placed to grow in a vacuum isolated from a social window will be but an empty husk devoid of any concrete activity. Stepping outside the immediacy of its bodily and spatial medium one begins to inform itself by contact with the universal, i.e. the non-local, for instance by learning a foreign language, history etc. We must start from the initial condition that the world has determinations and its entities are continuously being determinately produced and reproduced in concrete processes, processes which in human society are called history. From this it follows that a given human cannot simply inform himself in just any way: the only meaningful manner is to interact with the given institutions and disciplines which have accumulated a content that he alone will never catch up to. He himself is the product of such a racing society is making from the past millions of years since anatomically modern humans are event a thing, or we could even arbitrarily stretch the process as far back as the limits of science allows us to. This is why a given human can only REALIZE "universal humanity" by mastering the arts, the sciences, philosophy, a craft, or even sports, a discipline as great as the ancient depictions of the athletes brings to light in sculpture. But the human capacity to reach this universality on a massive scale is inhibited precisely by wage labour and capital. And whatever is not inhibited by 8+ hours of wage labour is done away with the drug market, the entertainment industry and social media industry, the culture industry etc., whose present goal seems to be the slow lobotomization of humanity at the lowest possible cost, for the mindless accumulation of capital for a bunch of monopolistic enterprises with known ties with one another. A mass of fully informed, cultured humans is not at all impossible as nietzscheans pretend it to be, picturing it as a limited thing for a leisuring class in spite of a mass of slaves. It is just that the present state of things determines the most of humanity to have nothing better to do than employ it's pluripotent activity to the one dimensional toiling for another person to accumulate more wealth than himself.

You are wrong when you say that marxism failed to consider universal humanity. He himself was deeply concerned with this throughout all his career, even though his work not always reflects this, but Capital and especially the grundrisse never disowned the matters touched in the manuscripts and were in fact developed from it. Even if Marx himself didn't give a shit later on, which is what Althusser et al try to do in their effort to delete Hegel from Marx, Marxism itself as a independent theory provides a system in which you can freely add this element. The above exposition on human universality shows why the working class interests in the abolition of capital as the organizing force of society aligns with universal human interest, or rather, REALIZES it. "Humanity generally" is an expression that would only have any reality after abolishing the present state of things, ex post facto. But humanity as you put it is just an ex ante abstraction since the current concrete form of humanity is not at all aligned with itself in its supposed form and interests. And if we, right now, say general interest of humanity we automatically abstract all concrete realities and contradictions, which brings as a result a proportional level of unreality to it's actual concept. At most, it can only function as a heuristic device or limit-concept ( the Kantian *Gremzbegriff*), but frankly I can only see the typical liberal rights as a reactionary bourgeoise attempt at elevating capitalist social relations as some sort of universal morality, a metaphysical carbon copy of empirical positive right, especially commercial contracts and such. Depicting universal humanity as real in actuality only shows the unwillingnes of working through its concept throughout the real history and present state of what it is supposed to represent, i.e. real concrete human beings and their activity, and divides the whole of reality in what is and what ought to be, which are not at all alike, and turns either one or the other into an empty illusion, or into the wretched shadow of its counterpart, which is to absurdly claim in your subjective mind an advantage over the real thing. As if mind was some plain spiritual blanket you could superimpose on reality, but reality has a lot of lumps and clots, and a lot of spikes also, which inevitably pierce and break the blanket: the white blanket of universal rights and humanity will always be painted grey on grey with the tinge of real social conditions. Which is not to say that mind has no ability to formulate universal values, but it is to say that these values do not have their locus in abstraction but in concrete conditions, the very self-same societal, historical, institutional realities which form the conditions of possibility for rational mind to begin with. Mind is but a link in the circuit formed by this social realities, which is why both Marx and Hegel understood the sociality of reason, hence why these universal forms such as general humanity lack any meaningful content unless they go through said circuit and account for it. To do otherwise is to bring forth the inherent formalist pretension of an impossible birds-eye-view, positioning oneself in an intelligible realm outside concrete reality.

>>2816279
>Do you need a justification to breathe? Do you need a legal case for your heart to pump blood? No, it just happens, and if communism and the proletariat become one and the same and an international revolution is realized the same will apply to it, it will just happen, doesn't really need a justification

I don't agree at all with this statement. Communism would not bring humanity to a natural homeostatic state where our activity would reach the same spontaneity as the animal, vegetal, fungal, etc. kingdoms. In fact, capitalism is much closer to such a thing precisely because it is a spontaneous irrational force which organizes the whole of society, which sweeps away matter and form from the hands of self-conscious, rational agency. Communism would in fact be "justificative" as in, conscious and rational agency would exponentially increase in all areas. I believe even the concept of "family" and other such merely traditional, unconscious, merely inherited forms of regarding oneself and others would be done away with, that is, would turn out to be unjustified. Family, homeland, etc., which form the lazybed of self identification, would come under scrutiny and revealed to be unjustified. The thing that most reflect the "unjustified" are precisely these remnants of merely inertial societal structures that are but a sediment from the ancient regime.

But there's still truth in what you said that a lot of forms of mediation, especially belonging to the sphere of right, justice, the law, the state or whichever way you want to call it, would be abolished or suspended. I believe that a certain analogy can be made with the aristotelian suspension of justice in friendship. But far from reducing the cost of social interaction, the social capabilities of humans, emancipated from the irreflexive structures of family, country etc., would have to be greatly increased, for with family you don't have to choose but you do have to actively move around in the world in order to establish friendship. The bourgeoise cult of brotherhood will be replaced by the communist ideal of friendship.

Even less of a tranquile and homeostatic state would life be without the struggle for material survival. Instead of minding our business most of the time, we would all be inevitably faced with the empty void, with the sheer problem of existence, the world, whatever you want to call it, and the greatest of all intellectual efforts would be massively distributed, unlike today where a lot of people have no time to even consider such a thing, and the little time the majority of people do mind it, they only fathom the mere tip of the tail of that monster, only for it to bring them great anxiety. They have no time nor intellectual, emotional, expressive means to endure the tornness (the Hegelian *Zerrissenheitof*) of the darkest nights of consciousness. The lack of time is proportional with the inertial adoptions of the structures I was just talking about on a massive scale, and the abundance of time will bring a proportional amount of intellectual development that paired with the new mode of production as it's condition of realizability will give birth to an unprecedented mass of highly informed human beings.

We can read in Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" (411 BCE) the rate of wages per rank of soldier:
<Potidæa being blockaded by a force of heavy infantry (each drawing two drachmae a day, one for himself and another for his servant) […] the rate of three Aeginetan obols per day for a heavy-armed soldier, archer, or light soldier, and an Aeginetan drachma for a trooper […] the treasury giving a drachma a day to each seaman […] targeteers, Thracian swordsmen […] each man was a drachma a day
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm
The Drachma is 4.3g of silver, and there are 6 obols in a drachma. The Roman Denarius was roughly equivalent to the Attic Drachma, and its original value was for 10 asses (from whence it derives its name; dēnī). We read in late 1st century literature such as The Book of Matthew (20:2) that the wage was set at one denarius:
<After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. 
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+20%3A1-16&version=ESV
And so there seems to be a customary rate for labour. The same passage tells us that the working day for agricultural labourers was 12 hours. Rates were daily, not hourly, and the custom of paying per day, not by week, seems to have been expected (Deut 24:15):
<You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+24%3A14-15&version=ESV
Marx writes that the exploitation of labour is made possible through the delay of payment, whereby the labourer credits the capitalist in advance (1867):
<In every country in which the capitalist mode of production reigns, it is the custom not to pay for labour-power before it has been exercised for the period fixed by the contract, as for example, the end of each week. In all cases, therefore, the use-value of the labour-power is advanced to the capitalist: the labourer allows the buyer to consume it before he receives payment of the price; he everywhere gives credit to the capitalist.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
So the ancient practice of daily wages empowered the labourer, and Thucydides also writes of the tactics used by employers to delay payment and diminish wages:
<Henceforth becoming his adviser in everything, he cut down the pay from an Attic drachma to three obols a day, and even this not paid too regularly; and told Tissaphernes to say to the Peloponnesians that the Athenians, whose maritime experience was of an older date than their own, only gave their men three obols, not so much from poverty as to prevent their seamen being corrupted by being too well off, and injuring their condition by spending money upon enervating indulgences, and also paid their crews irregularly in order to have a security against their deserting in the arrears which they would leave behind them.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm
So then, the delaying of payment is coincident with the diminishment of the wage, as a system of control and discipline, rather than economic necessity, as written.

>>2833486
You might find this interesting

>>2831860
I thoroughly recommend the obsidian + zotero workflow

>>2833603
please explain like i'm dumb, old, stinky. why wouldn't i just pirate PDFs and take notes in a word editor like i have for almost 20 years?

Ancient cuneiform tablets elaborating "ration lists" per monthly allotment of labour is given from two pre-Sargonic sources; the Tell Beydar archives (2400-2350 BCE) and the Enumus archives of Girsu (2350-2300 BCE). The allotments assort by divisions of labour, with the median rate being 60-90 litres of barley per head (or 2-3 litres per day) - to read more on this, see: "Home and Work in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia" - Walther Sallaberger and Alexander Pruß (2015). Rates differ from later on, as we read from (RSO 83 361 no. 37:1–4):
<464 men for 1 day, their barley is 4,640 liters [= 10 liters of barley per 1 man]; 3,248 men for 1 day, their silver is 9,744 grains of silver [= 3 grains of silver per 1 man]
This is from the Ur III period (2100-2000 BCE). We can see citation of the ruler Ur-šaga in (Princeton 2 34:1–8):
<[under] Ur-šaga; 20 hirelings, the wage of each (man) is ½ shekel of silver (and) 60 liters of barley
Now, wages here are extremely relative, which must show a difference between skilled and unskilled labour (also based in the number employed). We can further compare this to the Isin-Larsa period (1900-1800 BCE), where in the "Laws of Eshnunna" (1900 BCE) we get a series of fixed prices, or exchange rates between goods:
<1 kor barley for 1 shekel silver
<6 minae wool for 1 shekel silver
<3 minae copper for 1 shekel silver
<2 minae refined copper for 1 shekel
Here, prices are based in relative weights between the assorted goods (there are 200 litres in a kor; 200 grains in a shekel and 60 shekels in a mina). If the earlier period paid out basic wages 3:1 in barley and silver, the later period pays out 10:1, showing a ~300% reduction in the value of silver, which may be due to greater supply. The exchange rate between copper and silver is also relative to quality, and we may further read from the famous tablet "Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir" (1750 BCE):
<When you came, you said to me as follows: "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised me. […] On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and Umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper.
Thus, 1 mina of silver (1.25 pounds) is equal to 1,080 pounds (~850 minae) of refined copper ingots. In 1900 BCE then, the exchange rate between refined copper and silver is 120:1, while in 1750 BCE it is 850:1, showing a massive increase in the value of silver, relative to a depreciation in the value of copper. The supply of copper was increased by trade networks. In the contemporary "Code of Hammurabi" (1750 BCE) we get set prices for wages in different positions:
<If any one hire a day laborer, he shall pay him from the New Year until the fifth month (April to August, when days are long and the work hard) six gerahs in money per day; from the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him five gerahs per day. […] If any one hire a skilled artizan, he shall pay as wages of the . . . five gerahs, as wages of the potter five gerahs, of a tailor five gerahs, of . . . gerahs, . . . of a ropemaker four gerahs, of . . .. gerahs, of a mason . . . gerahs per day.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp
There are 24 gerahs in a shekel, so wages have increased from 1900 BCE, and interestingly, the day labourer is paid at the highest rate, compared to the artisans, who all seem to make 5 gerahs a day. Here, we also see the rate of wages affected by the seasons, which was also a feature in medieval wage systems. Comparing the mesopotamian wage from over 700 years then, we see that it began at 2-3 litres of barley (~1 grain of silver) from 2400-2300 BCE, rising to 3 grains of silver from 2100-2000 BCE, and rising again to 5 gerahs (~40 grains of silver) from 1800-1700 BCE. This increase is concurrent of the level of economic activity, reflected in the exchange rate between copper and silver. Wages then seem to rise with development.

>>2833595
Thanks for the sourcebook. I used it to add to my post above. 🙂👍

Explanation for rate of profit falling?

>>2836826
Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF) holds that the general rate of profit, expressed as surplus value over total capital advanced (s / (c + v)), tends to decline over the long term as a consequence of the accumulation process itself. In their competitive drive to increase productivity and extract relative surplus value, capitalists continually revolutionize the means of production, substituting machinery and fixed capital for living labor. This raises the organic composition of capital, which is the ratio of constant capital (c) to variable capital (v). Since only living labor creates new value and surplus value, the mass of surplus value (s) can rise, but the total capital advanced grows still faster; the denominator expands disproportionately relative to the numerator, exerting a persistent downward pressure on the rate of profit. This is, however, a “law of a tendency” because a host of counteracting influences can temporarily offset, suspend, or even reverse the fall: a rising rate of exploitation (increasing s/v), the cheapening of the elements of constant capital, the expansion of the industrial reserve army that depresses wages, foreign trade that lowers the value of both means of production and means of subsistence, and the export of capital to regions with a lower organic composition. Yet these counter-tendencies are themselves contradictory and often only intensify the underlying dynamic, for example by further raising the organic composition on an expanded scale. The tendency thus manifests itself not as a smooth linear decline but through recurrent crises of overaccumulation, where surplus capital cannot find profitable outlets, resulting in the devaluation and destruction of capital, concentration and centralization of capitals, and a chronic pressure toward stagnation. In this way, the TRPF encapsulates the historical limit of capitalism: the very development of the productive forces, driven by the pursuit of profit, progressively undermines the profitability that sustains accumulation, revealing the system as a historically transitory form.

Now one point of controversy is the question "Wait, why can only living labor create new value? What about AI? What about machines? What about slaves? What about livestock?" For Marx, the claim that only living labor creates new value is not a technological or physical statement but a categorical one grounded in the specific social form of capitalist production. Value, in his analysis, is not a transhistorical substance (another point of controversy) like embodied energy or general usefulness; it is the abstract social labor that becomes objectified in commodities under conditions where "freely contracted" (coerced by poverty) wage-labor and generalized commodity exchange are the norm. Machines and AI, no matter how productive, merely transfer their own value as commodities piecemeal into the final product through wear and tear; they cannot add more value than they themselves embody because they are themselves products of past labor, dead labor, and the capitalist pays for them at their value … Wait. Does the capitalist always pay exactly the value of the machine, or only on average? The answer is only on average. In Marx’s framework, value is the center of gravity around which market prices fluctuate. Individual capitalists can and do swindle one another, buy below value, or be forced to pay above value due to monopolies, information asymmetries, or sheer luck. These isolated cases of unequal exchange redistribute existing value. The swindler gains what the loser loses. but they do not create new value. So while the statement “the capitalist pays for them at their value” is a necessary theoretical simplification for analyzing the system as a whole, it is not a claim that every transaction happens at the exact value. In the long run, competition tends to enforce exchange at value (or prices of production) on average, precisely because persistent deviations reward some capitals and punish others, triggering movements of capital that erode the discrepancy.

Slaves and livestock, while biologically "living," do not create new value in the strictly capitalist sense because their activity is not performed under the wage-form: the slave is owned as a commodity and does not "freely" sell labor-power as a commodity, so the surplus they produce appears directly as surplus product consumed by the master, not as surplus value mediated through a wage contract. Thus, when accumulation systematically replaces living wage-labor with dead constant capital, it simultaneously reduces the sole source of new value and surplus value relative to the total capital advanced, driving the organic composition of capital upward and exerting the downward tendency on the rate of profit, a dynamic that no machine, no matter how sophisticated, can counteract because it cannot perform the social function of value creation upon which capitalism’s profit rests.

Crucially, this averaging process does not undermine the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Whether a particular capitalist got a bargain on their machinery or not, the machine itself only possesses the value determined by the socially necessary labor-time required to produce it, and that is the maximum it can transfer to the product. Any extra profit from paying less than value is not a magical expansion of value out of the machine, but a captured slice of surplus value generated elsewhere. The systematic rise in the organic composition of capital is a process measured in value terms, where the mass of constant capital grows relative to variable capital. That dynamic holds regardless of the daily noise of market haggling. Even the counter-tendency of the cheapening of constant capital, which raises the rate of profit by lowering the value of machines, operates as a real reduction in the labor-time needed to produce them, not merely a run of lucky discounts.

There are other side-questions and controversies (like the question of whether value is transhistorical) but I think I covered the main ones which immediately orbit the TRPF question.

>>2836884
>Value, in his analysis, is not a transhistorical substance (another point of controversy) like embodied energy or general usefulness; it is the abstract social labor that becomes objectified in commodities under conditions where "freely contracted" (coerced by poverty) wage-labor and generalized commodity exchange are the norm

Now to address this in a separate post because it arises from the first question but is somewhat unrelated: Why is value not a transhistorical concept in Marx's analysis? Won't products of human labor always be commensurable for their socially necessary labor time even if wage labor and capitalism are abolished?

Marx draws a sharp line between labor-time as the immanent measure of the expenditure of human effort and value as the social form this labor assumes under capitalism.

In any mode of production, there is a limited total of social labor-time to be distributed among different productive activities. As Marx writes,

<"every child knows that any nation that stopped working, I will not say for a year, but for a few weeks, would perish."

All societies must allocate their available labor in some proportion to meet their needs. In this sense, the substance of all material wealth is nature plus labor, and the magnitude of any product can always be traced back to a certain amount of labor-time.

Value is not simply labor-time, but abstract labor that becomes objectified in commodities and takes the form of a social relation between things. This happens only when production is carried out by private, independent producers who connect socially not through a plan but through the exchange of their products. In such a society, the specific labor of the tailor and the weaver cannot be directly social; they are only recognized as part of society's total labor if their products are exchanged. The exchange reduces their qualitatively different labors to a common abstract substance (value in Marx's system) which appears quantitatively as exchange-value. Thus, value is "purely social," a phantom-like objectivity that arises uniquely under generalized commodity production in industrial society.

In a communist or socialist society, Marx envisions a situation where labor is directly social. Imagine a producers' association that consciously plans production. Labor-time spent on tailoring or weaving would be recognized as part of the total social labor a priori, not post festum through the market. The products would no longer need to be commodities confronting each other as values; they would simply be the planned output of social labor. As Marx writes in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, after the capitalist mode of production is abolished, the share of each producer is determined by their labor-time contribution, but this labor-time no longer appears as the value of a commodity; instead,

<"the individual labor-time of the individual producer is the portion of the communal working-day he contributes, his share in it."

>>2836884
Does each article of a commodity give less profit as time goes on?

>>2836884
>they cannot add more value than they themselves embody because they are themselves products of past labor, dead labor, and the capitalist pays for them at their value
This is also the case for workers, whose value is measured by the wage, which is a consumption fund for existing commodities (e.g. dead labour). Thus, the value of labour-power is an accumulation of dead labour. The same logic applies to slaves and animals, which also produce a surplus, the same as the machine and worker. The only difference is that the worker is paid a wage. Thus, the valueless slave is suddenly valuable as soon as you represent his consumption by money; this is the great delusion of "value" as a speculative entity:
<In slave labour, even that part of the working day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer. [Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Ch. XIX]
>In the long run, competition tends to enforce exchange at value (or prices of production) on average
You seem to be presuming conditions of perfect competition. We live in a controlled market dominated by monopolies, so prices are mostly manually set for profit margins; the "law of value" is not present today (this is also true for things like wage controls on labour):
<The exchangeable value therefore of a commodity which is at a monopoly price, is no where regulated by the cost of production. [Ricardo, Principles, Ch. XVII]
>the surplus [slaves] produce appears directly as surplus product consumed by the master […] the social function of value creation upon which capitalism’s profit rests.
Consumed? Slavery has been extremely profitable for capitalists, because of the surplus commodities slaves produce for sale. This is a transhistorical reality:
<Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cot-ton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance. […] Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations. Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World. [Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, Ch. II]
>>2836893
>Why is value not a transhistorical concept in Marx's analysis?
It is:
<The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. [Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Ch. I]
<In a word: the Marxian law of value holds generally, as far as economic laws are valid at all, for the whole period of simple commodity production – that is, up to the time when the latter suffers a modification through the appearance of the capitalist form of production […] Thus, the Marxian law of value has general economic validity for a period lasting from the beginning of exchange […] 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. [Engels, Capital Vol. 3, Supplement]
This is why money is 'the form of value':
<The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all [Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1867 Preface]
>Value is not simply labor-time, but abstract labor that becomes objectified in commodities
And commodities are a transhistorical phenomenon.
>the share of each producer is determined by their labor-time contribution, but this labor-time no longer appears as the value of a commodity
It's identical to the wage, but it's not a wage, because… Reasons. The realist cares about the content, while the mystified cares about the misrecognised form.

>>2837425
>And commodities are a transhistorical phenomenon.
Laughing, not only is this not true but you need it to be every time you contend with Marx.

A commodity is a historical phenomenon unique to bourgeois capitalist society due to its manners of circulation

>>2837425
> value is measured by the wage
Likewise value isn't measured by the wage but merely part of its phenomenal form involved in the production of surplus value

You have so brutally misunderstood Marx, please read Harvey's companion

>>2838303
>>2837425
You will inevitably counter quote with a section from volume 1, so I will qualify "manners of circulation" which you come close to understanding but ignore. Capital is a historical phenomenon, and always has been

>>2838317
Manner* holy shit fucking autocorrect

>>2836884
>Now one point of controversy
for there to be a controversy this has to be a point held by someone of note, or that has at least indicated they have the slightest idea what the fuck they are talking about

post dismissed

>>2838303
>not true
From the *first* chapter of Marx's Capital Vol. 1:
<The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
>>2838317
>Capital is a historical phenomenon
Is capital the same as commodity production?
>>2838304
>value isn't measured by the wage
The wage is the value of labour-power, yes?
The wage pays for commodities, yes?

>>2838695
Hilarious, your own quote:
>though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days.

>Is capital the same as commodity production
You've thoroughly misunderstood what capital is

Not responding to you further as you will just go in circles

>>2838698
You seem to have skipped over the first part:
<[commodity production] makes its appearance at an early date in history
But I understand; your pride is wounded.
>You've thoroughly misunderstood what capital is
Where do I misunderstand? You substitute the term "commodity" for "capital" and now you run away. I'm sure you won't reply again either, as a man of honour, so I suggest that instead of reading Harvey, you actually read Marx's own words. If that will be all, so mote it be.

Sigma trilionaire grindset.

>>2838718
benjamin norton quotes form some finance people suggesting NASDAQ and wall st rewrote the rules for the space X IPO. this could be a pump and dump.

>>2836826
long term, bourgeois societies are unable to replenish the labor pool it needs for consumption, exploitation, etc

>>2838725
>elon is trillionaire

if it's a pump and dump he will come out even richer in the end.

he has about $576.60 for every second he has been alive.

clearly he works harder in 1 second than the third worlders who live on 1 dollar a day mining cobalt work in an entire year…. right?

he earned every dollar by innovating (crashing rocket ships) creating jobs (causing problems) and taking on risk (gambling with subsidies) or something… all while zonked out on ketamine and seig-heiling at GOP conventions

>>2838499
are you trolling dude. anon was just trying to get out ahead of counter arguments that often spring up in this very thread

>>2838947
Don't forget his relentless tweeting.
>>2838725
We've had plenty of trillionaires before…

>>2836903
if the cost of their production decreases, yes. but there are contrary tendencies. for example a supply chain shortage

>>2838951
>We've had plenty of trillionaires before…
he's the world's first USD trillionaire. Some argue that Roman emperors may have been inflation-adjusted USD trillionaires but it's basically impossible to get accurate statistics on their net worth and accurate inflation statistics going that far back.

>>2833616
If notes on same platform, no search. If obsidian and no word, link between note. Note from 10 years ago, keyword matches, go back, reread, idea you could no get other way like this. Note over note link, accumulate, unsuspected links. Zotero connector, highlight text you can import. Easily import excerpts, keep unified linked library of knowledge. Example: I highlight blue with bibliography items I want to read later, I highlight in orange everything that has to do with concept of value, in green every paragraph I find especially inspiring, then keep an automated templated like this: imports blue highlighted text into a section of note titled "bibliography" organr and green in respective titled section. Automate lot of stuff this way.

>>2833616
Also:
Keep unified calendar task manager, word written counter. Lots of community made add-ons to do every stuff with words you can imagine.

Only problem: if you get obsessed with it, you can end up loosing more time on fixing your obsidian than actually using it. Keep it basic and fix as need arise, don't fix before need

>>2838948
>legitimizing smith anons delusional rambling
please dont

>>2838968
>if you get obsessed with it, you can end up loosing more time on fixing your obsidian than actually using it.
that's my usual problem
>>2839003
>>2836884 was not smith anon. that anon is explicitly arguing against points smith anon has made in the past and has a completely different writing style. it seems like you just a saw a long post and your eyes glazed over and you started frothing at the mouth.

>>2839003
furthermore, here is proof that >>2836884 is not smith anon
>>2837425 was smith anon replying with direct arguments against >>2836884 .

>>2836884 is not smith anon
>>2837425 is smith anon

>>2839030
>it seems like you just a saw a long post and your eyes glazed over and you started frothing at the mouth.
of course it did

>that anon is explicitly arguing against points smith anon
oh, so legitimizing smith anons delusional rambling? the frequency and volume of his incorrect opinions does not justify giving them attention

>>2839036
your goal is to fill the thread with 1 sentence posts like "I didn't read that" and to ramble about smith anon when he's not even the one you're responding to. like you aren't even here to be on topic but to wreck the thread. fuck off.

>>2839164
>implying the thread was ever not wrecked from the start
>implying this is a website for serious discussion
(You)

>>2839425
>the site sucks so I have to make it worse
you're like a person who drives from a rich neighborhood to a poor neighborhood just to litter

Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) and Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up (ROU) were both attempts by communist-party-led governments to use market mechanisms to strengthen socialist states. However, they differed significantly in scale, duration, goals, and outcomes.

The NEP was introduced in 1921 after the Russian Civil War and allowed peasants and small businesses to engage in limited private trade while the state kept control of major industries. Deng's reforms began in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution and also reduced economic controls, but they went much further by encouraging private enterprise, foreign investment, and participation in global markets. Both policies reflected a pragmatic belief that some market activity could help achieve socialist goals, but Lenin saw the NEP as a temporary measure to restore economic stability, whereas Deng's reforms became a long-term transformation of China's economy. The NEP helped the Soviet economy recover but was ended by Stalin in the late 1920s, while Deng's reforms continued and contributed to decades of rapid economic growth in China. In short, both policies used markets to revive socialist economies, but Deng's program was broader, more enduring, and far more integrated with the global economy.

However, just because Stalin ended the NEP, does not mean he ended foreign direct investment in the Soviet economy. Consider:

<"The modern factories that defeated the Germans in World War II had their origin in the many technical agreements signed with foreign firms […] By March 1930 the [USSR] had signed 104 contracts. Of the 104, 81 were with American or German companies […] Over 400 American engineers made the architectural drawings for the Magnitogorosk plant, the largest project in the First Five-Year Plan. […] In May 1930, McKee waws hired to supervise the construction as well. By 1931, 250 American engineers were working on the project […] McKee brought in engineers from General Electric to work on the huge electrical installation. New open-hearth furnaces were designed by the Freyn Company […] the American Morgan Engineering Company […] and the German Demag A-G.”

- Walter Dunn Jr., The Soviet Economy and the Red Army 1930-1945, 1995

Formally, Joseph Stalin ended the NEP by abolishing private agriculture, collectivizing the countryside, and imposing centralized planning through the Five-Year Plans. In that sense, the NEP clearly ended. The limited domestic market economy that Lenin had permitted was largely dismantled.

Stalin's industrialization drive was not based on complete economic isolation or pure autarky. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet Union purchased foreign technology, hired Western engineers, licensed industrial processes, and contracted with American and German firms to build factories and infrastructure. The massive industrial complexes that became the foundation of Soviet heavy industry were often designed or assisted by foreign experts. In that respect, Stalin's policies retained a form of Leninist pragmatism. Ideologically, the Soviet government condemned capitalism, but practically, it was willing to use capitalist expertise and technology when it served Soviet development. Ironically, what followed the NEP was in one waty closer to the ROU than what came before: Lenin's NEP allowed market activity within the Soviet economy, but Stalin's industrialization, even though it eliminated domestic market mechanisms, it still continued to draw on foreign capitalist resources from outside the Soviet economy. Foreign direct investment: An opening up.

Regarding the perennial bugbear of "commodity production" Stalin said:

<Certain comrades affirm that the Party acted wrongly in preserving commodity production after it had assumed power and nationalized the means of production in our country. They consider that the Party should have banished commodity production there and then. In this connection they cite Engels, who says: "With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer". These comrades are profoundly mistaken. Let us examine Engels' formula. Engels' formula cannot be considered fully clear and precise, because it does not indicate whether it is referring to the seizure by society of all or only part of the means of production, that is, whether all or only part of the means of production are converted into public property. Hence, this formula of Engels' may be understood either way. Elsewhere in Anti-Duhring Engels speaks of mastering "all the means of production," of taking possession of "all means of production." Hence, in this formula Engels has in mind the nationalization not of part, but of all the means of production, that is, the conversion into public property of the means of production not only of industry, but also of agriculture. It follows from this that Engels has in mind countries where capitalism and the concentration of production have advanced far enough both in industry and in agriculture to permit the expropriation of all the means of production in the country and their conversion into public property. Engels, consequently, considers that in such countries, parallel with the socialization of all the means of production, commodity production should be put an end to. And that, of course, is correct. There was only one such country at the close of the last century, when Anti-Duhring was published - Britain. There the development of capitalism and the concentration of production both in industry and in agriculture had reached such a point that it would have been possible, in the event of the assumption of power by the proletariat, to convert all the country's means of production into public property and to put an end to commodity production.

- Stalin, Economic Problems of the USSR, 1951

Also:

<In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people, capable of nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organizing talent, which I do not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a great deal from the capitalists.

- Stalin, Marxism Versus Liberalism, An Interview With H.G. Wells, 1934

So it may be more accurate to say that Stalin ended the NEP's economic structure but preserved a certain pragmatic willingness to use capitalist tools for socialist ends. In that limited sense, one can argue that the NEP survived "in spirit," though not in its actual institutions or policies. Many historians would also note that this pragmatic borrowing from the capitalist world resembles one of the features later associated with Deng Xiaoping's reforms.

China remains socialist because the state retains control over the commanding heights of the economy and because political power remains in the hands of the Communist Party. In this view, markets are tools, not the defining feature. The CPSU meanwhile, dissolved itself and caved to a neoliberal counter revolution. Critics say the CPC may as well have dissolved because they have betrayed socialism. They point to billionaires, stock markets, and trade with Israel. What are your thoughts?

>>2842600
>In short, both policies used markets to revive socialist economies
Almost as if the desire to abolish markets is in itself irrational.
>Lenin's NEP allowed market activity within the Soviet economy, but Stalin's industrialization, even though it eliminated domestic market mechanisms, it still continued to draw on foreign capitalist resources from outside the Soviet economy.
We can read the primary statistics from USSR (1929), which detailed the imports and exports of the country:
<The principal countries taking Soviet exports are England (26 per cent), Germany (22 per cent), Latvia (7.5 per cent), France (1 per cent), Persia (5.6 per cent) […] The principal Soviet exports are grain products, oil products, furs, timber, dairy products, manganese ore, oil cake and flax and tow […] The principal Soviet imports are cotton, industrial machinery, non-ferrous metals, leather, wool, tea, paper and cardboard, woolen yarn and agricultural machinery. Imports of cotton, machinery and metals play a larger comparative role in the general import scheme than they did before the war, and imports of consumption goods have fallen off.
https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch12.htm
So, the USSR imported from the world market and exported to it as well, in the typical state-capitalist style.
>China remains socialist because the state retains control over the commanding heights of the economy and because political power remains in the hands of the Communist Party. In this view, markets are tools, not the defining feature
Doesn't this justify the statement that "socialism is when the government does stuff"? China itself attempts to say that you can have billionaires in socialism so long as capital is subordinated to politics - here, so long as the government is "sovereign" there is socialism, but what of fascism? If the nation is put ahead of capital, is this also socialism? The positive theory of socialism is undeveloped, because it has no precedence. Marx already identifies the various socialisms of his day and combats each of them, so "socialism" isn't enough:
<Reactionary Socialism […] Feudal Socialism […] Christian Socialism […] Petty-Bourgeois Socialism […] German or “True” Socialism […] Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism […] Critical-Utopian Socialism…
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm
<when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto […] in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm

>>2842902
the workers movement is stuck in a phase of apophatic theology. it can only say what is wrong. it cannot say what is right.

>>2842916
Well, the worker's movement is not the same as socialism or communism, as Lenin informs us (1902):
<The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[2] The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
Trade union consciousness develops in positivity to its reactionary object, as I argue, concerning the particularism of labour, which eventually becomes Fascist (I take this both from Kevin Passmore and Moishe Postone). The early Marx holds to the negativity of the proletariat in its international coalition (1848), yet later on, sees the internal contradiction where it concerns immigration (1870), in that the competition for wages incentivises hostilities. This is identified by Engels as early as 1845 with Irish immigrants in England. Marx holds to the position that this is irresolvable except by Irish independence and a cultivation of its own labour force, and as he writes most radically, the "English working class will never accomplish anything" until it has overcome the Irish question (1869). Thus, we see an earlier optimism in Marx broken up by the counter-revolution of proletarian nationalism. The term "national socialism" later emerges in 1898, following the Aigues-Mortes Massacre (1893), where French workers killed Italian immigrants. This has former precedence in the peasant revolt of 1381, where English guildsmen murdered Flemish guildsmen in London - thus, "trade union consciousness" leads to this sort of reaction, as a direct interest for the protection of labour. The worker's movement then has no broader project than this, which is why theories of socialism cannot regard the proletariat as their revolutionary subject. Indeed, even Marx's communism is supposed to be an abolition of the proletariat, but the proletariat cannot abolish itself.

>>2842941
> even Marx's communism is supposed to be an abolition of the proletariat, but the proletariat cannot abolish itself.
why do you think that is, and who is supposed to do it, if not them?

>>2843037
>why do you think that is
I think the working class is a particular category, not a universal category, so its political interests are exclusive. Within the categories of political economy, we also see the fine difference between "productive" and "unproductive" labourers, the employed and unemployed, the wage worker and slave, etc.
>who is supposed to do it, if not them?
Enlightened intellectuals. All revolutionary movements are driven by intellectuals, even the Peasant revolt, which was led by John Ball and Wat Tyler, who were not themselves peasants. None of the leaders of the Bolshevik leaders were proletarian, etc. Caesar was a patrician, not a plebeian. The certain difference between theory and practice makes itself manifest, the same way Plato distinguishes the head and the legs of the body politic by divisions of labour.

>>2843096
>Enlightened intellectuals.
the pen is not actually mightier than the sword

>>2843108
I disagree.

>>2843096
>Enlightened intellectuals. All revolutionary movements are driven by intellectuals
what is an intellectual? in 550 BCE thales first defined an intellectual as a house husband who listens to mozart on 2x speed in one ear and the bible in chinese in the other ear while doing the dishes for his absent wife

Responding to this video by Neema Parvini on cost (you may know Parvini for previously failing to know Marx's theory of value, despite claiming to be an expert, leading to a complete tantrum against Jack Angstreich):

• The primary claim that the classical LTV "imbues" products with a "magical" value is total ignorance; labour is factored as a production cost according to the computation of real wages. This is why a bee which builds a hive imparts no intrinsic value onto its product.
  
• The revelation that "value is subjective" is not unique to any school of economics, but is implicit to all of them. To overstate this common sense infers a humiliating illiteracy where it concerns distinguishing Austrian and Classical notions of value. Ricardo writes this on the first page of the first chapter of his major work (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.htm
Thus, has Mr. Parvini even read the authors which he assumes to repudiate? It seems to me that Austrian thinkers are most cultish, even moreso than Marxists.

• The declaration that "tin was once more valuable than gold" firstly needs historical citation, but also, Parvini claims that tin was more scarce (already quantifying a cause for the relative valuation), yet concludes that it is the use-value which determines relative value (despite, as we read in Aristotle, that although gold was less useful than iron, gold was still more valuable on account of its scarcity - the total utility of a thing is inverse to its marginal utility; this once again is basic economics, which Parvini irresponsibly overlooks - the utility of water has always been greater than diamonds, so why are diamonds more expensive than water? That is the question Smith asks in Wealth of Nations, Bk. 1, Ch. 4). To clarify, Menger does not make the arguments that Neema makes, Neema is simply improvising nonsense. The actual Austrian argument is congruent with Cost of Production theories of value in the macro, since all of these economists are drawing from the same data.
  
• Psychological phenomena as to 'why' one buys either commodity (A) or (B) is irrelevant and trivial to the actual exchange itself, so should have no concern in the domain of "economic" research beyond marketing.
  
• The idea that "there is no objective cost" disregards the fact that production itself is a chain of valuations. The result of this process is the objective product. Denying the causation of production is a strange hill to die on. Neema claims that exchange is "pure supply and pure demand", but supply is limited by cost; that is the basic physics of the point. Is "supply" also "subjective"? Neema continues, stating that "price is a result of exchange, not cost", but once more, production costs are accounted for by its various exchanges. This is why cost is framed as a cumulative price of production.
  
• Neema claims that prices rise due to consumer demand, but this is caused by increasing marginal utility, based in the supply of goods, based in costs; t. Jevons:
  

<Cost of production determines supply. Supply determines final degree of utility. Final degree of utility determines value.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-theory-of-political-economy#lf0237_head_054

• Neema once more invokes supply of coffee as a cause for its resultant rate of demand, displaying contradiction in his notion of valuation. If supply affects demand, then demand is caused by supply, making supply primary - thus, costs irresistably slip back into the framework. Parvini denies costs as a cause of value, yet constantly appeals to it unknowingly. The fact of its unintentional repetition displays the evidence better than I can.
  
• Finally, Parvini claims that interrupting price signals by regulating prices leads to socialism and poverty. Of course, there is no comment here upon the price fixing by private monopolies to increase marginal profits. Why is price fixing for private gain a non-issue to Parvini but price fixing for public gain an apocalyptic blunder?

H.H. Gossen is often considered the father of Marginal Utility Theory; at least as early as Jevons' Second Preface to Theory of Political Economy (1879). Gossen's major work was his "Entwickelung" (1854) which in its time was poorly-received, but has since been celebrated. Gossen himself in his preface declares the Copernican Revolution which he has established in economic theory. Unfortunately, Gossen died shortly after in 1858, mostly forgotten until later on.

Gossen's book is sorted between four parts:

• Part I: The Isolated Individual (Chapters I-VI)
  
• Part II: The Exchange Economy (Chapters VII-XIII)
  
• Part III: The Individual and Society (Chapters XIV-XVIII)
  
• Part IV: Social Reform (Chapters XIX-XXV)
  
  

Gossen's primary belief appears as deist, whereby the "laws of human enjoyment (pleasure)" are realised by the "Religion of the Creator", summed up here (Ch. XXV):
<"He made egoism the sole and irresistible force by which humanity may progress in the arts and science for both its material and intellectual welfare."
Part of the purpose of his polemic is to replace the need for socialism, since he sees what is common to economic justice is the renumeration of the social product to the labour expended on producing it; thus, it is by proportion of utility (commodity) to disutility (labour) which is most fair. He sees that in the current system, this does not occur, so seeks various reforms, including the nationalisation of land, for the sake that the rent is shared as a fund for social development rather than private extraction, as he formulates in Chapter X, that where rents are given, the value of labour is depleted, and so rents should be subjected against capital instead, for the benefit of labour (Ch. XXIII). Gossen favours a system of free exchange, but within the structure of reason, in state and citizen. Henceforth, I will provide summaries of the chapters of the book.

Chapter I:

• Value is understood as "pleasure" alone, which is subject to the laws of diminishing marginal utility, and so with added constant consumption, value decreases (e.g. increased supply lowers demand). Variable consumption prolongs the duration of pleasure, however, by an augmentation of value. The strategy of pleasure therefore concerns the efficient consumption of various resources, rather than of constant resources.
  
  

Chapter II:

• Life activity is generalised as "labour", and labour is presumed to accord to its object of pleasure. The activity thus renders an appreciating return to begin with, until the threshold of diminishing marginal returns. Labour is calculated as a unit of "disutility", and utility is reckoned to find equivalence to it for the sake of pleasure (this is also the marginal theory of wages proposed by Jevons, and for which reason, proves the exploitation of labour by the extension of the working day, such that wages are higher for lesser working days).
  
  

Chapter III:

• Gossen criticises the notion of "absolute value", and rather sees the relativity of value based in quantity of commodity supplied. For the same reason, he criticises the miser (hoarder) as "irrational" for the sake that money, like all other goods, should decline in value with each addition to its supply, which as Gossen claims, is an exception which proves the rule (a primary criticism of capital, e.g. making money from money ad infinitum).
  
  

Chapters IV-VI:

• Gossen relates the strategies of life pleasure according to a ratio between utility and disutility (consumption and production, in crude terms), where the aim of life is to create a positive balance. He also introduces a notion of time-preference in accounting for prospective reward via investment (this is especially relevant to Chapter VII, where greater skills are rewarded with greater pleasure).
  
  

Chapter VII:

• The Chapter opens with Axiom 7.1: (i) increase the number of pleasures as much as possible, (ii) increase skill and strength as much as possible, (iii) reduce one's labour as much as possible and (iv) be most efficient in applying skill and strength to achieving satiation. All of this is self-evidently sound, that the true object of utility is a positive balance between leisure and work.
  
• By the laws of diminishing marginal utility, the act of exchange is a relationship of pure gain, whereby (A) and (B) trade a surplus of good which they do not desire, for one which they do. Without exchange, surplus is waste, but with exchange, surplus turns from liability to asset, and so doubles the value of each commodity by the act. Exchange then, is a multiplier of value, based upon the more primary division of labour which facilitates it. An ideal distribution in exchange is one where products are shared most evenly, but even imperfect competition in trade yields benefits to both the buyer and seller.
  
• Gossen bases the measure of value in labour (with price acting indirectly of real value), as a standard of disutility which is met with a corresponding product returned for it. Gossen thus ascribes to the classical macroeconomics of accounting for labour as value. Accordingly, labour is renumerated from production by the amount of pleasure which its commodities provide, making skill (e.g. demand) the standard of wages. Unskilled labour therefore naturally receives a lesser reward than skilled labour, which Gossen sees as a natural disparity between ambitions for life pleasure (Jevons does the same where he says that some people prefer lower incomes because their desire is less. The Austrians are more critical upon this point by seeing how these cheap desires are short-term, not long-term, which reckons with economic justice more completely).
  
• Supply and demand lower the price of goods indefinitely, due to the desire to sell the total stock, benefitting consumers but ruining the producers.
  
• In a system which accords to the Laws of Pleasure, there is perfect economic justice, which rewards labour in proportion to its social contribution, bypassing the need for socialism. Gossen frames this system in terms of a free market, but does not glorify capitalism, and as we see proceeding henceforth, he critiques capital.
  
  

Chapters VIII-XIII:

• These chapters are quite short of content and mainly concern rent. Rent to Gossen is described as one-sided gain, where every positive pleasure on private land is subtracted by the landlord, leaving the tenant or producer without any gain of pleasure, and the landlord receiving the total product in return. Here, the laws of exchange do not follow from the sale of commodities. Axiom 12.1 relates the conclusive results that as rent decreases, these elements increase: (i) life pleasure, (ii) income, (iii) production yields. Thus, rents are the enemy of all of the essential economic categories. This is why later on (Chapter XXIII), Gossen advocates for the public ownership of land, so rents serve the ends of pleasure.
  
  

Chapters XIV-XVI:

• Axiom 14.1 confers that the measure of one is the meaeure of all in their various potentials: (i) increasing the absolute magnitude of pleasures (e.g. commodity), (ii) increasing the capacity for work, (iii) increasing life expectancy and (iv) increasing law and order.
  
• In chapter XVI, we see Gossen take a strong stand against deceit in trade, which he treats later as a legal matter (Aquinas similarly deals with this problem).
  
• Following Axiom 16.1 Gossen reveals an authoritarian streak in his writings, where the educated reserve a right to "discipline" the uneducated in the ways of custom and tradition which best serve the ends of pleasure. This right of "supervision" includes physical discipline. Gossen also sees that it is best to exercise both the body and mind continuously throughout life, and so the path of society should be indefinite self-improvement.
  
  

Chapter XVII:

• Commodities are assorted into (i) necessities, (ii) consumables and (iii) luxuries according to income distribution. Luxuries in Axiom 17.2 are also described as having an expense limited to the short duration of pleasure, making the marginal utility high, but total utility small.
  
• Chapter XVII ends with this passage, which appears to found the principle of cooperation upon general equality:
  

<humanity as a whole will render a maximum of work when it has succeeded in providing every individual with a position yielding him the average income of people in his class and when, moreover, each individual participates to the same extent in the work of all mankind as he partakes in the consumption of means of enjoyment produced by labor, a result that obviously leaves nothing to be desired.

Chapter XVIII:

• Chapter XVIII concerns the formal critique of existing social institutions, including markets and money. He immediately disputes that money directly represents value, but rather sees that money measures the labour required to produce commodities. Here, Gossen does not dispute the validity of the exchange-value of goods, but rather sees that equivalence in exchange is not the same as equivalent value as such. He then speaks contrarily upon this point, by relating value and price as the difference between demand and supply. In any case, Gossen sees value as the balance of supply and demand, with money obscuring this in the price system - so value to Gossen does seem to be value in exchange, accounted for by equal quantities of labour between produced commodities, the same as Jevons' view.
  
• Gossen sees that since money gives a claim to the labour of mankind, individual pleasure increases with income (apparently justifying policies of redistribution)
  
• Gossen diagnoses the cause of unemployment as given from overproduction, or the undervaluation of total commodity stock. Gossen suggests that until the time that human populations exist in perfect equilibrium, society should provide immediate assistance to the unemployed to give them re-employment in new sectors.
  
• Gossen repeats that equitable renumeration for labour must be measured according to these 3 aspects: (i) skill, (ii) intensity and (iii) displeasure. He appears to presume that overemployment lowers wages because each branch decreases individual output, and so the adjustment of labour into balanced sectors will raise wages, but at the expense of increased displeasure. This has the same issue as rent, of equalising gain with loss, rather than allowing a surplus (this is achieved in the classical vision by the disparity between value in use and value in exchange; as commodities become cheaper, total consumption may increase - Marx on this issue sees use-value both as a quality unto itself, but also a quantity of concrete labour, to justify his later claim that only labour-power possesses a surplus utility).
  
• We read in Gossen, Von Thünen's law of final utility (1826), which is also in The Book of Matthew (20:1-14):
  

<The agriculturalist attempts to produce an output on his land allowing the last [increment of] labor applied to it to receive its proportionate reward.

• Gossen criticises the system of protections for capital and labour and assigns the government with a single purpose, which is to allocate labour to its most efficient end so as to reduce the labour time required for production. Gossen is unclear as to whether or not this implies a reduction in the working day as such, but as seen, Gossen's aim is to increase real income in the general population as much as possible.
  
• Gossen views direct exchange (such as barter) as ideal, since it is the trade of value for value, while with money, he perceives a lack of value in the medium, and so he seeks that exchange should limit mediation as much as possible.
  
• Gossen sees that in his time, the quality of the "proletariat" is steadily declining, leading to the vanity of welfare programs which help less and less, but Gossen is largely unsympathetic, citing claims of increased general consumption, and therefore, an increase in the total life pleasure of mankind. Gossen sees that market competition is the ruin of many protected classes, and so no one is particularly discriminated. Gossen sees that welfare is a tax on the collective, and so the value one receives from it is disproportionate and unfair - also claiming that the anticipation of welfare leads to bad spending by workers, and so is an irrational system. Gossen's ultimate advice then is for workers to save and spend their money in more rational ways.
  
• Gossen criticises child labour as stunting the development of human beings into a fixed type.
  
• Gossen criticises "capital wealth" (rents and profits) as subtracting from the potential pleasure of mankind, stating that pleasure could increase without profits:
  

<Thus the percapita output of each good would increase accordingly, and the total life pleasure of each individual would increase on two counts in spite of the decrease in the so-called capital wealth to zero […] reduction of the purchase price of already existing rents represents a loss for the owner; however, it represents a much greater gain for the community as a whole.

• After this, Gossen discusses the rate of interest, which can be generally referred to the Mercantilist and Classical controversies concerning the legal rate and the natural rate of interest deviating from each other.

Moving into the final part of the work (XIX-XXV), we find Gossen's most practical solutions against barriers to the perfection of natural law applied to economic reality.

Chapter XIX:

• Gossen claims that in light of the perfect creation of Nature, the removal of obsctacles from society toward Natural Law (e.g. the laws of pleasure) will provide Heaven on Earth. His first decree is that man is born without knowledge or skill, so must be educated both in body and mind to achieve self-actualisation, which chiefly concerns an intuition of all natural forces. A complete education spans all subjects. From the age of 15, he further suggests physical education at gymnasia. He will be inducted into the true Religion of the Creator (e.g. Egoism) and will learn to appreciate custom.
  
• Following from this, he will enter employment, where Gossen imagines a true meritocracy, where income is measured by genuine talents and contributions.
  
• Gossen also promotes egalitarianism and abolitionism
  
  

Chapter XX:

• This chapter concerns monetary reform, wherein Gossen again sees only an indirect value in money, and real value in the things which money exchanges for. Money itself to Gossen should retain as stable a value as possible for consistency in exchange rates, and so supposes that all paper money should be abolished and replaced with silver and gold - although, at the same time, he suggests a fiat policy of valuing coin at face value (with an implicit trust in the validity of its value). Gossen also sees that circulation via the velocity of money should increase as much as possible.
  
  

Chapter XXI:

• Gossen makes the claim that the welfare of nations advance to the extent that private property is protected, yet if his complaint about the Communists is their desire to abolish private property, he should take note of the extent to which capitalism is accomplishing this task for them. Thus, the critique of Communism must at once be a critique of capitalism (Gossen nowhere defends 'capitalism' as such, but consistency in regard to the essence of anticommunism must be intuited).
  
• Labour is referred to as "value-creating activity".
  
• Gossen criticises all manner of subsidies, countering it with a Darwinist view of free economic justifications:
  

<All that exists must create by itself the means for its continued existence; otherwise it does not deserve to prevail. By the same token, the church, the arts, and science deserve to exist only when the accomplishments of their personnel are paid for in free economic relations at the level that brings to them their customary life pleasure without any subsidy by a legal person. […] It is not only the subsidies given by the government directly or indirectly to the church, the arts, and science that are deleterious for the well-being of society as a whole. As we have already noticed, the same holds true for subsidies coming out of endowments for the poor. These, too, should be abolished. […] The solution here is to give the sums not in the form of a subsidy but, rather, as a loan.

• Gossen finally sees that it should be illegal to sell a commodity with false or incomplete information, under the terms of "deceit".
  
  

Chapter XXII:

• Gossen suggests establishing a cooperative of creditors for the sake of publicly financing production.
  
  

Chapter XXIII:

• Here, Gossen establishes his plan to nationalise all land and only to lease it out to certain producers who will be willing to pay a rent which will be returned to the entire community, acting as a tax on profits. The purchase of land by the government is supposed to be voluntary, from whence afterwards, rents are imposed.
  
  

Chapter XXIV-XXV:

• This chapter summarises the proposed reforms: (i) The universality of cash payment, (ii) cooperative credit to allow the flow of cash much easier, (iii) state-owned land, (iv) loans replacing dole payments. From these, Gossen presumes a perfect system of meritocracy:
  

<As a necessary consequence, all of humanity will be engaged in a type of noble competition for the prize of the most enjoyable positions in life. […] every position will fall to the individual who is relatively best qualified for it; hence each person will have only himself to blame if he is pushed to a lower position in this competition. […] each individual will be rewarded according to the services that he has provided for mankind. And thus we discover that law, which determines the maximum of life pleasure for all mankind, is carried to the point where this maximum now also agrees with the varying services performed by individuals for the welfare of all. […] there is nothing further wanting in the world to make it a perfect paradise. […] [The Creator] made egoism the sole and irresistible force by which humanity may progress in the arts and science for both its material and intellectual welfare.
This is the conclusion of the work and its final message.

>>2843116
>revelation 19;15.jpeg

>15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

not the best verse to use to say the pen is mightier than the sword

>>2845924
The image of Rev 19:15 is the spoken word being the greatest weapon; the sword is symbolic of its power. It is also in reference to the earlier statement by Jesus in the gospels (Matt 10:34-36), that by his word, he brings strife between inwardly-divided wholes (such that a house divided may not stand). The dis-integration of wholes in this sense I would describe as "totalitarian" in the way that where the oikos is politicised, it divides the demos (for such discourses upon this primary contradiction, we may read Sophocles' Antigone, 440 BCE). Indeed, we see that an "iron rod" is brought against the nations by the means of the tongue.

On cursory theology concerning words, we see that in the basic translation, John 1 renders Logos as Word becoming Flesh, and in such a way that nothing is made without it. This links to Genesis 1, in how God creates by the power of his speech. Further, we see simulation in how Man is made in the "image of God", and we also see the ultimate sin in Revelation as life being given to the "image of the Beast" (Rev 13:15). Idols are called false gods in the Bible, because they are without life, yet we see how the living idol of the beast is animated (e.g. ensouled) and so is an authentic reproduction of God's power. Man is said to be made of clay and given the breath of life, and so man is the first "automaton" (e.g. such as the living instruments of Hephaestus). Words and images are then able to animate themselves. Marx later picks this up in a gothic way, seeing how man's objectification into the machine imbues the object with subjectivity and subordinates the subject as an object. Of course, animalia is itself simply electrified flesh.

On the essence of words, I would generally refer to the earliest kabbalistic literature (Plato's Cratylus) in which the nature of words and terms are discussed, with the conclusion of an original, divine language (which is a discourse continued into modernity, between John Dee's "Enochian", or PIE/Aryan, and which for their originality are claimed to possess the greatest purity of meaning). Some theorists claim that language can reflect the development of consciousness, from an original pictorial format (e.g. hieroglyphs) to alphabetic scripts, and so the division of encoded meaning to decoded meaning. When Plato discusses etymology, we notice how encoded terms are, such that one root word can mean multiple things, however we interpret them.

In terms of knowledge, Plato sees that thinking and speaking are inverse phenomena, and so thinking can seemingly not exist without words in which to speak. An early kabbalistic text, Sefer Yetzirah (500 CE), sees creation being both mental and linguistic, with the "three mothers": (א), (מ), (ש) being the foundation of existence. In esoteric terms, I refer to the Enuma Elish (1100 BCE):
<When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name […] When of the gods none had been called into being, And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained
https://sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
We see that before creation (order) there were no names, and no beings. Thus, we discover the esoteric meaning of names, as forms of things (e.g. a thing ids a thing by means of its distinction from other things, and so all things must have different names, whilst the nameless is unknowable, and so without being as such). This is why the highest principle has no name (道):
<The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html
We see the mystery of God's "name" in the Bible (יהוה):
<And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%203%3A14&version=KJV
Here, God has no name, but only a declaration, yet later in Revelation, we see mention of the mysterious name:
<His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2019&version=KJV
Here, Christ has a name that no man knows, and this name is the Word of God. This secret power reminds me of the Egyptian Legend of Isis and Ra (1200 BCE):
<Then the Majesty of Ra cried out and said, "Let Isis come with me, and let my Name pass from my breast to her breast." And he hid himself from the gods that followed in his train. […] Thus was the Name of Ra taken from him and given to Isis, and she, the great Enchantress, cried aloud the Word of Power, and the poison obeyed, and Ra was healed by the might of his Name.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/74354/74354-h/74354-h.htm
Thus, power is granted by the secret name of Ra, and for which, its possessor has the powers of the universe. This was major in modern occultism concerning the Tetragrammaton (יהוה), which became a symbol of all four-fold things (also called the ROTA in Tarot). Of course, we see that in the realm of knowledge (ἐπιστήμη), the mind is ruled by words, and it is words which grants man powers over nature thereof. Now, I will tell you what convinced me of kabbalistic realism…

Imagine a book which contained the answers to all questions of the universe, but it is encoded within a language which no one can read - does this inaccessibility to knowledge made the encoded knowledge invalid, or does it simply require translation? Now, imagine that the book is a metaphor of the mind, and suddenly we see that infinity rests within the modes of symbols, which express being by their decoding. For example, an alphabet represents an infinity of encoded cyphers, where letters are arranged to create meaning; truth then rests in the sequence of decoded meaning which was inherent in the alphabet itself. So, if I sent back a science book in Latin, I "unlock" knowledge which was always immanent to Roman culture, because the mind possesses infinite knowledge in an encoded format; decoding is the process of translating the mind into meaning. So then, access to being is simply an arrangement of Prima Materia, and All is within All. So, that is my brief theology of words and names, and an explanation of why the pen is mightier than the sword (because all things are written in ink). 🙂👍

I just encountered someone that said park chung hee economic policies and overall cold war dirigsme was economic liberalism.
how idiotic is this take?

>>2846575
depends on what they mean and what you mean by liberalism

>>2847496
alright
the context of this discussion happened in the neoliberal subreddit. And the guy who I was talking too had a nato tag.
So I used the liberal definition in the way neoliberals and classical economic liberals viewed it and I assumed he did the same

The issue is if we use this definition, saying the cold war dirigsme states were liberal is still profoundly wrong. The founder of modern economic liberalism (adam smith) attacked the mercantalist states. (which had simmilar economic policies that the dirigsme states had). Subsequent economic liberals after smith still advocated for the "free" market, where the private sector is the dominate leader and engine of the economy. Even liberals like keynes, still believed in the dominant leader role of the private sector.

The dirigsme states were not like this at all. Sure some of them still had dominately private economies but overall these economies functioned differently than what the liberals advocated. Using park chung hee as a example, the entire banking system was nationalized and the overall financial system was also controlled and domianted by the state. As a result the state had lots of control of the nations capital

This situation resulting in a economy where the economy was not shaped by the private sector following market mechanisms. Instead it lead to a economy where the state directly controlled where the market went. For example, instead of the domestic market "naturally" leading to sectors of the economy to be seen as a good investment. Its instead the state designating certain specific sectors as important and then sending pretty much a large majority of the nations capital towards that. (through the control of the banks)

I dont recall any economic liberal that advocated for something like this. Even keynes who argued for socalization of investment was thinking more so of a central bank. And then the central bank using macro economic tools to increase the overall investment in the economy. Not the state targeting specific economic sectors and then directly sending a large majority of the nations capital to those economic sectors

>>2847513
>the neoliberal subreddit
literally a think tank product btw

>>2847537
oh that explains so much

>>2847513
>The issue is if we use this definition, saying the cold war dirigsme states were liberal is still profoundly wrong. The founder of modern economic liberalism (adam smith) attacked the mercantalist states. (which had simmilar economic policies that the dirigsme states had).

Yeah, that makes sense.

>>2847547
deng… I kneel

>>2847513
>Even keynes who argued for socalization of investment was thinking more so of a central bank. And then the central bank using macro economic tools to increase the overall investment in the economy. Not the state targeting specific economic sectors and then directly sending a large majority of the nations capital to those economic sectors
That is literally what Keynes suggested - government control over the financial sector and targeted public investment into other economic sectors. The neoliberals have attempted to revise Keynes into some quasi-laissez-faire libtard and unfortunately Marxists like to play along with it in order so that they can dismiss Keynes. Keynes even supported controls on international trade he was a protectionist through and through.

>>2847554
can you give me particular quotes or sources where he advocates for strong gov control of the overall financial sector. And then using that control to send the majority of the nations capital towards key sectors of the economy.
From what I know of keynes, I thought he only advocated for increasing overall investment through macro economic controls (central bank) or work programs.

>>2822318
>>2822516
shipping is basically free. a container ship that can carry 1,000 TEU which translates into a cargo tonnage of ~10-15,000 tons and can have an operating cost as low as $5,000 a day. that's assuming a small ship and the lower end of operating costs, which should balance out. (in all likelihood we're dealing with a bigger ship and higher costs, but carrying capacity increasing faster than costs and thus, a lower cost per ton.)

anyway: it takes 35 days to get from argentina to thailand by ship and a ton of pears is ~5,000 pears.
operating cost of the ship: 175000 (35*5,000)
operating cost / 10,000 tons of pears: 0.0035 cents per pear.

now obviously the shipping company has to make a profit, but you can double the cost factor and still wind up with less than 1c per pear going to shipping costs.
now, it's possible they're using airfreight instead of going by sea, but i'll spare you re-doing the calculation: air-freight is usually $5,000 per ton so you wind up at about 1c per pear, more expensive but still negligible.

if wages are higher in argentina (they are) and other costs (taxes, regulatory burdens, etc) are higher (which seems plausible given thailand is a rising economy and argentina is a notoriously dysfunctional one) it almost certainly makes economic sense to ship the pears to benefit from the lower costs and barriers in thailand rather than having to sell at a higher price using argentine labour to pack them. the decision to ship is the result of rational actors working around an irrational economy in a desirable growing zone.
mostly i just wanted to illustrate how amazingly cheap shipping things is.

I have discovered a wonderful, though overstated, piece of pedantry and controversy, "The Myth of Simple Commodity Production", by Christopher J. Arthur (2005):
https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/chris-arthur/article2.htm
In this article, Christopher investigates the seeming revision of Marx's writing by Engels to prove a "logical-historical" development of his theory of value, from an original "simple commodity exchange" to "generalised commodity exchange", which thence has been repeated by many - the origin of such an intervention is traced to the preface and supplement of Capital Vol. 3 (1894), continuous of correspondence with Schmidt (1895). The consequent spokemen of this revision are Lange, Meek, Sweezy, Mandel and Fine (until his correction in 2003). I have also found this orthodoxy written in the official USSR handbook of Political Economy (1957). I find this fascinating, because to me, Engels is also the inventor of "dialectical materialism", not Marx. Marx did not view nature as a theoretical entity, but only human society. Marx respected the common science of his day, while Engels seemed to struggle to theorise nature, such as his writings on modern science, which Marx scarcely had pretensions toward. I find affinity in Arthur's work, since it focuses on primary sources. His ultimate conclusion is also resonant of the facts:
<Marx was not himself clear about the issues
https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/chris-arthur/article2.htm
This is a massive understatement, with Marx's later life being an editorial disaster, disabling him to sufficiently publish the later volumes of the Critique, because he was always going back to fix the first. Marx's economic manuscripts span from 1857-65, and he died in 1883, so had 18 years to edit and publish them, but was unable to. Engels himself laboured for over a decade after his death to put out Volume 2 (1885) and Volume 3 (1894), so Marx could never offer his final word on anything.

Now, unless Christopher's dispute is that pre-capitalist commodity production didn't exist, he may be justified, but no ultimate comment is made, besides that the commodities in the first part of Capital Vol. 1 (Chapters 1-3) refer to capitalist commodities. I would contend against this, as we see that Marx indeed accepted the "presupposition" of pre-capitalist commodities (1864):
<The production and circulation of commodities, however, do not conversely presuppose the capitalist mode of production for their existence; on the contrary, as I have already demonstrated, they also “exist in pre-bourgeois social formations”. They are the historical presupposition of the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, however, it is only on the basis of capitalist production that the commodity becomes the general form of the product, that every product must take on the commodity form, that sale and purchase seize control not only of the surplus of production but of its very substance, and that the various conditions of production themselves emerge in their totality as commodities which go into the production process from circulation. Hence if the commodity appears on the one hand as the presupposition for the formation of capital, the commodity also appears, on the other hand, as essentially the product and result of the capitalist production process, in so far as it is the universal elementary form of the product. At earlier stages of production, products assume the commodity form in part. Capital, in contrast, necessarily produces its product as a commodity. […] Here, it is apparent how even economic categories which belong to earlier epochs of production take on a specifically different, historical, character on the basis of the capitalist mode of production. […] Commodity production necessarily leads to capitalist production […] From the moment at which labour power itself in general becomes a commodity. […] Capitalist production annihilates the [original] basis of commodity production, isolated, independent production and exchange between the owners of commodities, or the exchange of equivalents. […] The commodity as it emerges from capitalist production is determined differently from the commodity as it was at the starting point, as the element, the presupposition, of capitalist production. We started with the individual commodity as an independent article in which a specific quantity of labour time was objectified, and which therefore had an exchange value of a given magnitude. […] The commodity now reveals itself as such — as the repository of the total value of the capital + the surplus value, as opposed to the commodity which originally appeared to us as independent […] the commodity as a product of capital […] must be considered differently from the way we viewed it previously, at the beginning of our examination of the individual, independent commodity.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch01.htm
The quotation referring to pre-bourgeois commodity production is cited in MECW34 from Zur Kritik (1A):
<Steuart knew very well that in pre-bourgeois eras also products assumed the form of commodities and commodities that of money; but he shows in great detail that the commodity as the elementary and primary unit of wealth and alienation as the predominant form of appropriation are characteristic only of the bourgeois period of production
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01a.htm
Here then is a brilliant proof of Engels' basic claim, and proves that the commodities in Part 1 of Capital Vol. 1 (C-M-C) are different from later capitalist commodities (M-C-M). Marx even gives way to the idea of generalised commodity production being the basis of capitalist relations, which is not in the exclusive commodification of labour-power, but only its generality. The difference between simple and capitalist commodities is already discussed by Adam Smith, of course, in that "labour was the first price", until labour became the unit of account between the revenues of wages, rents and profits [c + v + s], which is its capitalist augmentation. It would have been helpful if Marx included this segment, or at least part of its historicity in his published work, but at least we can consult his private thoughts in these records. As a preliminary, I would suggest all aspiring Marxists to read "Results of the Direct Production Process" (1864):
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/index.htm

Nevertheless, we still see the same basic idea in Marx's published work, especially early on in Capital (1867):
<Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use value; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society’s development that such a product becomes a commodity […] the elementary value form is also the primitive form under which a product of labour appears historically as a commodity […] The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form. […] In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the conversion of men into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. […] The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
<But such a state of reciprocal independence has no existence in a primitive society based on property in common, whether such a society takes the form of a patriarchal family, an ancient Indian community, or a Peruvian Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points of contact with other similar communities, or with members of the latter. So soon, however, as products once become commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
<Definite historical conditions are necessary that a product may become a commodity. […] The appearance of products as commodities pre-supposes such a development of the social division of labour, that the separation of use-value from exchange-value, a separation which first begins with barter, must already have been completed. But such a degree of development is common to many forms of society, which in other respects present the most varying historical features. On the other hand, if we consider money, its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of commodities. […] Yet we know by experience that a circulation of commodities relatively primitive, suffices for the production of all these forms. Otherwise with capital. The historical conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm

There is further relevance in unpublished work (1861-3):
<This is a return not only to the time before capitalist production, but even to the time before there was simple commodity production…
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch17.htm
<This means that capital is not a simple quantity.  It is not a simple commodity, but a commodity raised to a higher power; not a simple magnitude, but a proportion.  It is a proportion of the principal, a given value, to itself as surplus-value.  
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/add3.htm
Thus, Marx makes it clear that simple commodity circulation (C-M-C) differs from capital (M-C-M), but even on this point, capital still has a pre-capitalist origin. We see Marx discuss these two modes in relation to Aristotle's distinction between the circuits (1859-67):
<Aristotle sets forth the two circuits of circulation C—M—C and M—C—M, which he calls "economics" and "Chrematistics", and their differences.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3.htm
<Therefore, as [Aristotle] goes on to show, the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity developed into kapelike, into trading in commodities, and this again, in opposition to its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm
This is historically elaborated upon in Capital Vol. 3:
<Interest-bearing capital, or, as we may call it in its antiquated form, usurer's capital, belongs together with its twin brother, merchant's capital, to the antediluvian forms of capital, which long precede the capitalist mode of production and are to be found in the most diverse economic formations of society. The existence of usurer's capital merely requires that at least a portion of products should be transformed into commodities, and that money should have developed in its various functions along with trade in commodities.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch36.htm
So then, capital preceded capital-ism, and thencewise, commodity production preceded capitalist production. The error in Marx's work then is its lack of revision upon the requests of Engels, to systematise his work in a coherent logical-historical fashion. A lack of style kills the substance, and so Marx fails to be a philosopher. Marx was not stupid; in fact, he was a world-historical genius, but he was ultimately his own worst enemy. Engels' heroic loyalty to Marx leads to the attempt to redeem his friend, by proceeding from the spirit of the law rather than the letter, and so he is finally justified, and this is the academic legacy, from Kautsky onwards. So, Christopher is right, but Engels is also right, and as Hegel tells us, this is the essential meaning of tragedy.

>>2847657
I am begging you to read a guided reader to Capital, if not capital itself

>>2847672
I quote Capital numerous times in my post; perhaps you missed it.
In any case, I am exclusively quoting Marx, so any issue you have with the content of the post is with Marx himself.

>>2847678
You have so hilariously misunderstood and misappropriated selected quotes from Capital to argue that parasitic unproductive capital meant Marx was wrong that it is clear you do not understand Volume 1 least of all

Pick up a guided reader or a companion and begin working your way through.

>>2847680
>misunderstood
What is misunderstood? In any case, I will give you a history lesson.

Marx wrote his Economic Manuscripts between 1857-65, which subsequently become the Grundrisse (1857-8), Zur Kritik (1859), Capital Vol. 1 (1867), Capital Vol. 2 (1885), Capital Vol. 3 (1894), Theories of Surplus Value (1910) and Miscellanea, including "Results of the Direct Production Process" (1864), an original draft of Chapter 6 of Capital Vol. 1. There is of course an earlier collection of 1844 (often called the Paris Manuscripts), which were only made public in 1932 (the same as The German Ideology), when the Soviet Union began excavating Marx's work. So then, the context of published and unpublished sources from the same period represent a continuity of thought in the cultivation of a critique, making all citation valid in the general understanding of Marx's view. I will simplify the sources, since you appear to be incapable of sustaining reading comprehension.

Zur Kritik (1859):
<Steuart knew very well that in pre-bourgeois eras also products assumed the form of commodities and commodities that of money
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01a.htm
Theories of Surplus Value (1861-3):
<This is a return not only to the time before capitalist production, but even to the time before there was simple commodity production…
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch17.htm
Results of the Direct Production Process (1864):
<The production and circulation of commodities, however, do not conversely presuppose the capitalist mode of production for their existence; on the contrary, as I have already demonstrated, they also “exist in pre-bourgeois social formations”.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch01.htm
Capital Vol. 1 (1867):
<The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity […] makes its appearance at an early date in history
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
<primitive society […] an ancient Indian community, or a Peruvian Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of such communities
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
<Definite historical conditions are necessary that a product may become a commodity […] which first begins with barter […] if we consider money, its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of commodities.
Capital Vol. 3 (1894)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
<usurer's capital, belongs together with its twin brother, merchant's capital, to the antediluvian forms of capital, which long precede the capitalist mode of production […] The existence of usurer's capital merely requires that at least a portion of products should be transformed into commodities, and that money should have developed in its various functions along with trade in commodities.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch36.htm

>>2847693
You have just vomitted more quotes in defence of a point you have barely understood

Harvey's companion to Capital is 300 pages, come back when you have read it

>>2847698
Anon, you are literally just disagreeing with Marx.
You are allowed to do that, but at least be honest about it.
<The production and circulation of commodities, however, do not conversely presuppose the capitalist mode of production
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch01.htm

>>2847701
You are arguing yet again upon a platonic conception of capital based on a series of misreadings and misunderstandings of the term and its conceptual development

You are unable to synthesise a materialist understanding native to his works because you will do not do the basic required reading. If you will not read Harvey's companion not any other guided reader, then restart here:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2

Please stop shitting up these threads with you delusional misinterpretations of Marxist works

>>2847708
your delusional*

>>2847708
>misreadings
What is the proper reading of the following quotation?
<The production and circulation of commodities, however, do not conversely presuppose the capitalist mode of production
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch01.htm

>>2847717
Your point hinges upon your own ignorance as you yet again cherry pick quotations that rely on a misunderstanding of Marx's methodology in order to contrive an irrelevant and time wasting argument

Read First Premises On Materialist Method and then, to illustrate to yourself your own lack of understanding, On The Jewish Question

>>2847723
What is the proper reading of the following quotation?
<The production and circulation of commodities, however, do not conversely presuppose the capitalist mode of production
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch01.htm

>>2847698
>Harvey's companion to Capital
Harvey presumes Marx's affirmation of a pre-capitalist existence of commodities, in a relationship of barter which measures relative values unto the final value-form, in money (Chapter 1, Section 3):
<Marx's objective is to explain the origin of the money-form […] He accomplishes this task in a series of heavy-handed steps, beginning with a simple barter situation. I have a commodity, you have a commodity. […] your commodity is going to be a measure of the value of mine […] An increasing complexity of exchange relations produces an "expanded form' of value that morphs into a "general form' of value […] This ultimately crystallizes in a "universal equivalent": one commodity that plays the exclusive role of a "money commodity". […] The money commodity arises out of a trading system and does not precede it, so it is the proliferation and generalization of exchange relations that is the crucial, necessary condition for the crystallization of the money-form.
So Harvey reads that money is a result of the exchange of commodities, producing the universal equivalent. I read your suggested book, and it claimed the existence of pre-capitalist commodity exchange. To make it clear:
<barter […] I have a commodity, you have a commodity […] your commodity is going to be a measure of the value of mine

>>2847817
You abscond into an explanation of the money form as a universal equivalent in order to transubstantiate an explanation of capital that is never offered by grounding it in part of the monetary circulation.

This capital, as a deus machina, for you has existed, always existed, and any contention of historicity between the development of productive and merchant capital is confused as you reduce the concept to a platonic understanding.

Read through the companion and do not just quote mine for passages that seem to support your batshit views

>>2847830
Thus capital*

>>2847817
Laughibly you have finally managed to differentiate between simple commodity production and generalised commodity production, which is why you've had this little breakthrough in discovering that Marx posits merchants capital as preceding capitalist development proper

>>2847672
>>2847680
>>2847698
>Read Harvey
Reading Harvey, he affirms the existence of pre-capitalist commodity exchange with equivalent exchange-values as the basis of money in Marx's writing (Companion to Capital, Pages 30-31): >>2847817
This is entirely in line with what I have written.
>>2847723
>>2847709
>>2847708
>Read "First Premises On Materialist Method"
<These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way […] The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals […] They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence […] As individuals express their life, so they are […] The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
>Read "On The Jewish Question"
<The German Jews desire emancipation […] Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German? […] The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian is the  religious  opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible. How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion. […] Science, then, constitutes their unity. […] The limits of political emancipation are evident at once from the fact that the state can free itself from a restriction without man being really free from this restriction, that the state can be a free state […] without man being a free man […] It is possible, therefore, for the state to have emancipated itself from religion even if the overwhelming majority is still religious. […] The state is the intermediary between man and man’s freedom. […] Is not private property abolished in idea if the non-property owner has become the legislator for the property owner? The property qualification for the suffrage is the last political form of giving recognition to private property. Nevertheless, the political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. […] The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society  outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life – leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life […] Man, as the adherent of a particular religion, finds himself in conflict with his citizenship and with other men as members of the community. This conflict reduces itself to the  secular division between the political state and civil society. […] Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the sphere of public law to that of private law. […] Religion has become the spirit of civil society […] the perfect Christian state is the  atheistic  state, the democratic state, the state which relegates religion to a place among the other elements of civil society. […] Not Christianity, but the human basis of Christianity is the basis of this state. Religion remains the ideal, non-secular consciousness of its members, because religion is the ideal form of the stage of human development achieved in this state. The members of the political state are religious owing to the dualism between individual life and species-life, between the life of civil society and political life. […] We have, thus, shown that political emancipation from religion leaves religion in existence, although not a privileged religion. The contradiction in which the adherent of a particular religion finds himself involved in relation to his citizenship is only one aspect of the universal secular contradiction between the political state and civil society. […] The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation of the real man from religion. […] political emancipation itself is not  human  emancipation. […] the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing off the political yoke meant at the same time throwing off the bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society. Political emancipation was, at the same time, the emancipation of civil society from politics […] The real man is recognized only in the shape of the egoistic i individual, the true man is recognized only in the shape of the abstract citizen. […] Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life […] and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished. […] What particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the present-day Jew’s capacity for emancipation is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. […] Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God?  Money. Very well then! Emancipation from  huckstering  and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. […] In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. […] the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. […] The Jew, who exists as a distinct member of civil society, is only a particular manifestation of the Judaism of civil society. […] The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. […] From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is, therefore, the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again. […] Christianity is the sublime thought of Judaism, Judaism is the common practical application of Christianity […] civil society could not convince the Jew of the unreality of his religious nature, which is indeed only the ideal aspect of practical need. […] The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
I read them. Now what?

>>2847830
What I've done is quote Marx which makes you upset, so then I quote Harvey and that also makes you upset. You seem like a miserable person who doesn't know what they should believe. You certainly don't believe in the evidence of your senses, at least.
>>2847835
>you have finally managed to differentiate between simple commodity production and generalised commodity production
All I have claimed is that simple commodity production is a fact of Marx's theory, against Christopher Arthur. Anyway, you agree that commodity production preceded capitalism, and that because of this personal agreement, you find no controversy in these posts?
>>2847657
>>2847693
>>2847717
>>2847729
>>2847817

>>2847885
I've never seen someone misunderstand Capital this badly. It is hilarious that now you've formally accepted the necessity for differentiating between simple and generalised commodity production (simply because Marx wrote it) but rescue Smith through platonic abstractions between the two unified in an everlasting conception of Capital.

You cannot synthesise a truly scientific position because yours is eternally reduced to a transhistorical universalism of terminology used to delude yourself into accepting bourgeois notions. Actually read the entirety of Harvey's companion and we can talk.

>>2847901
>I've never seen someone misunderstand Capital this badly.
What is misunderstood? You haven't explained.
>you've formally accepted the necessity for differentiating between simple and generalised commodity production (simply because Marx wrote it) but rescue Smith through platonic abstractions between the two
Smith also differentiates between the two, as I stated: >>2847657
<The difference between simple and capitalist commodities is already discussed by Adam Smith, of course, in that "labour was the first price", until labour became the unit of account between the revenues of wages, rents and profits [c + v + s], which is its capitalist augmentation.
This is why I say you struggle with reading comprehension.
>transhistorical universalism
But you also accept the transhistoricity of commodity production…
There is no controversy, anon. You are just looking for trouble.
>Actually read the entirety of Harvey's companion and we can talk.
Talk about what? We are already agreeing on everything; you just don't know it because you appear to have some sort of personality disorder. I pray that you find peace in this life, my friend. 🙏🙂👍

>>2847905
>Smith also differentiates between the two, as I stated
He differentiates the two but in no way understands them, hence a formal acknowledgement
>But you also accept the transhistoricity of commodity production…
This is hilarious. Not only does he not understand the difference but neither do you.

Why you retards coalesce to this thread is beyond me. It is clear you idiots will never understand Marx without the help of a guided reader.

>>2847909
Oh my bad I thought you were someone else

You haven't understood the distinction between simple and generalised commodity production because it is a theoretical historical development

I am done with this ridiculous circuitous argument. If you will not bother to read the most basic of introductions then don't bother posting here

>>2847912
>You haven't understood the distinction between simple and generalised commodity production because it is a theoretical historical development
This treatment is already in Smith. Read below.
>>2847909
>He differentiates the two but in no way understands them
What is misunderstood? Both Marx and Engels attribute the discovery of surplus value to Smith's writings:
<In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another […] As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people […] The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this ease 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 […] He must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him. […] As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. […] The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch06.htm
Thus, there is an historical development from the "rude" state toward the conditions of surplus value production. So again, there is no actual disagreement, which is why no explanation of it is ever given.

>>2847934
It is hilarious still that you misquote on the origins of surplus value as the differentiating factor and not the fact that generalised commodity production entails productive capital and hence the general formulae for commodity circulation.

Oh, but Smith anon. Have you misunderstood chapter 4 of fucking volume 1? What a shock! Perhaps we should read Harvey's companion to help us understand the materialist premise and methodology of Marx and abandon endlessly quote mining economists and reducing them to a crude Neoplatonic perspective

>>2847934
>>2847947
This argument is so convoluted now you will spin out in a thousand different directions either misquoting Marx and Engels again or deferring back to Smith

All when you could simply read Harvey's fucking companion

>>2847950
Anon, you have already recognised the fact that you agree with me, so please stop being stubborn and prideful for no reason. You claim my misunderstanding, but can't give a single example. You don't even know what you're arguing about anymore. This derangement is unhealthy. Get well soon. 🙏🙂👍
>>2847947
>misquote on the origins of surplus value
What is "misquoted"? Surplus value is value added onto capital stock (e.g. value + value = surplus value). Thus, the employment of labour upon stock is the origin of surplus value, as it is understood:
<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
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htm#1885
This is why to Smith, once labour is employed by capitalists, it must combine itself with profit and/or rent as a means to compensate the "master" above the rate of wages. This is also Marx's view; that capital is LP + MP to create surplus (C'), realised as value (M-M').
>Have you misunderstood chapter 4 of fucking volume 1?
This is how it begins:
<The circulation of commodities is the starting-point of capital […] The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market. […] money: this final product of the circulation of commodities
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm
So then, the circulation of commodities precedes both capital, and money itself. C-M-C is then ancient. Further, as we read from a footnote in Chapter 4, Aristotle already describes capital (M-C-M). This shouldn't be controversial, since you have admitted to this.

>>2847964
And thus we resort to technical distinctions in the composition of capital in order to abstract from its specific historical character, taking us back in a loop to the very first issue which is your platonic conception of capital grounded in a simplistic interpretation of terminological causes.

Thus it is you misunderstand the differentiation inherent in simple and generalised commodity production with the general formulae holding that capital has existed, will exist, and has always existed because there is no meaningful separation between productive and merchant capital.

>>2847964
Your position can essentially be reduced to arguing that capitalism has always existed much like the bourgeois economists

Again, fuck off and read Harvey

>>2847977
>capitalism has always existed
If I'm citing Smith who says that capitalism has not always existed, then how am I making the opposite claim? You need to think about this.
>>2847973
>Thus it is you misunderstand the differentiation inherent in simple and generalised commodity production
There is no misunderstanding, there is only classification.
Both simple and capitalist commodities are "commodities".
Both merchant's capital and industrial capital are "capital".
This is the first point; you are jumping to the secondary point. We both agree on the first point, whether you admit it or not, but you imagine that I am only making a single point. I have given due consideration to the rise of industrial capital previously, by analysing the mercantilist period and its literature. I have even demonstrated the historical and cultural discontinuity concerning the mechanical arts from antiquity to modernity, in their economic conceptions. So, I don't nake a single point, but I still make a first point, which you agree with - yet still rebel. You are rebelling against yourself, anon.
>capital has existed, will exist, and has always existed
If capital is money making money, then how could it have always existed, if money has not always existed?

>>2847984
>Both merchant's capital and industrial capital are "capital".
They are both forms of capital but they are historically contingent on the level of the development of the productive forces within society - hence merchant capital is parasitic whereas productive capital entails the development of generalised commodity production.

You are attempting to turn this in its head and argue that since simple commodity production has existed in ancient slave holding societies capital in general has existed since time immemorial full stop. This contravenes the basic methodology of historical materialism which is why you retreat to Smith every time you are proven wrong. Thus the supposed distinctions in the "mechanical arts" resembles the basic arguments Marx wrote against 200 years prior in which economic conceptions were dependent upon mere technical developments and not the class structures unique to these periods along with the relations of ownership.

Again, reread the First Premises and this argument is there. You have so patently misunderstood Marx because you are incapable of confronting him on his own terms and instead resort to sophistry in order to complete the tedious obfuscation of actual scientific inquiry with your own delusional dogma.

Read through Harvey's companion and by the end you will have reconsidered your position

>>2848000
Compel the tedious*

>>2847984
Laughibly it is only weeks ago when you were told that simple and generalised commodity production were a thing that now you have had to brook their existence, but still delude yourself with an idealist conception of economics and thus history itself

This is no end of mirth because at the time you were struggling with the relative historically specific development of the law of value and your typical confusion with it and some deluded conception of an eternally existing economic principle

Weeks ago I recommended you pick up an introduction to capital for a guided reader to help you synthesise Marx's original structure of argumentation, and you have not. You will continue to go round in circles in philosophical quasi economical discourse if you continue to do so

Consider reading the Wikipedia on historical materialism if all else fails

>>2848011
synthesise an understanding of*

>>2848011
>>2848012
As a preliminary, can you please stop writing like an anime villain? Thx.
>you were told that simple and generalised commodity production were a thing
Please link this post.
>>2848000
>>2848002
>They are both forms of capital but they are historically contingent on the level of the development of the productive forces within society - hence merchant capital is parasitic whereas productive capital entails the development of generalised commodity production.
Yes, I completely agree. Marx's great chapter in Capital Vol. 3 (Chapter 36) deals with this. This is also where my interest in mercantile literature began, with inquiry into the rate of interest (which tracts the rate of profit):
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch36.htm
>You are attempting to turn this in its head and argue that since simple commodity production has existed in ancient slave holding societies capital in general has existed since time immemorial full stop.
I don't believe I have ever generalised the phenomenon; but if it pleases you, we can say that before modernity, capital and value valorisation existed in particular.
>This contravenes the basic methodology of historical materialism
It just sounds like you have a crisis of faith.
>Thus the supposed distinctions in the "mechanical arts" resembles the basic arguments Marx wrote against
Against? Perhaps you misunderstand, but I am making a Marxist argument where it concerns mechanical arts:
<In the pre-capitalist stages of society commerce ruled industry. In modern society the reverse is true.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch20.htm
Antoine Montchretien as the inventor* of political economy (1615) is the first to elevate the mechanical arts of the third estate to the might of the liberal arts of the first estate. This entirely subverts Aristotle's subordination of production as a secondary sphere of life. After Montchretien, we see how Smith inverts the social order, presenting labour as the source of value, and statesmen as parasites upon this earthly power.
>You have so patently misunderstood Marx
Anon, you need to explain what I have misunderstood…

>>2848011
>historically specific development of the law of value
Well, we can only judge the values of commodities from their stated prices (with the wage being the unit of production costs). I have analysed this here:
>>2833486
>>2834735
Thus, we see a fluctuation of the rate of wages based in different historical circumstances, namely material development, which as Smith writes, is linear to capital stock employed (and therefore rates of productivity). We see in 1750 BCE, Ea Nassir attempt to make a profit on the wholesale of massive amounts of copper ingots, and so we can assume a declining rate of profit, which occurs at the same time that wages are set according to a relatively high standard, due to excess demand (this is in accordance with laws of capital accumulation). In an account of the Greco-Roman world, we see wages being generally stable across centuries, although there is an increase in the value of labour, as the denarius rises from a 10:1 to a 16:1 exchange rate with copper asses. We see stability in the Republican period, but soon after the Imperial period, there is massive inflation (e.g. the redistribution of wealth to unproductive sectors) which depreciates the value of labour, based in social produce. So then, the value of labour is proportional to industry. The major surplus revenues of this time were rents and taxes (since most production was agricultural), but the mechanical arts still held a place. Aristotle comments on markets, seeing that household goods sold at their values (based in the value-form; t. Ethics, Bk. V, ch. v). Profit he reserved as usury (e.g. money making money) and so this was a hated form of income in antiquity. An exceptional case I would say is Xenophon, whose idea to productively invest slaves into the mining of silver displays a capitalistic impulse of making money from money (with slaves acting as capital). Xenophon even discusses the combination of paid and slave labour in the venture, and so this mining venture is capitalistic.

Moving into medieval times, we have Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Khaldun. Aquinas discusses the "Just Price" of goods measured according to the physical properties of the commodity, with added interest being a "double payment" and thus unjust of the equivalent exchange. Aquinas challenges himself on this point also, by seeing that rent is also a double payment (e.g. usufruct) since in occupation, nothing is consumed, yet still paid for. Thus, surplus appears as an additional charge upon a fixed good, not the sale of a surplus product as such. Ibn Khaldun as an Arab gives apology to merchants in their quest for profit, by seeing how when competition rules that prices must sink lower and lower, this is the ruin of the merchant, but the gain of the consumer. Ibn then suggests that profit (ribh) is made by buying cheap and selling dear, based in fluctuations in the market. Thus, hoarding is an important economic category to Khaldun (similar to how Aristotle shares the fable of Thales' long-term investing leading to monopoly). Here then, the value of a commodity is governed by relative equality. Khaldun still speaks upon taxation, which if paid in money, is a transfer of surplus value, and thus an augmentation of the value of commodities to cover rents (which as Aquinas claims, is an unjust payment). We see additional payments of subjective valuation in ancient times, like risk payments or time-based interest, but as Smith declares, the rhetoric of profit as "wages of superintendance" only obscures the real relationship of value which is transacted. Taxes were not often paid in cash in pre-modern times, but today, they are exclusively paid in cash, since states are not simply administrators, but producers and speculators in the world marketplace.

So then, the postulation of a surplus value in simple commodity production often followed the closed circuit of equivalent exchanges described by Marx (C-M-C), but industry and agriculture also surely created surplus value by domestic and foreign trade, whether through slaves or wage workers (the same way the independent peasant must have exploited himself to make profit). So again, capitalism to Marx is not an ontological horizon, but an historical threshold of general social relations.  Thus, capital "develops" rather than simply "emerges" ex nihilo. The historicists often treat capital superstitiously, and this itself is the deepest fetishism, such as we see with people like Nick Land, who ontologises capital, similar to Ian Wright, who mystifies capital. Demystify it.

>>2848070
>I don't believe I have ever generalised the phenomenon; but if it pleases you, we can say that before modernity, capital and value valorisation existed in particular.

Amazing, you have turned tail and run from your original position whilst conceding the necessity of acknowledging historical contingency. It is ridiculous that you deny ever generalising the phenomenon as that is the basic contradiction inherent in half your posts.

This, I might add, would be cleared up if you read a contemporary Marxist scholar like Harvey. If you will not read Harvey I will plead with you to read "the automatic fetish" to move away from the absurdity of propounding inherently valid Marxist propositions that you use to pass underhanded bourgeois notions of economism inherent in statements such as
>Well, we can only judge the values of commodities from their stated prices (with the wage being the unit of production costs)

>>2848117
>you have turned tail and run from your original position
Where is my "original position" contrary to this?
>the necessity of acknowledging historical contingency
As I say, I have already investigated historical particulars in regard to economic development, while also seeing what is general to each.
>It is ridiculous that you deny ever generalising the phenomenon
I don't think you quite grasp the nature of abstraction despite agreeing with my method; capital can be both (i) general and (ii) particular. Admitting this is not contradictory, since it is the very means by which we assess knowledge of the phenomena.
>Well, we can only judge the values of commodities from their stated prices (with the wage being the unit of production costs)
But this is a correct statement… Do you now reject the LTV?

>>2848122
Ah yes, I am the one who has not understood abstraction. Me, the person who was obfuscating historical particularities with general comprehensions in order to argue that capital existed in ancient slave holding societies.

>>2848122
>>2848124
Capital, a social relation stemming from developments in social property. But as someone once said:
>So again, capitalism to Marx is not an ontological horizon, but an historical threshold of general social relations

>>2848122
>But this is a correct statement… Do you now reject the LTV?
Cackling, you pass simplistic notions of bourgeois economic theory behind Marxist propositions considered only in isolation. Truly, you have a unique ability to abstract in thought what only appear as vague laws to us mere Marxists

>>2848127
Again, you agree with me, but want to pretend to disagree with me.
Why not just find peace in the common ground we are establishing?
>>2848124
>in order to argue that capital existed in ancient slave holding societies.
But it did, according to Marx. This is a settled discussion.
Capital in particular must by necessity precede its general format.
>>2848126
Capital-ism to Marx begins in the 16th century, with the world market, but capital as such (M-C-M) precedes the "capitalist mode of production" proper:
<Interest-bearing capital, or, as we may call it in its antiquated form, usurer's capital, belongs together with its twin brother, merchant's capital, to the antediluvian forms of capital, which long precede the capitalist mode of production and are to be found in the most diverse economic formations of society.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch36.htm

>>2848134
And at last we've come full circle, Smith will not do in the face of Marx so we can no longer pretend productive capital and the development of capitalism proper precedes the argument outlined in Volume 1.

Thus the only obfuscation, ignorance of the fact that capital is a social relation, continues with your contention that the general formula for simple exchange is equivalent to that under generalised commodity production. Interesting that we no are no longer making reference to the universal equivalent as a means for oblating productive and mercantile capital.

>But that's what I was saying from the beginning!
So cries Smith anon, who mere weeks ago could not understand the difference between simple and generalised commodity production

>>2847698
>You have just vomitted more quotes in defence of a point you have barely understood
and you have done even less. all you do is say he is wrong, without saying why, or what would be more correct

>>2848150
Ah yes, the more quotes you can vomit the more sound your comprehension of theory is. Excuse me as I quote paragraphs from Marginalists in defence of Marx

>>2848156
>Excuse me as I quote paragraphs from Marginalists in defence of Marx
If only you could ecclectic-maxx like a true theorist. 💪😁
>>2848143
I have requested a link to this supposed post, if you would oblige me.
>>2848142
>we can no longer pretend productive capital and the development of capitalism proper precedes the argument outlined in Volume 1.
>Interesting that we no are no longer making reference to the universal equivalent as a means for oblating productive and mercantile capital.
Could you clarify what you mean by these statements, please?
>the general formula for simple exchange is equivalent to that under generalised commodity production
Well, yes… Commerce is still the rule of equivalent exchange (where perfect competition persists); the augmented value of commodities simply takes on a distributed component of cost in alignment with the prices of production, and so incorporates the rate of profit:
<The value of a commodity is equal to the value of the constant capital contained in it, plus the value of the variable capital reproduced in it, plus the increment — the surplus-value produced — of this variable capital. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch08.htm
You will notice that this is identical ro what Smith wrote on the topic.

>>2848176
>Commerce
And we have retreated back to a universalism in which commodity exchange is held as a transhistorical through fictitious arguments of cost analysis by distorting the notion of capital composition by abstracting completely from class relations and the role of the historical development of labour. Thus we can safely reference Smith as preceding Marx.

I'm done with this tedious argument. Please read The Automatic Fetish, it is a recent work that deals with Volume 3 and will outline in the first section a much better argument than can be stated here

>>2848191
>commodity exchange is held as transhistorical
Yes, we already agreed to this, by consultation of Marx:
<However, not commerce alone, but also merchant's capital, is older than the capitalist mode of production, is, in fact, historically the oldest free state of existence of capital. […] The product becomes a commodity by way of commerce. […] In the pre-capitalist stages of society commerce ruled industry.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch20.htm
Again, this is not controversial, but mutually agreed upon.
>Thus we can safely reference Smith as preceding Marx.
But he did…
>I'm done with this tedious argument
We're not arguing, we're agreeing.
>Please read The Automatic Fetish, it is a recent work that deals with Volume 3 and will outline in the first section a much better argument than can be stated here
I will check it out, along with Harvey's Companion.
Thanks for the recommendations. 🫡😛

Beverley Best's "The Automatic Fetish" (2024) is a bit of a mess in structure, and quite simplistic, but engaging in its core premise, which concerns an aesthetic critique of capitalist society. The forms of representation of value (e.g. as revenues of production) become the "mystified" expression of objective social relations. Of course, this is simply the critique of political economy, continuous of the Classical Economists, who approach "the true relation of things" (Capital Vol. 1, Chapter 19) by seeing how the "Wealth of Nations" is really a class structure, which divides social produce between different sectors. Engels offers an original critique in his "Outline" (1844):
<The “national wealth” of the English is very great and yet they are the poorest people under the sun.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm
Here, "wealth" is both general and particular, not simply in possession, but in concept (e.g. Smith's "Paradox of Value") as we may read in the writings of Ricardo (1817):
<Value, then, essentially differs from riches, for value depends not on abundance, but on the difficulty or facility of production. The labour of a million of men in manufactures, will always produce the same value, but will not always produce the same riches.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch20.htm
Thus, "value" esteems an inverse definition; not as utility, but its opposite, as a measure of the disutility of labour. The more "valuable" a thing is, the less useful in general. Here then in the "scientific" political economy of the aspiring bourgeoisie, we find a groundwork of critique, which Marx obviously advances from with enthusiasm.

In dealing with "vulgar" political economy (e.g. capitalist apologists who deal in phenomena alone), Marx directly excludes the Classicists, theoretically and historically:
<The narrow and pedantic expression of vulgar conceptions which are bound to arise among those who are the representatives of this mode of production is very different from the urge of political economists like the Physiocrats, Adam Smith and Ricardo to grasp the inner connection of the phenomena.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/add3.htm
Marx provides a brief history of the movement in his 1873 Preface to Capital Vol. 1, that the final period of "scientific bourgeois economy" (1820-30) was met with a crisis due to the class ascendancy of the bourgeoisie. For 2 decades after (1830-50) various contests were held, and Marx names two dominant figures; Bastiat, who represents vulgar political economy, and J.S. Mill, who attempts to preserve the scientific spirit of study. The meaning of "vulgar" political economy then cannot be lazily compared to "bourgeois" economics in itself. Some contemporary marxists claim that Marginalism in economics is a new vulgar political economy, but is this true? What is only implicit in marginal theories is the inverse magnitudes of MP and TP past the threshold of diminishing returns, which is the source of profit, as proven by Jevons' empirical account on rates of wages:
<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.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-theory-of-political-economy#lf0237_head_060
The only issue is that Jevons has it backwards; lesser working times is the cause of the higher wages, not vice versa. This is proven by jevons' exact model (Fig. VIII), that the working day (a-d) involves appreciating and diminishing returns, and so where it diminishes for the employee, it appreciates for the employer. Jevons then provides a "scientific" model of political economy, but is not conscious of his own conclusions. Jevons is not an apologist, but he is not yet critical of capitalism either.

So then, Beverley approaches her critique by seeing the distinction between essence and appearance (or what is otherwise referenced as base/superstructure). Moreso, her analysis is to show that "the automatic fetish" is the primary mystification of capital, as self-expanding value. Of course, this is dealt with by Marx early on in Capital:
<For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays goldeuyghs.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm
This "occult" or mystical property is also spoken of by Aristotle (referenced in the same chapter) through his description of Chrematistics (one of the "antediluvian" forms of capital: interest-bearing, or usruer's capital):
<The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of an modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html
Here, "the birth of money from money" (M-M') is treated as an "unnatural" process, and thus superstitiously. Marx speaks more directly upon this "automatic fetish":
<Interest-bearing capital is the consummate automatic fetish, the self-expanding value, the money-making money, and in this form it no longer bears any trace of its origin.  The social relation is consummated as a relation of things (money, commodities) to themselves […] the creation of value arising from capital as such […] This is also the form in which it is conceived by the vulgar economists.  In this form all intermediate links are obliterated, and the fetishistic feature of capital, as also the concept of the capital-fetish, is complete.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/add3.htm
I would say that this Addenda of Theories of Surplus Value (1861-3) also seems superior to Capital Vol. 3 as an accompanying text for a critique of the "automatic fetish" (since Marx already gives anouncement to it). Here, we also see the transhistorical nature of this fetish, as it first appears with interest-bearing capital:
<Interest-bearing capital, or, as we may call it in its antiquated form, usurer's capital, belongs together with its twin brother, merchant's capital, to the antediluvian forms of capital, which long precede the capitalist mode of production and are to be found in the most diverse economic formations of society.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch36.htm
So then, in addressing the "automatic fetish" of capital, I will provide some ancient sources on the the topic.

We can read in the Mesopotamian text, "Dialogue of Pessimism" (1000 BCE) the servant speaks upon his master's interest given from loans [grain = silver]:
<The man who makes loans, his grain is (still) his grain while his interest is profit […] Loaning is [swee]t as falling in love, getting back as pain[ful] as giving birth. They will consume your grain, be always abusing you, and finally they will swindle you out of the interest on your grain.”
https://www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus/L/2/4/SB/-
Here, loaning is first normalised as a social relation, and secondly, the denial of interest is seen as 'swindling' and 'abuse', as though a great injustice is permitted by this denial of the capitalist automaton. As I have previously referenced, Aquinas (1274 CE) viewed interest as unjust because it adds nothing to products, and so Aquinas escapes the capital-fetish, while still retaining the commodity fetish somewhat, in viewing rent as similar to interest; as usufruct, but abiding by its custom. Engels himself is victim of the same uncritical error:
<[Housing rent] is simple commodity sale; it is not an operation between proletarian and bourgeois, between worker and capitalist […] On the contrary, we are dealing here with a quite ordinary commodity transaction between two citizens, and this transaction proceeds according to the economic laws which govern the sale of commodities in general and in particular the sale of the commodity, land property. The building and maintenance costs of the house, or of the part of the house in question, enters first of all into the calculation; the land value, determined by the more or less favourable situation of the house, comes next; the state of the relation between supply and demand existing at the moment is finally decisive.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm
Thus, Engels supposes that where the tenant doesn't pay the landlord, the landlord has been 'swindled' and 'abused'. This mystification by Engels proves the fetish (e.g. Engels imagines that land creates its own value, and so it must be returned as a revenue of rent, lest the "laws" of value are suspended and chaos pervades all). Of course, Smith (1776) is already critical of landlords:
<As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch06.htm
Further, the origin of rent is demystified by Smith as a product of labour, which then enters into the final price of goods. Smith is not beguiled by the automatic fetish. On the "automatic fetish" of the later capitalist cost-price (k), we also see Aristotle speak of Hephaesetus' automatons, that if only the master could treat artificial life as his own, he would have no need for slaves, and so wealth would develop from itself, by self-sufficiency:
<For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus […] the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves. 
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html
Fetishism and fantasy coincide on this point, with Virgil speaking of the automatic wealth from a Golden Age:
<the uncultivated earth will pour out her first little gifts, straggling ivy and cyclamen everywhere and the bean flower with the smiling acanthus.The goats will come home themselves, their udders swollen with milk, and the cattle will have no fear of fierce lions
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilEclogues.php
Thus, the very idea of automatic wealth is ancient, like the automatic fetish of interest-bearing capital itself (which seems to have relation to Plato's idea of perpetual motion, e.g. "Lusiteloun").

Returning to Beverley Best, the commodity fetish seems to be the operative disguise of exploitation under the appearance of equivalent exchange. An example is the wage contract, which only pays for necessary labour, yet includes surplus labour in its calculation. Here, Marx is subtle, by seeing that the exchange-values of wages are equivalent, but the use-value of labour-power is unequal:
<The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity […] the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm
So then, the law of value persists, since man is himself now a (rented) commodity. Interestingly, Marx says that the only difference between free and unfree labour is the status of exchange; between renting and purchasing as such. The "appearance" of freedom by the contract then is mediated by the modified space and time of labour, but for which still retains it's essential character, as the extraction of surplus labour. Fetishism is displayed here:
<The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htm
Here, the wage form (e.g. value fetish) gives appearance to equivalent exchange, but also displays an artificial separation between himself and the slave. The value fetish imagines that surplus is generated by a master, with the slave as a parasite upon production at worst, or simply as fixed capital, and so incapable of living labour. The same discourse exists under capitalism, of course, that it is "entrepeneurship" or "abstinence", or "wages of superintendence" which really produces surplus value, and so the worker is only hired out of charity. Sticking with the fetish character of labour however, we see the anthropocentric fetish of Marx, in Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 7:
<We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Here, the "imagination" imbues human labour with some sort of higher substance, and the animal is relegated as purely instinctive, without creativity or consciousness. This is the anthropocentric fetish, which imagines that man himself is really distinct from his own animalia. So, just as racism can obscure exploitation by fetishism, we see speciesism do the same. Animals (from whence we derive the very term "capital", by "cattle") are seen as an irrelevant raw material to convert into "value" (this is Marx at his most uncritical). The same distinction exists between man and machine, of course, which Beverley sees as an intensification of the fetish, but Marx may see otherwise, through the ensoulment of the machine:
<Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal, oil etc. (matières instrumentales), just as the worker consumes food, to keep up its perpetual motion. The worker’s activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and not the opposite. The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the power of the machine itself. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch13.htm
Here, agency and subjectivity is given to the machine, like Marx provides self-determination to value in general:
<the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things […] Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
<Commodities find their own value already completely represented, without any initiative on their part, in another commodity existing in company with them. These objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human labour. Hence the magic of money. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
Now, is Marx not in the throes of an automatic fetish here? He is seeing that "Value" determines itself, without anyone knowing it, the same way capital "makes money" from itself. So then, I would conclude that "value" in its very proposition is fetishistic, and the critique of "value" by Smith and Ricardo proves the point, that by the value signifier, social forms justify themselves according to it. We can read this from Beverley's examples (e.g. Fuchs):
<Some commentators use the term ‘prosumer’ to characterize the consumer-become-producer – the unpaid digital labourer who ‘works’ through consuming […] Some commentators, including the critical communications theorist Christian Fuchs, argue that this ‘unpaid digital labour’ produces surplus-value for the capitalist
Beverley corrects the record that only by the value-form is labour contracted as "value", but this is demonstrating the deepening of illusion. Both are right, and both are wrong. Fuchs to me represents what much of the left have become debased as, of not criticising the category of "value", but attempting to appropriate it for political purposes. Thus, the feminists complain about "unpaid housework", or black people complain about "unpaid slavery". Here, compensation acts as "wages" for the transaction (in linguistic terms, all communication is thereby symbolised). This is naturalising "value" as a physical relationship and not a socio-historical object. The "materialist" approach is often even worse, since it treats "economics" as a physical problem, rather than a social one. The confusion of most Marxists concerns this precisely; of validating the social construct "value". To me then, fetishism begins by the proposition of "value" itself. Or as Marx writes in his temporary lucidity:
<The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes […] So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use value of objects belongs to them independently of their material properties, while their value, on the other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use value of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is realised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Fetishism then grows in proportion to development, and so the more "civilised", the more delusional people are. For the most part, Beverley's book is just a summary of Capital Vol. 3 which I find disinteresting, so unless anyone wants me to go through any particular section, this is how I will conclude my review of the book. 🙂👍

in the imperial core, capitalism has become even more of a scam than ever before, and more averse to actual commodity production, because of the falling profit rates and relatively high wages…. and the scams (like crypto so-called "currency" and Artificial so-called "Intelligence") have become more destructive to the environment than ever, in an age when we are in the precipice of climate collapse, and we are decades behind doing what needs to be done to fix the climate, let alone some kind of proletarian revolution. So why live?

>>2849989
>Here, the "imagination" imbues human labour with some sort of higher substance, and the animal is relegated as purely instinctive
Stopped reading here. You misunderstand Marx's distinction and reduce the comprehension of the sentence to some mythical capacity of man to think (is this yet again idealism Smith anon?)

From The German Ideology:
>Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

You read this yesterday! And again:

>The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process

Your argument breaks down as one again you misunderstand the nature of Marx's methodology and begin accusing him of a fetishism of value. Perhaps it's time to reread First Premises more deeply

>>2850357
>>2849989
This is to add: your use of fetishism in this case would likewise make no sense. Fetishism begins as an argument in Capital as the product of historically specific relations that result the reproduction of capitalist society. This is to say that fetishistic notions develop as a consequence of existence under capitalism, you cannot therefore turn the critique on its head and accuse Marx's analysis of being a product of its own error. Fetishism is a product of the social relation - abstracting from class society and turning it again into an ideal universal mystifies a genuinely historical comprehension.

>>2850437
>fetishistic notions develop as a consequence of existence under capitalism
This is disputed by Marx's point that the fetishism of commodities begins at an "early date in history", along with the fact that interest-bearing capital (as an antediluvian form of capital) is the realisation of the capital-fetish, all the way back in Aristotle's time (where value is supposed to increase itself automatically). Marx's historical point is that as commodity production generalises, fetishism increases, hence my concluding comment that in capitalist society we are the most delusion and superstitious, while also being the most civilised.
>>2850357
>reduce the comprehension of the sentence to some mythical capacity of man to think
But that is his point in this sentence:
<what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Cockshott criticises Marx for the same passage (vidrel).
>accusing him of a fetishism of value
Well, if the value fetish is simply a misrecognition of the indirect distribution of social production, then assigning a "phantom-like objectivity" to an immaterial agency which works 'behind the backs' of men is reproducing the logic of fetishism, by pretending that "value" exists. Of course, Marx understands that for Robinson Crusoe, "value" has no meaning, but Marx also 'appears' to insist upon the abstraction as self-determining for society, even when under common conditions of monopoly, this supposed "law of value" is temporarily suspended, displaying its utter contingency:
<apart from the effect of monopolies and some other modifications I must now pass by, all descriptions of commodities are, on average, sold at their respective values or natural prices.
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm
<The exchangeable value therefore of a commodity which is at a monopoly price, is nowhere regulated by the cost of production.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch17.htm
Also, I'm currently reading David Harvey's "Companion" so I will provide a review of that work soon enough. 🫡

>>2850449
Hilarious, you extend the conceptualisation of fetishism where it suits you in order to avoid a proper historical account of the concept.

Hence you reduce value to nothing more than a conceptual fetish itself. That you believe Marx suspends the use of value under monopoly conditions is all the more ridiculous given the utter irrelevance of that quote.

Likewise the idea of fetishism 'increasing' is absolute nonsense. And that you have merely requoted Marx without consideration of the second quote given in the original post from First Premises signifies that you have not understood the basic premise that again knowledge is produced as a consequence of the social relations of production. Thus you find absolutely no issue absconding from any treatment of history proper and seek to argue through obfuscation of terminology by blending ancient greek philosophy and contemporary political economic theory.

That you believe fetishism begins prior to Marx's stated proposition is absurd. Again, reread On The Jewish Question for a formulaic argument on religion as the inversion of social consciousness and you will discover that what you mistake as fetishism is instead the direct result of the mode of production conditioning social being (species being).

>>2850495
>you reduce value to nothing more than a conceptual fetish itself.
Anon, that is Marx's meaning of commodity fetishism… The fetishism of commodities is the spectre of "value" itself, hence as Marx writes, the vulgar economist imposes the concept of value onto natural laws. As Marx continues, "no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value in a pearl or diamond". This is why commodity production obscures social production behind this "hieroglyph", which is the commodity fetish. This is why to Marx, "value no longer appears" in a communist society, where the social product is directly distributed, rather than indirectly (e.g. Gothakritik). So, "value" is the fetishism of commodities which mystifies social production in all societies which exchange. This is why communism abolishes commodity exchange.
>Marx suspends the use of value under monopoly conditions
It is written as clear as day, because Marx is borrowing from Smith and Ricardo. Monopoly suspends the law of value because the market loses perfect competition.
>the idea of fetishism 'increasing' is absolute nonsense
Anon, the commodity fetish develops into the money fetish into the capital fetish. This is in Marx's writing…
>you believe fetishism begins prior to Marx's stated proposition
Marx's proposition is that commodity fetishism begins "at an early date in history" which is more transparent, until commodity production and fetishism increases:
<It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between producers, but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
You need to refresh your memory on this chapter again.

>>2850870
This is such willful obscurantism of that chapter that I'm going to bother to respond, likewise for the fact that as again you've cherry picked the ending passage despite the chapter containing numerous repetitions of the argument of its historically specific character to the nature of bourgeois society. Likewise your mystification and confusion of the critique of value with social fetishism is equally absurd.

Actually reread that chapter, specifically the first half and do not just go quote hunting.

>>2850874
Not going to bother to respond**

>>2850876
You are responding in your apparent 'lack' of response.
>>2850495
>religion as the inversion of social consciousness
Yes, and "value" is the *fetishism* of commodities, which mysfifies social relations by indirect representation. This is why Beverley Best connects fetishism to the Base/Superstructure dynamic. Value is a superstructural abstraction of the base economic conditions.
>>2850874
>obscurantism
No, I am the person who simplifies.
>historically specific character of bourgeois society.
Yes, which Marx says begins at "an early date in history" in embryo (e.g. based in the production of commodities). As you will read, fetishism first begins in an appearance of "simplicity", until money develops, and from money, the automatic fetish of interest-bearing capital (an antediluvian form of capital which precedes capitalism). Thus, fetishism *increases* as commodity production generalises.

>>2850874
>>2850876
>>2850893
To simplify further, 'value formation' to Marx is historically particular to commodity production, which indirectly represents the labour of society by the fetish of "value"; a mystifying appearance of totality:
<Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Thus, "value" is the fetishism of commodities, which first begins simply, but develops through value forms by the increase of commodity exchange, and into money:
<The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Money by itself however takes on a new value form in capital (M-C-M'), which 'appears' to increase itself, first either by interest or profit (antediluvian capital forms). This new fetishism Marx calls the "automatic fetish". Marx writes that interest-bearing capital progressed the historical development of slave and feudal economies into capitalist economies by the ruin of independent producers (alongside "primitive accumulation"). Thus, the concentration of money-capital (M-M') gave way to means of productive investment. Productive capital (P) then arises to increasing relevance in the capitalist 'mode of production' (beginning around 1500 CE), as capitalists seek to expand value by investment in both means of production (MP) and Labour-Power (LP), which are the constituents of (P). Marx further writes that capitalism in particular displays the generality of wage labour (e.g. the commodification of LP), and this plays a part in the automatic fetish of productive capital. Rather than money-capital merely being extractive, it now allows for an expansion of itself by living labour (rather than simply increasing M, C is also increased). But because this is disguised under both the wage-form and capital-form (e.g. labour as variable capital), the cost-price (k) of the capitalist appears to make money from itself, since capital as an integrated 'concept' is self-expanding. With (P), productive capital expands due to surplus labour being converted into surplus value. Surplus value doesn't just share its revenue with profit however, but also land, as land-capital, which extracts rents by an increase in surplus value. Here again, Marx sees the fetishism of the 'physiocrats' of perceiving wealth growing out of the soil, instead of society. So then, as capital generalises commodity production, the source of value becomes more and more mystified by the "fetishism" of commodities. "Prices of production" comprise the fetish of the capitalist mode of production, since the revenues give appearance of an equal share. Much of political economy is about justifying this fact, by assigning productive margins to cost components. So then, as "value" is modified by capital and land, it 'appears' that it is these components which add value to the process, rather than exploited social labour itself. Some people then say that capital has 'evolved' since Marx's time into new 'forms' of self-valorisation. "Financial capital" plays a dominant role in the theory of capitalist imperialism, for example. But as I say, the very 'theory of value' leads to silliness, as I will show in my review of David Harvey's "Companion".

I hope this is sufficient in clarifying the historical point. 🫡

>>2850943
Again you retreat from a comprehensive understanding of the form of commodity fetishism as a product of social relations into a technical explication of interest.

>which indirectly represents the labour of society by the fetish of "value"; a mystifying appearance of totality
This conclusion is backwards for the understand of the prior statement; the historical specificity of generalised commodity production leads to the development of a fetishism in which the appearance of social relations occurs as the mediation between things. Hence "value does not stalk around with a label". Beverley's point is not of a fetishism of value but that the appearance of value is mystified by the emergence in capitalist exchange (and with it class society) through this mediation of the universal equivalent, which is the only particular form value can assume.

Hence you end up with this ludicrous inversion that "value" is the fetishism of commodities when the converse is true. Value as a social relation is subsumed beneath its historical appearance, namely the commodity. Again here you must go back and reread First Premises - we do not deal with abstract ideals of society mediated through an ideal conceptual understanding divorced from reality but:

>The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.

>>2850953
understanding*

>>2850953
>the appearance of value is mystified
Yes, it's a simulation (e.g. a copy of a copy).
Value is itself the original fetishism of commodities.
What "value" obscures is the social labour itself.
>ludicrous inversion that "value" is the fetishism of commodities
Marx claims that "value" is an immaterial abstraction. He claims that in a communist society, "value" would not 'appear' as a material quality of labour, because labour will be *directly* represented in distribution. Value does not exist as a natural thing; do you at least accept this? If so, then value can only appear as a fetishism of natural conditions (e.g. the exchange of divided social labours).
>These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.
But value is not an empirical entity, is it?

>>2850960
>Yes, it's a simulation (e.g. a copy of a copy).
>Value is itself the original fetishism of commodities.
>What "value" obscures is the social labour itself.

And again, this understanding is entirely backwards and converse to what Marx wrote. The idea that value is a simulation is equally ridiculous given that as again you must be told of the existence of socially necessary labour time and the law of averages. Hence you end up with ridiculous statements like "value is not an empirical entity".

The only thing that remains to be said is that you have misunderstood the use of the term fetishism as simply meaning obfuscation of empiricism (confusing yet again Marx's contention of empirical verification with mere appearance of fact in nature). Hence when Marx explains fetishism as belonging and resulting from a peculiar mode of production (differentiating this from the appearance of the class relation under feudalism) he argued for its historical specificity. Again you are divorcing commodity production from class relations and attempting to schematise history simply through the appearance of the commodity based on its existence as a use value (this despite the fact that Marx contends that the purpose of history is to find a use for things. Harvey repeats but actually underlines this contention in his companion)

>>2850960
>>2850975
It is here you will repeat the contention that a) value cannot be measured and b) the law of averages is meaningless and that value is merely 'simulated'. This despite Marx's explanation within the very first chapter that value is again a social relation and a direct factor in the determination of exchange originating not in exchange itself but the conditions of production.

>>2850960
>Value does not exist as a natural thing; do you at least accept this? If so, then value can only appear as a fetishism of natural conditions
It serves here to point out that this argument is spectacularly ridiculous. You have latently accepted some of the passages from First Premises but cannot reduce the explanation to a more complex understanding than that that which appears in nature and hence is directly observable is empirically valid and that of social production entails a mystification (what you designate as a 'fetish').

>>2850975
>>2850977
>>2850982
>the existence of socially necessary labour time
And labour is not "value"; it 'becomes' value in commodity exchange. This is why value does not 'appear' in communist societies as a material quality of the social product. You implicitly agree by now reframing the "form" of value as its content. The content is not the form, and you know that, and Marx wrote the same, here:
<little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them […] Content and form are changed […] a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Here, "labour" is still accounted for, but no longer possesses the fetish character of commodity production (e.g. "value" as a form).
>value is not an empirical entity
But you are not discussing "value", you are discussing labour.
>value cannot be measured
"Value" doesn't actually exist, so of course not. Further, I take Marx's position that "value" can only be derived from price, speculatively:
<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.htm
>value is again a social relation and a direct factor in the determination of exchange originating not in exchange itself
Yes, commodity exchange, which began at an "early date in history".
>social production entails a mystification
Commodity production in particular, as I have plainly stated… It is in commodity production that the "fetishism of commodities" begins. But please enlighten me, what exactly is the fetishism of commodities? What is the mystified form of appearance of them?

>>2850986
And again you derive historical conditions of production with the mere appearance of the form of value from exchange, failing to explain why societies develop at all. Instead of an understanding of history and human society based on class relations we have instead an argument similar to those of the bourgeois economists.

I can't be bothered to continue contending this argument as you will just requote passages of capital abstracted from their context as you always do.

>>2850990
>you derive historical conditions of production with the mere appearance of the form of value from exchange
Right, these conditions are called "commodity production", which Marx gives attribution of in ancient times, though "not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days". Social production in itself of course has no need for a "form of value" (e.g. the fetishism of commodities) since according to Marx, this only arises where social production is indirectly mediated by exchange.
>an understanding of history and human society based on class relations
Yes, that is the understanding which I have, since the ancient political science of people like Plato and Aristotle bases itself in class, the same way the political economy of Smith is based in class relations.
>argument
There is no "argument", I am simply teaching you about Marx.
It is a demonstration, not a dialectic.
>you will just requote passages of capital
Yes, reading is important for learning about things. 🙂👍

>>2851009
>political science
Made me laugh