/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?

We read this 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.

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