/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2889615
>The assessment of a general rate of profit is not unique to Marx, but has precedence in Massie (1750), Smith (1776) and Ricardo (1817), by way of the natural rate of interest, which has been discussed since Petty (1662) and Locke (1691).

the hunt for the natural rate of interest is an ideological humbug. there is no natural rate of interest. if you make a loan and expect the same money back, it is a loan. if you expect the same money back + interest, it's just exploitation. You expect to get money for having money. If everyone who has money expects to get even more money by loaning it, and contributing no labor, then that polarizes society between creditors and debtors. a rate of interest can only be non-exploitative if it matches the rate of inflation over the period of repayment. Since the purchasing power received back by the lender is the same as before, even if the currency amount is "greater". but since the rate of inflation over the period of repayment cannot be predicted by either the creditor or the debtor, it is impossible to peg the loan to the rate of inflation except retroactively. if interest were outlawed, nobody would lend except people who don't expect a profit from lending. But even these people might not lend if the 0% interest repayment is worth less than before because of inflation. So that is the real problem of loans: how to incentivize lending without interest. The use value of money isn't in the lending, it's in the purchasing. Really lending is just a situation where a person needs money but doesn't have it, and can't labor for it for some reason, so they borrow it from someone who already has it. Eliminate those situations and you eliminate the need for lending entirely.

>>2890278
better question: what empirical proof is there that this is what capitalists and workers compete over the distribution of, rather than capitalists and workers simply competing over who gets more money.
e.g. it's not like a union has never demanded an unprofitable firm pay them more, even though they're already being paid the full value of what they're adding, or even more than that full value.
(it is, equally, not unknown for a company to destroy value by producing something nobody wants or needs, wasting resources and labor power which could've been better used. if a worker is producing such negative value, they are almost tautologically overpaid compared to the "full value" of their labor.)

>>2890270
>Moreover, the value of fixed capital & inventory can decrease or increase over time.
indeed. but that also has little to do with my point
>For marginal production, like say on land with differential productivity, you get redistribution of value (usually in the form of rent, although it depends on the sale price at the time of sale).
you have to be really careful here, because "value" refers to different things in Marx. if you take value to be social labor then this is not the case. but if you posit a conversion factor between social labor and value then yes, I believe this is what ends up happening
>TSSI
I am skeptical of Kliman based on what I've heard of his work, but I admit I haven't read it yet. downlooooded
>>2890275
>If a person grows a fruit and they let that fruit go bad, it does not mean the labor used to grow the fruit was bad, it means the fruit didn't get used in time
there is functionally no distinction between these two things. you produced too much output, now you have to pay to get rid of some of it rather than getting paid for it. what was a positive price (fresh apples that people pay for) is now a negative price (rotten apples you as the producer have to pay to get rid of)
>In the case of the rotten fruit, its use value as an edible is gone. But even so it can still be used as compost or for some applications in science. But for most people who just wanted to eat it, it has lost its use value. Some farms pick up rotten produce from the grocery store and recycle it into compost, to replenish soil fertility. For them it has a useful value, even though the grocery store would like to be rid of it
then those apples are not really waste now are they? compost is a social good rather than a social bad. better examples would be CO2 emissions or PFAS. currently these are just dumped, because actually dealing with them implies the use of labor. no capitalist wishes to pay for sequestering their CO2 emissions when they can just doomp instead
>It does in fact cost money to hold onto things
yes this is also true. but a thing can have inherently negative value

Solved by british autist:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=agIWGvXD3hU

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2RxDbjEnU

>>2890321
doesn't Wright's "super-integrated values" just count bourgeois consumption as "socially necessary"? it kind of just reduces to a just-so story if I remember correctly

Marxism would benefit from microfoundations. It is the most annoying thing in the world to accept, and in my own Keynesian phase I coped and seethed infinitely until I came to accept this. It is quite natural to cope and try to duck and dodge the boring old individual to focus on the macro phenomena at play, but there's no reason you can't have all the macro phenomena as emergent properties of individual behaviour. (including coordinated-yet-"uncoordinated" actions in the service of class interest and all the rest of it. If the internet has done one thing, it's make phenomena like this clearly legible! Even down to stuff like: a journalist can post nothing but bourgeois propaganda without ever being told to do so, simply because - as a rational individual - they know it's the best way to maximise their career prospects. Microfoundations!)

>>2890308

Value as social labour is also the case in the rent scenario, but its the social labour of the whole economy. That's a lot of what is behind the theory of the MELT in the TSSI.

There is also this (but unlike RMC, I haven't read it yet; Too many other things.

>>2890361

As you might be aware, the main problem with microfoundations in neoclassical is that fallacy of composition is replete throughout.

Actually formulating an economy with social relations between people under given yet also evolving circumstances is mathematically difficult. Sometimes it also leads to intractability/unpredictability or divergent outcomes (eg. in physics: The three body problem)

>>2890345
Since capital is an analysis of internal, immanent logic of capitalism, wouldn't the reproduction of bourgeois class be socially necesarry for the reproduction of capitalism itself?

It's like, inefficiency and waste are "necessary" under capitalism because orienting society towards surplus value production, including existence of capitalists *is* the waste.

>>2890499

Not necessarily if you think of the bourgeoisie as singular human beings.

Its at least theoretically possible to imagine a kid nd of economy where all property is nationalized & the state receives dividends, but that the enterprises all still compete for profit, market share & share of assets of the whole economy.

In this case abstract & possible but very unlikely case the bourgeois class becomes the state owned firms themselves, with zero consumption & profits either reinvested & paid or paid in dividends.

Now obviously such it would be irrational for a state with such ownership to deliberately run its firms in that antagonistic fashion if it is seeling relatively economic growth & stability. The point is just to illustrate an edge case.

Its likely in such a case either the state moves towards unitary planning or (more likely) the top managers of the firms become capitalists but that have to pay some portion of their profits as dividends.

In Russia for example, most non-privatized assets that remained operate in this latter manner to dome degree.

>>2890499

Still, I want to commend this comment. Its a productive question to ask, unlike so much of posting on leftypol that might as well be trolling or bait.

>>2890494
It's a real difficulty, but an overstated problem in my view. Most of the obvious examples of compositional fallacies are the kind of thing you could easily imagine solving or fudging if you were programming. (e.g. if you create a model with 100 agents who can choose to save or consume at different ratios, any half-worthwhile model will have the paradox of thrift as an emergent property, rather than a lazily assembled "IF saving THEN richer" that eschews it.)

You can progressively get things closer to the actual outcome. Like, Kerbal Space Program makes the laughable assumption that a spaceship is only impacted by the orbital mechanics of one body at a time and that orbital bodies don't impact one another, which means you lose certain properties like Lagrange points, but it's nevertheless very useful for illustrating and clarifying the generalities of rocket-physics to the layman in a way that a purely macro description (overly focused on just how weird things get when you pause in space because your spaceship can't decide what it's falling towards) isn't. A lot of the simplifying assumptions (infinitely restartable rocket engines, no orbital decay/suddenly stopping atmosphere, etc) can be modded out and in the last resort, there's even a mod to introduce n-body physics. (with their own simplifying assumptions.)
The downsides of this need to simplify or fudge from time to time are more than offset by the enforcement of fairly rigorous thinking about the impact of each change. You can't just throw something in casually (especially not in response to someone identifying a flaw in your thinking) and assume the model as a whole continues to function. (e.g. when they put n-body physics in KSP the solar system, designed for a simpler model, immediately spun itself apart.) You may not be able to predict the actual outcome 1:1 because of all the fundamental uncertainties, but you can get a good idea of the underlying system dynamics that's nevertheless rooted in a thousand little chaotic choices.

Or maybe I'm just too enamoured by the idea of how, if you simulate all this with agents, you could illustrate all these things in a visually interesting way. (Perhaps you could even make a game of class warfare…)

>>2890298
>e.g. it's not like a union has never demanded an unprofitable firm pay them more, even though they're already being paid the full value of what they're adding, or even more than that full value.
such a firm would collapse so it's irrelevant
>(it is, equally, not unknown for a company to destroy value by producing something nobody wants or needs, wasting resources and labor power which could've been better used.
read rajani palme dutt fascism and social revolution chapter 3, section titled the destruction of the productive forces. this observation is not incompatible with marx.
>if a worker is producing such negative value, they are almost tautologically overpaid compared to the "full value" of their labor.)
labor doesn't have value. my god. read marx. like actually understand marx's argument.

>>2890918
there's no guarantee such a firm would collapse. it could well be cross-subsidised by other parts of the same firm for prestige reasons, for example.
>labor doesn't have value
read "full value" in the context of being a reply to >>2890278
>what gets added by abstract labor in the production process
e.g. if labor is removing value, then what is "added" by abstract labor in the production process is a negative, yet the workers come out of the competition for distribution with a positive. ""full value" of their labor" amounts to the entirety of the addition or subtraction, as opposed to the value of labor itself. (insofar as this matters.)

>>2890298
You are correct that workers can be overpaid according to the value of their labour, which is why it's a universal opinion of political economy that minimum wage laws are detrimental, but maximum hours laws are beneficial. Marx (1867), Jevons (1871) and Keynes (1921) all saw that higher wages are only a result of lower hours, and not the other way round. The USSR (1928) also resolved differential wages on the basis of the working day. With minimum wages, the working day is actually increased. So, it would be lawful to abolish minimum wages and its vulgar "trade union consciousness" to allow real pricing.
>>2890361
>>2890494
>there's no reason you can't have all the macro phenomena as emergent properties of individual behaviour.
But Marx already does base his analysis in exchange, which is an individual unit of the economy, or as he puts it, the "economic cell-form" of a larger body. Everything hinges upon the constitutive act of exchange (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 2), which requires an effective demand of the parties involved, elsewise "value" cannot not manifest (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Sct. 1). Effective demand is the determinate factor of the value of commodities being realised (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 3, Sct. 2A), and so value is a function of subjective utility, but not identical with it. This is because natural objects may provide utility, but may still lack a value in exchange (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Sct. 1). This is also what Carl Menger (founder of the Austrian School) writes, that the utility of a good is not necessarily identical with it having value, since valueless things can still be useful. Trade to Marx begins by barter (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 2), which then develops into the simple form of commodities, which finally develops into money (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Sct. 3). In all of this, the "value form" is isolated to the individual act of exchange, but expanded to many exchanges. The economic germ thus grows into a value body, or "world of commodities". So, we begin with the singular, to expand to the general. To Marx, markets are networks.

>>2890282
>Really lending is just a situation where a person needs money but doesn't have it, and can't labor for it for some reason, so they borrow it from someone who already has it.
We can say that borrowing money is the cost of present goods cut against future goods, since interest acts as a tax on high time-preference. We immediately summon mythical examples of selling one's soul for possessions. Here, the gains are immediate, at a later expense. Debt is then the creation of the debtor, who steals his own time - the creditor simply allows vice to commence. The ethical question concerns economic responsibility in general. For example, it would be seen as unethical to offer children a loan, since they lack economic reason. Another term for this would be a "credit score". A person who is known to be in debt due to economic irrationality is then a victim of themselves, by legal permission. We saw in the 2008 crisis, that "sub-prime" mortgages were given out, which means banks loaning to people with low credit scores, causing accumulations of social debt. The global economy has not yet recovered from this inclusive policy. Equally, we see young people exploited by student loans, which we may call "sub-prime", since evidently, these people have no economic qualifications, and so "know not what they do", by lack of foresight. We could otherwise say that the legal permission of student loans is the industrialisation of bad social investment, which bases an economy on debt slavery. This has been common in all histories, and never ends well for society. In any case, we prove that the creditor is not a villain, it is only the state's complicity which permits such evils (e.g. the same way drug dealers are just businessmen). This is why in ancient Athens, Solon displaced Draco's laws by a forgiveness of debts, and so the power of the creditors is in the responsibility of the state to decide who is eligible for loans. For these reasons, I would end all student loan schemes and replace it with scholarship for selected students. All the rest can pay their way out of pocket. In the UK, student loans are dispensed from the government, so this would be an easy policy reform. To conclude, debtors are victims of themselves, and so should be restricted from self-harm, like any drug addict. The drug dealer is innocent, since they provide service. This is also how Satan is theologically understood, like a vampire. Man is "tempted", but The Devil never forces any evil.

>>2889922
>prices could lack any grounding. they could just be an immanent property, as eigenfrequencies
<yeah dude prices are actually natural characteristics like the color yellow or the smell of roses
Sometimes I wonder if you guys actually understand what you are saying

>>2890996
UK student loans are an odd case because their aim isn't really to be repaid in full. They are for practical purposes a graduate tax (nobody has their TV repossessed to pay their student loans, for example), but a graduate tax would have some downsides that an infinite loan avoids (Most obviously that you could avoid paying by emigrating.) at the cost of being slightly regressive (since a rich person can pay it off quickly and, possibly, save on their net tax bill, while a poor person cannot.) and engaging in a touch of accounting fraud (at one point they had it rigged up so that the spending to give students a loan wasn't recorded as debt the government took on because you were just swapping some cash for the "asset" of a future loan payment, but the repayments were recorded as revenue. (e.g. the government was double dipping.))

Personally, I would bite the bullet and hike general taxation to fund free university education for anyone who wants it (For basically instrumental reasons: it shifts people left/liberal. Not because people are propagandised by left/liberal lecturers - people are rarely so easy to propagandise, and nobody pays attention in class anyway - but because the university environment itself has this effect on people.), I'd even allow people to do multiple degrees and all sorts of other shenanigans. Rather than merely avoiding evil, I would have the state try to cultivate goodness - but indirectly.

>>2891243
you tell me anon, how can the following both be true?
>the value of labor power depends on its productivity
>the productivity of labor power depends on its value
so where does the value "come from" in the first place? for example, it is entirely possible that value isn't actually created, but merely transferred from worker to product via depreciation, same as any other MoP

>>2891243
>>2891302 (me)
for example, we can posit that new value comes from a growth in the productivity of the MoPs, and that value is otherwise recycled

>>2891270
But you don't see a fallacy here? Loans isolate costs as a graduate tax, but a general subsidy taxes non-graduates for a service which they never received. It is class warfare. That's why I prefer a particular subsidy, so as to (as you write), (i) avoid being scammed by foreign claimants, (ii) allow the rich to pay their own way, (iii) to avoid an overproduction of elites. I disagree that we need more students. The limits of admission should be regulated by proper social standards, since to extend the previous demonstration, a child should not receive anything they want at the expense of everybody else. It's immoral.

>>2891302
>the productivity of labor power depends on its value
no it doesn't. the value of labor power is the subsistence of the worker. a highly productive and highly unproductive worker will both on average require roughly the same amount of food, water, shelter.

>>2890949
>read "full value" in the context of being a reply to
doesn't change anything. i was aware of the context

>>2891474
Rich non graduates should pay for poor (and rich!) graduates just as rich healthy people with private insurance nevertheless pay taxes for public healthcare, the childless pay for schools, motorists pay for railway subsidies, and so on. Insofar as it's class warfare, it's a war of the uneducated rich against the educated poor (which is the basic dynamic of voting behaviour in most developed countries), and in that battle I know where I'd have the state subsidize reinforcements.
The alternative is to go full libertarian: if justice requires we get only what we pay for, go all the way. This is not entirely a bad faith suggestion: the uneducated rich often congregate in uncompetitive industries protected by the state. (Here I mean things like US car dealerships and most "privatised" British gifts, rather than say, useful factories or whatever aesthetic image the term usually conjures up.)

If overproducing elites skews society leftwards (a theory I'm skeptical of since even older, comfortably off graduates skew left in polling, meaning causation probably lies elsewhere) I am all for it.

>>2891480
>no it doesn't
slaves produce no value. see vol III
>a highly productive and highly unproductive worker will both on average require roughly the same amount of food, water, shelter.
again, see vol III

>>2891496
>Rich non graduates should pay for all graduates, the same way they pay for public services in genral
Well, this gets to the crux of the matter; I don't believe that higher education ought to be a public service, since admission should depend on sound social investment, and/or academic credit (e.g. UCAS Points), lest we see university act as an extension of Secondary School, as it already tends towards. We have existing colleges for BTEC and A-Level courses which are rightfully free for public use and unlimited in application - the market also allows cheaper university courses in less prestigious institutions, so anyone can save up and go to these. But if you literally cannot save up for university, you already fail the test of personal responsibility, wouldn't you agree? Let's say that we revise UCAS Points to be at a total possible score of 400 (e.g. 4 D*). If you receive 400, you get a free interview with any university, and subsidised admission in selected universities. If you get 350 Points, you get a tax deduction for certain courses, and if you get less than 350, you have to pay your own way. As I say, the benefit of free college is that you can always re-apply to get a better score. So, there is an unlimited right of opportunity, but the right of admission is dependent on personal talent, which if is absent, can be paid for.
>if justice requires we get only what we pay for, go all the way
Justice is getting what we deserve. We may lack certain means, but possess others, so as to acquire what we are owed. This is why money is not the only standard, but also credit - in the form of recorded talents. A poor person lacks money, but are eligible by other means. So, the libertarian is only half-right in his assessment.

>>2891581
which part of the posthumously published volume 3? marx clearly says in volume 1, the only volume to come out when he was still alive, the only volume he actually finished, that the value of labor power is equal to the value of the subsistence of the worker.

>>2892156
This is a bad characterisation of Engels' editorialisation, since you can actually read the original manuscript for Capital Vol. 3 (1864-5) here:
https://libcom.org/article/capital-volume-3-unedited-engels

>>2892158
so the value of labor power isn't equal to the value of the subsistence of the worker?

>>2892164
Sorry, I forgot to add that I'm not the arrogant anon you're responding to. Your comments are easily verified by primary sources. Marx (1867):
<The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requisite for their production.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
So yes, the value of labour-power is its cost of (re-)production. But do please keep pressing the other anon to present his supposed sources.

>>2891941
Why not embrace the development of university as a de-facto post secondary school? We once let people leave school at 10 years old, then 15, then 16. (Which I assume is in your gut the correct figure, even if England now has some weirdness making it 16 only if you get a job or further education, while Scotland keeps the old system.) Universities already filter their offers by academic ability (allowing people to pay to bypass this is certainly a novel idea, not necessarily one I'd oppose since it probably reduces the incentives to just cheat as well as raising revenue) so I don't see too much benefit of adjusting funding in that way.

I think everyone deserves the chance to cultivate the best possible version of themselves. Even if we grant for argument's sake that university is basically just 4 years of state funded dossing around, I think the evidence suggests that on the whole this is beneficial to them, and a society of such people is beneficial in general. (Both of which you can read off from voting behaviour, which proxies underlying personality biases and prejudices.) It is entirely possible that the causal mechanism isn't he educational component - perhaps it's simply the effect of choosing to move somewhere new, away from home, for example. (I think this can only be a partial explanation, since there are a lot of stay-at-home students) Perhaps it's simply thinking of oneself as someone who likes to think, or as an academic, or a degree-holder, or such, which renders one impervious to the more base appeals to stupid prejudices of right-wing parties. (Contra historical norms. e.g. I am not just making the vulgar argument that the state should buy Labour and Green voters, but that the state should craft the sort of people who incidentally happen to vote Green and to a lesser extent Labour. Although I think it is utter madness that Labour doesn't agree…)

Universities as an institution should probably be fundamentally re-thought, and the whole approach to research needs to be upended, but that's another story.

>>2892218
>Why not embrace the development of university as a de-facto post secondary school?
Because it is expensive, infantilising and diminishes marginal returns; hence an issue of elite overproduction where university graduates fail to find employment. The more graduates, the less valuable that qualifications become - you cannot work around this, except by trying to re-invent the wheel with even more higher education. The Academy is exclusive by its nature; it was created by Plato, the same way Aristotle had the Lyceum. Later we had Monastic institutions for Scholastics. General education itself was only promoted in the 19th century, with thinkers like Robert Owen, who insisted upon the requirement for Nursey/Kindergarten. As you say, time goes on and school gets longer, but less useful as well. That's why we need vocational training, like traditional education, which based learning on apprenticeship. The discussion we're having is larger than economic policy of course, so cannot all be resolved with swiftness.
>I think everyone deserves the chance to cultivate the best possible version of themselves
Right, and that opportunity then requires responsibility. If you are a clever-cloggs, you will be rewarded, and if not, you can pay your own way. I see no controversy.
>this is beneficial to them
Sure, but what exactly is beneficial is not university in particular, it is the social experience. Surely there are more appropriate means to make connections. I am not against the principle, say, of a year's break after school is finished to allow young people to flourish, rather than to be suddenly implanted into a hostile labour market.
>Universities as an institution should probably be fundamentally re-thought, and the whole approach to research needs to be upended, but that's another story.
Yes, I agree. As a basic idea, I think that schools should account fot students' behaviours and create a credit account for them which is redeemable after their period, so that good behaviour is rewarded by incentive. In primary school we used to have lottery using tokens for good behaviour - good parents also operate by fairness in these things, like a swear jar that punishes parents themselves, rather than the typical authoritarian ethic. But this concerns a larger conversation of youth justice.

>>2892267
>Because it is expensive, infantilising and diminishes marginal returns

Hey skin that's retarded. There's nothing about university education per se that is or results in any of those things. You might as well oppose education itself.

>>2892170
thanks anon

>>2892156
>the value of labor power is equal to the value of the subsistence of the worker
mhm. and what determines the subsistence level of the worker? society does. the value of labor power varies with location and across time. if you tried to only give workers the absolute bare minimum for survival, such as water and potatoes and literally nothing else, they would swiftly revolt
the value of labor power is a question of political struggle, and it tends to shake out at around 50% of the value produced. you will find that you cannot reproduce say a French worker without supplying not just food and water, but also diapers, toys, education, healthcare, PCs, internet, gaming consoles, cookies, cheese, wine etc etc. many of these things are not necessary to reproduce say Ivorian workers. therefore the value of French labor power is higher than Ivorian labor power

>>2889197
the transformation problem isnt a problem OP
read this and this (pdf and then blog)

https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2024/12/17/reply-to-carchedi/

>>2892294
>You might as well oppose education itself
Well, general education has its intrinsic limits. Some kids just don't have the interest or discipline to read, write or use arithmetic, which is why further education is specialised according to divisions of labour. Traditional education was vocational along these lines, suited to a more artisinal age.

>>2892728
Oh well, school isn't for everyone, they'll just get jobs instead of going to uni.. Hardly worth fucking crying over is it.

Friedrich Engels on the general rate of profit (1895):
<the individual capitalists, each on his own, chase after the biggest profit. Bourgeois economy discovers that this race in which every one chases after the bigger profit results in the general and equal rate of profit, the approximately equal ratio of profit for each one. Neither the capitalists nor the bourgeois economists, however, realise that the goal of this race is the uniform proportional distribution of the total surplus value calculated on the total capital. But how has the equalisation been brought about in reality? This is a very interesting point, about which Marx himself does not say much. But his way of viewing things is not a doctrine but a method. It does not provide ready-made dogmas, but criteria for further research and the method for this research. Here therefore a certain amount of work has to be carried out, since Marx did not elaborate it himself in his first draft.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/letters/95_03_11.htm
So, even Engels displays indeterminacy as to the problem.

>>2892745
How are you supposed to do any job in the 21st century if you can’t read?

>>2889842
>>2889756
Commodities don't embody labor. Value is a relationship of society to a commodity and not an embodiment of labor. The idea that a commodity embodies labor becomes nonsensical in the light of changing productive technologies causing changes in the values of extant commodities. You'd have to argue that the labor embodied within a commodity can simply vanish. Value is relative but not subjective.

>>2892366
This is why labour value is understood as the competitive rate of wages. Things like minimum wage laws, border restrictions and so on overprice labour according to its value. You are then confusing the market price of labour (e.g. wages) with its natural price. If countries were maximally competitive, the price of labour would decrease, no?
>>2892807
>You'd have to argue that the labor embodied within a commodity can simply vanish.
To Marx, value only exists where it has been produced, distributed and consumed. So value is not an inert property, but a syllogism of labour.

>>2892267
Primary and secondary schooling are another discussion entirely. My gut position is that we basically need a year zero on them, absolutely irredeemable timewasting prisons that can and do put millions off the very concept of education and learning by structuring it in the most miserable way possible. Barely functional as a means of ensuring basic literacy for all, useless on teaching mathematics, and actively harmful beyond that. It is my sincere belief that if kids are all using their phones in class nowadays they're probably better off for it - those who go to Wikipedia certainly are, but even those on fandom pages have a leg up. One can be a teacher or a prison guard, but not both. It is criminal what we subject children to when they really could be learning.

>>2892840
>If countries were maximally competitive, the price of labour would decrease, no?
the free movement of labor power should cause the value of labor power to be levelled over time, I think

>>2893299
Right, but this would mean reducing wages in the West to an average found across the world. We can see this dispute in Social Democrats like Bernie. In this interview he says he is against open borders since it declines wages, and he says he doesn't care about levelling wages of the third world to the first world. We could then call this protection of wages a type of price-fixing that allows greater consumption on the world market, but also results in capital flight to competitive sectors.

>>2893314
>Right, but this would mean reducing wages in the West to an average found across the world
indeed. but it is historically progressive, so of course the social fascist would oppose it
beyond keeping wages unequal, this also leads to unequal development. it makes no sense to invest in MoPs when labor power is cheap

>>2893319
>Historically progressive
I mean, that's a loaded judgement. It is what it is - it can either be good or bad for whichever context you're discussing it in. I am just describing the facts; border regulations raise national wages by monopolising domestic labour markets over international ones.

>>2893320
yeah. but it also wastes labor power and holds back the development of the MoPs

>>2893322
Well, it all depends. We see that in the struggle of labour versus capital, that pushing for higher wages leads to the development of machines which subsequently replace workers. So, technology is not just created by competition between capitalists, but also of workers versus capital as well. Now, for the struggles of labour regulations, Marx gives an account of its history in Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 10, and it concludes that the real struggle is the fight for a lesser working day, which in turn, leads to higher wages, rather than the other way round. Minimum wage laws were never pushed by socialists, but only liberals. Even trade unions had opposition to minimum wages, but only because it levelled wages in different industries. So, simply letting capital take the reins is not the sole path to productivity, and it cannot bring increased prosperity without regulations in place, either.