Now that the dust has settled, what the fuck was his problem? Why did he disavow his work on imperialism and what's he doing today?
The booty was too short or empty.
>>2931871I guess hes realized he was wrong about unequal exchange.
>>2931871He became really angry that the left refused to condemn Hamas.
On a more serious note this explanation itself sounds like a major cope (lol) and my hypothesis is that since he got a comfortable academic gig in a university he decided to sell out his soul in exchange for keeping that job. Sad! Many such cases!
>"My last two published monographs (Cope, 2015, 2019) are based on Marxist views that are outright false or misleadingly one-sided. I hereby retract them. Having been committed to the toxic Marxist perspective for more than half my life, it ultimately proved impossible for me not to perceive the consistent and century-old pattern of far-left apologetics for every conceivable atrocity committed by avowed enemies of the West (including war crimes and genocide), these typically starting with denial, moving to excuse, and ending in justification (Glazov, 2009, p. 208). This was starkly highlighted in the leftist response to the bestial violence unleashed by Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7, 2023 (Berkovits, 2024). Laboring under Marxian fantasies for so long, following the shock of recognition in witnessing such moral and intellectual decrepitude its dissolution in my mind was precipitate. Undoubtedly, as Polish philosopher and historian Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) wrote, “the extinction of myths requires certain conditions. But,” he continues, “it will be a mass extinction: once one myth is exposed, the rest will follow, hurtling down like an avalanche. [. . .] And its collapse had to be as total as its rule had been: a chain of divinities, collapsing like a pack of cards. What folly to imagine it was possible to extract just one!” (Kolakowski, 2012)."
>“In the name of anti-imperialism, nominal socialists have, inter alia, denied the genocidal colonialism of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia during the Balkans Wars of the 1990s. Today, proponents of ‘multipolarity’ deny the appalling repression conducted by the Chinese government against the Uyghur people of Xinjiang/East Turkestan, and China’s record of human rights violations, extreme labour exploitation, widespread environmental despoliation, and unequal relations with weaker economic partners. Contemporary ‘anti-imperialists’ have justified, denied, or simply ignored crimes against humanity on the part of Syria’s (neo)patrimonial billionaire dictatorship and its Russian and Iranian patrons. They have defended or minimized the deadly Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine, and they have disregarded Russian economic imperialism in the former Soviet Republics. Self-professed ‘anti-imperialists’ have lionized the rentier-capitalist governments of ‘socialist’ Venezuela and other corrupt and authoritarian populist regimes in Central and South America. Many socialists routinely confuse anti-imperialism with anti-Semitism, all of the above with frequent recourse to rhetorical strawman, tu quoque, and ad hominem illogic.
>In their shared anti-elitism, ideological antipluralism, and threatened nationalism, the far left and far right often espouse a similar paranoid and conspiracist populism."
>>2931882<i denounce marxism>lists off positions that have nothing to do with marxism (commies didn't condom serbia and uyghurs o algo)>uses kolakowski to advocate against opposition to genocide and zionist censorshipKek, looks like the anon who said he did it for some academia grift was right
>>2931880Bordiga could have saved him
>>2931882>Muh evil serbs, muh poor uyghurs, muh russiayeah there's 0% chance he actually believes any of this shit he really did just sell himself out for a comfy job.
>>2931920>yeah there's 0% chance he actually believes any of this shit Hes a basic bitch liberal. Of course he believes CIA funded propaganda.
>>2931879Unequal exchange has been reaffirmed endlessly. Only lolbertarians and Eurocentric liberals deny it at this point.
>>2931960>Unequal exchange has been reaffirmed endlessly.It rests on debunked LTV theory.
>>2931969>debunkedRetard detected. Opinion discarded.
>>2931969Right… and only lolbertarians and Eurocentric liberals think LTV has been "debunked."
Besides, you don't even need LTV to prove unequal exchange, just use a relevant metric and a benchmark.
>>2931969>LTV… badOk liberal how about you try to have a society without working?
>>2931871>Now that the dust has settled, what the fuck was his problem? Why did he disavow his work on imperialism and what's he doing today?>>2931879>I guess hes realized he was wrong about unequal exchange.If only it were that simple. He didn't just disavow his own work, he turned into a gigazionist. I think he either was always a reactionary, or he got kidnapped by the CIA and tortured or was given involuntary brain surgery.
>>2931882>unequal exchange>marxistanyone who call themselves a marxist and at the same time believes in unequal exchange is a grifter just like this guy. regardless of whether you think ue is real or not, it is fundamentally incompatible with marxism. anyone claiming to uphold both, doesn't actually give a shit about either
>>2931992So, Eurocentric liberal it is.
>>2931992marx pioneered unequal exchmage, thobeit.
>>2931969my belief in Unequal exchange has been reaffirmed
>>2931891based on what he says here
>>2931882 he seems pretty ultra left. "the anti imperialists are all hypocrites doing apologetics for alt-imperialism" is something we hear frequently out of the so called "Bordigists" on this board. He left communism because it wasn't left enough for him. It's especially embittering that out of the grab bag of examples he chose to cry about October 7 2023 first and foremost. really buddy? Gaza striking back is what made you finally give up on Communism? Muh hecking "antisemitism" of a genocided people doing the modern equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?
>>2931992>>2931997>marx pioneered unequal exchmage, thobeit.the people who say unequal exchange isn't true (like cockshott) rest on a highly pedantic foundation of "well under generalized commodity production in bourgeois society, equal values are always exchanged". they get this from a vulgar reading of marx
>>2931999Bordiga cheered on the Axis powers against the Allies during WW2 on the basis that the Axis would hasten the collapse of the British Empire, but leftcoms somehow don't extend that logic to the Global South destabilizing Northern imperialism.
>>2931999You don't need to be a leftcom to see the marcyite tier mental gymnastics of supporting serbian/russian irredentism and random regimes built on the corpses of socialist movements as silly. Zak was one of those guys!
>>2932003'Diga didn't actually cheer them on, this is a meme that could be rectified by reading any single one of his texts where he mentions WW2. It's based on a quote he made under police surveillance in fascist Italy during the war.
>>2932000Cockshott only says that shit because it's required to uphold the "Falling Rate of Profit" line constantly going down doom graphs which point towards a final irreversible end to capitalism sometime in the next 10 years. It's pure copium just ignore his L take on this. He's a STEMtard so he wants there to be a scientifically verifiable final conclusion and he'll ignore or slander everything that doesn't support it.
>>2932017Yeah rate of profit falling is a tendency and not an absolute rule like gravity or entropy. You can get around it through capital destruction like in WWII, government subsidies (no farm can exist without them), keeping wages down and having the government pick up the tab through welfare.
>>2932034Why do you think marxist parties in the third world have largely failed to take power in the last 30 years? precisely because their theory is wrong.
>>2932017for someone calling cockshott vulgar you seem to have no understand of what marx meant by the tendency of falling rate of profits. it is a tendency, not a vibe, you can measure it. and the reasons are fairly mechanical (bet you hate that word) and inescapable. here is the thing though: you're going to have to do some math. speaking of latin-america, here is the line that is common here on the subject, explained by david laibman
it's crazy how focused you're on cockshott, I'm going to have to read him
>>2932025
Again, you didn't read shit you stupid uyghur. I hate it when leftyfaggots just type shit and act authoritative on subject they have no idea about.
>>2932045Right wingers and liberals do it all the time and they consistently get power and hold on to it while Marxists bury themselves in footnotes as the world moves on without them, stop caring about being right
>>2932045Show me where Bordiga denounced his pro-Axis views after the war had ended then. In his last interview, he said he was unrepentant about everything.
>>2932039Marx took the idea of a falling rate of profit from bourgeois writers like Ricardo. It used to be considered non-controversial, since it is simply an effect of equalising by competition, whether in local or global markets. Adam Smith traces the national rate of profit from the 16th century, which he saw as declining up to his time, due to accumulation of capital – mercantilists such as Potter (1650) and Child (1668) also noted the difference of interest rates between Holland and England, which Petty (1662) and Locke (1690) explained as a factor of capital stock employed in production. Naturally, total profits decrease at the margins – so as Marx says, the rate of profit declines in proportion to an increase in the rate of exploitation. The tendency is suspended in the case that the law of value is also suspended by monopoly, though, which manually sets price at the highest margin of bargaining power. Competition is central to Marx's theory, which presumes free markets. It is entirely contested whether such things survived the 20th century.
>>2932017what? but cockshott doesnt view the tendency of the profit to fall that important, he agrees that there might be a tendency but he thinks it will never truly reach zero. Michael Roberts is the one arguing that it is trending towards zero however with the huge caveat that would only happen decades from now for major economies, at best somewhere around 2100 and even that would only happen if everything else stays the same, like no new wars breaking out, rising productivity etc…. Current vulgar economists deny it (even though people like Adam Smith already were aware of it) simply because it would threaten their entire viewpoint.
>>2931992The marxist interpretation of unequal exchange is an equalising of the rate of profit by combining capitals. In less developed nations, the rate is higher due to lesser proportions of fixed stock; the more developed can then shift the price down to usurp the average rate of profit from them – by international competition. This is why a capital-intensive firm (e.g. in the developed world) can still operate on stable profits (since it siphens profits away from smaller businesses). That is the compatibility within a Marxist framework. I don't know whether it's true.
>>2932000But the value of capitalist commodities includes the surplus, which in Marx's view, combines in complex markets, averaging out profit rates. This is why to Marx, particular commodities do not sell at their values (e.g. their "market values" are determined from an average case):
<Those who produce at the worst extreme must then sell their commodities below the individual value; those producing at the best extreme sell them above it […] Demand and supply imply the conversion of value into market-value, and so far as they proceed on a capitalist basis […] The price of production includes the average profit […] Our analysis has revealed how the market-value (and everything said concerning it applies with appropriate modifications to the price of production) embraces a surplus-profit for those who produce in any particular sphere of production under the most favourable conditions.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htmThis term, "surplus profit" is called "super profit" in Leninist analysis.
>>2932057if marx's theory is the same as ricardo, then you didn't understand ricardo
if you did understand ricardo, then marx's theory is different because it has nothing to do with competition or what you posted
rates of profit tend to fall because the organic composition of capital tends to rise. competition or not, you need people to produce things, the more tools and machines there are, the bigger the ratio of work that goes back into producing those machines and tools. and thus, it is the other way around: increasing exploitation rates (the % appropriated) is often the only way to maintain the profit rates. in turn, increasing exploitation disincentivizes innovation and reproduction
>>2932077>it has nothing to do with competitionI'm afraid to say that you are illiterate of Marx's work.
The tendency of a falling GENERAL rate of profit is by competition:
<Equalisation of the General Rate of Profit Through Competition […] Competition so distributes the social capital among the various spheres of production that the prices of production in each sphere take shape according to the model of the prices of production in these spheres of average composition […] All other capitals, of whatever composition, tend toward this average under pressure of competition […] And it is competition of capitals in different spheres, which first brings out the price of production equalizing the rates of profit in the different spheres.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htmEt cetera, et cetera. Good day, sir!
>>2932034>most marxist parties in latin america take autistic care to say "unequal development" (the marxist line that you call vulgar) instead of "unequal exchange", because of how irrational and stupid that theory isquick rundown on what's the difference for normies
>>2932075>the more developed can then shift the price down to usurp the average rate of profit from themthis doesn't make any sense at all
>can still operate on stable profitsbecause the exploitation rates are higher
let cc be the constant capital, vc the variable capital, and p the product
if cc=1, vc=1 and p=4, then the worker produced 3 units, was paid 1, and the profit was 2 units
if you invested into new machines and now cc=2, vc=?, and p=6; note that productivity has gone up, but
- if the new wage is 1u like it was before, exploitation went from 66% to 75%
- if wages increase with productivity, then the profit rate will be lower than before, making the switch pointless
this means that, usually, exploitation rates are higher in the developed economies
>>2932080the volume 3 was not published by marx, it was published after his death from his notes. if you go to the first volume of capital:
<From what has gone before, we know that surplus-value is purely the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion of the capital which is transformed into labour-power; consequently, v + s = v + v', or v plus an increment of v. But the fact that it is v alone that varies, and the conditions of that variation, are obscured by the circumstance that in consequence of the increase in the variable component of the capital, there is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It was originally £500 and becomes £590. Therefore in order that our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must make abstraction from that portion of the value of the product, in which constant capital alone appears, and consequently must equate the constant capital to zero or make c = 0. This is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes, related to each other by the symbols of addition and subtraction only. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm>>2932081the unequal exchange theory claims that countries in the third world sell commodities to the first world for less than they are worth, that the first world does the opposite, and that this order is maintained through coercion. the evidence for this was taken from aggregated economic statistics: A sold 100kg of "minerals" to B for 100$, and then bought 50kg of "minerals" from B for 100$. it then follows that this explains the unequal living conditions in the first and the third world
the unequal development theory claims that economies in the developed countries are more capital intensive and more productive, and that explains the differences in wealth between nations. the evidence given is that most commodities with an international market have global prices. the international cost of a barrel of diesel is ~200$ + shipping regardless of if you are in brazil or in the uk. then there is taxes and such particular to each country, but that's not expressed in international prices
the practical difference is that the first one pursues an isolationist policy and the second the development of the means of production
>>2932083yes, there is pillaging, but the problem of the theory is that pillaging doesn't happen through some convoluted international trade trickery. stealing shit is a rather straightforward process that doesn't involve price differences
>>2932083Why did saddam try to make his economy basef upon a gold standard again
>>2932100>this doesn't make any sense at allMany struggle with Capital Vol. 3.
>because the exploitation rates are higherYes, but the rate of profit is inverse of the rate of exploitation.
This is why larger investments lead to lesser marginal returns.
Rate of exploitation (surplus): s/v
Rate of profit: s/(c+v)
>volume 3 was not published by marx, it was published after his death from his notesYou can read his "notes" here:
https://libcom.org/article/capital-volume-3-unedited-engelsIt's basically the same book.
>>2932102He didn't, that was Gaddafi. Saddam moved over to the Euro.
The reason Gaddafi wanted to do it was to hold a monopoly over the terms of trade, since to purchase Libyan oil in gold, you'd have to pay a higher price; it was basically forcing the rising of oil prices to then invest into a Bank of Africa (as he proposed).
>>2932083The bars are brass made to look like gold probably getting disposed by the US. It's not gold that the US took, the oil revenue to this day goes to the federal bank then is "given" to Iraq.
Also 900 million dollars are bread crumbs compared to the trillions that were and are made from privatization to this day. Stop giving chuds gotchas
>zak cope devolved into zio seethe
sad!
>>2932125>ignored the question, got all huffy about the picmany such cases
>>2932135I don't care to debate succdem delusions. Stop posting coal if you don't want to be called out.
>>2932113>the rate of profit is inverse of the rate of exploitation>Rate of exploitation (surplus): s/v>Rate of profit: s/(c+v)those are not inverses… I don't know what to tell you man, this is high-school math
let E be the rate of exploitation, the inverse of E would be 1/E, which is not the case here
case in point, imagine the capitalist decided to pay their workers less, say, half, it is evident that
s/v < s/(v/2)
the rate of profit would also be affected in the same direction (increase)
s/(c+v) < s/(c+v/2)
so not only is not the inverse, it is also evident that, all things equal, higher exploitation can produce higher profits. and in the developed economies it is often the only way of maintaining and increasing the profit rates
>You can read his "notes" here:>It's basically the same book.that's the problem. the problem is not the revisions, but that those are notes, not a book. the point of a draft is that you make mistakes
furthermore, you seem to be avoiding the main point I made, which is that the tendency of profit rates to fall doesn't depend on competition, but on the organic composition of capital, and the distinction between variable and constant capital. even if you uncritically accepted the claim that profit rates equalize among spheres of production, that's not the same as saying that the rate of profit tends to decrease. the book from laibman goes into detail about it
>>2932138>because I think that's what a lot of people who don't care about the diff between UE and UD are getting at.we are no talking about random people here but about the positions that political parties take, and the difference is important for them because they need a more or less consistent and practical model of the world. if you really want to take power, if you really want to change things, sometimes you need some precision and discipline when you talk about these things. the practical difference here is that if you believe in ue, then the logical strategy is to close foreign trade. whereas if you take ud, the strategy will probably be to accumulate and develop, maybe by replacing the local bourgeoisie if they have proven to be incapable of performing that task
>>2932138>what do you make of the notion that the first world is more capital intensive because it plunders resources from the third worldNot only does it plunder resources from the Global South, but also labor time. Like I said earlier in this thread, unequal exchange is basically undeniable.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y<Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages. We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income. >>2932135so countries never steal stuff from each other and believing otherwise is a 'succdem delusion' now? really? just checking.
>>2932235They do so through capital export as demonstrated in the case of Iraq 2 posts ago, not comical sensationalist nonsense.
>>2932291did it or did it not happen in real life, master baiter?
>>2932316Yeah but like, it's framed in a click-baity way so it doesn't count !
>>2932316>>2932328The US is killing Iranian proles without harming their leadership cuz they want to airlift the oil loony tunes style. You know, that's why less than 5% of Iraq's oil is exported to the US. US and oil, ge tit? Updoot pls. Also whatever you do just ignore capitalism, the crisis of overproduction, capital export and that old stuff. Sub to my patreon to end the genocide btw and SMASH that like button for more epic anti imperialism rants
>>2932175the obvious defect when using aggregated statistics like that is that a broad statistical category like "minerals" can mean very different things. iron ore and silver ore both belong to that category. pillaging seems more credible than claiming that global prices don't exist
the barrel of oil for example has more or less the same price everywhere. for ue to be true it would have to be tabulated different for every country
>>2932402>irrelevant nonsenseThe study is specifically measuring embodied labor and wage differentials that flows from South to North, not whether raw resources having different prices.
>the point of a draft is that you make mistakes
Three questions for those who explain the wealth of the richest countries mainly by exploitation of the poorer countries:
From the 19th century to early 20th century, UK and France gained control over massive areas of the globe, the Germans did not. Yet in the early 20th century, the Germans had achieved similar development of the means of production and got to a similar standard of living. How did they do that? By working much longer for much lower wages? I find that hard to believe. OK, I can imagine them working under not exactly equal conditions, but then there remains only the possibility of colonialism/imperialism raising the standard of living by at most a small amount for the people in UK and France.
In the 20th century, UK and France lost colony after colony. In terms of land mass we are talking about something much bigger than the area of these two countries themselves. And then, what happened? The two countries did not collapse. I don't even know of any recessions in UK or France named after the countries that became independent. So again I ask: How can these poorer countries have much to do with the wealth in the richer countries? One may try to rescue the hypothesis by pointing out that formal/official/legal representations of an issue don't need to match reality on the ground (formally independent != truly independent). I can believe that to an extent. But going to the extreme of assuming a total disconnect between formal change and real change feels tinfoilhattish. I would need some actual arguments here and not just an assertion.
If the exploitation of the poorer countries happens through international trade, then the logical thing for these countries to do is to avoid international trade. Yet, what we hear from the leaders of Cuba, North Korea, and so on is that they want to trade with the rest of the world. Do you believe they are all very stupid? And it is the most racist and warmongering faction of the ruling class of the richer countries who is blocking trade.
>>2932450 (me)
>From the 19th century to early 20th century, UK and France gained control over massive areas of the globe, the Germans did not.I'm not trying to claim that there was exactly zero German colonialism or that Germans had some particular superiority in morals.
>>2932450>In the 20th century, UK and France lost colony after colony. In terms of land mass we are talking about something much bigger than the area of these two countries themselves. And then, what happened? The two countries did not collapse. I don't even know of any recessions in UK or France named after the countries that became independent. So again I ask: How can these poorer countries have much to do with the wealth in the richer countries? Just because direct rule ended doesn't mean that colonial exploitation didn't continue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_CFA_franc >>2932450>If the exploitation of the poorer countries happens through international trade, then the logical thing for these countries to do is to avoid international trade. My man you have so much more reading to do.
>>2932474Which book is that?
>>2932474Yeah, guy you're replying to is a fucking retard. Why else was Hitler so obsessed with colonizing Eastern Europe?
>>2932474 (me)
Oh and also:
>Not even going to read the rest of your post since you're already wrong from the start.Now I am certain that you did read the other two points and got no answers to them lol
>>2932474>if you combine Britain and France together,they're bigger than Germany and huuuuuh Italy lolmeme analysis
>>2931988>What's correct instead?The modern view is that prices are set by costs and equilibrium of supply and demand without any magical value behind it.
>Marx didn't have an "LTV". Smith did. Ricardo did. Ibn Khaldun did. Thomas Aquinus did. Ben fucking Franklin did.No serious economists holds these views anymore. Classical economists have been wrong for the past 150 years on this and Marx copied their work.
>Marx's theory of value is a theory of socially necessary labor time, labor power, equilibrium prices, and commodity production. Any careful reading of Marx yields this understanding, why the vulgar reading yields an "LTV" Marx didnt use the term but "labor theory of value" is the standard name for his theory by Marxist scholars too.
Flood >>2932172>higher exploitation can produce higher profitsYou're not understanding my point.
That is probably my fault for bad communication.
The absolute profit is inverse from the rate of profit.
The higher the total profit, the lesser the margin of profit.
I'm not saying that Tesla is less profitable than a small business, I'm saying that Tesla has less opportunity for growth, due to the proportion of its investments.
If we have two companies: (A) and (B);
(A) invests £1M and receives back £10,000 in profit,
(B) invests £1,000 and receives back £1,000 in profit.
(A) has 1,000% more profit, but only a 1% profit rate,
(B) has 1% of (B)'s profit, but a 100% profit rate.
This is due to the organic composition of capital (c/v)
We could also call the profit rate the "relative profit".
On the broader point, these are rates for single capitals.
Marx says that if you combined the rates of surplus value by competition, the larger capital receives more (e.g. since it siphens from lesser organic composition). You are free to disagree with Marx, but that's his idea.
>those are notes, not a book800-pages worth of "notes"?
You seem to be overly-rationalising your opposition.
>the tendency of profit rates to fall doesn't depend on competitionOnce more, you misunderstand the point.
Competition affects the GENERAL rate of profit.
It is the general rate which has tendency to fall.
>if you uncritically accepted the claim I don't, because as I implied: (i) empirical accounts give national rates of profit, but not international rates, and (ii) the "law of value" is effectively suspended by monopoly, so there is no necessary decline of profit rates. I myself am not a Marxist, but am just explaining his concepts.
>>2931988Marx had the same theory of value as Ricardo.
>>2932519>prices are set by costs and equilibrium of supply and demandBut supply is a factor of costs, and costs are determined by labour.
Keynes intervenes to describe a lack of effective demand to meet supply – but this was already diagnosed by Marx decades earlier.
>No serious economists holds these views anymoreThe Classicals and Neoclassicals are criticised as holding a "static" view of the economy where equilibrium is presumed – this is critiqued by the Austrian School, which posits the incompletion of knowledge in society, leading to the limits of economisation. Veblen also criticised the static view as empirically false – with added emphasis on a rise of rentierism, continued in part by Bukharin. Keynes is the arch critic of the classical school based on the same premise; that "imperfect competition" dominates the landscape, leading to general crises of boom and bust (e.g. the business cycle, which the Austrians see as a monetary cycle). Marx identified this as early as 1847, whereby he criticised Proudhon, and Ricardo in part, for having primitive ideas of equilibrium. With industry, overproduction is necessary – Robertus in 1852 also identifies this, with dialog on ideas of "underconsumption", identified as early as 1800 by Thomas Malthus with market "glut". The post-classical period of political economy thus seeks to explain why the market in industrial capitalism fails, not to devalue labour itself, since you must remember that labour is itself a type of commodity.
>>2932519Read adam smith personal santa wishlist award
Still don't know why wealth of nations is treated as gospel when he even mention it's supposed to only happen in a perfectly free market (will never exist)
Notice the semantic shift. My post
>>2932450 compares Germany with France and Britain in the early 20th century. I admit I haven't done a deep dive into econ statistics about the time. It just seemed obviously true to me. (When I think of quality of live I think of aspects like average lifespan, electricity, literacy before others.) The quoted text in the reply
>>2932474 refers to a period after Word War I, which Germany lost, and glues together Germany and Italy (probably poorer, no?). From the POV of someone living in Africa or Asia in the early 20th century, surely German quality of life looked much closer to QOL in UK or France. If the GDP per head really shows that much of a difference, then so much worse for that measure.
>>2932488… I don't consider Hitler an expert on economics or really much anything. That aside, exploitation and extermination are very different. This thread is supposed to be about the concept of unequal exchange, which assumes an exploited LIVING population that something gets extracted from continuously. Can't do that with dead people.
>>2933792>exterminationWTF are you talking about?
>>2933798What theory is the thread supposed to be about? UNEQUAL EXCHANGE. And what makes you think you can use the words of Hitler to justify the soundness of this theory? The main idea for going East was more living space for German people by displacing/culling the native population. Which has nothing to do with unequal exchange. Keeping a couple natives as slaves was a side thing from the Nazi POV, and anyway, slavery isn't unequal exchange either. Again, totally different concept.
>>2932519>No serious economists holds these views anymore. hahahaha describe what a value added tax is taxing. and maybe also take a few moments to consider that "serious economists" are high priests of bourgeois ideology
>>2932519>The modern view is that prices are set by costs and equilibrium of supply and demand without any magical value behind it.value is literally just cost of production considered before market effects. the cost of production is the value of the commodity expressed in money. but then supply and demand causes the final price to fluctuate above or below the cost of production. Abstracting away the market effects, all you have is the cost of production. What is the cost of production? The cost of the raw materials (which took labor to extract) the constant capital (past labor used to create means of production) and the variable capital (living labor). All of that is labor costs. You say "supply" like it is this magical thing, but really supply is determined by scarcity, and scarcity determines … how much labor time it takes on average to find, extract, and ship a material.
>>2932543>Marx had the same theory of value as Ricardo.[… later in the same post…]
>Marx identified this as early as 1847, whereby he criticised Proudhon, and Ricardo in part, for having primitive ideas of equilibrium.If Marx criticized Ricardo for having a primitive idea of equilibrium, then can Marx really be said to have the same theory of value as Ricardo?
>>2933803>And what makes you think you can use the words of Hitler to justify the soundness of this theory? The main idea for going East was more living space for German people by displacing/culling the native population.WTF are you talking about? Nobody used Hitler's words to justify anything. Lebensraum wasn't Hitler's idea, but Hitler sought to emulate Britain's colonization of India and the United States' Westward Expansion.
>>2933814Yes, because value is a factor of production in both.
Where they differ is in the manner of distribution and in terminology.
For example, Ricardo regards all surplus value as "profit", while to Marx, profit is a particular net revenue deducted from capital costs. Disagreements are slight, the same as between Marx and Smith; Marx sees that Smith fails to properly abstract surplus value in itself, as separate from its particular revenues, but the content is the same:
<As Adam Smith resolves surplus-value not only into profit but also into the rent of land—two particular kinds of surplus-value, whose movement is determined by quite different laws—he should certainly have seen from this that he ought not to treat general abstract form as directly identical with any of its particular forms. With all later bourgeois economists, as with Adam Smith, lack of theoretical understanding needed to distinguish the different forms of the economic relations remains the rule in their coarse grabbing at and interest in the empirically available material.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htmThe criticism is that bourgeois economics is 'too' empirical.
>>2933841Post
>>2932488 (was that your post?)
"'argues
" for (just asserts) the soundness of unequal exchange because
>Why else was Hitler so obsessed with colonizing Eastern Europe?And this isn't an actual argument for the theory of unequal exchange. Have you read as much as a single paragraph of Zak Cope or Arghiri Emmanuel or Jason Hickel?
>>2934005WTF are you still talking about? Hitler wanted extractive colonies in Eastern Europe, especially after Germany lost her colonies in Africa and Asia after WW1. The point of unequal exchange is to extract wealth and labor-power from the periphery and semi-periphery.
>>2934008>The point of unequal exchange is*record scratch* I asked you something: Have you read as much as a single paragraph of Zak Cope or Arghiri Emmanuel or Jason Hickel? That's not asking for much. So don't call me an elitist and don't evade. But I don't respect this tumblr "Marxism" or whatever shit you are doing here.
In the following I will explain very important stuff in not very complicated language, but you learning that requires you being honest with yourself and your lack of knowledge which is getting very visible and grating here, so I suggest you drop this cringe act.
Do you not know what market exchange is. An invasion is not exchange. Enslaving people is not exchange (though buying and selling them is). Mass murder is not exchange.
Equality between people plays a part in pro-capitalist propaganda. This talk is not all clever manipulation, and the belief of the honest capitalism evangelists is not simply mistaken either. There is substantial equality between people in capitalism compared to feudalism. The formal legal equality between employers and employees as actors in markets has merit, it's not just a show for bamboozling people. And despite all that, there is still massive inequality, points out Marx, as do many others. And (here comes the specialty of Marx who wasn't even an equality fetishist) the massive inequality develops and is sustained
through this equality.
Once that thought sits firmly in one's mind, it seems quite natural to try and extend this take to the trade between nations, as Hickel does and Cope used to do. And that is the idea of unequal exchange. The theory claims something systematic happening in everyday trade between nations that is quite automatically creating, re-creating, maintaining, increasing the inequality. Some country A invading some country B is not an illustration of the theory.
>>2934034>Have you read as much as a single paragraph of Zak Cope or Arghiri Emmanuel or Jason Hickel?Yes.
>An invasion is not exchange. Enslaving people is not exchange (though buying and selling them is). Mass murder is not exchange.WTF are you still talking about? No one said murdering people was exchange. Also, enslavement is appropriation of embodied labor, so it is unequal exchange. Slavery is the most extreme form of appropriated labor.
>>2934038Slavery is the highest form of unequal exchange.
Hahahaha, you're so retarded snd obsessed with Hitler all you can say is "NUH-UH."
>>2934044It was not me who brought up Hitler as an attempt to illustrate a theory you are not familiar with and you were just vibing about. Calling enslavement or theft an example of a market exchange is just you making up a brand-new definition on the spot because you haven't thought through your words so you got caught spewing nonsense.
>>2934049>It was not me who brought up Hitler as an attempt to illustrate a theory you are not familiar with and you were just vibing about.You are mistaken. Lebensraum sought to plunder and rob Eastern Europe of its wealth. That is the unequal exchange.
>Calling enslavement or theft an example of a market exchange is just you making up a brand-new definition on the spot because you haven't thought through your words so you got caught spewing nonsense.WTF are you talking about? Extracting labor-power from an imperialized territory is theft. Slavery is theft of value from an imperialized territory/people. Slavery is the highest form of unequal exchange.
>>2934061 (me)
>Lebensraum sought to plunder and rob Eastern Europe of its wealth. That is the unequal exchange.BTW this was literally no different from what the other European powers did. Nazis were directly inspired by the British colonization of India and the US' Manifest Destiny.
>>2934067>Nazis were directly inspired by the British colonization of India and the US' Manifest DestinyYou already said that. AND YOU GOT ALREADY TOLD THIS IS NOT UNEQUAL EXCHANGE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_exchangeFirst paragraph:
<Unequal exchange is used primarily in Marxist economics, but also in ecological economics (more specifically also as ecologically unequal exchange), to describe the systemic hidden transfer of labor and ecological value from poor countries in the imperial periphery (mainly in the Global South) to rich countries and monopolistic corporations in the imperial core (mainly in the Global North) due to structural inequalities in the global economy. >>2934073WTF are you still talking about? Your own scrambling for Wikipedia proves me correct:
<transfer of labor and ecological value from poor countries in the imperial periphery (mainly in the Global South) to rich countries and monopolistic corporations in the imperial core (mainly in the Global North) due to structural inequalities in the global economyWhat do you think the goal of colonization is? TO TRANSFER VALUE, I.E., THEFT. Absolute fucking retard…
>>2934075Are profits theft. Is exchange theft. Can you show a citation of Marx stating that. Can you show a citation from
any book on economics, mainstream or radical, or any dictionary, sharing your definitions.
>>2934082>Are profits theftYes.
>Is exchange theftUnequal exchange is theft, yes.
>Can you show a citation of Marx stating thatA citation of Marx saying capitalist profit is simply the extraction of surplus value, i.e. THEFT from the worker? Are you retarded or just trolling?
>Can you show a citation from any book on economics, mainstream or radical, or any dictionary, sharing your definitions.Don't feel like looking for quotes for you. Hickel, Samir Amin, etc. write about this. You already embarrassed yourself with Wikipedia (only proved me correct).
>>2932034>The majority says ____! Therefore it's correct!Ah yeah I remember that famous line from Lenin in his letter to Boris Souvarine:
<"Marxists are extremely concerned with being in the majority all the time. Don't worry about forming an analysis of what is or isn't opportunist, the majority is always correct. This is why we Bolsheviks gladly follow the largest and most experienced Party in social democracy — the Social-Democratic Party of Germany and its leading theorist Karl Kautsky!"Lenin Collected Works Vol. 23, page 200 if you wanna check.
>>2934043To go into more detail, Marx in his Zur Kritik (1859) gives a history of the labour theory of value, which he traces from Petty (1662) and Boisguilbert (1690), to Franklin (1731), and finally to Smith (1776) – "labour" here is considered "abstract" labour, or labour in general. From this comes the standard measure of labour time, which treats all labour as a homogenous quantity to be tallied up (Marx in Capital Vol. 1 sees that this is only to be perceived after prices have been established). This presupposes the most efficient labour in employment (e.g. socially necessary labour time) since as Smith puts it; a 'master' wouldn't employ a servant without getting the most of out of them. Competition is the means to equilibrate supply and demand of labour to thus realise the minimum wage. This is the 'value' of labour (e.g. its "natural price"). When costs are given in the factors of production (e.g. labour, land and capital), as revenues (e.g. wages, rent and profit), Smith sees that each of these can be computed as labour costs, so are able to be divided into labour time (Martin Luther in a discourse on trade has the same intuition). In this, however, Smith conflates labour itself with its revenue – this is Marx's concern; hence the heading of "Smith’s Two Different Definitions of Value", which we may read from (1861):
<he makes wages the measure; for wages are equal to the quantity of commodities bought with a definite quantity of living labour […] value is made the measuring rod and the basis for the explanation of value—so we have a vicious circle.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htmBy the same reasoning, rent and profit as surplus value are only potential wages (e.g. such that Smith sees how wages increase inverse to the rate of profit – given the conditions of competition). On this "vicious circle", Marx wishes to distinguish "labour" from labour-power (1867):
<could the labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour […] the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the value of labour-powerhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htmIt is not "labour", but the labourer himself. Both Smith and Ricardo make the same point, but less specifically:
<Adam Smith was well aware that the labour-time expended on the reproduction and maintenance of labour-power is very different from the labour which it [i.e., labour-power] itself can perform.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htmThe difficulty is in choosing the former as "measure of value", rather than the latter, such as Ricardo. It is in the formulation of Smith, however, that one can say that the full product of labour is undercut, and that this the origin of exploitation, such as he calls the landlord a thief;
<rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour […] profit makes a second deductionhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htmIt is the contrary opinion of Marx that no theft takes place, since what is exchanged (e.g. the wage) and that which is produced (e.g. surplus produce) have different determinations, so as to maintain "laws" exchange:
<the equating here of labour and product of labour in fact provides the first occasion for the confusion between the determination of the value of commodities by the quantity of labour contained in themhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htmEngels appears to take the Smithian position (1885):
<Adam Smith in plain terms describes rent and profit on capital as mere deductions from the workman’s product or the value of his product […] Thus even Adam Smith knew “the source of the surplus-value of the capitalist,” and furthermore also of that of the landlord.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch00.htmMost Marxists also intuitively treat wages as a type of theft, but Marx himself declines this conclusion in the means of an obscure dialectical framework, to show a conflict between form and content – which is really the same thing, viewed properly. I have previously seen that Libertarians claim that "taxation is theft", like Anarchists claim that "property is theft", so have suggested that Socialists should claim that "profit is theft", but astute Marxists will intervene, such as Engels makes the claim:
<The axioms which qualify as robbery the landowner’s method of deriving an income – namely, that each has a right to the product of his labour, or that no one shall reap where he has not sown – are not advanced by us.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htmHe is right, from his own perspective, that defending the rights of property, as against property (like Anarchists) is self-evidently absurd, but this is why I'm not a Marxist. So, basically, both are saying the same thing, but not in the same language. Each agree to 'labour' being value, and surplus vaiue being unearned income by class war. I consider Smith to be a Socialist figure, as I have written here:
>>2863918 >>2934092I'm afraid the other anon is right.
To Marx, profit is not theft, since all exchanges are equivalent.
I touch on the issue in this post:
>>2934113 >>2934092<The use-value of labour-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm >>2934114>To Marx, profit is not theft, since all exchanges are equivalent.No, that's a cherrypicked reading. Labor-power is bought at its value, i.e., the cost of reproducing the worker, but its use creates more value than it costs. The capitalist thus appropriates unpaid labor, and this is described as exploitation, which he morally characterized as a form of theft. On the surface, the wage exchange is formally equal but this disguises an unequal exchange of unpaid labor. Profit is theft.
>>2934123You're still cherrypicking. He is simply arguing that surplus value can be extracted without violating the laws of commodity exchange. He is saying that while the form of exchange can appear to look just, the content of the relationship, i.e., the appropriation of unpaid labor, is exploitative.
>>2934127Do you have a SINGLE instance of Marx saying "profit is theft"
>>2934289Capital got quoted here:
>>2934123Again:
<The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller.It's even more clear in the German original where Marx wrote:
<aber durchaus kein Unrecht gegen den VerkäuferThis corresponds roughly to the part I bolded above, but instead of the broader term
injury (that would have been Verletzung in German) Marx wrote the more specific
injustice (Unrecht). By no means an injustice happening to the seller of labour-power! Literally said by Marx in Capital Volume One.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160304065358/http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me23/me23_192.htm >>2934315The kind of cherrypicking that yields many cherries.
>>2934317Cherrypicking when Marx talks about surplus value extraction in accordance to the laws of exchange will get you nowhere, retard. I already addressed your bullshit here:
>>2934127 >>2934128
<There is not one single atom of its value that does not owe its existence to unpaid labour. The means of production, with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus-product, of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm
<So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital — endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will — his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulation, just as in book-keeping by double entry, the private expenditure of the capitalist is placed on the debtor side of his account against his capital. To accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to increase the mass of human beings exploited by him, and thus to extend both the direct and the indirect sway of the capitalist.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm >>2934113>Socialists should claim that "profit is theft", but astute Marxists will intervene, such as Engels makes the claim:><The axioms which qualify as robbery the landowner’s method of deriving an income – namely, that each has a right to the product of his labour, or that no one shall reap where he has not sown – are not advanced by us.The entire post is a bunch of psuedointellect nonsense, but this quote-mine is particularly egregious and deserves to be addressed directly.
Look at what Engels says directly before the quote-mine:
<The landowner has nothing with which to reproach the merchant. He practices robbery in monopolising the land. He practices robbery in exploiting for his own benefit the increase in population which increases competition and thus the value of his estate; in turning into a source of personal advantage that which has not been his own doing – that which is his by sheer accident. He practices robbery in leasing his land, when he eventually seizes for himself the improvements effected by his tenant. This is the secret of the ever-increasing wealth of the big landowners.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htmSo, only AFTER establishing that rent is a form of robbery does Engels say:
<The axioms which qualify as robbery the landowner’s method of deriving an income – namely, that each has a right to the product of his labour, or that no one shall reap where he has not sown – are not advanced by us.Engels' point is that the critique of exploitation should not be grounded in bourgeois juridical axioms, as those axioms are themselves consequences of private property. He isn't claiming that theft is not occurring, he is making the point the ultimate goal should be the abandonment of private property as a premise.
>>2932017Better to be a moralist and support third world small capitalists cause "they look poor" then
>>2934127>he morally characterized as a form of theftNowhere does he do this. He does the opposite:
>>2934123<The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htmTheft denotes a relationship of unrightful property ownership.
Marx sees that profit 'belongs' to the capitalist by its own terms.
>>2934324>psuedointellect nonsenseIt's a basic reading of Marx on Smith with primary sources.
But if I'm incorrect on anything, you could correct me, surely.
>Engels' point is that the critique of exploitation should not be grounded in bourgeois juridical axioms, as those axioms are themselves consequences of private property.But that's literally what I wrote.
You're agreeing with me, then getting mad at yourself.
>He isn't claiming that theft is not occurringI already said that Engels agrees with Smith on profit/rent as theft.
Forwarding the cause of reclaiming property is abandoned, however.
This is the political limit of Marxism, is my point.
>>2934347>Nowhere does he do this.Except he does multiple times. Marx and Engels repeatedly polemically condemn capitalist accumulation and surplus value extraction as "robbery," "loot," and "theft." You are selectively quoting their analytical framework that treats the wage exchange as lawful under bourgeois axioms and claiming they're saying that no theft is occurring. Either you're being deceptive or you're a psuedointellect (probably both imo).
>Marx sees that profit 'belongs' to the capitalist by its own terms.That conclusion isn't supported by your cherrypicked quotation. Again, you're citing Marx's analysis of the juridical appearance of equivalent exchange, while ignoring the appropriation it conceals, which Marx and Engels characterize as robbery and theft. Marx and Engels are essentially saying the capitalist is able to steal without needing to cheat; profit is "legitimate" only under the bourgeoisie's juridical terms. They are NOT accepting the capitalist entitlement to profit. Marx explicitly says that even in the case where an "equivalent is exchanged for equivalent," the transaction is "only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of."
>But if I'm incorrect on anything, you could correct me, surely.Your credibility goes down the shitter the moment you start misrepresenting sources, and you've done that multiple times.
>But that's literally what I wrote.>I already said that Engels agrees with Smith on profit/rent as theft.No, it isn't. Don't backpedal. You've been arguing the exact opposite:
<Most Marxists also intuitively treat wages as a type of theft, but Marx himself declines this conclusion<Socialists should claim that "profit is theft", but astute Marxists will intervene<To Marx, profit is not theft, since all exchanges are equivalent.Engels calls the landowner's rent robbery, then says communists do not ground their critique in bourgeois axioms. That is not a denial of theft, but rather a refusal to base communism on bourgeois right.
>Forwarding the cause of reclaiming property is abandoned, however.Marxism does not aim to "reclaim property" within bourgeois right. Seizing the means of production and then abolishing private property in them as a social relation, part of which is the capitalist's ability to accumulate profit, is the entire cause of Marxism, dimwit.
>>2934397>he does multiple timesPresent the "multiple times".
>selectively quotingAs opposed to unselectively quoting?
To Marx, wages are an equivalent exchange for labour-power.
There is no exploitation in the exchange relation itself.
Exploitation is an overemployment in production. You know this.
>deceptiveWhat lies have I said? Quote them directly.
>the juridical appearance of equivalent exchangeQuestion: does the capitalist undervalue labour-power in exchange?
Is exchange the site of exploitation by a discount?
>ignoring the appropriation it concealsI am the one who invoked the dialectic of form and content.
What exactly am I ignorant of?
>They are NOT accepting the capitalist entitlement to profit.I never said they were – I explicitly state the opposite.
>can't actually say what I am incorrect about.If you can't say what I'm incorrect about, you must agree with me.
This anger against me is only an anger against yourself, anon.
>No, it isn't.Anon, I'm afraid to say that you lack reading comprehension. Read:
>>2934113<It is in the formulation of Smith, however, that one can say that the full product of labour is undercut […] Engels appears to take the Smithian position>Engels calls the landowner's rent robberyI literally quote Engels quoting Smith on the robbery of rent.
>communists do not ground their critique in bourgeois axiomsYes – that's what I wrote.
>Marxism does not aim to "reclaim property" within bourgeois right. I know – that's why I said Marxism is a political failure; an incoherence.
>>2934399>Present the "multiple times".Already done. Scroll up.
>>2934323 >>2934324>To Marx, wages are an equivalent exchange for labour-power. There is no exploitation in the exchange relation itself. Exploitation is an overemployment in production.Right. But that does not establish "profit is not theft" like you're trying to claim. The charge of robbery isn't a charge of fraud at the point of sale, but rather against the property relation that permits appropriation of unpaid labor. That is how profit is theft. Again, you're either deceptive or a psuedointellect.
>What lies have I said? Quote them directly.These are objective distortions and/or outright falsehoods:
<Most Marxists also intuitively treat wages as a type of theft, but Marx himself declines this conclusion<Socialists should claim that "profit is theft", but astute Marxists will intervene<To Marx, profit is not theft, since all exchanges are equivalent.<Nowhere does he do this. He does the opposite:The first three equivocates exchange with the substance of the relation. The fourth is false on the documentary record.
>Question: does the capitalist undervalue labour-power in exchange?>Is exchange the site of exploitation by a discount?No and no. That still does not contradict with the assertion that profit is theft. Marx's point is precisely that robbery can occur through formally equivalent exchange. You keep quote-mining the latter.
>I am the one who invoked the dialectic of form and content. What exactly am I ignorant of?You invoke form and content, then collapse content back into the form. You say that exchange is equivalent, therefore there is no theft; however, the dialectic you invoke says the form of equivalent exchange conceals the content, i.e., the appropriation of unpaid labour.
>I never said they were – I explicitly state the opposite.If you agree that Marx does not accept capitalist entitlement, your "profit is not theft" line must mean only "not theft in the bourgeois-juridical sense." It does not mean there is no theft in the appropriation of labor, which is intrinsic to capitalist accumulation.
>If you can't say what I'm incorrect about, you must agree with me.Are you retarded? You're incorrect in saying "nowhere" when Marx and Engels do it repeatedly and inferring no theft because there is no fraud in exchange.
><It is in the formulation of Smith, however, that one can say that the full product of labour is undercut […] Engels appears to take the Smithian positionIf the "full product of labour is undercut" then you have conceded my point about where the theft occurs.
>I literally quote Engels quoting Smith on the robbery of rent.>Yes – that's what I wrote.Then your earlier "nowhere does he do this" and your "profit is not theft" framing collapses.
>Marxism is a political failure; an incoherence.No, it isn't retard because Marxism explicitly rejects that premise. It aims to abolish capitalist private property in the means of production as a social relation, i.e., an end to the capitalist's ability to appropriate surplus labor. That is not a failure to reclaim property, but rather a rejection of the terms on which your objection depends. You are measuring Marxism by the standard it explicitly criticizes and then calling it incoherent for not meeting that standard.
>>2934323>>2934324>>2934403In addition…
<Again, one must be a Pomeranian manor owner in order to imagine that a working class would put up with working twelve hours in order to receive a certificate for four hours of labour. If the hocus-pocus of capitalist production is translated into this naïve language, in which it appears as naked robbery, it is made impossible.Engels, The Poverty of Philosophy – Preface
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/pre-1885.htm
<The means of production, with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus-product, of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of.<…<The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries.Marx, Capital Volume 1, Chapter 24
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm >>2934406Once more, Engels brings the British common sense.
>>2934403>Already done:<equivalent is exchanged for equivalentRight. So, still no examples.
>The charge of robbery isn't a charge of fraud>appropriation of unpaid laborWhy isn't it a matter of fraud if it has a disguised reality?
You Marxists are confused people.
I easily say that "profit is theft", but you have to twist it in jargon. Workers do not receive the full value in exchange – that is my position. Rent and profit are deductions, as Smith says; thencewise, commodities would be cheaper without rents and profits. This is the Smithian position – that the added real cost of commodities is itself theft.
>equivocates exchange with the substance of the relation.If wages are entirely equal to the value of labour-power, what is being stolen and how? Where is the theft, anon? For example, since we both engage in this conversation with our own living labour, and produce use-values, are we stealing from each other, or conducting free service? We are both performing unpaid labour. Is there a theft? If not, when does a free or paid service exploit people?
>profit is theftDefine "theft". This is the crux of the matter.
>You say that exchange is equivalent, therefore there is no theftNo, that's what Marx says.
>the form of equivalent exchange conceals the content, i.e., the appropriation of unpaid labour.Yes… but this appropriation is not "theft" to Marx.
>It does not mean there is no theft in the appropriation of labor, which is intrinsic to capitalist accumulation.It depends how you define "theft".
I think profit is theft, but not for the same stated reason.
I prefer common sense over Hegelian hogwash – which is why I am careful to say that Smith and Marx agreed in essence. One is more straightforward than the other. Or do you actually think that distinguishing between labour and labour-power is theoretically imperative for things?
>You're incorrect in saying "nowhere"Nowhere does Marx say that profit is theft. This is true.
You already began by framing it as "moral" theft.
>you have conceded my point about where the theft occurs.I think theft occurs in non-equivalent exchange.
This is what most Socialists think, besides intervening Marxoids who want to be "dialectical" (masturbatory).
>nowhere does he do thisThis refers to Marx, not Engels.
>an end to the capitalist's ability to appropriate surplus laborYou mean the private capitalist.
What about the state capitalist?
Your theory has already been put into practice.
>That is not a failure to reclaim propertySo you want to abolish private property but also affirm private property? Sounds like a contradiction to me.
>>2934408>Right. So, still no examples.Plenty of examples have been provided, you're just playing dumb.
>Why isn't it a matter of fraud if it has a disguised reality?Because fraud is a misrepresentation in the transaction. The Marxist claim is that there is no fraud in the exchange because labor-power is bought at its value. The "disguise" is the structural appearance of equivalent exchange which conceals the appropriation of unpaid labor in production. This is where capitalist profit is theft.
>Workers do not receive the full value in exchange – that is my position. Rent and profit are deductions, as Smith saysThen you are equivocating on "value." The worker receives the value of labor-power. The worker does not receive the value of the product.
>If wages are entirely equal to the value of labour-power, what is being stolen and how? Where is the theft, anon?Fucking idiot. What is stolen is the surplus labor, i.e. labor time performed beyond what is necessary to reproduce the worker. How it's stolen is via the property relation. Workers are separated from the means of production, so they must sell their labor-power while the capitalist appropriates the surplus value created by their unpaid surplus labor.
>For example, since we both engage in this conversation with our own living labour, and produce use-values, are we stealing from each other, or conducting free service?No. Theft in the Marxian sense requires appropriation of another person's labor by someone who has a property claim to the product, under conditions of class dependence. If we freely collaborate, there is no appropriation of surplus.
>Define "theft". This is the crux of the matter.I defined it multiple times and you pretend like it doesn't exist. It is the unpaid appropriation of the worker's surplus labor without equivalent. It is theft from the standpoint of labor, but not in the standpoint of labor-power, which is enshrined in bourgeois axiom. The relation is equivalent in exchange, but not in production.
>No, that's what Marx says.Going "NUH UH" like a child after I've explained to you why your interpretation is at best inaccurate while also supplying my own citations to substantiate my criticism will get you nowhere. Sorry!
>Yes… but this appropriation is not "theft" to Marx.Yes, it is LMFAO.
For example, in Chapter 24 of Capital Volune 1, Marx explicitly says that even in the case where an "equivalent is exchanged for equivalent," the transaction is "only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of."
>I think profit is theft, but not for the same stated reason.Okay? I don't care what you think. I care that you're deliberately misquoting Marx and Engels.
>Or do you actually think that distinguishing between labour and labour-power is theoretically imperative for things?That is literally the Marxian position, you absolute doofus. Marx's whole point is that capitalism can be lawful and exploitative at the same time. Smith conflates labor with labor-power, which produces the vicious circle Marx criticizes.
>Nowhere does Marx say that profit is theft. This is true. You already began by framing it as "moral" theft.I reiterate what I said above. Going "NUH UH" is not an argument. Marx repeatedly calls the appropriation of surplus value robbery, theft, embezzlement, and tribute.
>I think theft occurs in non-equivalent exchange. This is what most Socialists thinkThen you disagree with the Marxian position. Marx's critique is precisely that theft occurs even when exchange is equivalent.
>This refers to Marx, not Engels.Marx and Engels are in agreement with one another.
>You mean the private capitalist. What about the state capitalist? Your theory has already been put into practice.Marx's target is capital as a social relation. If the state owns the means of production while workers still sell labor-power and surplus is appropriated by state managers, that is state capitalism. AES failures don't refute the analytical claim.
>So you want to abolish private property but also affirm private property?Again, are you retarded? You're equivocating on "private property." Marxism seeks to abolish bourgeois ownership of productive assets, not all forms of private property.
>>2934445>fraud is a misrepresentation in the transactionIf I say to you "I'll pay you for a day's work" and only pay you for half the day, am I being fraudulent? Yes. Who is playing dumb, now?
>labor-power is bought at its value.Only if you abstract "labour-power" as a real variable. Characterising the capacity of labour as its own "commodity" is the tenuous logic of Marx.
Labour as such is underpaid; that is the Socialist understanding.
>conceals the appropriation of unpaid laborAnd how is the concealment of unpaid labour not a type of fraud?
See how as a Marxist you must believe in the honesty of exchange?
>The worker receives the value of labor-power.>The worker does not receive the value of the product.So the worker is paid in full, but also robbed? Contradiction.
>What is stolen is the surplus laborAgain – how? You are currently performing surplus labour, but this isn't being stolen from you. The exertion of a surplus in the service of another person is not theft – unless you were promised full payment and denied it. We return to Smith – surplus value is a deduction.
>[theft is] appropriation of another person's labor by someone who has a property claim to the productThis is circular. Theft is a property relation, you agree, but at the same time see that property can nonetheless be unrightfully possessed – Marx says that the purchaser of labour has full rights to it, so also has the right to its product. This cannot be "theft" in any legal sense. Not in any "Marxian" sense either, since Marxists don't believe in property. To boil it down, what property of the worker is being stolen, exactly?
>If we freely collaborate, there is no appropriation of surplus.What? Free contract presupposes the condition of inequality.
It is the free market that is endemic to capitalist relations, no?
The issue with employment is that it's dishonest more than it's unfair.
>It is theft from the standpoint of labor, but not in the standpoint of labor-powerGreat – now, who has the right of property to this labour?
If the capitalist retains rights over this labour, there cannot be theft.
>I care that you're deliberately misquoting Marx and Engels. Nowhere have I done this.
>Smith conflates labor with labor-powerDo you actually think a commodity called "labour-power" exists?
There is only labour in reality. I thought you were a materialist, no?
>Then you disagree with the Marxian positionI already began with this.
>Marx and Engels are in agreement with one another.Spoken like a true dogmatist.
>Marx's target is capital as a social relationState capitalism is still capitalism.
>Marxism seeks to abolish bourgeois ownership of productive assets, not all forms of private property.Ask two Marxists what Communism is and you get two different answers – wouldn't you agree? It is incoherence.
>>2934484>If I say to you "I'll pay you for a day's work" and only pay you for half the day, am I being fraudulent? Yes. Who is playing dumb, now?That is not the transaction Marx describes. You continue to misrepresent the Marxian position. The capitalist buys labor-power, not "a day's work." So who is playing dumb? You, but I don't think you're playing anymore.
>Only if you abstract "labour-power" as a real variable. Characterising the capacity of labour as its own "commodity" is the tenuous logic of Marx. Labour as such is underpaid; that is the Socialist understanding.Labor-power isn't an abstraction. It is the real capacity to labor, which is what the worker sells to the capitalist when separated from the means of production. It is the only way to explain surplus value and exploitation under the LTV without fraud. This is how profit is theft.
>And how is the concealment of unpaid labour not a type of fraud? See how as a Marxist you must believe in the honesty of exchange?Because fraud is a misrepresentation in the transaction. The capitalist does not need to lie or misrepresent anything when hiring the worker. Marx's argument is that the exploitation/theft is structural through the selling of labor-power which is intrinsic for capitalist accumulation, not through fraudulent exchange activities.
>So the worker is paid in full, but also robbed? Contradiction.There is no contradiction, you moron. The worker is paid in full for his labor-power, i.e., the cost of reproducing the work, not in full for the labor that went into producing the commodity. The surplus value difference between the two is extracted by the capitalist as profit. That is the theft.
>Again – how? You are currently performing surplus labour, but this isn't being stolen from you. The exertion of a surplus in the service of another person is not theft – unless you were promised full payment and denied it.It is theft under capitalism's relations of production where workers are separated from the means of production and must sell labor-power as a result. You are ignoring the property relation, which is structural and unavoidable to achieve subsistence as a worker in the capitalist mode of production. Exploitation is not any unpaid labor, but rather the appropriation of surplus labor by the bourgeoisie through their monopoly on the means of production.
>We return to Smith – surplus value is a deduction.Please return to Smith. Marxism is obviously too complicated for you.
>This is circular. Theft is a property relation, you agree, but at the same time see that property can nonetheless be unrightfully possessed – Marx says that the purchaser of labour has full rights to it, so also has the right to its product. This cannot be "theft" in any legal sense. Not in any "Marxian" sense either, since Marxists don't believe in property. To boil it down, what property of the worker is being stolen, exactly?WTF are you babbling about? "Marxists don't believe in property?" According to who? You, some random pseudointellect online? Marxism seeks to abolish bourgeois control of the means of production, but it isn't against ownership of property in and of itself. For fucks sake, they even clarify this in the Communist Manifesto.
Nothing about the theft is circular. The capitalist has a legal right under bourgeois property; however, that right is not morally self-justifying. The theft occurs via the worker selling labor-power for its value, despite labor-power in production creating more value than it costs, which the capitalist then appropriates surplus without equivalent. There is nothing circular about that because bourgeois property rights are irrelevant to Marxists.
>What? Free contract presupposes the condition of inequality. It is the free market that is endemic to capitalist relations, no? The issue with employment is that it's dishonest more than it's unfair.Per Marx, the freedom of contract is made under class dependence. There is no dishonesty, but rather exploitation through bourgeois property ownership. If you reduce it to dishonesty, you have diverged from Marx.
>Great – now, who has the right of property to this labour? If the capitalist retains rights over this labour, there cannot be theft.No, dumbass. Marx’s point is that legal right is not the final word. The capitalist's right is valid by capitalism's own terms, but not in an absolute sense. This is again, your own cherrypicked reading of Marx that you’re trying to force on to unsuspecting readers.
>Nowhere have I done this.You have in fact. Repeatedly. You said "nowhere does he do this" about Marx's theft language. That is false: ch. 24 of Capital vol. 1 says the capitalist buys "with the money he has robbed them of"; the surplus product is "embezzled… without return of an equivalent"; private consumption is "a robbery perpetrated on accumulation." You also said “to Marx, profit is not theft." That is at best an equivocation between juridical theft and Marx's own language of robbery. Again, I supplied the citations earlier in the thread so anyone can go and see it.
>Do you actually think a commodity called "labour-power" exists? There is only labour in reality. I thought you were a materialist, no?Labor-power is the real capacity to labor, distinct from its exercise. It is thus sold before it is used. If you collapse labor-power into labor, you get classical bourgeois economics propagated by the likes of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
>I already began with this.Then you should be able to disagree without having to deceptively quote Marx, lol. I don't even care about your dogshit opinions; just demolishing your falsehoods of Marx because I know no one else will.
>Spoken like a true dogmatist.Saying Marx and Engels textually agree with one another isn't dogma, dumbfuck.
>State capitalism is still capitalism.The same social relations apply. State ownership isn't abolition. Engels makes this clear in Anti-Duhring.
>Ask two Marxists what Communism is and you get two different answers – wouldn't you agree? It is incoherence.Disagreements about details do not make the core incoherent.
>>2932533>You're not understanding my point.I understand it perfectly well. you claim that marx said that the tprf is because of competition, and you base that on one of his unfinished drafts where he talks about equalization of the general rate of profit
which is… do you even understand how averages work? equalization, even if you want to argue that it happens, and that it happens because of competition, doesn't imply a change in the average. for example, imagine a situation where
<capitalist firm A has 50% profits, B has 40%, and C has 30%if capital shifted hands through competition, you could have next A with 45%, B with 40%, and C with 35%. a equalization took place, but the general rate is still the same (because the capital added to A was taken from the unproductive C)
again, marx doesn't claim that the tprf is directly related to competition, and even in that note, he is not talking about the tprf, but about a hypothetical equalization of profit rates among different spheres of production
>That is probably my fault for bad communication.your fault is that you said something stupid, and now you're trying to pivot to something else to save face
you do have a problem expressing yourself because you only have a surface knowledge of these things, and want to bend them to fit your anti-marxist ideology. for example, you make several terminological mistakes, such as:
>the rate of profit is inverse of the rate of exploitationwhich is straight up wrong, no matter how you look at it
but despite those mistakes, I'm addressing the point you're trying to make. there is no comprehension issues between me and you, only between you and marx
>The absolute profit is inverse from the rate of profit.>The higher the total profit, the lesser the margin of profit.now you're reverting the the difference between absolute and relative surplus; except you aren't, because you don't understand marx. higher absolute surplus doesn't imply that the relative surplus has gone down. for example, let
c + v = 1; p = 2; (p/c+v) = 2
then, let
c + v = 2; p = 4; (p/c+v) = 2
what marx said is that the relative surplus will depend, ultimately, on the organic composition of capital. not on the "absolute profit" as a number alone, which doesn't mean anything by itself. then, the tprf depends on that organic composition, not on competition
>Competition affects the GENERAL rate of profit.that claim is not related to the marx quote you posted though. we are not arguing about your theories. what marx wrote there (again, in something he didn't finish) was:
<The average profit would then be computed on that portion of the social capital which enters the equalization process. It is evident that the average profit can be nothing but the total mass of surplus-values allotted to the various quantities of capital proportionally to their magnitudes in their different spheres of production. It is the total realized unpaid labour, and this total mass, like the paid, congealed or living, labour, obtains in the total mass of commodities and money that falls to the capitalists.the "total mass of surplus-values" doesn't change because of the equalization, the only thing that changes is how it is distributed between capitals
>You seem to be overly-rationalising your opposition.? marxism isn't vibes, you can't just say whatever. btw
>explaining his conceptsthis is false. you confused the rate of exploitation with the absolute surplus value, you don't understand these things
BTWyou write like a llm, what do you see in this pic?
>>2934554 (me)
>i.e., the cost of reproducing the workI made a typo here. Should be the cost of reproducing the worker.
>>2934323The first quote is a well-picked cherry. I can see how a reasonable person not familiar with Marx would read that as Marx saying profit is theft. The problem is: How does this fit with Marx explicitly stating the opposite, as shown in post
>>2934309 (and there are other instances of Marx & Engels restating that, though I don't have them all at hand atm)?
The second quote gives no support whatsoever to your interpretation and is about something else entirely. You might want to read that again. Marx says about the capitalist:
<his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulationThe capitalist as a living human being who needs to consume to live, and who wants to spend more on consumption than basics because he wants to live well, is in conflict with…
*drummroll*
…himself in his role as an accumulation-maxxer. One part of him is "stealing" from the other part of him. Very poetic, no?
>>2934895>The first quote is a well-picked cherry. I can see how a reasonable person not familiar with Marx would read that as Marx saying profit is theft.There is no cherrypick. It is Marx's own summary of accumulation: the surplus-product is "the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class"; indeed, even when "equivalent is exchanged for equivalent," the transaction is "only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of." It is the conclusion of Marx's analysis of how capital accumulates through robbery.
>How does this fit with Marx explicitly stating the opposite, as shown in post >>2934309 (and there are other instances of Marx & Engels restating that, though I don't have them all at hand atm)It fits because Marx is making two distinct points, and you keep collapsing them. This is either because you're too incompetent to understand Marx or you're deliberately misrepresenting Marx for ideological reasons. In chapter 7 (your quote), Marx says the worker suffers "by no means an injury" in the exchange, i.e., because labor-power is bought at its value, there is no fraud that occurs at the point of sale. But the theft is not located in the wage contract; it arises in production because the use-value of labor-power is labor that creates more value than the value of labor-power. Thus, in chapter 24 (my quote), Marx says capitalist accumulation reveals and reproduces the robbery because the capitalist buys labor-power with money that is itself the product of prior unpaid labor, and appropriates the surplus product without equivalent. Marx then combines the two concepts: "equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror." There is no contradiction if you have an autism score above room temperature.
>The second quote gives no support whatsoever to your interpretation and is about something else entirely. You might want to read that again.I have read it. It's about the capitalist's private consumption versus accumulation. I did not present it as the central proof of exploitation; I presented it as evidence that Marx habitually uses the language of thievery for capitalist functions.
>Marx says about the capitalist:<his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulationLook at the surrounding text, retard: "To accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to increase the mass of human beings exploited by him." Marx is describing the capitalist as a function of capital, driven to accumulate by appropriating surplus labor. In chapter 24, Marx characterizes the exploitation of workers as the robbery:
<The means of production, with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus-product, of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of.>The capitalist as a living human being who needs to consume to live, and who wants to spend more on consumption than basics because he wants to live well, is in conflict with… *drummroll* …himself in his role as an accumulation-maxxer. One part of him is "stealing" from the other part of him. Very poetic, no?Yes, and? Per Marx, the capitalist is a personification of capital, divided between consumption and accumulation. If Marx can call the capitalist's consumption a "robbery perpetrated on accumulation," then "robbery" is clearly not restricted to juridical fraud in exchange. It is a moral-political characterization of capital's drive to appropriate surplus labor.
>>2934577I hope you feel better one day.
>>2934554>That is not the transaction Marx describesI'm not talking about Marx, I'm asking you as a person.
Is capitalist exchange fraudulent? Yes or no?
You obviously know it is, but want to appease your master.
>The capitalist buys labor-power, not "a day's work."Labour-power is a euphemism for subsistence.
You are concerned with the forms in which capitalism appears, but everybody in society (i.e. except Marxists) knows that what is purported to be sold is "labour". It is in every economic textbook (i.e. except Marxists') that the "commodity" which is sold to employers is "labour". Back in ancient forms of wage labour, it was paid at the end of the day; we still use the expression. So again, there is what Marx says, and what you actually believe. Dialectical jargon doesn't escape the fact of the matter.
>the only way to explain surplus value and exploitation under the LTV without fraudPrecisely. But capitalist exchange is evidently fraudulent.
Don't you find it strange defending capitalist relations?
>fraud is a misrepresentation in the transactionYes – the capitalist purchases "labour" but undercuts it.
>There is no contradictionBut you're literally positing an internal contradiction.
>That is the theft.You don't know what theft is. That's your problem.
>The capitalist has a legal right under bourgeois property; however, that right is not morally self-justifying.Here we go. So then, property rights are metaphysical? They exist as a claim outside of its immanent social forms? You can "steal" from someone even if the state or society does not recognise it as theft? Please tell me.
>The theft occurs via the worker selling labor-power for its valueOkay, so exploitation begins in the exchange process?
>bourgeois property rights are irrelevant to Marxists.Marxists only believe in metaphysical property, clearly.
>There is no dishonesty, but rather exploitationSo the capitalist exploits workers with transparency?
The capitalist says "I will steal this labour from you in return for your subsistence?" Please don't lie to yourself. The purpose of theory is to expose these real relations. If capitalists were honest, could capitalism persist? No.
>legal right is not the final wordSo where do property rights come from? God? Nature? What gives "moral self-justification" for possessions?
>If you collapse labor-power into labor, you get classical bourgeois economics propagated by the likes of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.Notice how simple and easy my understanding of easy and simple phenomena are, while your circumlocution just ends up in the same place anyway. You say yourself that Marx is "complicated". That means he's a bad writer.
>you should be able to disagree without having to deceptively quote MarxIt's clear that you're too stubborn on this.
But I'll try to give a final word: Marx sees that the rights of property to labour belong to the capitalist by sale of the worker's own commodity. Profit is thus yielded from his own private consumption. For profit to be theft, the worker must have a claim to "labour", not "labour-power".
>Marx and Engels textually agree with one anotherNot on everything.
Your dogma is presupposing a clean doctrine.
>Disagreements about details do not make the core incoherent.And what is the core? That private property is abolished but also private property is affirmed? That capitalism is abolished but capitalism is affirmed? People are right when they say Communism is just when the government owns everything. That's what it seems to boil down to. But if I'm incorrect, please educate me on the "core" of it.
>>2934951>Is capitalist exchange fraudulent? Yes or no?No.
>You are concerned with the forms in which capitalism appears, but everybody in society (i.e. except Marxists) knows that what is purported to be sold is "labour". It is in every economic textbook (i.e. except Marxists') that the "commodity" which is sold to employers is "labour".Nobody cares about what "every economic textbook" says, retard. The discussion at hand are your distortions of Marx.
>Precisely. But capitalist exchange is evidently fraudulent.No, it isn't, dumbfuck. The wage contract is fulfilled; the worker is paid the value of labor-power, which is what the worker agrees to when he or she is hired. Fraud would be refusing to pay or deception.
>Yes – the capitalist purchases "labour" but undercuts it.No, the capitalist purchases labor-power and pays it its full value. The "undercut" is the difference between value created and value paid for labor-power.
>But you're literally positing an internal contradiction.Retard. Equivalent exchange and appropriation without equivalent coexist. That’s Marx's point.
>You don't know what theft is. That's your problem.Appropriation of unpaid labor through a property relation, NOT through fraud in the exchange of labor-power.
>So then, property rights are metaphysical? They exist as a claim outside of its immanent social forms? You can "steal" from someone even if the state or society does not recognise it as theft?>Marxists only believe in metaphysical property, clearly.WTF are you babbling about, pseudointellect wannabe? Property rights are historical social relations, not metaphysical. Theft in the context of Marx is a moral-political judgment, not a legal one.
>Okay, so exploitation begins in the exchange process?NO. It occurs in production.
>So the capitalist exploits workers with transparency? The capitalist says "I will steal this labour from you in return for your subsistence?" Please don't lie to yourself. The purpose of theory is to expose these real relations. If capitalists were honest, could capitalism persist? No.You're braindead. The capitalist mode production does not require dishonesty to perpetuate itself. It requires the structural relation of wage labor and capital, that the workers remain disconnected from the means of production and therefore must rely on selling labor-power to survive. An honest capitalist who pays the full value of labor-power still extracts surplus value.
>So where do property rights come from? God? Nature? What gives "moral self-justification" for possessions?Property rights come from political power and historical social relations.
>Notice how simple and easy my understanding of easy and simple phenomena are, while your circumlocution just ends up in the same place anyway. You say yourself that Marx is "complicated". That means he's a bad writer.No, that just means you're not understanding it, lmfao.
>Marx sees that the rights of property to labour belong to the capitalist by sale of the worker's own commodity. Profit is thus yielded from his own private consumption. For profit to be theft, the worker must have a claim to "labour", not "labour-power".You're attacking a strawman. Capitalist profit isn't "yielded from his own private consumption"; surplus value is produced in production. And the worker's claim isn't a bourgeois property right to labor, but rather that the wage relation presupposes separation from the means of production and appropriates unpaid labor time. Legal title can be valid and still not morally justified.
>Not on everything. Your dogma is presupposing a clean doctrine.I didn't say everything, dumbass. On the point that surplus appropriation is theft, they textually agree.
>And what is the core? That private property is abolished but also private property is affirmed?The core is abolishing capitalist private property in the means of production, i.e., ending the class relation that lets a minority monopolize production and exploit wage labor. That Marxists oppose private property in and of itself is a myth perpetuated by disingenuous retards like you.
>>2935012You're hopeless at the moment.
I pray that one day you come to reason.
Best of luck to you and I hope you have a great life. 🙏
>>2935027>I give up, but I'm gonna whine about how you're le hopeless to save faceSurrender accepted, but I could do without your coping.
>>>/leftypol/2934951>completely gives up at the sight of a captchaholy shit
>>2934908>There is no cherrypick.How many cherries do you have? Repeatedly referring to the same passage does not count as several quotations.
>In chapter 7 (your quote), Marx says the worker suffers "by no means an injury"As was pointed out in
>>2934309 already, the original word is Unrecht = injustice.
>because labor-power is bought at its value, there is no fraud that occurs at the point of sale. But the theft is not located in the wage contract; it arises in productionThis amounts to poetry (derogatory).
There are two types of theft, a person steals A) by sneaky means or B) by violent means. Which one is it? A kid who fails at being sneaky fails at stealing from me. The capitalist process is intransparent. Some of the time I am working covers the cost of my wage and I work for some time beyond that point, but no bell rings to tell me when the switch happens. Suppose I hacked into the accounting database of my boss. Then I would know. Now, what do I do with that knowledge? Me become aware of the sneaky surplus-extraction switch point (picture a big ❗ popping up over my head) does not undo shit here. So yeah, there is something sneaky about the whole state of affairs, but it is not A). So is it B) then? Does my boss hold a gun to my head? No.
Is this concept to narrow and brittle? How about this, then: We might posit that
capitalists are violent as a group and they steal together as a group. Does that work. Well, Dühring said something like that. He spoke of the capitalist as the "man with the rapier in hand" and Engels mocked him mercilessly for that. The police and army are the armed people protecting the state, but these armed people are not identical with the capitalists nor are they simply a sub-group of the capitalists, and besides, all these people together and all the capitalists would have no chance against the organized massive majority of the rest of society who C O N S E N T to capitalist society, as frustrating as that fact of life is.
You take Marx and Engels in their flattest and least precise expressions, the sort of thing that instantly feels good as a slogan, but is kinda dumb if you think about it for a moment, and you act like you were digging at the core of the deepest knowledge.
>It's about the capitalist's private consumption versus accumulation. I did not present it as the central proof of exploitation; I presented it as evidence that Marx habitually uses the language of thievery for capitalist functions.The little problem you got here is that the victim of the metaphorical "robbery" is not the worker.
>Marx is describing the capitalist as a function of capital, driven to accumulate by appropriating surplus labor (…) Per Marx, the capitalist is a personification of capital, divided between consumption and accumulation.One-sided. In that passage Marx says that the person who is a capitalist is a human being who is torn between conflicting goals and one of these is accumulating surplus, and the other is his own consumption. If he truly were the personification of capital 100 percent, he would not be divided.
You have not brought up anything new about these two passages. I said what I think about these two passages. If you want to go on referring to these same bits over and over you can do that and I can post a one-liner response referring to what I already posted, but for this discussion to have a chance of being even mildly interesting I suggest we
look for other passages before continuing.
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