Moderate Socialism - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#14627533
Truth to Power wrote:Capitalism and socialism -- including communism -- are failed ideologies because they are factually in error. By commingling land and capital as "the means of production," they refuse to know the fact that land and capital are fundamentally different. The socialist pretends capital is land to justify stealing capital, the capitalist pretends land is capital to justify stealing land.

The Immortal Goon wrote:Perhaps you'd be so kind as to show a source where some half-assed so called Marxist defines land as:

Marx, examining capital wrote:Money as distinguished from coin is the result of the circuit C—M—C and constitutes the starting point of the circuit M—C—M, that is the exchange of money for commodities so as to exchange commodities for money. In the form C—M—C it is the commodity that is the beginning and the end of the transaction; in the form M—C—M it is money. Money mediates the exchange of commodities in the first circuit, the commodities mediates the evolution of money into money in the second circuit. Money, which serves solely as a medium in the first circuit, appears as the goal of circulation in the second, whereas the commodity, which was the goal in the first circuit, appears simply as a means in the second. Because money itself is already the result of the circuit C—M—C, the result of circulation appears to be also its point of departure in the form M—C—M. The exchange of material is the content of C—M—C, whereas the real content of the second circuit, M—C—M, is the commodity in the form in which it emerged from the first circuit.

If I could figure out what that gibberish meant, I might be able to help you.

Here's what Marx himself said:

"Means of production are capital if, from the worker's standpoint, they function as his non-property, i.e., as someone else's property. In this form, they function only as opposed to the labor. The existence of these conditions in the form of an opposition to labor transforms their owner into a capitalist, and the means of production which belong to him, into capital." (Theorien uber den Mehrwert, Vol. III, p. 530).
#14627998
Truth To Power wrote: I could figure out what that gibberish meant, I might be able to help you.


It's how Marx defined capital.

TTP wrote:Here's what Marx himself said:


Isaak Illich Rubin is Marx?

Regardless, Rubin pretty much disqualifies your confused sense of land in the piece you butchered:

Rubin wrote:For example, if land (which is not the product of exchange) appears in exchange, then production relations in this case do not connect commodity producers with commodity producers, but with a landowner; if the price fluctuations of plots of land have a different influence on the course and distribution of the production process from the price fluctuations of the products of labor, then we are dealing with a different social relation, a different production relation, behind the same material form of exchange and value. This social relation is subject to special analysis, namely in the context of the theory of rent. Thus land, which has price, i.e., a money expression of value (as a material category), does not have "value" in the sense mentioned above, i.e., in the act of exchange the price of land does not express the functional social relation which relates the value of the products of labor with the working activity of independent commodity producers.
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By Red Skull
#14628136
Truth To Power wrote:Capitalism and socialism -- including communism -- are failed ideologies because they are factually in error. By commingling land and capital as "the means of production," they refuse to know the fact that land and capital are fundamentally different. The socialist pretends capital is land to justify stealing capital, the capitalist pretends land is capital to justify stealing land.

If you are interested in a great speaker and writer who got the relationship of capital and land right, you might enjoy "Progress and Poverty," by Henry George (who is certainly a far better writer and economist than the cretinous Karl Marx). The modern geoists have gone beyond George, and they are the only school of political economy that is objectively correct on the principal facts of economic science.


Looking into Geoism I don't see how a land tax is incompatible with Socialism.

Seems like an interesting idea for public revenue.
#14628608
Truth To Power wrote:Capitalism and socialism -- including communism -- are failed ideologies because they are factually in error. By commingling land and capital as "the means of production," they refuse to know the fact that land and capital are fundamentally different. The socialist pretends capital is land to justify stealing capital, the capitalist pretends land is capital to justify stealing land.

If you are interested in a great speaker and writer who got the relationship of capital and land right, you might enjoy "Progress and Poverty," by Henry George (who is certainly a far better writer and economist than the cretinous Karl Marx). The modern geoists have gone beyond George, and they are the only school of political economy that is objectively correct on the principal facts of economic science.

Red Skull wrote:Looking into Geoism I don't see how a land tax is incompatible with Socialism.

Geoism is not just a land tax. Land value taxation serves as the necessary way to implement the basic principle of liberty and justice: that each human being has a right to own what he produces, and equal liberty rights to use what no one produced. The individual right to property in the fruits of one's labor is not compatible with socialism, which collectivizes capital goods and deprives their owner of his liberty to employ them productively and his property right in what his labor produces. It must be noted that by collectivizing land, socialism also deprives people of their liberty to use it, just as much as capitalism does.
Seems like an interesting idea for public revenue.

It's known to be clearly superior to all alternatives, especially the ones actually in use.
Truth To Power wrote: I could figure out what that gibberish meant, I might be able to help you.

The Immortal Goon wrote:It's how Marx defined capital.

No, it's how he prevented a definition -- much less an understanding -- of capital.
TTP wrote:Here's what Marx himself said:

Isaak Illich Rubin is Marx? :eh:

I assumed Rubin gave an accurate translation. My bad if it wasn't.
Regardless, Rubin pretty much disqualifies your confused sense of land in the piece you butchered:

Rubin wrote:For example, if land (which is not the product of exchange) appears in exchange, then production relations in this case do not connect commodity producers with commodity producers, but with a landowner; if the price fluctuations of plots of land have a different influence on the course and distribution of the production process from the price fluctuations of the products of labor, then we are dealing with a different social relation, a different production relation, behind the same material form of exchange and value. This social relation is subject to special analysis, namely in the context of the theory of rent. Thus land, which has price, i.e., a money expression of value (as a material category), does not have "value" in the sense mentioned above, i.e., in the act of exchange the price of land does not express the functional social relation which relates the value of the products of labor with the working activity of independent commodity producers.

MY "confused sense of land"...?

ROTFLMAO!!!
Last edited by Truth To Power on 05 Dec 2015 00:21, edited 1 time in total.
#14628664
TTP wrote:No, it's how he prevented a definition -- much less an understanding -- of capital.


Do you know what capital is?

TTP wrote:I assumed Rubin gave an accurate translation. My bad if it wasn't.


That wasn't a translation. It was Rubin's work. Not Marx's.

Rubin wrote:Thus land, which has price, i.e., a money expression of value (as a material category), does not have "value" in the sense mentioned above,


TTP wrote:MY "confused sense of land"...?


I have yet to see how land is capital in this quote. You made the assertion, surely you can prove it.
#14629829
TTP wrote:No, it's how he prevented a definition -- much less an understanding -- of capital.

The Immortal Goon wrote:Do you know what capital is?

I do indeed: products of labor devoted to production.
TTP wrote:I assumed Rubin gave an accurate translation. My bad if it wasn't.

That wasn't a translation. It was Rubin's work. Not Marx's.

Huh? Rubin put it in quotation marks and said it was from Marx's "Theory of Surplus Value," and even that the quoted emphasis was Marx's in the original. Was Rubin just making the whole thing up? That sounds a little strange.
Rubin wrote:Thus land, which has price, i.e., a money expression of value (as a material category), does not have "value" in the sense mentioned above,

TTP wrote:MY "confused sense of land"...?

I have yet to see how land is capital in this quote.

It's redefined as capital in the quote from Marx (i.e., the one that you say Rubin made up), not Rubin.
You made the assertion, surely you can prove it.

Huh? Are you even reading what I wrote? I gave the quote, which Rubin explicitly said was from Marx:

"Means of production are capital if, from the worker's standpoint, they function as his non-property, i.e., as someone else's property." (Theorien uber den Mehrwert, Vol. III, p. 530).

By that definition, land is clearly capital.
#14629852
TTP wrote:I do indeed: products of labor devoted to production.


I've read this forward and backward and have no idea what you're trying to say here.

The dictionary says this:

The Dictionary wrote:the wealth, whether in money or property, owned or employed in business by an individual, firm, corporation, etc.


Which isn't really far off from what Rubin says of Marx:

Rubin wrote:These words of Marx, which have often puzzled and even provoked the mockery of critics, [1] express a profound idea about the possible divergence between the social form of working relations and the material form which corresponds to it. The material form has its own logic and can include other phenomena in addition to the production relations which it expresses in a given economic formation. For example, in addition to the exchange of products of labor among independent commodity producers (the basic fact of the commodity economy), the material form of exchange includes the exchange of plots of land, the exchange of goods which cannot be multiplied by labor, exchange in a socialist society, etc. From the standpoint of the material forms of economic phenomena, the sale of cotton and the sale of a painting by Raphael or a plot of land do not in any way differ from each other. But from the standpoint of their social nature, their connection with production relations, and their impact on the working activity of society, the two phenomena are of a different order and have to be analyzed separately.


In that a fundamental part of capital is its value to exchange.

Or as Purdue put it:

Purdue wrote:Buying in order to sell at a higher profit. Capital transforms the simple circulation of commodities. In commodity exchange, one exchanges a commodity for money, which one then exchanges for some other commodity. One sells in order to buy something else of use to the consumer; Marx writes this formula as C-M-C (or Commodity-Money-Commodity). Money allows this formula to be transformed, however: now one can buy in order to sell (at a higher price): M-C-M, which becomes for Marx the general formula for capital. In this second formula, "the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless" (253). The aim of the capitalist thus becomes "the unceasing movement of profit-making" (254). Indeed, the formula is reduced even further in the case of usury, when one loans money in return for the same money with interest, or M-M. A similar process occurs on the stock market.


Which is pretty much what even Rubin is saying.

He even, again, goes into how things like land value differs from capital though still retaining value to be bought and sold:

Rubin, Ibid wrote:From the standpoint of the material forms of economic phenomena, the sale of cotton and the sale of a painting by Raphael or a plot of land do not in any way differ from each other. But from the standpoint of their social nature, their connection with production relations, and their impact on the working activity of society, the two phenomena are of a different order and have to be analyzed separately.
#14629981
TTP wrote:I do indeed: products of labor devoted to production.

The Immortal Goon wrote:I've read this forward and backward and have no idea what you're trying to say here.

It's very clear. The problem, I would venture, is that every socialist has decided not to know what capital is, as that's the only way to maintain their false and evil belief system. Hence, you cannot understand a simple concept like devoting a product of labor to further production because you have very deliberately decided not to understand it.
The dictionary says this:
The Dictionary wrote:the wealth, whether in money or property, owned or employed in business by an individual, firm, corporation, etc.

That's an ACCOUNTING definition of capital, not an ECONOMIC one. Two entirely different things.
Which isn't really far off from what Rubin says of Marx:

Rubin wrote:These words of Marx, which have often puzzled and even provoked the mockery of critics, [1] express a profound idea about the possible divergence between the social form of working relations and the material form which corresponds to it. The material form has its own logic and can include other phenomena in addition to the production relations which it expresses in a given economic formation. For example, in addition to the exchange of products of labor among independent commodity producers (the basic fact of the commodity economy), the material form of exchange includes the exchange of plots of land, the exchange of goods which cannot be multiplied by labor, exchange in a socialist society, etc. From the standpoint of the material forms of economic phenomena, the sale of cotton and the sale of a painting by Raphael or a plot of land do not in any way differ from each other. But from the standpoint of their social nature, their connection with production relations, and their impact on the working activity of society, the two phenomena are of a different order and have to be analyzed separately.

In that a fundamental part of capital is its value to exchange.

Right: like the accountant, the Marxist/socialist makes no distinction between capital that earns a share of production ("profit") by contributing to production and "capital" that obtains a share of production by legally entitling its owner to extort a share of production from the producer.
Or as Purdue put it:

Purdue wrote:Buying in order to sell at a higher profit. Capital transforms the simple circulation of commodities. In commodity exchange, one exchanges a commodity for money, which one then exchanges for some other commodity. One sells in order to buy something else of use to the consumer; Marx writes this formula as C-M-C (or Commodity-Money-Commodity). Money allows this formula to be transformed, however: now one can buy in order to sell (at a higher price): M-C-M, which becomes for Marx the general formula for capital. In this second formula, "the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless" (253). The aim of the capitalist thus becomes "the unceasing movement of profit-making" (254). Indeed, the formula is reduced even further in the case of usury, when one loans money in return for the same money with interest, or M-M. A similar process occurs on the stock market.

Which is pretty much what even Rubin is saying.

And is a silly load of uninformative gibberish.
He even, again, goes into how things like land value differs from capital though still retaining value to be bought and sold:

Rubin, Ibid wrote:From the standpoint of the material forms of economic phenomena, the sale of cotton and the sale of a painting by Raphael or a plot of land do not in any way differ from each other. But from the standpoint of their social nature, their connection with production relations, and their impact on the working activity of society, the two phenomena are of a different order and have to be analyzed separately.

A miracle of disinformation.
#14629995
So I've brainwashed myself, one of the premier academic institutions in North America is completely ignorant, the dictionary doesn't know what it's talking about, and your own source is now useless. Well, that makes way more sense than you simply not knowing what you're talking about
#14630369
The Immortal Goon wrote:So I've brainwashed myself,

The inevitable absurdity.
one of the premier academic institutions in North America is completely ignorant,

It is willfully ignorant of a very select set of inconvenient truths.
the dictionary doesn't know what it's talking about,

Dictionaries are not exclusively for technical vocabulary.
and your own source is now useless.

It was always useless for the purpose of providing clarity and understanding. That was my point.
Well, that makes way more sense than you simply not knowing what you're talking about

The facts are what they are.
User avatar
By ThirdTerm
#14630467
Image

R > G

Piketty says that the return on capital R is always higher than the growth rate G and the share of wealth owned by the rich continues to increase in a capitalist economy. American society may be more meritocratic, rewarding hard-working Americans as it's often said, but European society fits perfectly with Piketty's economic model. Piketty argues that a person's success in life largely depends on inherited wealth rather than his talents or efforts to succeed. He further warns that the Western world is returning to the Gilded Age, when the gap between rich and poor was noticeable to anyone, and he proposes to tax the rich properly by levying a tax on the net worth of a business.

Piketty's argument is that, in an economy where the rate of return on capital outstrips the rate of growth, inherited wealth will always grow faster than earned wealth. So the fact that rich kids can swan aimlessly from gap year to internship to a job at father's bank/ministry/TV network – while the poor kids sweat into their barista uniforms – is not an accident: it is the system working normally. If you get slow growth alongside better financial returns, then inherited wealth will, on average, "dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime's labour by a wide margin", says Piketty. Wealth will concentrate to levels incompatible with democracy, let alone social justice. Capitalism, in short, automatically creates levels of inequality that are unsustainable. The rising wealth of the 1% is neither a blip, nor rhetoric.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/a ... bestseller

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