A question for our Marxists - Page 10 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15171947
@ckaihatsu and @blackjack21 debating is quite entertaining to read.

Exactly -- it's apples-and-oranges, all in your continued *avoidance* tactics to sidestep the *politics* at-hand, here on a political forum.

You're implying that the world *needs* bourgeois law and private-property boundaries, when in fact such formal partitioning just *divides* people from each other artificially / politically, as with Trump's enhanced U.S.-Mexico border.

You'd rather sow *anxiety* that people can't work together for *common goals* -- displacing the capitalist norm of hyper-abstracted private-property accumulation and aggrandizement.


I am glad Chris is not the only one who notices BJ's avoidance tactics. I have for years.

I wonder? Will these two unmarried men one from Chicago and the other one from California ever understand each other in brotherly love over a Marxist question?

Or will they continue to fight over sowing anxiety over private property. A sacred Cow of Capitalism in the norm of hyper-abstracted accumulation of greedy people living in the ethos of modern capitalism.

You made me smile and laugh. :lol:
#15171950
ckaihatsu wrote:Like what, for instance?


Like you can see in the discussion about Okishio's Theorem and the TSSI.

ckaihatsu wrote:Why don't you *tell* me about it, since you're invoking it.


https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/ ... minal.html

ckaihatsu wrote:So it's crucial to have a definition of 'value', regarding political economy / economics.


There are several definitions of value.

ckaihatsu wrote:Thanks, I'm gonna just go ahead and do that, and all day tomorrow, too, despite your opinion of it. (grin)


Sure, if you want to rely on a virtually useless construct, go ahead.

ckaihatsu wrote:You *do* tend to go off on tangents, instead of sticking to the topic of each given discussion segment -- you invoked Roemer earlier to state your thesis that:

So you see 'value' as being determined entirely by the balance of supply and demand, while discounting labor value entirely.


Why wouldn't I discount it? How can you determine labor value in an easy way?

ckaihatsu wrote:In this, your latest post, though, you're not contending *my* Marxist position on labor value:


I'm simply highlighting Roemer's point that, in fact, even using Marxian constructs one can reach some fairly interesting conclusions - interesting in the sense that many of Marx's original claims seem to depend on unstated assumptions.

I think the LVT was already shown to have a fair amount of issues.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, then, in that case, the capitalist-workers would *still* be operating within the larger sea of capitalism, and would have to put their own, proletarian interests *behind* that of the enterprise itself, the same as any other capitalist owner or manager.

Profits would have to be reinvested instead of benefitting themselves, more surplus labor value would have to be extracted from their own labor, for the sake of the enterprise, versus all competitors in the marketplace, etc. So it's actually an *undesirable* situation for the workers to be in, having to collectively self-exploit their own labor-power after having plowed so much capital into acquiring the business to begin with.


But that extraction, is ultimately being done to generate more profits in the future i.e. it's an investment.

What I'm getting to, though, is if the fact that more productive workers are seemingly paid the same as less productive ones while generating more value than the latter means the low productivity workers are exploiting high productivity workers. After all, high productivity workers would be paid less than the value they generate while low productivity workers are being paid more (again, assuming profits - after reinvestment and depreciation of existing capital - are shared equally among everyone). So from that point of view, there would be exploitation in this arrangement as well.

One may also wonder where does this objective value come from. It's not in exchange values, I suppose, but even use values don't seem to be stable or easily to objectively determine in practice. After all, can't scientific innovation affect the use value of a commodity, by allowing for new ways to use it (such as by discovering the commodity has newfound physical properties) or new alternatives to its use? What assumptions did Marx make about the stability of use values over time?
#15171952
Wellsy wrote:
it's labor for labor in full rather than based on the average.



Non-exploited, *internal* labor, for each other, instead of for the capitalist employer. Of course, no argument.

And you're saying that, on the whole, all variations will even out (over a 'normal' / bell curve), with actual compensation provided back to the individual worker on a strictly *individualized* basis -- again, understandable.


Wellsy wrote:



The difference is that, here, labor is “directly” or “immediately” social. Unlike in the formulations of Proudhon and unlike in our own commodity-producing society, where the exchange of equivalents exists only in the average, here there would actually be an exchange of equivalents in the individual case. “[N]ow,” as Marx notes, “in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.” So here, right from the beginning, Marx is telling us that the law of value will not hold. The labor, Marx says, employed in the production of products will no longer take the form of a material quality possessed by them; the products of our own hands will no longer have control over us.



Right -- I understand that the medium of exchange, conventionally currency, will not itself be commodified (and subject to financialization). Of course that's a major plus.


Wellsy wrote:
And to which the difference in people's ability to work seems in part to reflect a necessary inequality int he compensation as noted in Marx's critique of the gotha programme, but such a step is considered necessary to dissolve class relations in production.



Sure -- I don't mean to quibble if allowing any such 'wiggle-room', especially in our present tech-enabled age, would enable the definitive overthrow of the oppressive exploiting capitalist class.


Wellsy wrote:
I don't quite follow what mismatch you're stating here in your emphasis on the compensation being based on the work of individuals.



Again, though, I'm not taking issue with people's own varying *work* abilities, and the varying individualized *compensation*, per individual, indexed to the overall average rate of socially-necessary productivity, per work role, per hour -- what I'm finding lacking, technically-speaking, is what the most fundamental, key-indexing factor / variable is to be. With all labor notes / labor vouchers / labor chit proposals, it's work-role time (hours), indexed to *other* work-role time (hours), and I'm saying that, technically, that's *problematic*, because people are still being incentivized *individually*, with labor notes, while there's an overarching socio-political political interest in collective *egalitarianism*, for all rates of productivity, to the common good, to be equivalent (per work role, per hour of work).

In other words the *politics* of collectivism is lacking and taking a hit if the post-capitalist political economy isn't taking per-hour varying *productivity* into account, which these conventional labor-notes-type proposals / frameworks *don't*.

To be stark, if I work at the factory for 8 hours doing socially necessary work that produces 1,000,000 widgets, while the next person does 8 hours of the same but only produces 800,000 widgets, and we both get the same compensation, of an 8-hours-note, this is *not* equal productivity to *the collective*.

There would be a macro-level (socio-political) *societal* interest in all 8-hour-notes being issued to workers for work done with the same *productivity* resulting. Why should one person be off by 200,000 units compared to someone else, for the same compensation *from* the social commons?


---


Wellsy wrote:
Is your point here in the vein that those who can laborer more productively and be compensated as such could amass their labor notes in such a way that it'd result in a problematic level of inequality that would undermine the system?



No, this is *not* my concern here, and I have *not* said anything like this -- I know that orthodox labor notes would only confer extents of *personal* consumption, and would not / could not be applied to any kind of private ownership of productive infrastructure.


Wellsy wrote:
What would you consider the example of a collective material incentive? Something in the vein of pooling resources to make things accessible like with universal healthcare but as applied to all sorts of services?



Yeah, of course, and you've already cited the cases of children and infirm people who *wouldn't* work but would still have to partake, for individual consumption, from the 'commons', meaning from the work of others who *did* produce goods and services.

As I said, the use of individualized-scale *labor notes* means that labor / labor-power is being formally / politically recognized as originating from *individuals*, and the compensation provided for work done is back to *individuals*, via individual-issued labor notes. This can be termed 'rewards-for-work', which I find to be politically *problematic* since work is being indexed to material rewards, thus incentivizing individual work efforts for individual material compensation, for individual material consumption.

Again, there's nothing that similarly incentivizes *collective*-scale material work / inputs, so the 'collectivism' of this labor-notes-type political economy is *lacking*.


Wellsy wrote:
Are you saying that while it may serve a small community well enough, it is insufficient for a larger society because it wouldn't provide some sort of baseline productivity index? Because it would be difficult to compare labor on such a scale within this framework?



I'd say that the labor-hours-notes approach is lacking even on an individual-vs.-individual basis, or scale, since the hourly productivity of any one person may vary significantly to the next, per hour, per work role, which deprives the collective *societal* interest of any consistency of inputs from person-to-person, even though every post-capitalist worker person is getting *compensated* the same hourly despite yielding differently in material output per hour to the collective good. (See the 'factory' example I provided, above.)


Wellsy wrote:
Are you saying that it is unable to deal with actual productivity because it is focused on time which can be considered independently of how much one produces and thus some will be incentivized to be lazy and be rewarded the same amount of labor notes for less production?



Yes, exactly.


Wellsy wrote:
I can't access that RevLeft content, its as if the site is somewhat down or inaccessible for some reason so I can't see what you shared there.



Yeah, no prob -- the RevLeft site has been defunct. You show that you understand my critique.


Wellsy wrote:



. . . Owen’s ‘labour money,’ for instance, is no more ‘money’ than a theatre ticket is.



This is actually a very good example, since it's basically saying that all post-capitalist labor would be *services*, such as what actors do on stage for the arts, for any-given-sized audience.

Even 'services' at a post-capitalist collectivized factory could be socially considered the same way, though I think my critique of such would *still* be valid, because of the discretely *quantitative* material results of specifically mass industrial production -- the productivity of tangibly-measurable 'widgets per hour' due to certain individual and/or group material work productivity, versus the varying productivity of *any other* individual and/or group work efforts / productivity.


Wellsy wrote:



We have already seen what Marx had in mind when he refers to “juggling with money.”



My critique could be termed 'juggling with varying rates of productivity / material-outputs'.
#15171958
Marx was a historian and an analyst, but he couldn't build anything. It's a lot easier to criticize something than to make something better. It's infinitely easier for a film critic to tear apart a movie than to make a better movie himself.

I would like Marxists to get their heads out of books and stop complaining on message boards and go out into the real actual world and create something better than capitalism. Put up or shut up. It's been ~170 years since the Communist Manifesto and we're still waiting.

Like the guy who sits at home masturbating to porn and never gets laid. It's all fantasy until you can do it in real life.
#15171964
Unthinking Majority wrote:Marx was a historian and an analyst, but he couldn't build anything. It's a lot easier to criticize something than to make something better. It's infinitely easier for a film critic to tear apart a movie than to make a better movie himself.

I would like Marxists to get their heads out of books and stop complaining on message boards and go out into the real actual world and create something better than capitalism. Put up or shut up. It's been ~170 years since the Communist Manifesto and we're still waiting.

Like the guy who sits at home masturbating to porn and never gets laid. It's all fantasy until you can do it in real life.


Hmm, I think you need to stop using these porn terms like you know what....and stop the fantasy and go and share your life with people you care about and help them out. Be kind, compassionate, respectful and hard working, trustworthy and good.

Be an asset and not a liability.

And go and raise a couple of kids on tight budgets in capitalism and then tell me the system is great. Lol.

You need a lot of people who care about your life to make it work. No one cares and no one helps? Not much of a life.

It is not that hard to figure out what works Unthinking. The problem is getting people to a consensus on what kind of society they want to live in and making it work. if people think that capitalism is something they have to not change. It won't change. Society usually changes in human history because it simply doesn't work anymore.
#15171966
Tainari88 wrote:Hmm, I think you need to stop using these porn terms like you know what....and stop the fantasy and go and share your life with people you care about and help them out. Be kind, compassionate, respectful and hard working, trustworthy and good.

Be an asset and not a liability.

And go and raise a couple of kids on tight budgets in capitalism and then tell me the system is great. Lol.

You need a lot of people who care about your life to make it work. No one cares and no one helps? Not much of a life.

It is not that hard to figure out what works Unthinking. The problem is getting people to a consensus on what kind of society they want to live in and making it work. if people think that capitalism is something they have to not change. It won't change. Society usually changes in human history because it simply doesn't work anymore.

Go raise a couple of kids without food due to famine and tell me the system is great.

The Maoists were convinced communism was the best until they embraced capitalism, and now look at them. The Maoists accidentally starved tens of millions to death due to their naive idealism. Happy sharing thoughts of love and joy might seem pleasant but they don't feed mouths. If all you have to eat is dirt it doesn't help to share it equally.

Show me a successful society that hasn't embraced both capitalism mixed with socialism, like the Nordic countries. I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist, I'm a logical scientific person and the evidence shows that a mix like the Nordic model works best.
#15171988
Unthinking Majority wrote:Marx was a historian and an analyst, but he couldn't build anything. It's a lot easier to criticize something than to make something better. It's infinitely easier for a film critic to tear apart a movie than to make a better movie himself.

I would like Marxists to get their heads out of books and stop complaining on message boards and go out into the real actual world and create something better than capitalism. Put up or shut up. It's been ~170 years since the Communist Manifesto and we're still waiting.

Like the guy who sits at home masturbating to porn and never gets laid. It's all fantasy until you can do it in real life.

In the case of Marx’s analysis, it wasn’t as simple and easy as a dismissive criticism of someone who soeaks shit simoly because they didn’t like something. Das Kapitsl was the culmination of his lifes work and an intense study of the political economy among other things. So the characterization is inapt as it isn’t simply stating pfft capitalism sucks but rather he offered an incredibly original synthesis and critique of economics which for radicals who do wish to change capitalism is indespensable.

And of course it is Marx who emphasized the necessity of action over critique but he didn’t propose a one sidedness of thoughtless action or actionless theory. Hence the concept of praxis which is fundamental to his epistemology. To which Marx was a busy guy in working to the international, the Chartist movement and so on.
But he did spend many years developing theory also because one regularly sees those who so not dk the study often make crude errors that have already been confronted and even solved in the past. A spontaenous effort to change things without understanding the illusion of commodity fetishism and issue of how to actually overcome it is no direct means to end task.

And of course creating an alternative to capitalism is no easy task and had developed strongly out of self criticism. Nearly two centuries is a blip in terms of history and capitalism itself has only existed for hundreds of years, not yet a thousand. These are young systems and they’ll be the basis for struggle for sometime to come.

People aren’t just bitching and venting about capitalism here, well some might because they’re lazy on the study side.

But you are probably equating proposals of how to overcome the law of value and commodity production as on oar with the utopian dreaming of certain literature that claims to know what the future will holds. But such discussions are only as future orientated as planning of action might be in its early and vaguest stages as opposed to a mere fantasy of material wealth pr having a love family or some other lack driven desire.
#15171996
For @Unthinking Majority he proposes a mixed economy but he doesn't live in a capitalism that is really distressing. Latín América is distressing capitalismo. Honduras never had a civil war because the USA basically took over the country, armed the far-right, and bribed politicians. They destroyed that nation to the point that it is a gang Paradise and a Lawless, unemployed chaotic society. The Honduran people can't feed their children. They know the USA is a place with higher wages, safer streets, and free public schools. They will go there. What the USA should have done is not arm, bribe, lie and manipulate and create chaos, división, and problems in countries they use and then discard like trash. But Unthinking only defends the USA's interests and not the Honduran civilians? Why? Start holding the Empires accountable. I AM in the Américas not in Asia. Do My pressing concern, For Now, is the lack of responsibility for the actions of the USA gov't. These arrogant imperial interferences are horrible.

Latín América is youthful. They are the future, protect the future and care about them. You don't? I have little to tell you. You are a lost cause.

The consequences of interfering in tiny, vulnerable nations because United Fruit the (Corporate Giant) who manipulates politics in the USA---this is what that imperial shit turns our to produce:



Did you notice what the conservative Honduran said about the USA? They came here, they did this, and this is what they left behind. The Hondurans were trained in torture and intimidation and not respecting civil rights. They armed the nation to eradicate the 'communists'. Who were they? A bunch of leftist union organizers against United Fruit not wanting to pay small pay raises to their exploited work force in Honduras.

Do you hear about these problems in these banana republics? I come from an ex banana republic. Because the USA doesn't allow us to really re develop our own agriculture. It cuts into the Jones Act profits.

I get tired of people taking the side of the USA because of the excuse that it is a liberal democracy and the only light of hope in the world. It is not. It is an Imperial Monster. The ones who are living in fear of the PRC being another USA? They should put some discipline on any nation who is interfering and using these violent and ugly tactics to get what they want.

But being blind to the Empire in the Americas will never be my role in this board. No. I can't.

I am from the stomped on places. Not the USA. You can all identify with the USA's interests. I NEVER WILL.
Last edited by Tainari88 on 12 May 2021 14:58, edited 2 times in total.
#15172002
Unthinking Majority wrote:Marx was a historian and an analyst, but he couldn't build anything. It's a lot easier to criticize something than to make something better. It's infinitely easier for a film critic to tear apart a movie than to make a better movie himself.

I would like Marxists to get their heads out of books and stop complaining on message boards and go out into the real actual world and create something better than capitalism. Put up or shut up. It's been ~170 years since the Communist Manifesto and we're still waiting.

Like the guy who sits at home masturbating to porn and never gets laid. It's all fantasy until you can do it in real life.


I would like to add that Marx was a rabid anti-semite.

Marx also lived off Engels who came form a wealthy family. Engels paid a salary to Marx that came from the work and sweat of workers in his family businesses.
#15172023
Unthinking Majority wrote:Marx was a historian and an analyst, but he couldn't build anything. It's a lot easier to criticize something than to make something better. It's infinitely easier for a film critic to tear apart a movie than to make a better movie himself.

I would like Marxists to get their heads out of books and stop complaining on message boards and go out into the real actual world and create something better than capitalism. Put up or shut up. It's been ~170 years since the Communist Manifesto and we're still waiting.

Like the guy who sits at home masturbating to porn and never gets laid. It's all fantasy until you can do it in real life.


Since Marx wrote, labourers have won (for themselves and you and all of us):

1. The five day week.
2. The eight hour day.
3. Sick leave,
4. Maternal leave.
5. Workplace safety regulations.
6. Anti-discrimination regulations.
7. Public healthcare.
8. An end to child labour.
9. Pensions.
10. Minimum wage.

And these people were all poor and opposed by the richest and most powerful people in society.
#15172027
Pants-of-dog wrote:Since Marx wrote, labourers have won (for themselves and you and all of us):

1. The five day week.
2. The eight hour day.
3. Sick leave,
4. Maternal leave.
5. Workplace safety regulations.
6. Anti-discrimination regulations.
7. Public healthcare.
8. An end to child labour.
9. Pensions.
10. Minimum wage.


Can you show this is a direct result of Marx? In otherwords, had Marx never existed, would this not have happened? I think all of this would have happened without Marx.

BTW, Henry Ford, a capitalist, was the first major player in American history to push the 5 day work week in America. Not because of human rights though. :lol: Because of money. :|
#15172028
Rancid wrote:Can you show this is a direct result of Marx? In otherwords, had Marx never existed, would this not have happened? I think all of this would have happened without Marx.


I do not think this was a direct result of Marx. He was a scientist who was merely describing what he was observing and his predictions based on said observations.

So I agree that all of this would have happened without Marx, as an organic reaction to exploitation by the rich.

BTW, Henry Ford, a capitalist, was the first major player in American history to push the 5 day work week in America. Not because of human rights though. :lol: Because of money. :|


And the union for clothing workers came along a year later and forced the country to make it a law.

So while you are factually correct, my point also still stands.
#15172035
Yes, the fact that the labour rights movement predates Marx himself corroborates @Rancid’s claim that these struggles against exploitation would have happened with or without Marx.

If he had not written those books, we would be called “labourists” or something.
#15172042
Pants-of-dog wrote:Yes, the fact that the labour rights movement predates Marx himself corroborates @Rancid’s claim that these struggles against exploitation would have happened with or without Marx.

If he had not written those books, we would be called “labourists” or something.



Here's another question though.

Did Marx's existence accelerate labor movements? I would guess yes, but the harder question to answer would be, by how much?

YOu know, kind of like how Einstein accelerated scientific discovery by 50 years or so. I wonder by how many years did he help accelerate labor movements.
#15172043
Pants-of-dog wrote:Since Marx wrote, labourers have won (for themselves and you and all of us):

1. The five day week.
2. The eight hour day.
3. Sick leave,
4. Maternal leave.
5. Workplace safety regulations.
6. Anti-discrimination regulations.
7. Public healthcare.
8. An end to child labour.
9. Pensions.
10. Minimum wage.

And these people were all poor and opposed by the richest and most powerful people in society.


Marx was a committed antisemite:

What truth is there in this argument? Marx’s essay, On the Jewish Question, originally published in 1844 contains the following:

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.


https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion ... tisemitism

Marx was also a loafer who lived off Engels who exploited the proletariat despite all his virtue signaling. Marx lived indirectly off the exploitation of the workers by the wealthy family of Engels.

Friedrich Engels’ life appears replete with contradiction. He was a Prussian communist, a keen fox-hunter who despised the landed gentry, and a mill owner whose greatest ambition was to lead the revolution of the working class. As a wealthy member of the bourgeoisie, he provided, for nearly 40 years, the financial support that kept his collaborator Karl Marx at work on world-changing books such as Das Kapital.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... %20parents.
#15172044
Pants-of-dog wrote:Since Marx wrote, labourers have won (for themselves and you and all of us):

1. The five day week.
2. The eight hour day.
3. Sick leave,
4. Maternal leave.
5. Workplace safety regulations.
6. Anti-discrimination regulations.
7. Public healthcare.
8. An end to child labour.
9. Pensions.
10. Minimum wage.

And these people were all poor and opposed by the richest and most powerful people in society.


Marx was a committed antisemite:

What truth is there in this argument? Marx’s essay, On the Jewish Question, originally published in 1844 contains the following:

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.


https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion ... tisemitism

Marx was also a loafer who lived off Engels who exploited the proletariat despite all his virtue signaling. Marx lived indirectly off the exploitation of the workers by the wealthy family of Engels.

Friedrich Engels’ life appears replete with contradiction. He was a Prussian communist, a keen fox-hunter who despised the landed gentry, and a mill owner whose greatest ambition was to lead the revolution of the working class. As a wealthy member of the bourgeoisie, he provided, for nearly 40 years, the financial support that kept his collaborator Karl Marx at work on world-changing books such as Das Kapital.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... %20parents.
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