[Tainari88]

That's always the goal, but how do we achieve it is the real question?

The reason we have war and exploitation is because there are no enforceable international laws. There's no global government or global police force to stop any country from doing bad things to other countries. The international system is anarchic (anarchy, meaning no overarching political authority), which creates never-ending competition for power and security and control among countries because all live in fear of everyone else. This is not my theory, this is basic international relations theory:

Interestingly, Panama has a famous singer/songwriter/ex political party leader candidate that ran for the presidency in Panama. A lawyer and expert in international law. Graduate of Harvard. And a Panamanian who believes in social democracy.

Ruben Blades. The issue is how do you get all the people at the table. It is about again conditions? What conditions might be necessary in order for many nation-states to have to cooperate for survival and benefit? I can think of one thing that might force that to happen. Climate change. It can either have competing actors fighting and pushing us to our extinction, or it could be the catalyst for a large and authoritative body of legal frameworks insisting on rules in order for the variation in distributed resources to expand and be able to supply the world efficiently with the constant pressures of less and less able to adapt. With fewer resources, you can't fight and waste what there is. you also might lack the power to have just one or two superpowers. Your survival might depend on many small nations who are the third column cooperating.

International law is about contracts and enforcement. That requires trustworthy government and consistent adherence.

It is an interesting part of living in societies with more developed governments than in the past. The information Age might be the right conditions with another 100 years to become that. It is interesting.

Ruben Blades:

It was a hard and tough thing studying international law in Harvard.

Unfortunately @Unthinking Majority getting to know who are the people dealing with issues in Latin America is something that requires a lot of effort and a lot of years. But? The bottom line is that there is good leadership in our nations. We just have to start following decent values. That will get it done. Without decent values? Nada funciona. Nothing works.

[Unthinking Majority]

The issue is how do you get all the people at the table. It is about again conditions? What conditions might be necessary in order for many nation-states to have to cooperate for survival and benefit? I can think of one thing that might force that to happen. Climate change.

The UN was an attempt at creating and enforcing international law. It's had mixed results, and keeps eroding more and more. It's a flawed design, the rules are good but enforcement is weak. UN was created 2 months after WWII. So yes a crisis like climate change or something else may force the issue again.

Unfortunately @Unthinking Majority getting to know who are the people dealing with issues in Latin America is something that requires a lot of effort and a lot of years. But? The bottom line is that there is good leadership in our nations. We just have to start following decent values. That will get it done. Without decent values? Nada funciona. Nothing works.

[/quote]
They'll have to somehow solve the drug problem in Latin America for it to really develop. Maybe the US and other countries will have to legalize it.

[Julian658]

Many of them did. That is one of the things about being a refugee: you often do not have a choice.

However, a western capitalist nation is always no. 1 on the list and you wisely picked Canada.

The fight for public healthcare in Canada took decades and was opposed by doctors, the owners of private hospitals, medical associations, drug companies, insurance companies, and other people who were getting rich off it.

In fact, some of these groups still try and roll it back.

So, it is historically accurate to say that the people who profit from the status quo will use said profits to stop any change.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. " Adam Smith

One thing you are not doing, for example, is isolating variables. So you are assuming that the current ideological framework of the countries is responsible for their current level of development; i.e. this is the only variable that you think is significant.

But the current level of development is due to past socio-economic conditions. Os it would make more sense to assume that current levels of development and ideological frameworks are correlated and are both caused by certain historical similarities.

Like benefiting from the colonial era, to name one factor.

POD:

Why is South America less developed than North America?

[Wellsy]

Doesn't this strike you as being *moralistic*, though?

I'm finding revolutionary theory to be sorely lacking when it comes to addressing dynamics of the *material world* -- your concern is easily answerable with the reply of 'use values' (from collectivized production), and the treatment you included indicts *political economy* itself, in its entirety, implying perhaps a family-farm-type of backwards subsistence-type farming, all for the sake of eschewing material-economic relations altogether, just to be on the 'safe' side, or something.

I do agree with the author that the economy doesn't have to be *exchanges*-based -- it *could* be free-access and direct-distribution -- but the whole position really seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The summary itself isn't a scientific analysis of the matter but I do not think Marx's work is deprived of ethical content in spite of those who would solely emphasize it's objectivity and scientific credentials.
I am against what I see as the tendency to treat facts as independent rather than distinct from value. To emphasize objectivity I worry is simply to diminish the relation of even knowledge to the knower, the human subjects and to make out that while the task of an ethical judgment is incredibly difficult, that this signifies the lack of ethical implications of facts. Many attempts to confine themselves to the level of raw data, a prerequisite of knowledge but by far not the highest level of comprehension.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/humanism-science.htm

Therefore it was precisely Karl Marx - a man with a developed morality and sensitivity to arguments stemming from the moral consciousness of the masses - who saw an authentic scientific problem where philistine scientists saw cause only for the elaboration of a formally non-contradictory scheme of concepts. Spotting an authentic scientific problem means travelling half the distance to its solution. Therefore Marx’s Capital, though constructed with a strictly scientific scaffolding, is nevertheless invested with a humanistic core, that is to say, a humanistic formulation of the problem and thrust.

The basic moral inspiration underlying Capital is fully and precisely expressed by the thesis of authentic humanism: Man, the living human being, not money, nor machines, nor products or any form of “wealth,” is the highest value and the “creator-subject” of all “alienated” forms. If we were to divest Capital of this “moral” principle, declaring it unscientific, the scientific logic underlying this work of genius would collapse as a whole. Indeed can one give a purely “logical” basis to the thesis that human labour creates value, while the work of the donkey, although it performs exactly the same labour, creates no new value?

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/brenkert.htm

Discussion of Marx’s moral views has hitherto been deficient because it has failed to recognise a common distinction between two different conceptions of morality. Because it seems apparent that he does not have a moral theory in one sense of the term ‘morality,’ it is concluded that he does not have a moral theory at all. But this does not follow if there is another sense of ‘morality.’ We must recognise, that is, that the notion of morality is not a simple and unambiguous notion. We must distinguish between an ethics of duty and an ethics of virtue. [26] On the one hand, morality has been viewed as centrally concerned with the duties and obligations one person owes to another. So viewed, morality is characterised by certain notions such as duty, obligation, guilt, justice, rights, etc. On this understanding of morality, to be moral is to act in accordance with certain moral laws and duties, or to be moved by a sense of moral obligation. It is the morality of ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shalt not.’ Failure to act in these ways is met with condemnation for moral corruption, for being recreant to duty. In this sense, it has already been suggested, Marx does not have a moral theory. He rarely uses the notions and vocabulary which are identified with this view of morality, If one then assumes that this view is the only (proper) view of morality, one will quite naturally conclude that Marx must have been a scientist. Accordingly, one might further conclude that he condemned capitalism either simply because it was self-destructive, or because it violated various non-moral reasons or values. [27]

However, there is another understanding of morality which should not be forgotten. This is the sense of morality in which morality is linked with certain virtues, excellences, or flourishing ways of living. In this sense, morality is not primarily concerned with rules and principles, but with the cultivation of certain dispositions or traits of character. This view has been expressed in this way: ‘The moral law ... has to be expressed in the form, “be this”, not in the form, “do this” ... the true moral law says “hate not”, instead of “kill not”...... the only mode of stating the moral law must be a rule of character.’ [28] This, I believe, is quite close to Marx’s views.

The quote I think simply makes a general summary as opposed to analysis in order to argue that the law of value and the effort to try and predict the economy may be a fruitless effort that arises out of a particular desire within capitalist production.
[url][/url]

This inability to see in money the universal measure of value led not only to a series of mistakes about the determination of the general price level. It was directly connected with Ricardo’s false search for an invariable measure of value. This is a problem we have already looked at, but can return to briefly in the light of the discussion of fetishism. To insist, as we have done, that fetishism is a phenomenon of the very being of capital amounts to exactly the same as insisting that the ‘measurement’ of all commodities in one alienated (money) commodity is an objective, necessary process and not the ‘invention’ of man. All those who think there can be some invariable measure of value in fact completely misunderstand the nature of capital. It is because man’s production relations are indirect, relations mediated through things, that there can never be any invariable measure of value, be it ‘labour’, ‘money’ or the currently fashionable Sraffian ‘standard commodity’. Values are measured spontaneously, becoming embodied in one commodity (money) because the production relations are not, and cannot be, planned in advance. To deny this is to deny one of the basic qualities of capitalism as a mode of production. The task of true science here is therefore not to invent fictitious ‘measures’ but to demonstrate how this spontaneous process of measurement actually takes place. The neo-Ricardian school does not even begin to understand this point. All those who wish to discover some standard of value in effect want to transform capitalism into a system capable of conscious planning. In short they want to retain capital while removing its contradictions. Stressing the need for money as a ‘thing’ in which the values of all commodities must be alienated...
...
This futile search for a standard of value for the ‘economist’s stone’, should perhaps enable us to put into some perspective the work of those who believe that Marx’s work suffers from precisely the absence of such a standard. It is no accident that there is no trace of the notion of fetishism in the work of what might he called the ‘Sraffa School’ which has returned to Ricardo for some answers to the current crisis in economic theory. For it is precisely this school which has grappled with what we have tried to show is a quite mistaken problem – namely the search for some abstract standard of value – be it a ‘standard’ or ‘composite’ commodity. Nor is it any accident that this school has ‘discovered’ (one hundred years after Marx!) that capital is a social relation. No doubt this is a welcome advance over the orthodox conception that capital is a stock of goods used in the production of other goods. But in the light of what we have tried to show it must be said that it is quite inadequate merely to stress that capital is no mere thing but a social relation. This was not Marx’s position: he insisted always that capital was a social relation, but one affixed to ‘things’. Marx’s qualification to Galiani involved no small quibble. For in this caveat to Galiani is expressed the essential point of Marx’s notion of fetishism, a notion which is fundamental to his entire analysis of capitalist economy.
...
When therefore Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons ... he ought to have added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things. (I, p. 74)

This is where I have some skepticism also into the idea of controlling and managing as one might subscribe to the USSR and it's assertion of controlling or managing the law of value.

I certainly don't want things to be reduced back to subsistence farming or something, I think the idea of maintaining the gains in production is the strong point in socialist thought against some kind of utopian completeness with nature in a less culturally mediated world.

Okay, sure, this is a valid point that the dictatorship-of-the-proletariat / workers state may not need to be as *granular* in its political-economy measurements and tracking as the Western imperialist capitalist reductionist tradition happens to be, especially regarding the commodification of labor.

You mentioned the Stakhanovite movement earlier, which is fair, historically successful, and probably appropriate for any kind of proto-collectivist organization, like that of a workers state, versus the bourgeoisie. I just mean to say that such should be seen as *strategic*, and not as a desired end, or political economy, in and of itself. It's beyond me, of course, to suggest how a post-capitalist, post-revolution fully communist society would collectively organize its own production, but I like to think that much industrial automation would be involved -- 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism'.

Agreed, such examples only point to possible issues in the realization of some minimal level of production and the history of how it has been confronted. Although the USSR is hardly an ideal case either.
Understandable, to much prediction of the future might show a tendency for utopianism where I think these things will have to be solved practically with problems as they're faced rather than a created fantasy which is attempted to be forced upon reality.
Indeed, the increased physical output due to machines does seem intuitively part of the ability to meet the needs of the population as a precondition for their multifaceted labor/activity unrestrained by so direct a threat of poverty and deprivation.

Perhaps you might find sympathy in this student of Evald Ilyenkov in his summary of Ilyenkov's dissatisfaction with the USSR state.
http://caute.ru/am/text/dogstate.html

With the machines of the market and the state, Man will have to do the same thing that he is already doing with machines in automated factories. All human, software functions of the state should be taken over, and mechanical ones should be transferred to programmable machines. (There is no need to be afraid of the "rebellion of robots" and similar stories that anthropomorphize digital machines. The beauty of these machines is precisely that they, in principle, are not capable of performing any human function, even the most simple one. You need to be afraid of bad programmers.)

This is how and only in this way the notorious "alienation of labor" is eliminated, when abstract, material, non-creative labor falls to the share of the worker, and concrete - planning and management of the production of life - goes to the machines of the market and the state. Alienation is "lifted" only by the development of technology , it is overcome thanks to the creation of machines of a new type, automatic machines capable of taking on the abstract labor of the proletarian and allowing themselves to be programmed. With their help, people will be able to plan and manage their relationships to each other as competently and freely as the processes of external nature.

The more personal the main instrument of production - the computer - becomes, the more personal the process of social labor itself acquires. At the same time, the alienation of a person from the conditions (and hence the products) of his labor comes to naught. A personal computer allows each individual directly , bypassing superpersonal intermediary institutions, to participate in social production and make the product of his labor available to all interested parties, to society as a whole. The axiom of the materialist understanding of history says that production relations (including property relations) must correspond to the level of development and the nature of the productive forces.

In this case, “ individual property on the basis of ... cooperation and common ownership of land and the means of production produced by labor itself” 19 will replace private property no sooner than the production process itself is individualized .

By individualizing social labor, the personal computer, thereby, opens the door for mankind to the longed-for "kingdom of freedom." At the same time, the " centralization of the means of production", in which Marx saw the embryo of a new formation, led only to the monopolization of property. Centralized production has demonstrated excellent, almost perfect compatibility with the "capitalist shell", i.e. with relations of private ownership of working conditions.

This miscalculation was the basis of Marx's messianic dreams of a world revolution and the withering away of the state. They do not deprive Marx of the status of the greatest thinker and humanist - Copernicus in the "science of history" 20 . But nevertheless, these dreams must be dispelled, for to this day the world is full of Marxists who live and think with them.

The Copernican discovery of Marx was the position of labor as the primary source of world history. Machines and technologies set the orbits along which societies of different formations revolve around the "sun of labor." Mankind will be brought into the orbit of communism by a programmable machine , driven by the tamed forces of nature and excluding any material labor. As long as there is no such machine, "world communism" was, is and will remain a pure utopia . But even such a utopian-communist ideal is better - more lofty and noble than a theoretical admiration for the idols of the machines of the market and the state. Liberals and statists, “free-market” and “statist” are two competing sects of idolaters. Ilyenkov opened our eyes to this (at least, he opened it to me personally).

The interests of the market and the state are the interests of the machines of human exploitation , which only partially coincide with the interests of society, the most important of which is the interest in the development of the individual as an "ensemble of social relations."

The foregoing directly concerns the Russian Kremlin, which claims to be "concrete-universal", for our Fatherland itself. Any car, including the Kremlin one, can and should be studied, repaired and improved (or, as they say now, "do tuning" - so that it does not look so much like an armored car), until a Machine obedient to Man is created, with the help of which he will be able to build a new society - “without money and without the state, these“ alienated ”images of universality, a genuine community of human-to-human relations ... replaced by the organization of self - government ” (E.V. Ilyenkov) 21

[wat0n]

The problem as I see it as you're trying to frame economic terms as similarly applicable in the same way to a worker as it is to a capitalist which I speculate is a tendency in some economics which doesn't take the class distinction to be meaningful and largely ignores essential differences between the two in the notion that it is approaching economics in a formalized and neutral technical way.

Or maybe the same person can actually be both a capitalist and a worker depending on the situation. What stops you, after all, from renting your own home using AirBnB? Aren't you acting as a capitalist in that situation?

FOr example, your talk of human capital and it is dubious if even such a thing as anything more than a metaphor and doesn't actually represent capital as Marx conceives it which I think is relevant in the distinction that you as a worker most certainly are not investing money as capital because it is not to make a profit but a wage and these are qualitatively different things. You are enhancing you possible labour-power, how much which you can earn, this is not capital however and the tendency to ignore distinctions of the sort is problematic. It's not arbitrary but identifying essential differences, it is only arbitrary once one ignores the distinctions to solely emphasize the manner in which they become vaguely analogous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_(economics)#:~:text=For%20Marx%2C%20capital%20only%20exists,the%20economic%20system%20of%20capitalism.

Spoiler: show

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/social.pdf

That's a weird definition of capital, under it a Picasso portrait could easily count as such. But that's another difference, as the neoclassical definition of "capital" corresponds to goods or services that are used to produce other goods or services. From that point of view, of course the concept of "human capital" makes sense.

In fact profit is clearly distinguished in the costs of production as the capitalist makes an investment in not only the tools and means of production, but in wages for employees. The difference between the input and output within a cycle of production expressing the profit or perhaps the loss.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/a.htm#rate-profit

Unless you want to somehow say that wages are profit, I think you're muddying the waters with the terms as if they're synonymous.

For the worker, wages are in fact a profit once he discounts his own costs of working (e.g. commuting, training, etc).

I don't think Marx's ideas have lost their relevance at all, I don't agree with the sentiment that things have become obsolete in part because he identified essential aspects of Capital and its relations and we still live in a global capitalist economy than not. There are additions and elaborations that have had to be made in the same vein as Marx's work, but these are compliments rather than a point of obsoletion.

While freelancing might be increasing, it's not something that has displaced the dominant mode of production and everything which flows from it. They still operate within a capitalist economy
https://books.google.com/books?id=tDsui1AA7mIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA180&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

Indeed, freelancing isn't the dominant mode of production (for now at least) but its very existence is something Marxian theories can't really account for or deal with. Not that freelancing is all that new either.

Basically, regardless of ownership, while capital dominates the mode of production, even if all workers are owners in some sort of co-opt, they're still subject to the competitiveness of the market, the law of value still forces workers to press efficiency in decreasing the SNLT, increase reinvestment of capital, decrease their own wages. The idea being that it's not the case that Marx is singling out capitalist's as the origins of problems of the system, rather they come to personifiy tendencies inherent within it which no individual capitalists controls themselves but merely responds to. So even without the capitalists', if you haven't changed the manner of production, people will still be alienated and this is a big point in Marx's criticism, his critique isn't simply give workers their full labor, his point is about the harm it has upon humanity's being, it is actually a lot radical than a Ricardian Socialist want of full labor payment under the emotion that the equality of exchange is contradicted where as Marx shows that its maintained but labour isn't paid for, labour power is.
http://libcom.org/files/marx,%20marginalism%20and%20modern%20sociology%20-%20clarke.pdf

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf

Thought this might interest you as Marx isn't calling for a kind of equality, he wants a change in production. His criticism undermines this because he maintains that the equality of exchange is not violated in the exploitation of labor by paying only for labour power.
Man is no more liberated as long as his labor is still expressed in a commodity form, as he is still subject to the alienating forces of the market.

If the goal was to change the mode of production then you'll need to find some technological way to make production without using industrial means more efficient than our industrialized production. Perhaps only in an economy where people work mostly in the service industries, performing services that cannot be standardized and automated while leaving all the production that can be automated in the hands of robots? Although right now most of the labor force does work in the service industries (itself a problem for Marxian interpretations, since it's based on producing goods for the most part and I don't think it can account well for e.g. freelance provision of services), there are still plenty of services that are repetitive and perhaps labor intensive, and industrialized in nature where one could attempt an imperfect analogy with the production of goods (it's imperfect because even in those services there seems to be more variation in the output than in the industrial production of goods fulfilling something like a Four Sigma Standard - something that's basically impossible without automating production). However, even those are being gradually automated e.g. people don't wash their clothes manually anymore and no one would set a service to do that nowadays, much of banking is also done through apps (i.e. without conscious human intervention) and banks are gradually closing branches in some places as a result, etc.

Anyway, that change in the mode of production's not coming from a political revolution. If it happens, it will come from a technological revolution and it will be because the change will be more profitable than keeping things as is. It will also be a very slow change and just another stage of the Industrial Revolution we're still in the midst of. And maybe that's where we're going right now, since there is a constant push to automate production as much as possible and indeed automating customized services is one of the hardest things to do, which would thus leave a venue for labor in that sort of activities.

Thank you for sharing the details on the productivity implications of types of programming languages.
I did have the impression that some were limited in what they were useful or worked best in doing and other implications that could make it that no particular language reigns supreme in all cases perhaps but a preferce for what works best for the job's requirements.

But does the government make a profit off of their worker's, do they invest capital into people in that cyclical relation of costs of production, and then come out with a surplus. They may well do such a thing, I don't see why a government couldn't do so, but then they would act just as the capitalist does.
However, the government tends to step in where private enterprise cannot yet yield a profit. And while it might help maintain or even create the preconditions for the accumulation of capital, such preconditions such as enhancing workers education nd thus labour power/wages, doesn't constitute it as capital. I mean, raising children is a necessary task that takes a lot of work and is a precondition to the functioning of society and the accumulation of capital, but such work although useful doesn't yield a profit. But where the aim is the making of something useful, it need not yield a profit.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/value.htm

It depends on how you stretch the term "profit". If a government performs a good job, gaining legitimacy as a result and thus allows those who run it to establish their own clientelistic networks or to engage in the usual corruption while the public prefers to look to the other side, is this profit? In a very concrete sense, yes, it is.

And if running those services in a minimally competent way allows the government to e.g. collect more tax revenue, then it is effectively making a profit as well.

This is part of Marx's distinction between labor and labor power, labor is universal to all of human history, but labour power is a distinct commodity under capitalist mode of production.

In a commune, it is difficult for me to see the possible distinction of a worker selling their labour-power and thus producing a profit and surplus based on it's difference with the amount of labor performed.
As such it is hard for me to even necessarily see how capitalist relations necessary exist within a commune and where there isn't such a relation of production the idea of exploitation as Marx denotes it under capitalism likely doesn't exist.
However, in the general meaning of the term and colloquially I would say that they are taking advantage of other peoples work i.e. exploiting the advantages or work of others.
I would like to reference a piece from James Connolly to kind of reflect on the conditions of 'wages' within a commune.

Spoiler: show

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/chap11.htm

Now what I wonder here with the labour note is whether it is the equivalent to ones full hours of labor and is not conditioned by the SNLT of a market.
To help explain...
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/indirectly-social-labor/

That depends on how you regard it. At least that sort of situation, where there is the disconnect between the value of a worker's production and his earnings, would be labeled as exploitation in a different context as you mention. It seems odd to name the same phenomenon differently just because it happens in a commune.

So what happens here is that those who are better able to work or work more are properly compenstated for such, and those who work less or unable may not be paid or based on the community a fund may be raised collectively such in the case of when a tragedies befalls someone and they're unable to work.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

What you are describing is basically an insurance scheme, but one where you can't opt out (interestingly, it is often inefficient to allow for that e.g. in health insurance). That can also lead to situations where people get less value than what they are paying for.

So there is a similar accounting of labor, but labor isn't compensated based on the social average but in full. This is seen as the first step in breaking the law of value I believe.
So it actually undoes somewhat the tendency for someone to still receive their wage while working less than others because they will not be compensated as much in this scenario, they haven't worked. Here the idea would be the capitalist wouldn't exist or survive because he can't exploit the surplus labor to profit individually, each individual must work. As such, the idea is to undo the very basis of a class distinction.

In what way is labor necessarily being compensated in full in the above scenario? For instance, what makes you believe that those who operate the compulsory insurance scheme above are getting compensated by getting the same value they generate? They could be compensated by far more and become an elite of its own, as it would happen in socialist regimes

Elsewhere had a good yarn about how the Amish do not represent communism and how they in fat are increasingly being drawn into the capitalist economy because they aren't entirely self-sufficient communities but are reliant on tourism and paid work outside of their communities.
https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=175024
Which I think points to the difficulty in how tenable preconfigurative politics is, as it seeks to simply act as one's ideal and collapses the means into the end as opposed to delinating the means to the broader end of how to change production overall and not in one's small 'island'.

But that also happens because it's more profitable to the community at large to do that rather than just live in autarchy.

I think one problem with Marxians in general is that you guys are using some very specific definitions for some terms such as "capital" or "profit", and end up ignoring some relevant dynamics as a result. For example, if you'll stick to Marx's definition of capital you quoted above, then how do you define the production of a service (which cannot be resold by definition) aimed at producing goods or other services? Or how do you call the decision by some to study a degree to earn more and is it really all that different from deciding to buy a machine to produce and sell stuff? I actually wonder if Marx would agree with those narrow readings of his theory if he were alive today.

Funny -- you seem to think that *differences* with Marxist political economy are somehow Marxist themselves.

Gotta hunt those heretics, heh?

By the way, Okishio in particular actually proved the Fundamental Marxian Theorem

Your acceptance of the real-world phenomena of falling prices and capitalist overproduction means that you're acknowledging the empirical evidence for Marx's 'Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall', or the declining rate of profit. Real or nominal variables in the measurement of such makes no difference.

Actually we don't often see deflation in the real world

That deflation would only be true if money supply was non-increasing and there were constant increases in productivity. The tendency of the profit rate to fall is on the other hand not a given as shown by Okishio (there need to be assumptions made to conclude that) and plenty of literature as we saw a while ago when we actually saw some of the empirical research on the matter.

Okay, regarding the value of *commodities*, here it is:

That's one of the things I'm referring to. Paradox of water and diamonds, you know

Well, gee, I'm still *not* convinced otherwise, even by your lack of effort, so it's going to go on my calendar for *months* from now, now.

Here's how it works:


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show

What else is there to say? Who the hell decides on whether to buy something based narrowly on its cost of production as opposed to sale price?

Thanks for asking. Right here:


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show

Explain yourself.

No, Marx's theory of value is not nearly as open to interpretation or ambiguous as you're claiming it to be. Here's another diagram on it:


[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit

Spoiler: show

Then you'd need to account for some of the issues I mentioned there, such as finding new uses for a given commodity as a result of scientific innovation. That means use values are not all that well defined, let alone constant, in practice.

This is only within the context of this bunch of workers who somehow saved up enough wages and received enough charity / financing, to *buy out* the business that they work at -- it's a preposterous formulation to begin with, and I've shown that it's an *undesirable* one for the workers, too, because of the economic risk involved and the economic necessity to self-exploit their own labor power for the sake of the business.

That would also apply to means of productions that were taken over by force.

Now you're indicating that there could very well be *infighting* among these potential co-owner workers, over their own varying degrees of individual productivity, for the enterprise. It wouldn't be 'exploitation', though -- it would be disproportionate inputs of 'sweat equity' among the co-owners which would have to be worked out economically in terms of formal shares of equity in the business.

That's a very unconvincing answer. Why couldn't call disagreements between workers and business owners as fights over "sweat equity" as well?

Again, not 'exploitation' because buying into the business was *optional* and *discretionary* for each and every one of these hypothetical co-owner workers. Any one of them, or all of them, could *divest*, and cash-out, to alleviate any friction arising from such contentious co-owner dynamics.

And workers can quit and work elsewhere or start their own businesses.

Wellsy has given us all a good refresher course on Marx's political economy -- note, from it, that Marx *eschewed* any formal abstractions of 'value', as those touted by communal types for inter-communal economic exchanges. Marx held up the simple internal social reciprocity of labor-*time* vouchers, outside of conventional capitalist exploitation of labor and its expropriation of surplus labor value.

I don't think he's actually touched that point. I'd be interested to read him out on it.

[Pants-of-dog]

The UN was an attempt at creating and enforcing international law. It's had mixed results, and keeps eroding more and more. It's a flawed design, the rules are good but enforcement is weak. UN was created 2 months after WWII. So yes a crisis like climate change or something else may force the issue again.

Capitalism is a globalist ideology. Thus, it creates global problems. These problems, in turn, require global solutions.

And it is this need for global solutions that should give rise to a global order that restricts the power of the rich in order to protect the rest of us.

They'll have to somehow solve the drug problem in Latin America for it to really develop. Maybe the US and other countries will have to legalize it.

The easiest way to end the drug war in Latin America is to legalise drugs in the USA.

[Julian658]

Capitalism is a globalist ideology. Thus, it creates global problems. These problems, in turn, require global solutions.

And it is this need for global solutions that should give rise to a global order that restricts the power of the rich in order to protect the rest of us.

And that would be a totalitarian oppressive system that prevents entrepreneurial activity. Listen to your own words POD.

[ckaihatsu]

I get why people in developing countries are sympathetic to Marxism, because these are the less powerful countries that are often exploited.

You're ignoring the *political* side, now, which is the imperialist militaristic *destruction* wreaked on those outside of the U.S.

Liberals like yourself tend to like to flip-flop, aspect-wise, to address the *economic* side of things when the *politics* is paramount, and vice-versa.


Why So Many Liberals Supported Invading Iraq

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... ntion.html


Ideologies & Operations -- Bottom Up

Spoiler: show

[ckaihatsu]

Doesn't this strike you as being *moralistic*, though?

I'm finding revolutionary theory to be sorely lacking when it comes to addressing dynamics of the *material world* -- your concern is easily answerable with the reply of 'use values' (from collectivized production), and the treatment you included indicts *political economy* itself, in its entirety, implying perhaps a family-farm-type of backwards subsistence-type farming, all for the sake of eschewing material-economic relations altogether, just to be on the 'safe' side, or something.

I do agree with the author that the economy doesn't have to be *exchanges*-based -- it *could* be free-access and direct-distribution -- but the whole position really seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The summary itself isn't a scientific analysis of the matter but I do not think Marx's work is deprived of ethical content in spite of those who would solely emphasize it's objectivity and scientific credentials.
I am against what I see as the tendency to treat facts as independent rather than distinct from value. To emphasize objectivity I worry is simply to diminish the relation of even knowledge to the knower, the human subjects and to make out that while the task of an ethical judgment is incredibly difficult, that this signifies the lack of ethical implications of facts. Many attempts to confine themselves to the level of raw data, a prerequisite of knowledge but by far not the highest level of comprehension.

Sure, I can agree with this in the abstract, and I've depicted this dynamic in diagram form:


philosophical abstractions

Spoiler: show

Interpersonal Meanings

Spoiler: show

Unfortunately you're not addressing anything of what I've said regarding potential political economy.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/humanism-science.htm

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/brenkert.htm

The quote I think simply makes a general summary as opposed to analysis in order to argue that the law of value and the effort to try and predict the economy may be a fruitless effort that arises out of a particular desire within capitalist production.
[url][/url]

Let me put it *this* way, then -- Marx advocated labor-time *vouchers*, which I've stated to be *insufficient* due to their lack of addressing material content / material accounting, specifically regarding varying rates of *productivity*, per person, per hour, for the collective 'commons'.

Would you like to apply your humane 'morality' and/or 'ethics' here, to address this particular situation of a potential post-capitalist political economy? Why should any one person be able to contribute *less*, materially, while still receiving *standardized* consideration and compensation (per-hour) from the collective social commons -- ?

Values [in capitalism] are measured spontaneously, becoming embodied in one commodity (money) because the production relations are not, and cannot be, planned in advance.

So then, by extension, if values -- *use* values -- are to be planned in advance, *without* money / exchanges, *post*-capitalism, then any such post-capitalist valuations, like liberated-labor-time, should be on an *egalitarian* basis, and -- I would argue -- should also find a way to include the physical / tangible 'realm' of use-value *materials*, as well.

This is where I have some skepticism also into the idea of controlling and managing as one might subscribe to the USSR and it's assertion of controlling or managing the law of value.

I certainly don't want things to be reduced back to subsistence farming or something, I think the idea of maintaining the gains in production is the strong point in socialist thought against some kind of utopian completeness with nature in a less culturally mediated world.

Okay, thanks. I happen to agree, presumably, that the workers of the world have the capacity to collectively co-administrate, and that there is no objective need for anything resembling a USSR-type standing bureaucracy.

Given this anti-primitivist position / politics of yours, then, would you be so kind as to address some of these particulars of how use-values *might* be treated in an egalitarian way by a potential post-capitalist political economy -- ?

Agreed, such examples only point to possible issues in the realization of some minimal level of production and the history of how it has been confronted. Although the USSR is hardly an ideal case either.
Understandable, to much prediction of the future might show a tendency for utopianism where I think these things will have to be solved practically with problems as they're faced rather than a created fantasy which is attempted to be forced upon reality.
Indeed, the increased physical output due to machines does seem intuitively part of the ability to meet the needs of the population as a precondition for their multifaceted labor/activity unrestrained by so direct a threat of poverty and deprivation.

Perhaps you might find sympathy in this student of Evald Ilyenkov in his summary of Ilyenkov's dissatisfaction with the USSR state.
http://caute.ru/am/text/dogstate.html

I have no problem with the potential use of AI for resolving rudimentary *logistical*, point-to-point (GPS-route-type) situations, including those of supply chains altogether...


History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show

...But I'm not certain what the author means by 'abstract, material, non-creative labor' (for people), and 'allowing themselves [proletarians] to be programmed'.

At the same time, the " centralization of the means of production", in which Marx saw the embryo of a new formation, led only to the monopolization of property. Centralized production has demonstrated excellent, almost perfect compatibility with the "capitalist shell", i.e. with relations of private ownership of working conditions.

For this critique of centralization I'd ask how something like the *airlines* should be organized -- many industries would *not* lend themselves to the popularity of the trope of 'decentralization', because of the too-many-cooks-spoil-the-broth dynamic inherent to the material world. Here is my own position regarding social organization, and logistics:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show

---

the "sun of labor."

Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show

[ckaihatsu]

Funny -- you seem to think that *differences* with Marxist political economy are somehow Marxist themselves.

Gotta hunt those heretics, heh?

I've heard that garlic and wooden stakes are the most effective. (grin)

By the way, Okishio in particular actually proved the Fundamental Marxian Theorem

Okay, I'll bite -- wtf is the 'Fundamental Marxian Theorem' -- ?


---

Your acceptance of the real-world phenomena of falling prices and capitalist overproduction means that you're acknowledging the empirical evidence for Marx's 'Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall', or the declining rate of profit. Real or nominal variables in the measurement of such makes no difference.

Actually we don't often see deflation in the real world

Yeah, nice -- here's from earlier in the thread, though -- we're seeing it *now*...!

viewtopic.php?p=15171734#p15171734

---

That deflation would only be true if money supply was non-increasing and there were constant increases in productivity. The tendency of the profit rate to fall is on the other hand not a given as shown by Okishio (there need to be assumptions made to conclude that)

If anything you've been acknowledging the economic conditions that support Marx's declining rate of profit (falling prices, overproduction), and you haven't made any kind of a case that supports Okishio.

and plenty of literature as we saw a while ago when we actually saw some of the empirical research on the matter.

Oh, okay -- like what?


---

'value' is based on the cost of production of the commodity in the first place.

That's one of the things I'm referring to. Paradox of water and diamonds, you know

Fun -- so you'd rather be a dickhead and repeat the supply-and-demand exchange-value approach to value -- post-production market pricing -- while ignoring the equity capital and exploited labor value that *produced* the commodity (brought it into existence) in the first place. Okay, *be* that way.


---

What else is there to say? Who the hell decides on whether to buy something based narrowly on its cost of production as opposed to sale price?

Um, yeah. So it's always back to your market-pricing fetishism. 'Value' can never be viewed in terms of what it took to *make* the stuff in the first place, according to you, even though you're ignoring that *that* value actually *sets the pace* for your subsequent fluctuating market-pricing exchange valuations.


---

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

Thanks for asking. Right here:


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show

Explain yourself.

(See the previous segment.)


---

No, Marx's theory of value is not nearly as open to interpretation or ambiguous as you're claiming it to be. Here's another diagram on it:


[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit

Spoiler: show

Then you'd need to account for some of the issues I mentioned there, such as finding new uses for a given commodity as a result of scientific innovation. That means use values are not all that well defined, let alone constant, in practice.

Note that we haven't been *discussing* use values at all -- *you've* been maniacally focused on *exchange* values, in market pricing, to the exclusion of all other valuations.

Also, no one's *claimed* that use values are constant in practice. A screwdriver used today may be an item for donation tomorrow, that someone else receives and uses in an electricity experiment.


---

This is only within the context of this bunch of workers who somehow saved up enough wages and received enough charity / financing, to *buy out* the business that they work at -- it's a preposterous formulation to begin with, and I've shown that it's an *undesirable* one for the workers, too, because of the economic risk involved and the economic necessity to self-exploit their own labor power for the sake of the business.

That would also apply to means of productions that were taken over by force.

No, it wouldn't, because such wouldn't realistically be at one-off workplaces, on paths to capitalism-type ownership -- such would be *politically organized* on vast scales, preferably worldwide, as part of a *political* movement of proletarian revolution.


---

Now you're indicating that there could very well be *infighting* among these potential co-owner workers, over their own varying degrees of individual productivity, for the enterprise. It wouldn't be 'exploitation', though -- it would be disproportionate inputs of 'sweat equity' among the co-owners which would have to be worked out economically in terms of formal shares of equity in the business.

That's a very unconvincing answer. Why couldn't call disagreements between workers and business owners as fights over "sweat equity" as well?

Workers at any business don't enjoy 'sweat equity' because they're *not rewarded* for such -- workers are paid a set wage, no matter how productive they are for the company that employs them.


---

Again, not 'exploitation' because buying into the business was *optional* and *discretionary* for each and every one of these hypothetical co-owner workers. Any one of them, or all of them, could *divest*, and cash-out, to alleviate any friction arising from such contentious co-owner dynamics.

And workers can quit and work elsewhere or start their own businesses.

Nooooottttt really -- if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, quitting would be a *bad* idea because of the interruption in the steady receipt of paychecks, due to any gaps in employment going-forward. And starting one's own business requires one's own capital, or the securing of financing, both of which entail *transactional* costs, including one's own discretionary time to 'invest' in such, which someone living paycheck-to-paycheck simply can't afford.


---

Wellsy has given us all a good refresher course on Marx's political economy -- note, from it, that Marx *eschewed* any formal abstractions of 'value', as those touted by communal types for inter-communal economic exchanges. Marx held up the simple internal social reciprocity of labor-*time* vouchers, outside of conventional capitalist exploitation of labor and its expropriation of surplus labor value.

I don't think he's actually touched that point. I'd be interested to read him out on it.

You could always ask Wellsy about it if you like.

[wat0n]

Okay, I'll bite -- wtf is the 'Fundamental Marxian Theorem' -- ?

http://digamo.free.fr/dongmin9.pdf

Very first paragraph:

The well-known fundamental Marxian theorem elaborated by Okishio (1963) and Morishima (1973) asserted that “the exploitation of laborers by capitalists is necessary and sufficient for the existence of a price-wage set yielding positive profits or, in other words, for the possibility of conserving the capitalist economy” (Morishima 1973: 53). At least for a while, this theorem was regarded as a “proof” for Marx’s theory of exploitation. However, it turns out that the fundamental Marxian theorem itself cannot be a safe haven for Marxian economists.

Care to explain if claiming (and showing, under assumptions) that exploitation of workers is necessary and sufficient for a capitalist to have a profit isn't Marxian?

Yeah, nice -- here's from earlier in the thread, though -- we're seeing it *now*...!

How about you post the inflation series itself? Or the Marxian definition of "inflation" is also different to the one used by everyone else?

If anything you've been acknowledging the economic conditions that support Marx's declining rate of profit (falling prices, overproduction), and you haven't made any kind of a case that supports Okishio.

How so?

Oh, okay -- like what?

Do you want me to repost? I can do that if you want. Most of the papers showing the "downward" trend began their series in the 1960s, a time of unusually high growth in the West as the post depression, post-war recovery was taking hold and the newly discovered scientific findings during the 1920s-1940s were being applied in the broader economy. Even then, you would see that the rate of profit would level off at a nonnegative level eventually. And papers that began in the 19th century would find no such trend at all.

Fun -- so you'd rather be a dickhead and repeat the supply-and-demand exchange-value approach to value -- post-production market pricing -- while ignoring the equity capital and exploited labor value that *produced* the commodity (brought it into existence) in the first place. Okay, *be* that way.

How can valuing production at cost solve the paradox at all?

Um, yeah. So it's always back to your market-pricing fetishism. 'Value' can never be viewed in terms of what it took to *make* the stuff in the first place, according to you, even though you're ignoring that *that* value actually *sets the pace* for your subsequent fluctuating market-pricing exchange valuations.

Production costs are one big determinant of prices, no one denies that. But they aren't the only one.

Note that we haven't been *discussing* use values at all -- *you've* been maniacally focused on *exchange* values, in market pricing, to the exclusion of all other valuations.

Are there any other notions of values in Marxian terms besides use and exchange values?

Also, no one's *claimed* that use values are constant in practice. A screwdriver used today may be an item for donation tomorrow, that someone else receives and uses in an electricity experiment.

How does that change your results?

No, it wouldn't, because such wouldn't realistically be at one-off workplaces, on paths to capitalism-type ownership -- such would be *politically organized* on vast scales, preferably worldwide, as part of a *political* movement of proletarian revolution.

I don't see how it would affect my point at all. Then you'll just have to deal with a worldwide worker's rebellion.

Workers at any business don't enjoy 'sweat equity' because they're *not rewarded* for such -- workers are paid a set wage, no matter how productive they are for the company that employs them.

That's clearly not true, not only there are all sorts of compensation structures that prize productivity but also workers are sometimes paid with equity.

Nooooottttt really -- if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, quitting would be a *bad* idea because of the interruption in the steady receipt of paychecks, due to any gaps in employment going-forward. And starting one's own business requires one's own capital, or the securing of financing, both of which entail *transactional* costs, including one's own discretionary time to 'invest' in such, which someone living paycheck-to-paycheck simply can't afford.

For the former, workers can always look for alternatives while on their own free time, for the latter, that's what banks are for.

You could always ask Wellsy about it if you like.

Let's wait to see his view on it.

[ckaihatsu]

http://digamo.free.fr/dongmin9.pdf

Very first paragraph:



Care to explain if claiming (and showing, under assumptions) that exploitation of workers is necessary and sufficient for a capitalist to have a profit isn't Marxian?

Exploitation of workers *is* capitalism, and vice-versa.


---

Actually we don't often see deflation in the real world

Yeah, nice -- here's from earlier in the thread, though -- we're seeing it *now*...!

How about you post the inflation series itself? Or the Marxian definition of "inflation" is also different to the one used by everyone else?

My point stands that *deflation* is what prevails today.


---

If anything you've been acknowledging the economic conditions that support Marx's declining rate of profit (falling prices, overproduction), and you haven't made any kind of a case that supports Okishio.

How so?

Just go back and review.

Do you want me to repost? I can do that if you want. Most of the papers showing the "downward" trend began their series in the 1960s, a time of unusually high growth in the West as the post depression, post-war recovery was taking hold and the newly discovered scientific findings during the 1920s-1940s were being applied in the broader economy. Even then, you would see that the rate of profit would level off at a nonnegative level eventually. And papers that began in the 19th century would find no such trend at all.

Do as you like -- that's what we're here for. Sure, I'll look at any data you may have handy, but you've already acknowledged the dynamic details of how capital tends to rush in without any overall planning, and capitalist overproduction ensues, yielding falling prices and a tendency for the rate of profit to decline.

How can valuing production at cost solve the paradox at all?

What's 'the paradox'?

Production costs are one big determinant of prices, no one denies that. But they aren't the only one.

Production costs are *the* big determinant of prices, because the calculation that the capitalist does is 'How much will it cost to make these things, and how much can I sell them for'.

Are there any other notions of values in Marxian terms besides use and exchange values?

No, that's it, in terms of modalities.


---

Then you'd need to account for some of the issues I mentioned there, such as finding new uses for a given commodity as a result of scientific innovation. That means use values are not all that well defined, let alone constant, in practice.

Also, no one's *claimed* that use values are constant in practice. A screwdriver used today may be an item for donation tomorrow, that someone else receives and uses in an electricity experiment.

How does that change your results?

You're not understanding -- there are *no calculations* to be made with use values, aside from who-needs-what, which is just a simple 'inventory', or 'stock' matter of maintaining a set quantity, to replenish the inventory when it gets depleted.

My own shorthand for a post-capitalist political economy is the phrase 'a landscape of piles of stuff', indicating inventories-in-parallel, while society has to collectively decide who does the labor to *replenish* each given pile-of-stuff, and what supply chains might take from which piles, for the production of the finished goods, for the benefit of who.


---

This is only within the context of this bunch of workers who somehow saved up enough wages and received enough charity / financing, to *buy out* the business that they work at -- it's a preposterous formulation to begin with, and I've shown that it's an *undesirable* one for the workers, too, because of the economic risk involved and the economic necessity to self-exploit their own labor power for the sake of the business.

That would also apply to means of productions that were taken over by force.

No, it wouldn't, because such wouldn't realistically be at one-off workplaces, on paths to capitalism-type ownership -- such would be *politically organized* on vast scales, preferably worldwide, as part of a *political* movement of proletarian revolution.

I don't see how it would affect my point at all. Then you'll just have to deal with a worldwide worker's rebellion.

'I' would have 'to deal with' a worldwide workers' rebellion -- ?

You're showing that you don't understand -- my point here is that, in a worldwide proletarian revolution the working class would be *dispossessing* all capitalists of their means of mass industrial production, meaning the factories, basically.

Local workplaces being directly collectively controlled by the *workers* of each workplace means that there are no external pressures to produce for finance anymore. Workers wouldn't have to self-exploit because *they* would decide what and when to produce, and for whom.

That's clearly not true, not only there are all sorts of compensation structures that prize productivity but also workers are sometimes paid with equity.

No, it's not the norm, and it's beside the point, anyway -- workers have a common interest in *organizing* collectively on the basis of their own labor power. Little individual incentives for workers here and there are crumbs from the table.

For the former, workers can always look for alternatives while on their own free time, for the latter, that's what banks are for.

Well you're making it sound like a walk in the park, but I don't think that *any* nascent capitalist would take their finances so lightly, and neither should any *prospective* capitalist, either.

I'll reiterate that wage workers have *far* more power and leverage in their *collective numbers*, than they do going off on their own for whatever individualist goals they may have.

Let's wait to see his view on it.

[wat0n]

Exploitation of workers *is* capitalism, and vice-versa.

So Okishio is a Marxian economist now?

My point stands that *deflation* is what prevails today.

Then post the series of CPI inflation.

Just go back and review.

I already did. You haven't really shown why Okishio is so obviously wrong.

Do as you like -- that's what we're here for. Sure, I'll look at any data you may have handy, but you've already acknowledged the dynamic details of how capital tends to rush in without any overall planning, and capitalist overproduction ensues, yielding falling prices and a tendency for the rate of profit to decline.

I haven't agreed with that. You're just talking nonsense. Also:

Sure:

http://pinguet.free.fr/barkai17.pdf
https://www.nber.org/papers/w24112.pdf
http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func ... Id=4648170 (specific to manufactring)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/79529/1 ... _79529.pdf (mixed, depends on the country)
http://gesd.free.fr/basuvasu.pdf

And even the blog post includes a paper where it's highly questionable to claim there is a clear decreasing trend:

https://thenextrecession.files.wordpres ... conomy.pdf

Note that all of these papers consider accounting profits. Economic profits (net of opportunity cost) are a different matter.

What's 'the paradox'?

You don't know about it?

Production costs are *the* big determinant of prices, because the calculation that the capitalist does is 'How much will it cost to make these things, and how much can I sell them for'.

Was it for e.g. the Mona Lisa?

No, that's it, in terms of modalities.

Then why wouldn't we talk about use values?

You're not understanding -- there are *no calculations* to be made with use values, aside from who-needs-what, which is just a simple 'inventory', or 'stock' matter of maintaining a set quantity, to replenish the inventory when it gets depleted.

My own shorthand for a post-capitalist political economy is the phrase 'a landscape of piles of stuff', indicating inventories-in-parallel, while society has to collectively decide who does the labor to *replenish* each given pile-of-stuff, and what supply chains might take from which piles, for the production of the finished goods, for the benefit of who.

I'm speaking about analytical results, not calculations

'I' would have 'to deal with' a worldwide workers' rebellion -- ?

You're showing that you don't understand -- my point here is that, in a worldwide proletarian revolution the working class would be *dispossessing* all capitalists of their means of mass industrial production, meaning the factories, basically.

Local workplaces being directly collectively controlled by the *workers* of each workplace means that there are no external pressures to produce for finance anymore. Workers wouldn't have to self-exploit because *they* would decide what and when to produce, and for whom.

That doesn't deal with the issue of how highly productive workers would be paid less than they produce and less productive workers would be paid more.

No, it's not the norm, and it's beside the point, anyway -- workers have a common interest in *organizing* collectively on the basis of their own labor power. Little individual incentives for workers here and there are crumbs from the table.

The use of compensation incentives for productivity is fairly extended. Pretty much all sales jobs have those for example.

Well you're making it sound like a walk in the park, but I don't think that *any* nascent capitalist would take their finances so lightly, and neither should any *prospective* capitalist, either.

I'll reiterate that wage workers have *far* more power and leverage in their *collective numbers*, than they do going off on their own for whatever individualist goals they may have.

It's no walk in the park but switching does happen in practice too. In fact it happens more often than in the past.

[Unthinking Majority]

And that would be a totalitarian oppressive system that prevents entrepreneurial activity. Listen to your own words POD.

@Pants-of-dog if referring to some kind of global governance. It doesn't have to be totalitarian, it can be democratic. Like every country gets a vote in a global parliament, or some such system. The UN General Assembly is similar to this. But it's also dominated by dictatorships, and money will always be able to influence and buy votes most likely.

[Unthinking Majority]

You're ignoring the *political* side, now, which is the imperialist militaristic *destruction* wreaked on those outside of the U.S.

Liberals like yourself tend to like to flip-flop, aspect-wise, to address the *economic* side of things when the *politics* is paramount, and vice-versa.

I don't think i'm ignoring it. Politics is power relations between human individuals and groups. Whether you're an individual or a country, if you're low on the power totem pole you're probably not going to like the current system very much and think it unfair. If you're high on the power totem you're probably going to like the status quo and seek to maintain it.

Why So Many Liberals Supported Invading Iraq

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... ntion.html

I was extremely against the Iraq War.

This is not a scientific analysis.

This is a very shallow sociological analysis that ignores history and other factors.

One thing you are not doing, for example, is isolating variables. So you are assuming that the current ideological framework of the countries is responsible for their current level of development; i.e. this is the only variable that you think is significant.

But the current level of development is due to past socio-economic conditions. Os it would make more sense to assume that current levels of development and ideological frameworks are correlated and are both caused by certain historical similarities.

Like benefiting from the colonial era, to name one factor.

How am I ignoring variables? Explain to me why Scandinavian countries do better than the UK, France, and the US when Scandavian countries have benefited the same or less from colonialism. I'm not comparing Norway to Colombia, I'm comparing Norway to the USA or Spain etc. There's pretty obvious reasons why Norway has better health and education outcomes than the USA.

Yes obviously colonialism is a big factor separating some countries from others.

[ckaihatsu]

So Okishio is a Marxian economist now?

No, I wouldn't say so -- I referred to Okishio's line as being triumphalist capitalist propaganda.


---

My point stands that *deflation* is what prevails today.

Then post the series of CPI inflation.

I'm not stopping you.

What you're referring to is taking place in the *real economy*, meaning that the rate of profit is so low now, for regular everyday items, that *shortages* develop because no one wants to bother for such little economic reward. Petty-bourgeois types, like that of your descriptions, are practically *proletarian* in terms of the work they do now, and the compensation they get for doing it. Hence all the bankruptcies, etc. -- which goes to prove my point about prevailing financial *deflation*, and Marx's declining rate of profit.

I already did. You haven't really shown why Okishio is so obviously wrong.

(See the previous segment.)

I haven't agreed with that. You're just talking nonsense. Also:

You don't know about it?

Whatevs.


---

Production costs are *the* big determinant of prices, because the calculation that the capitalist does is 'How much will it cost to make these things, and how much can I sell them for'.

Was it for e.g. the Mona Lisa?

You tell me.

Then why wouldn't we talk about use values?

You really *do* sound like a #$^&* chatbot.


---

Also, no one's *claimed* that use values are constant in practice. A screwdriver used today may be an item for donation tomorrow, that someone else receives and uses in an electricity experiment.

How does that change your results?

You're not understanding -- there are *no calculations* to be made with use values, aside from who-needs-what, which is just a simple 'inventory', or 'stock' matter of maintaining a set quantity, to replenish the inventory when it gets depleted.

My own shorthand for a post-capitalist political economy is the phrase 'a landscape of piles of stuff', indicating inventories-in-parallel, while society has to collectively decide who does the labor to *replenish* each given pile-of-stuff, and what supply chains might take from which piles, for the production of the finished goods, for the benefit of who.

I'm speaking about analytical results, not calculations

So how would you propose to analyze use values?

That doesn't deal with the issue of how highly productive workers would be paid less than they produce and less productive workers would be paid more.

Well there would no longer be *wages* because surplus labor value would no longer be appropriated by capitalist employers -- a workers state, in protracted class warfare with the world's bourgeoisie, would have the advantage of keeping all labor power *internal*, on collectivized means of mass industrial production. So your point here is moot.

The use of compensation incentives for productivity is fairly extended. Pretty much all sales jobs have those for example.

And what percentage of all jobs are sales jobs? Also note that sales is not really proletarian since such work doesn't produce any commodities for the economy. It's basically *overhead* / 'abstract labor', directly in the interests of management.

It's no walk in the park but switching does happen in practice too. In fact it happens more often than in the past.

[ckaihatsu]

@Pants-of-dog if referring to some kind of global governance. It doesn't have to be totalitarian, it can be democratic. Like every country gets a vote in a global parliament, or some such system. The UN General Assembly is similar to this. But it's also dominated by dictatorships, and money will always be able to influence and buy votes most likely.

Okay, *go*:

Climate change. It can either have competing actors fighting and pushing us to our extinction, or it could be the catalyst for a large and authoritative body of legal frameworks insisting on rules in order for the variation in distributed resources to expand and be able to supply the world efficiently with the constant pressures of less and less able to adapt.

[Pants-of-dog]

How am I ignoring variables? Explain to me why Scandinavian countries do better than the UK, France, and the US when Scandavian countries have benefited the same or less from colonialism. I'm not comparing Norway to Colombia, I'm comparing Norway to the USA or Spain etc. There's pretty obvious reasons why Norway has better health and education outcomes than the USA.

Yes obviously colonialism is a big factor separating some countries from others.

You are obviously ignoring colonialism and how wealth was transferred from the Americas, Africa, and Asia into Europe, and how this transfer of wealth affected economic development.

You are also ignoring how the monarchy in Spain was stronger than in England and how this affected who was able to spend the wealth from this colonialism.

[Tainari88]

Ok folks, I had an attack for coconut stuff. The guy was blaring over a loudspeaker here, "Cremitas de Coco, Pay de Coco, cocos frios, la competencia esta dura pero nosotros somos los mejores!" it made me laugh. I bought coconut pie, fresh coconut water in its shell and coconut creme. I have never been so happy with the pie in my life or the drinks or the creme. Excellent thing. Home made beautiful coconut pie. It was not sweet and had a lot of natural flavor and merengue on top that was the prettiest and tastiest thing. Fresh tasting coconut.

There is this nice man with his three kids that sells burgers and fries and nostalgia...great burgers. Vegetarian ones too made of portabello mushrooms grilled. Delicious.

Here is his website.

https://burgers66-restaurant.negocio.site/


He is a totally nice man. His son plays live guitar for a long time. Great teen with fine electric guitar playing skills and he has a little 8 year old sing in English lyrics from the Beatles. it is adorable.

I might swing over there and eat out tonight.

[wat0n]

No, I wouldn't say so -- I referred to Okishio's line as being triumphalist capitalist propaganda.

Why, given his claims about exploitation?

I'm not stopping you.

What you're referring to is taking place in the *real economy*, meaning that the rate of profit is so low now, for regular everyday items, that *shortages* develop because no one wants to bother for such little economic reward. Petty-bourgeois types, like that of your descriptions, are practically *proletarian* in terms of the work they do now, and the compensation they get for doing it. Hence all the bankruptcies, etc. -- which goes to prove my point about prevailing financial *deflation*, and Marx's declining rate of profit.

If so, then prices would go up - and also, you'd see a contraction of GDP. But it seems the world economy is recovering from the restrictions and so is the American one.

And yet... In reality there hasn't been a significant deflation since the Great Depression.

Whatevs.

Ok...?

You tell me.

I'd say not.

You really *do* sound like a #$^&* chatbot.

It's a fair question.

So how would you propose to analyze use values?

I would guess that if they are so important, they'd eventually determine the evolution of the economy... Right?

Well there would no longer be *wages* because surplus labor value would no longer be appropriated by capitalist employers -- a workers state, in protracted class warfare with the world's bourgeoisie, would have the advantage of keeping all labor power *internal*, on collectivized means of mass industrial production. So your point here is moot.

You can use another name for 'labor compensation' if you want.

And what percentage of all jobs are sales jobs? Also note that sales is not really proletarian since such work doesn't produce any commodities for the economy. It's basically *overhead* / 'abstract labor', directly in the interests of management.

And yet most of employment consists in producing services instead of commodities.