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Race Hate Kramer posted:You laugh but you can't refute any of my points so I'm winning so Actually, I agree with you. I was just making a joke. Marxist conception of value is loving bonkers.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:30
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Race Hate Kramer posted:The real question, in my opinion, is what happens when labor itself becomes antiquated - I realize, again, this might seem extraordinary but look at how much labor was able to be basically erased from existence with the existence of primitive computer systems. Most likely the owners of the machines and the proles get their own, separate economies - the latter still have to eat and without robots, they still have to rely on manual labor. As both economies need resources, the proles and the owners clash, which most probably gets the owners murdered and their machines appropriated.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:30
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Friendly Tumour posted:Actually, I agree with you. I was just making a joke. Marxist conception of value is loving bonkers. O-oh, okay. Well then that is fine  Gantolandon posted:Most likely the owners of the machines and the proles get their own, separate economies - the latter still have to eat and without robots, they still have to rely on manual labor. As both economies need resources, the proles and the owners clash, which most probably gets the owners murdered and their machines appropriated. I'm so confused
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Nov 6, 2014 00:30
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Gantolandon posted:This is not a very good example, because conducting a job interview is actually productive - it helps you get workers able to produce shoes. You participate in the process of making something valuable. The main point is that the owner doesn't even have to do that to get their money. They can hire managers, recruiters and lawyers to make decisions for them and still get the lion's share of the profit. Really, exploitation and surplus value, in the absence of a rigorous way to value labor of all kinds, is best described by looking at the profit of a large corporation like, say, agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, which had a net income of 1 billion dollars after taxes and interest payments last year, and which centralizes the CEO and Chair of the Board positions in one person, Patricia Woertz. This last year was ADM's best year ever, so let's look at her salary from a few years back of 15 million dollars. Let's assume that there are four other people in ADM with similar power and income to Ms. Woertz, for the sake of argument, and that they are not overpaid. In order for ADM's profit to come entirely out of the salaries of the top executives, they are underpaying themselves by more than 90%. If we assume it all comes out of Ms. Woertz's salary, she's paid 2% of her actual value to the company.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:32
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HorseLord posted:I don't think a bunch of ineffectual directionless people doing a whole bunch of nothing and developing no ideas beyond "down with this sort of thing" will do much of anything. I agree, Marxism won't do much to help anyone
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Nov 6, 2014 00:34
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Friendly Tumour posted:I'd say that Podemos is inspired by the same ideals of direct democracy and transparency in politics as the Occupy movement is. You can call it leftist if you want to, but I don't think you can justly say that all left-wing movements are Marxist. Friendly Tumour posted:it does mean that the time of Marxism is in the past, and that the ideas that are going to shape the history of this century are not going to come from the Communist Manifesto. Friendly Tumour posted:I for one am waiting for that new ideal that will inspire a new century of war with trepidation. Liberalism certainly reached the end of its road. Friendly Tumour posted:
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Nov 6, 2014 00:36
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icantfindaname posted:I agree, Marxism won't do much to help anyone Man, you made multiple posts snidely insinuating that the wars of independence in Haiti and Latin America weren't worth it, and now you're down to this kind of hit-and-run?
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Nov 6, 2014 00:39
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Ardennes posted:That one quote shows he is engaging with Marx though, the book is an academic work, most of the turf conflicts are going to happen in the introduction and conclusion. I'm not trying to suggest that Piketty hates Marx or that Marx has zero influence on mainstream economists. If I had to guess I'd say Piketty thinks Marx was an interesting philosopher but a bad economist. Piketty's a French economics PHD; he got a decent serving of Marx through his academic training at a minimum-- although it was much more likely to be secondary sources than big chunks of Das Kapital (which is totally fine, by the way, you can understand evolution perfectly well without reading a word from the Origin of Species). Also his parents were apparently french communists of some sort so perhaps this is all precocious defiance! My point in bringing this up was to refute the idea that the Marxist critique of capitalism has any significant degree of acceptance in mainstream economics by showing that reaching somewhat similar conclusions to Marx is not the same thing as accepting his views or even being influenced by them. Obdicut posted:I feel you're missing a few logical jumps here. It contributes to productive work by deciding which sort of work is done and which isn't, how much of it is done, and who should go about doing it. I don't mean day-to-day management decisions like production quotas or hiring and firing individual workers. I mean decisions about which organizations should have access to capital in order to do things like hire people and make things. Who should be able to use this car-making capital, Ford or GM? Maybe neither because demand for cars is low. Maybe car companies should have less access to capital and shoe companies should have more. By choosing who to invest (and disinvest) in, the capitalist performs productive labor by allocating resources to more productive enterprises. Some committee would have to do the same thing if the means of production were seized by the proletariat, right? I think we should tax the poo poo out of their profits, but I don't think what capitalists do is necessarily worthless.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:41
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icantfindaname posted:I agree, Marxism won't do much to help anyone A fun pet project would be to get hold of a random tiny communist party and direct them towards actually acting like a political party and not a study group. I mean, learning is cool, but meaningless beyond your own enjoyment if you don't go out and apply it.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:43
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Mans posted:lol the first thing Podemos did when it started to get mass appeal was to apply the same centralism that you see in any organized political party. Don't compare a proper and promissing European party with a bunch of American losers yelping without a cause. Occupy isn't confined to America though. Podemos grew out of the Spanish 15-M movement, which in turn was the Spanish equivalent of the Occupy movement in the states, sharing their ideals. What I'm saying is that there is a widespread feeling of discontent in the younger generations across the western world. The fact its first public manifestations didn't amount to much is irrelevant in that sense. The emotion and the motivation are still there, waiting for a new outlet. And new movements will come, and they will still be inspired by the same emotions that drew the people on the streets on the height of Occupy. Or that's what I predict anyway. lollontee fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 00:43
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Effectronica posted:Man, you made multiple posts snidely insinuating that the wars of independence in Haiti and Latin America weren't worth it, and now you're down to this kind of hit-and-run? Where did I ever mention Bolivar or Louverture? War of independence doesn't equal leftist revolution. In fact, Bolivar was fairly conservative for his time quote:Among the books accompanying him as he traveled were, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Voltaire's Letters, and when he was writing the Bolivian Constitution, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws.[37] His Bolivian constitution placed him within the camp of what would become Latin American conservatism in the later nineteenth century. The Bolivian Constitution intended to establish a lifelong presidency and a hereditary senate, essentially recreating the British unwritten constitution, as it existed at the time, without formally establishing a monarchy. It was his attempts to implement a similar constitution in Gran Colombia that led to his downfall and rejection by 1830. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar#Political_beliefs I'd say the most radical thing both of them did was abolish slavery, and you don't have to be a Marxist to be against slavery or for fair wages, despite what the Marxists ITT insist icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 00:44
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icantfindaname posted:Where did I ever mention Bolivar or Louverture? War of independence doesn't equal leftist revolution. In fact, Bolivar was fairly conservative for his time You were talking about how revolutions are a bad thing, and buddy, Latin America and Haiti won their independence through revolutions. I guess it's just "leftist" revolutions that are bad, but given that the Haitian revolutionaries expropriated land to create smallholding farms, they were pretty goddamn left for 1804.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:50
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Race Hate Kramer posted:My hope is that it will go quicker than expected and it won't come to that - as I mentioned earlier, the Lockeed Martin Fusion Engine shows much promise, and if it comes through even as half of a success, it'll still drop the price of power to basically nothing for the average person. You would be able to fully realize and integrate Edison's vision of the power grid, giving everyone functionally limitless energy. But the problem in areas of severe poverty like sub Saharan Africa of India isn't a lack of money to pay for energy but rather incompetence in governing, building and maintaining infrastructure. The difference between $2/megawatt (or whatever) and $0/megawatt isn't going to eradicate poverty and feed and clothe the people of a country like the D.R.C
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Nov 6, 2014 00:52
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Friendly Tumour posted:Occupy isn't confined to America though. Podemos grew out of the Spanish 15-M movement, which in turn was the Spanish equivalent of the Occupy movement in the states, sharing their ideals. What I'm saying is that there is a widespread feeling of discontent in the younger generations across the western world. The fact its first public manifestations didn't amount to much is irrelevant in that sense. The emotion and the motivation are still there, waiting for a new outlet. And new movements will come, and they will still be inspired by the same emotions that drew the people on the streets on the height of Occupy. Or that's what I predict anyway. "People will feel bad about things that suck and want to change them". What insight.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:53
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Effectronica posted:You were talking about how revolutions are a bad thing, and buddy, Latin America and Haiti won their independence through revolutions. I guess it's just "leftist" revolutions that are bad, but given that the Haitian revolutionaries expropriated land to create smallholding farms, they were pretty goddamn left for 1804. They seized the means of production! (Their own persons)
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Nov 6, 2014 00:53
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:But the problem in areas of severe poverty like sub Saharan Africa of India isn't a lack of money to pay for energy but rather incompetence in governing, building and maintaining infrastructure. The difference between $2/megawatt (or whatever) and $0/megawatt isn't going to eradicate poverty and feed and clothe the people of a country like the D.R.C it's this. this is the problem. and it's why Marxism isn't the solution, because Marxism doesn't actually address this problem besides blaming it on imperialists, whether that's true or not JeffersonClay posted:They seized the means of production! (Their own persons) By that definition Abraham Lincoln was a leftist, instead of one of the great figures of the same American Liberalism that leftists are mortally opposed to icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 00:54
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Effectronica posted:You were talking about how revolutions are a bad thing, and buddy, Latin America and Haiti won their independence through revolutions. I guess it's just "leftist" revolutions that are bad, but given that the Haitian revolutionaries expropriated land to create smallholding farms, they were pretty goddamn left for 1804. And Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after two centuries of independence so I would hardly call their revolution a stirring success.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:55
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Friendly Tumour posted:Occupy isn't confined to America though. Podemos grew out of the Spanish 15-M movement, which in turn was the Spanish equivalent of the Occupy movement in the states, sharing their ideals. What I'm saying is that there is a widespread feeling of discontent in the younger generations across the western world. The fact its first public manifestations didn't amount to much is irrelevant in that sense. The emotion and the motivation are still there, waiting for a new outlet. And new movements will come, and they will still be inspired by the same emotions that drew the people on the streets on the height of Occupy. Or that's what I predict anyway. I really don't get all the bitterness and hatred for the Occupy movement coming from the left. It was the first time since at least 30 years where such a large strata of society demonstrated their disappointment with capitalism. In a country which for a long time presented itself as a champion of economic freedom and recently scored a decisive victory against its archenemy. I don't think anyone should have expected them to immediately start a revolution or form a successful political party and oust Obama in presidential elections. It's like being angry at the guy, who had an accident with a spinal injury and is in the middle of rehabilitation, for not winning a marathon.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:58
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:And Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after two centuries of independence so I would hardly call their revolution a stirring success. Turns out self-government really isn't a substitute for good government.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:58
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:And Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after two centuries of independence so I would hardly call their revolution a stirring success. There we go. I was hoping to provoke some unironic musings about whether maybe they should have stayed slaves. But Haiti was pretty prosperous during the second half of the nineteenth century after they managed to pay down the usurious loans they had to take out to pay war reparations to France. Then they suffered from the political turmoil most of the world was going through in the early 20th century and Uncle Sam took a hand.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:59
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JeffersonClay posted:
They don't invest in more productive enterprises, but in more profitable ones. The decision of 'how much' work is done is not decided by the investment, it is at most influenced. Likewise, who does it is not decided by the investment. And yes, a committee would have to make decisions about resource allocation, but it doesn't take the seizure of the means of production, just a non-profit enterprise. In addition, the 'labor' of decision-making in this regard is really hard to judge. Lots of investments fail, some succeed. How do you measure the effectiveness of an investment? Even if it was successful, maybe he could have invested in something else that would have been more profitable or even better. Etc. Finally, the capitalist is really, really unlikely to just go ahead and make this decision, he almost certainly pays a large number of people to come to this decision. And again, even if we granted fully and totally that the capitalist is doing labor by doing that, it doesn't disturb the basic mechanism at wall. He recoups the value of that labor, nobody else gets the profit from it.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:59
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icantfindaname posted:it's this. this is the problem. and it's why Marxism isn't the solution, because Marxism doesn't actually address this problem besides blaming it on imperialists, whether that's true or not "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class--neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives, sons, and daughters--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class."
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Nov 6, 2014 01:00
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Gantolandon posted:I really don't get all the bitterness and hatred for the Occupy movement coming from the left. It was the first time since at least 30 years where such a large strata of society demonstrated their disappointment with capitalism. In a country which for a long time presented itself as a champion of economic freedom and recently scored a decisive victory against its archenemy. I don't think anyone should have expected them to immediately start a revolution or form a successful political party and oust Obama in presidential elections. It's like being angry at the guy, who had an accident with a spinal injury and is in the middle of rehabilitation, for not winning a marathon. The bitterness is a result of the political left's failure to bring about the changes called for by the Occupy movement. They are pointing out the failures of the left-wing establishment, and the establishment does not like that at all. Ok, not really, but I think it's still funny.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:01
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It's also good to remember that most capitalist activity is not investing in new stuff, but buying already existing stuff. If Warren Buffet decides that Microsoft is undervalued and buys a lot of stock, that only very, very tangentially possibly aids Microsoft, and it doesn't actually influence anything they do in particular. Shareholders can agitate for the business to do something or another, but most shares are held at a remove or two, and most shareholders exhibit no control over the companies they invest in.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:05
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:But the problem in areas of severe poverty like sub Saharan Africa of India isn't a lack of money to pay for energy but rather incompetence in governing, building and maintaining infrastructure. The difference between $2/megawatt (or whatever) and $0/megawatt isn't going to eradicate poverty and feed and clothe the people of a country like the D.R.C icantfindaname posted:it's this. this is the problem. and it's why Marxism isn't the solution, because Marxism doesn't actually address this problem besides blaming it on imperialists, whether that's true or not The reason there is incompetent governing is that those places extremely uncared about by 'modern' countries because they have no 'value' - resources, etc. If nobody is looking, it's easy for Tribalism and militias to take control on a governmental level - because what else is there? That said, if power is so easy to distribute, an easy way to create jobs and improve the quality of life for many people would be installing infrastructure in those areas. Okay, even if that infrastructure costs a (relatively) small amount of money, there is still incentive to do so because once those people have a modern power source like that, it would be trivially easy to modernize and further increase the infrastructure once it becomes standard. Power means people can have the internet, and that means they can have schools, and classrooms, even if they don't have the resources to have a physical school (though they can probably build one soon enough with the influx of money from all this 'catch up'). Furthermore, power like that would probably need a more efficient government to manage it, and as more modern technology is implemented and people are needed to figure out the realities of that, there is an large increase in the investment of, that's right, modern government! Training, updating, hiring, even a small country will need a government to coordinate all this, and as the modern world becomes integrated, the power of these governments becomes stronger and so political violence and unrest start to go down. Why would that go down? Because the changes have a hugely positive impact on people's lives. The reason armed religious groups have gained so much power is because everyone's lives suck there because they are poor and ignored. If they weren't miserable, terror groups wouldn't gain so much traction. If they are not miserable, if they have a good quality of life and opportunity, then terrorism becomes a much smaller issue. So now this formerly poor nation, after the arrival of modern, clean, limitless energy - gains infrastructure, government, schools, safety, resources, etc. etc. One reason Marxism has always been flawed is because the people go hungry and resources are simply too scarce. If that is not an issue, if distributing the resources and food and power is free, then that solves that problem. That's never been an option before. Power is leverage.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:19
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Effectronica posted:There we go. I was hoping to provoke some unironic musings about whether maybe they should have stayed slaves. Well my approach is that if something happened then it should have happened because that's the reality we live in. All power to the Haitian people for rebelling against what s no doubt a terrible system, but we should also take from this that revolutions, no matter how heroic and just the motives are, by no means guarantee prosperity or responsible government. quote:But Haiti was pretty prosperous during the second half of the nineteenth century after they managed to pay down the usurious loans they had to take out to pay war reparations to France. Then they suffered from the political turmoil most of the world was going through in the early 20th century and Uncle Sam took a hand. No doubt but a lot of countries faced similar problems and yet are far better places than Haiti, implying that the Haitians themselves are responsible for much of their dire state of affairs. I'm not sure what facilities there are in Marxist discourse for discussing this outside of the vulgar leftist "everything is the capitalist Wests fault"
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Nov 6, 2014 01:28
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heh, looks like some countries aren't perfect utopias 
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Nov 6, 2014 01:29
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:Well my approach is that if something happened then it should have happened because that's the reality we live in. All power to the Haitian people for rebelling against what s no doubt a terrible system, but we should also take from this that revolutions, no matter how heroic and just the motives are, by no means guarantee prosperity or responsible government. Haitians are responsible for the rule of the Duvaliers? Hmm?
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Nov 6, 2014 01:30
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You know who really needs telling off? Those poor rear end Haitians. It's their own drat fault, you know.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:31
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Effectronica posted:Haitians are responsible for the rule of the Duvaliers? Hmm? Same as Russians are responsible for Stalin. Why did those fools elect him? Those fools, curse them 
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Nov 6, 2014 01:32
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the fact that people still die clearly shows the superiority of skeletonism
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Nov 6, 2014 01:34
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Ernie Muppari posted:the fact that people still die clearly shows the superiority of skeletonism You really enjoy shitposting.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:36
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Friendly Tumour posted:You really enjoy shitposting. i think that's my line 
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Nov 6, 2014 01:38
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Ernie Muppari posted:i think that's my line nice
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Nov 6, 2014 01:40
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Race Hate Kramer posted:You know who really needs telling off? Why does this idea of accountability offend you so much? Plenty of countries have had brutal histories and colonial exploitation and yet have chosen more prosperous paths, and Haiti got at least a centuries head start in throwing off the colonial yoke as well. I was Haitian i'd be pretty offended by your implication that we were so childlike and innocent that my people were unable to affect the development of their own country.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:53
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:Why does this idea of accountability offend you so much? Plenty of countries have had brutal histories and colonial exploitation and yet have chosen more prosperous paths, and Haiti got at least a centuries head start in throwing off the colonial yoke as well. It's because Marxism as a political-economic framework can't really account for any failures besides those caused by its crude model of capitalism.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:54
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well maybe haitians are just plain inferior? checkmate marxicans
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Nov 6, 2014 01:57
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:Why does this idea of accountability offend you so much? Plenty of countries have had brutal histories and colonial exploitation and yet have chosen more prosperous paths, and Haiti got at least a centuries head start in throwing off the colonial yoke as well. That is not at all what I was implying you thick dolt, I was pointing out the fact that kicking Haiti while it's down does nobody any good and there are far more productive discussions that we could have. icantfindaname posted:It's because Marxism as a political-economic framework can't really account for any failures besides those caused by its crude model of capitalism. Way to drive-by shitpost and convince absolutely no one, your pot shots are misplaced and irrelevant.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:58
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Race Hate Kramer posted:Way to drive-by shitpost and convince absolutely no one, your pot shots are misplaced and irrelevant. i disagree
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Nov 6, 2014 02:04
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Race Hate Kramer posted:That is not at all what I was implying you thick dolt, I was pointing out the fact that kicking Haiti while it's down does nobody any good and there are far more productive discussions that we could have. So Marxism is, if not a Science, then a thoughtful, logical and material analysis of the world and it's history, but doing so sometimes causes bad feels and therefore should be avoided. I'm not the one kicking Haiti when it's down, my posts here aren't going to make any different to the conditions of the slums of Port-au-Prince. Maybe Haitians could though?
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Nov 6, 2014 02:05
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