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vyelkin posted:Two that come to mind immediately are Salvador Allende in Chile and Communists' repeated victories in the Indian state of Kerala. gradenko_2000 posted:Unless I'm mistaken the most obvious example would be the Bolsheviks participating in the Provisional Government. As Lenin explained in "An Infantile Disease", even if you don't set out to actually win any legalistic victories via your participation in bourgeois democracy, at the very minimum, their sandbagging of the efforts of the communists will serve as an example to the people that the bourgeois democracy needs to be overthrown, because LOOK AT WHAT THEY'RE DOING, THIS ISN'T GOING TO WORK. Ahh, right. I just finished reading Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, and was wondering what folks thought about the plan that he sets out? The first thing that sort of struck to me is that it seems like while it'd work for an industrialized economy in the late 19th century or early 20th when it was written, with a modern economy that relies on global logistics to get certain rare earth metals and other goods essential for various advanced and critical technologies, a system of mutual aid based on local production of all goods might not be feasible. For example, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries and solar power plants require certain elements like platinum alloys, neodymium rare earth magnets, lithium and so on, the deposits of which are located only in very specific places - mostly in China, or Africa. While it was feasible for a country that only needed coal, iron, leather, agricultural products, and so on, to have a kind of anarchist autarky like Kropotkin describes, I am skeptical if this would be possible in the modern day without some kind of global uprising.
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Nov 6, 2020 17:55
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DrSunshine posted:I just finished reading Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, and was wondering what folks thought about the plan that he sets out? The first thing that sort of struck to me is that it seems like while it'd work for an industrialized economy in the late 19th century or early 20th when it was written, with a modern economy that relies on global logistics to get certain rare earth metals and other goods essential for various advanced and critical technologies, a system of mutual aid based on local production of all goods might not be feasible. As a huge fan of Kropotkin: yes, it's outdated and yes, the interdependencies between things mean that you need to trade with outside actors in modern society. However, what the CoB still shows is that Well-Being For All - the title of one of the chapters - was attainable even back then thanks to the gains in productivity, as well as that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" in an equitable society where needs are met will be met with willingness to do work for the collective and this work will be sufficient to sustain the society. As far as examples of that, look no further than EZLN - they are agriculturally self-sufficient, but to have money for taxes for the existing gov + for trade with outside agents for things they cannot make at their scale like electronics or complicated medicine they still maintain exports (coffee, wonderful organically grown coffee in fact). They are also an illustration that you can adapt the ideas - to not be 'destroyed' by market influence, they have allied with anarchist orgs outside their borders. In Europe, they have essentially created their own distribution network, which is why their highest-luxury coffee ends up cheaper on your kitchen's shelf than capitalist coffee of half the quality, and you get a detailed breakdown of what each cent of your cash goes to - some to sustain the network of allied orgs, some for transport costs, some for growing the coffee in the first place, and some as surplus for the Zap. poo poo, an org I recently joined gets a small share of this cash from things sold in my country! This distribution network operates thanks to being, well, distributed small groups. In essence, they have created a trade backbone to sidestep the problem of the lack of global uprising. Where there's a will, there's a way. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Nov 6, 2020 |
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Nov 6, 2020 18:43
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The previous post is mine but better so nevermind
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Nov 6, 2020 18:57
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How do I buy the communist coffee? I really do like nice coffee but I can rarely afford it.
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Nov 6, 2020 18:59
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Cpt_Obvious posted:If you actually want to apply a materialist lens to the social contract, we must analyze the relationship between human beings as the manifestation of the contract. Thanks again, and I promise I'm not being intentionally dense or contrarian on this topic, fwiw. I'm still not sure I follow this distinction. I think the concept of the social contract is prescriptive, not descriptive. I.e. a government SHOULD only be legitimate if it has the consent of the governed. As you said, history shows us that in practice most/all liberal societies haven't really operated with a valid social contract; it's been entirely theoretical while reality has been oppression and coercion. So a materialist analysis (as I understand it) tells us that these societies do not, in fact, have valid social contracts, but it does not tell us that a valid social contract is an unworthy aim for society. This is the same flawed thinking that leads people to e.g. point to failures of socialist states as "proof" that socialism doesn't work or that communism can only operate as it does in the CCP. I know this probably sounds like babby's first Marxist thought, but isn't it fair to say that both theory and praxis are necessary in order to move from a capitalist society to a socialist or communist society?
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Nov 6, 2020 19:03
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Thanks again, and I promise I'm not being intentionally dense or contrarian on this topic, fwiw. Yeah I mean the idealism grift is that you can do both of these things at the same time. A) start a new country with the following statement of intent: quote:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. B) Own slaves and rape them "And yet you participate in society! Gotcha!" rhetoric is a feature of idealists but not materialists because yeah, of course you loving participate in an unjust society when the other route involves exclusion, deprivation, and death. The idea of a social contract is corrosive because in practical application it's used as a justification to say, in effect, "Well, you're not in armed rebellion, so you consent to what we're doing and therefore we have the consent of the governed and if that changes we'll kill you"
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Nov 6, 2020 19:10
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Thanks again, and I promise I'm not being intentionally dense or contrarian on this topic, fwiw. Sharks Eat Bear posted:So a materialist analysis (as I understand it) tells us that these societies do not, in fact, have valid social contracts, but it does not tell us that a valid social contract is an unworthy aim for society. This is the same flawed thinking that leads people to e.g. point to failures of socialist states as "proof" that socialism doesn't work or that communism can only operate as it does in the CCP. Marxism would prescribe that consent itself is a product of material conditions. A man under coercion cannot "consent" to anything. Therefore, everyone needs to be free from coercion - and material threats like violence and starvation - before they can "consent" to anything. So, the best way to make a fair society isn't to write "Society is fair" in some law book, but instead to make sure that nobody is hungry or scared. And the only way to do that is get rid of all the rich bosses that hoard unearned wealth that they have coerced from their workers. I was about to make a long post about Labor Theory and Exploitation which will describe the Wage-Labor Relationship as one of bosses stealing from workers which will make that more clear. Sharks Eat Bear posted:I know this probably sounds like babby's first Marxist thought, but isn't it fair to say that both theory and praxis are necessary in order to move from a capitalist society to a socialist or communist society? Absolutely. Marx was an activist and an organizer as well as a prolific thinker. Anarchist theory tends to focus far more heavily on the praxis angle than anything. gradenko_2000 posted:I wouldn't say so. Communism desires democracy, and in turn it desires the abolition of capitalism because capitalism is incompatible with democracy. Thanks for clearing that up! I've heard the term all over the place, but never really understood it. I think a big barrier to entry for a lot people is lexiconic. That is, Marxist theory uses a whole slew of words that causes those without a background in it to bounce right off. To that end, the next step for the OP will be to add an easily understandable glossary for all the fancy words.  If anyone reading this thread sees a bunch of words they don't understand, please speak up. This stuff isn't taught in schools, so asking questions is the only way to learn.BTW, if anyone wants to breadpost, feel free.
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Nov 6, 2020 19:22
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There is a sense in which "consent of the governed" is a valid claim even when made by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, because the working class always outnumbers the ruling class (until they become one and the same, and maybe not even then depending on how you count the peasantry) and there is always some sense in which a critical mass of cashiers, truck drivers, fruit pickers, office drones, etc. are willing to get up in the morning and go do their lovely jobs because as much as it sucks they think it's better than the alternative. Even a government as insanely predatory and dysfunctional as that of the USA has enough passive and/or active support by segments of the middle and working classes that it'd be wrong to describe it as purely run by intimidation or something. Of course, the bargain all those proles and petit-bourgeoisie are making is made in the context of repressive forces which might be brought to bear against them in addition to the ability to nibble on trickling-down imperial spoils or whatever. Basically I don't think "legitimate" is really a useful word to use when describing governments. A regime is either able to hold onto power or it isn't, and that ability flows in part from the "consent" of the governed, but consent to be governed is, itself is always given within the constraints of existing material conditions rather than from some kind of abstract judgment on how fair the language in the latest edition of the constitution sounds.
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Nov 6, 2020 19:25
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OwlFancier posted:How do I buy the communist coffee? I really do like nice coffee but I can rarely afford it. AFAIK this is legit although the Zapatistas are not exactly communist. https://schoolsforchiapas.org/store/coffee-corn-and-agricultural/zapatista-coffee/ Also you can get a painting of this EZLN hummingbird imagining a better world 
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Nov 6, 2020 19:35
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The Oldest Man posted:AFAIK this is legit although the Zapatistas are not exactly communist. This is for America, for Europe just google your country + zapatista coffee and make sure they're some sort of collective. Their main product is Cafe Libertad but they have a few. If you can't find anything in your country, this is where most countries' orgs get it from: https://www.cafe-libertad.de/en but you'll have to pay extra for capitalist delivery. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Nov 6, 2020 |
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Nov 6, 2020 19:43
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Ferrinus posted:There is a sense in which "consent of the governed" is a valid claim even when made by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, because the working class always outnumbers the ruling class (until they become one and the same, and maybe not even then depending on how you count the peasantry) and there is always some sense in which a critical mass of cashiers, truck drivers, fruit pickers, office drones, etc. are willing to get up in the morning and go do their lovely jobs because as much as it sucks they think it's better than the alternative. Even a government as insanely predatory and dysfunctional as that of the USA has enough passive and/or active support by segments of the middle and working classes that it'd be wrong to describe it as purely run by intimidation or something. Of course, the bargain all those proles and petit-bourgeoisie are making is made in the context of repressive forces which might be brought to bear against them in addition to the ability to nibble on trickling-down imperial spoils or whatever. This issue also applies interpersonally under capitalism. How do you know a romantic relationship is legitimate, consent-based, and not based on intimidation and coercion? If the woman is the chattel property of the man, your modern American liberal would say that's obviously illegitimate. If she's his corporate subordinate, they'd probably still say that but less emphatically. If she's simply unable to materially support herself and her children in our hosed system so she stays with a man who is cruel to her, what would they say then? What if it was emotional cruelty but never physical? What if there was no explicit cruelty at all but he simply does none of the housework even though she works as many hours as he does for wages and she grinds her teeth and lives with that? The facts that there's an unresolvable gap in material power (both personal and indirect) and that she's constantly making every calculation in her whole life in that context in order to support her material needs and those of her children because the other alternative under capitalism is some level of deprivation is simply not considered. "Legitimate" and "consent" are idealistic attributes that allow an exploitative system to cloak itself and its harms by pretending that the economic and political variables that went into getting the more powerful party getting the "yes" from the less powerful party didn't exist.
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Nov 6, 2020 19:51
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The Oldest Man posted:This issue also applies interpersonally under capitalism. How do you know a romantic relationship is legitimate, consent-based, and not based on intimidation and coercion? If the woman is the chattel property of the man, your modern American liberal would say that's obviously illegitimate. If she's his corporate subordinate, they'd probably still say that but less emphatically. If she's simply unable to materially support herself and her children in our hosed system so she stays with a man who is cruel to her, what would they say then? What if it was emotional cruelty but never physical? What if there was no explicit cruelty at all but he simply does none of the housework even though she works as many hours as he does for wages and she grinds her teeth and lives with that? This is a great point, and it's always worth nothing the way that capitalism filters down into our interpersonal relationships to both poison them by degrees and generate feedback loops such that not living under capitalism becomes harder and harder to imagine or pursue.
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Nov 6, 2020 20:10
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The power dynamics of our capitalist system are honestly the worst part. I'd be able to live with making some piece of poo poo boss rich if there was an alternative better than 'starve in the street'.
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Nov 6, 2020 20:34
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Ferrinus posted:This is a great point, and it's always worth nothing the way that capitalism filters down into our interpersonal relationships to both poison them by degrees and generate feedback loops such that not living under capitalism becomes harder and harder to imagine or pursue. This is also why "progressive" liberals are basically just trying over and over again to fit a round peg in a square hole, watching it bounce off and fall on the floor, only to pick it back up to try again. They see some of the toxic outcomes of capitalism and go "whoa! women only make 75 cents for every dollar men make! that's really unfair!" and want to do something about it but are ideologically blocked from asking a) why it's so deadly important that that matters and b) what systems contribute to that asymmetry of economic power. So you end up with solutions like quotas (liberal social dem solution) or mentoring programs/bias training (neoliberal solution) that do exactly gently caress-all but help a few more bourgeoise ladies up a rung or two on the ladder , which doesn't solve the problem to begin with, and then you constantly get revanchist white guys with economic power who use it to tunnel under the supports for even those ineffective programs because you haven't addressed any of the root causes. This isn't to say that workers owning the means of production is a panacea to chauvinism, but it seems to me to be a necessary ingredient in a solution.
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Nov 6, 2020 20:35
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I don't have enough time to get into it but before I firget, anyone curious about learning more about the Chinese communist revolution's impact on agricultural production and how the famines went down absolutely must read William Hinton's Through A Glasd Darkly. Hinton is an American farmer who was in China during the cultural revolution, first as part of a UN program and then employed by the state as a consultant to help woth mechanizing and cooperatizing the ag system. In Through a Glass he basically demolishes the mainstream US narrative on the famines (with facts and logic) and then describes the situations he saw on the ground while working there. I've read more than the average persom about ag in communist China and in my opinion Hinton is one of the most clear eyed western authors on topic. https://monthlyreview.org/product/through_a_glass_darkly/
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Nov 6, 2020 20:35
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Larry Parrish posted:The power dynamics of our capitalist system are honestly the worst part. I'd be able to live with making some piece of poo poo boss rich if there was an alternative better than 'starve in the street'. There's a type of ordoliberal that groks that they could pay the bribe/dividend down to the bottom (or closer to it) via UBI, free medical care, social housing, labor protections and so on and hold on to power "forever" because a person with a full belly and a warm house and some guarantees of safety and a retirement and some basic entertainments is never going to revolt against the system. They similarly grok that the state can act continuously to try to break up accumulations of capital and prevent the onset of late capitalism. This is more or less how Germany operates. It also used to be me. However, that a) doesn't address colonial capitalism at all, and b) it's still unable to resolve the core contradiction of capitalism, which means it's only a matter of time before the truce collapses, accumulation goes into a critical runaway, and the capitalists start turning the crank on the meatgrinder again to keep up their profits. It's sort of like playing endless defense; the ordoliberal state has to succeed every time prevent disaster while the capitalists only have to succeed once.
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Nov 6, 2020 20:50
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I'm sorry I missed the start of this thread, now I'm coming in a day late. I'm slowly working my way through Das Kapital for the second time in my life; I'm inclined to provide my interpretation of some of the concepts therein (use-value vs exchange-value, the way the accumulation of capital functions, etc.), both for my own edification and to maybe help inform the curious about why Socialism has certain requisite characteristics according to Marx. I'm a bit worried it's going to be kind of dry for the discussions going on so far, though, which seem more focused on the history of vanguardism and the attempts to build transitional societies to bridge the distance between capitalism and socialism. If there's an area or topic someone would like me to start with, I'm open to suggestions. Before I do anything with that, I do have one question for the thread at large, and a couple comments, though. First, what is this thread for? The OP seems to indicate that it's for discussion of leftist theory, but a lot of the posts over the past few pages were more along the lines of "Ah, but if Marx theory of labor-value what about mud pies?! Check mate, tankies!" which, okay, I guess "convince me on Marxist theory" is a valid area of discussion but it's a pretty tiresome one for me. There have been threads on Marxism in D&D before and they're always the target of folks kramering into the thread and demanding people explain how socialism is going to fix car accidents, then refusing to actually engage with any answers or dismissing those answers as insufficient when their opinions remain unchanged. I was kind of hoping, perhaps naively, that we'd be able to avoid that this time around. I'm cool with challenges, particularly when backed up by other theoretical perspectives, but setting the bar at "You must convince me" is kinda bullshit for online discussions. As for the comments, firstly, the focus has been pretty heavily on Marx so far. Which is cool, I'm more versed on orthodox Marxism than any other strain of theory, myself. But other strains also exist and have a robust intellectual tradition - I'm very glad to see someone bring up Kropotkin, with whom I am not particularly familiar but whose ideas I would love to know more about. I'd love to see someone's exegesis of The Conquest of Bread, or whatever other well-regarded anarcho-socialist work you might be familiar with. A further comment, not a question: At the risk of sounding like a post-scold, for the sake of clarity it would be nice if we were careful with our language in these discussions. Talking about "socialist theory says this" doesn't make much sense because you'd need to clarify - which socialist theory? Marxist theory? Marxism-Leninism? Anarchist theory (which has several different flavours, so which one?) Even expressions of socialist visions of society can vary according to scientific, utopian, or crude... So it would be helpful, I think, to be more specific. Those are just a couple of bullet points on my wish list for this thread. I hope I'm not coming across as pushy or anything - the thread will be what it will be, just figured I'd throw my thoughts into the mix. Also, hey Grandenko... gradenko_2000 posted:___ This post was really good, what's it from?
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Nov 6, 2020 21:00
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To be concrete, the principal contradiction of capitalism is rooted in the fact it requires growth to sustain itself. This in itself is not necessarily bad, but if you believe in the labor theory of value, a curious thing happens. Since value comes from labor, your improvements in process don't actually improve your value: if you invented a paperclip machine that was perfectly able by itself to take resources and produce paperclips with no issues, your produced paperclips instantly are only worth as much as the resource itself (barring monopolies etc.). So you actually need to buy the things that improve efficiency but still have laborers doing stuff. And you can't opt out since because of the gains in efficiency previous methods of production are no longer viable. So, as efficiency grows due to discoveries and progress, more capital is required to start extracting value, and therefore, proportionally you can extract less of that value. This is one of the chief predictions of Marx: the rate of profit, defined as profits per investment capital, has a tendency to fall long-term and it is pretty verifiably looking good when you check historical data. So, combine this prediction with the requirement for growth, and a stunning realisation emerges: at some point, in order to sustain itself, capital must start extracting value more aggressively. This can mean rolling back consumer protections (sound familiar?), worker protections (sound VERY familiar?), or it can mean increasing the consumption of resources to produce more of a good (like, idk, despite the fact that our processes are greener than ever and countries are making at least a token effort to limit pollution, our emissions still keep increasing?). We are in the context of impending climate change, and all those factors are beginning to compound and synergise. Liberal states like Germany are better than nothing, but as long as they are capitalist, they eventually must begin collapsing. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Nov 6, 2020 |
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Nov 6, 2020 21:04
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dex_sda posted:To be concrete, the principal contradiction of capitalism is rooted in the fact it requires growth to sustain itself. This in itself is not necessarily bad, but if you believe in the labor theory of value, a curious thing happens. Since value comes from labor, your improvements in process don't actually improve your value: if you invented a paperclip machine that was perfectly able by itself to take resources and produce paperclips with no issues, your produced paperclips instantly are only worth as much as the resource itself (barring monopolies etc.). But, because of the gains in efficiency previous methods of production are no longer viable. So, as efficiency grows due to discoveries and progress, more capital is required to start extracting value, and therefore, proportionally you can extract less of that value. This is one of the chief predictions of Marx: the rate of profit, defined as profits per investment capital, has a tendency to fall long-term and it is pretty verifiably looking good when you check historical data. Thank you, this is a great plain-language description of the phenomenon. One specific (relevant to America especially) point on this is that the fall in the rate of profit for capital will inevitably result in every invention being applied to prop up the rate of profitability. In addition to the ones you mentioned like putting workers into a juice machine to wring out the last drop of blood and selling consumers inferior products, that also includes increasing financialization and the widespread adoption of dangerous financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations and insurance swaps and ever more investment being applied to totally worthwhile projects such as "if we get our banking data center a thousand feet closer to the stock exchange data center, we can make arbitrage profits from the .01 millisecond latency advantage we have over other market actors" and "we need to hire the top fifty software engineers from every reputable school every year to optimize our high-frequency-trading algorithms." Liberals will either choose to defend these as somehow adding value in the form of financial liquidity, or decry them as a step too far, but the point is that the incentive to take resources from people in order to build ever-more-pointless profit-taking devices is ultimately unstoppable and the only bound on it is the collapse of the social order.
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Nov 6, 2020 21:16
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dex_sda posted:To be concrete, the principal contradiction of capitalism is rooted in the fact it requires growth to sustain itself. This in itself is not necessarily bad, but if you believe in the labor theory of value, a curious thing happens. Since value comes from labor, your improvements in process don't actually improve your value: if you invented a paperclip machine that was perfectly able by itself to take resources and produce paperclips with no issues, your produced paperclips instantly are only worth as much as the resource itself (barring monopolies etc.). So you actually need to buy the things that improve efficiency but still have laborers doing stuff. And you can't opt out since because of the gains in efficiency previous methods of production are no longer viable. So, as efficiency grows due to discoveries and progress, more capital is required to start extracting value, and therefore, proportionally you can extract less of that value. This is one of the chief predictions of Marx: the rate of profit, defined as profits per investment capital, has a tendency to fall long-term and it is pretty verifiably looking good when you check historical data. Hey, I'm working on an explanation of Labor Theory. Is it ok to steal this post for the OP? I think it will help a lot of people understand Marxism a lot better.
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Nov 6, 2020 21:17
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Hey, I'm working on an explanation of Labor Theory. Is it ok to steal this post for the OP? I think it will help a lot of people understand Marxism a lot better. Knock yourself out
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Nov 6, 2020 21:33
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For those who have read Capital and want to continue learning about Marx's value theory, Alan Freeman is one of my personal favorite analysts of the subject. If you're mathematically or scientifically inclined, I would recommend Price, Value, and Profit, a (technical) booklet he wrote that basically re-treads the territory Capital has already explored, but in light of critiquing the general equilibrium theory which grew in popularity after Marx's death.
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Nov 6, 2020 22:04
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dex_sda posted:This is one of the chief predictions of Marx: the rate of profit, defined as profits per investment capital, has a tendency to fall long-term and it is pretty verifiably looking good when you check historical data. Where would someone find this?
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Nov 6, 2020 22:17
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I think I'll start with use-value, exchange-value, and commodities, according to Marx: A commodity is defined as anything produced for exchange. To be a commodity, it has to be bought and sold; the price tag is the unique insignia of the commodity. A commodity leads a double life: it is a product of labour made not just for use, but for exchange. A thing’s use-value satisfies some need or desire for its user. Though use-value is present in nature (everyone needs water to live, it fulfills a need), exchangeability is not a quality found in nature, but only ever in the market (bottle that water and give it a price, and it's a commodity). In other words, the two dimensions of the commodity are what it can be used for, and what it is worth. A fur coat can be used to keep you warm, or it can be used to attract wealth (by being sold as a commodity.) Use-value and exchange-value are twin sides of the commodity – opposite poles of its double life. This is not unique to Marx, not by a long shot – Adam Smith also wrote that “A commodity is both a use value and a value.” In fact, even Aristotle had some words to say on the matter... Aristotle posted:Of everything we possess there are two uses. One is the proper use, the second is improper. A sandal, for example, is properly used as footwear. But this same sandal can also be exchanged for food or money. It is true, exchange is also use; but it is not the proper or primary way a sandal should be used. Before capitalism, most production was for use. Most dresses were made to be worn, rather than sold; hammers were made because you needed to build something that required such a tool, not because you wanted to open a hammer store. Aristotle makes clear that this was the case – commerce was a pretty minor part of life which he called Chrematistics. (Confusingly, he called production for use Economics, but we’re allowed to change up the meaning between words over 2200 years – living language!) Likewise, european serfs typically did not produce commodities; they often produced for others, but they produced for the use of others, not as something to be sold. So a commodity has a double life. The interesting thing about this double life is that use-value and exchange-value are at odds with one another. This is what Marx called the alienation of use-value. A commodity must be (or at least seem) useful in order to have an exchange value… But it cannot be used until it is sold - its use-value must remain dormant. If a commodity is not exchanged, cannot demonstrate exchangeability, then in a capitalist system its use-value is cancelled. For example: A loaf of bread sitting in a supermarket is useless to everyone. It’s edible, of course, but it must prove its exchange-value before it can be eaten. Absent that, it will be thrown out (and likely poisoned), even if people outside the supermarket are starving. No sale, no use; commodities are not made to be given away. You can also see this idea at work in the sabotage of products. A commodity’s quality only matters from the standpoint of sales – if exchange-value is unaffected, capital will happily make a product with less use-value. Phones, appliances, vehicles designed with planned obsolescence in mind; medicines that offer short-term benefits but which can literally kill you over the long-term; products contaminated with chemicals, etc. In fact, for exchange value, flaws often prove beneficial - a company that makes a product that has too much use-value (such as the Budd Company with its extremely durable trains) can end up putting itself out of business. This also plays into overproduction. A capitalist enterprise that overproduces something and puts it into a market that is “glutted” will, inevitably, intentionally destroy many of the commodities it has overproduced, because despite use-value theoretically remaining constant (and it being possible to freely distribute surplus use-value), exchange-value is harmed by overabundance. Prices and profits fall. An example from my life: I used to work in sales in a big box electronics store, and sometimes I’d get to see the company’s inventory sheets. Every year big Television manufacturers would produce massive amounts of televisions and ship them out to stores. These items had a shelf-life – after enough time, any of them that had failed to sell (i.e., did not demonstrate exchange value) would be shipped back to central warehouse for destruction. This was true at the manufacturers’ level, as well – any televisions they were unable to sell to stores would, after a time, end up in a landfill. Their use-value was voided, despite being perfectly functional televisions, because they failed to prove their exchange-value, so they had to be removed from the market to make room for the next commodity (and to prevent the devaluation of commodities occupying the same market.) This concept of use-value and exchange-value is actually crucial to Marx’s concept of Labour Theory of Value – it helps complete the circle in Aristotle’s thinking about the way the two sides of a commodity interact with each other. I know others have already covered that, and quite well, but I think I'll share my own take on it next so I can make its relationship to these concepts of value explicit.
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Nov 6, 2020 22:32
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I like the idea that aristotle thinks the primary use of a sandal is to wear it and that selling it is improper. What a different time 
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Nov 6, 2020 22:33
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Aristotle was big on the essential quality of things. You could have a chair, and how good that chair is was based on how close it was to the ideal essence of "chair." (Assuming I'm remembering correctly, at least. It's very possible I'm getting him mixed up with another thinker of antiquity.)
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Nov 6, 2020 22:52
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Sure, I'm reluctant to take any greek philosopher as indicative of the general idea of the time cos they were all up their own arse about something. Just still an amusing contrast with today where selling poo poo is, even for normal people, considered a perfectly normal use for it.
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Nov 6, 2020 22:54
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Falstaff posted:First, what is this thread for? The OP seems to indicate that it's for discussion of leftist theory, but a lot of the posts over the past few pages were more along the lines of "Ah, but if Marx theory of labor-value what about mud pies?! Check mate, tankies!" which, okay, I guess "convince me on Marxist theory" is a valid area of discussion but it's a pretty tiresome one for me. There have been threads on Marxism in D&D before and they're always the target of folks kramering into the thread and demanding people explain how socialism is going to fix car accidents, then refusing to actually engage with any answers or dismissing those answers as insufficient when their opinions remain unchanged. I was kind of hoping, perhaps naively, that we'd be able to avoid that this time around. I'm cool with challenges, particularly when backed up by other theoretical perspectives, but setting the bar at "You must convince me" is kinda bullshit for online discussions. I think this is a good point. I'm not familiar with D&D's sympathy (or hostility) toward Marxism, but having a more thorough direction could benefit the thread. As it stands, a thread about "leftist" theory is pretty vague. American democrats consider themselves left of their conservative counterpart, but anyone with a little political literacy would call bullshit on that easily. It would be a lot smoother, I believe, to be up front with the thread's intention. Granted, it seems the point of the thread really is engage with Marxism and then theory in relation to Marxism. This, hopefully, would curtail those "communism killed my dog" posts and endless posting about Chomsky, Foucault, etc. as revolutionary.
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Nov 6, 2020 22:54
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Falstaff posted:Aristotle was big on the essential quality of things. That sounds like Plato/Socrates. Just wanted to say that your post explaining commodities was really awesome and helped expand my understanding significantly.
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Nov 6, 2020 22:55
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readingatwork posted:What do people feel are some legitimate problems with left wing theory? Under the "perfect vision" of communism there is no welfare state to carve up because there are no more class divisions and society manages itself without a state. It's kind of like speculating that once we hook everyone up with running water people might forget what it's like fear the plague and revert to making GBS threads in the streets. Which I guess is what's happening under capitalism as more and more people are evicted from their homes.
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Nov 6, 2020 23:48
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BoldFrankensteinMir posted:Okay a bunch of people are using similar arguments about art that has "value" vs art that doesn't, and I want to stop y'all for a moment and ask you, who gets to determine which art has value and which doesn't? By what rubric, and with what extent of authority? If you're gonna have laws in your society that hinge on this, you better get it down. And that is not historically an easy task. there's a good book/BBC series from the 70s called Ways of Seeing that helped a STEM-addled dips hit like me understand art from a socialist perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
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Nov 6, 2020 23:49
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uncop posted:The thing is, under capitalism the greed of 80-90% of the people counts for next to nothing. They can't accumulate much, no matter how greedy and self-serving they are as people. They don't become captains of industry, they work menial jobs for little pay until their health fails like everyone else does, both the saints and the sinners. People's individual vices or "human nature" have never ever decided what society looks like. yeah even one of the most objectively awful people of all time, donald j. trump, when vested with singular, world-shaping power that the roman emperors couldn't have imagined, only dreamt as big as some petty real estate scams and a room full of mcdonalds hamburgers. the scale of most people's greed isn't even a rounding error in the totality of global capitalism, and is mostly only exists at all due to the terrible emptiness created by the system we exist in. republicans aren't wrong about waste, fraud, and abuse, but it is systemic in nature. it is the engine of capitalism.
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Nov 6, 2020 23:50
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Sweetyuck posted:I think this is a good point. I'm not familiar with D&D's sympathy (or hostility) toward Marxism, but having a more thorough direction could benefit the thread. As it stands, a thread about "leftist" theory is pretty vague. American democrats consider themselves left of their conservative counterpart, but anyone with a little political literacy would call bullshit on that easily. It would be a lot smoother, I believe, to be up front with the thread's intention. Granted, it seems the point of the thread really is engage with Marxism and then theory in relation to Marxism. This, hopefully, would curtail those "communism killed my dog" posts and endless posting about Chomsky, Foucault, etc. as revolutionary. I think "Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, and Anarchy" is a pretty good outline of the subjects and a lot of non-Marxist Left theory and praxis is relevant specifically as a critique of Marxism-Leninism so making this thread a Marxist Theory Only thread seems too narrow to me. I think Falstaff was grumping that a lot of posts were "will I be forbidden from playing guitar under socialism?" and "are socialist biotruths a thing?" type tangents, and he's doing real effort-posts about relatively complex texts that can easily be buried under that kind of thing.
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Nov 7, 2020 00:05
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Yes, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear there. I absolutely am hoping we'll get some non-Marxist leftist theory and discussion as well - it's not something I feel comfortable contributing, myself, because I'm pretty ignorant on a lot of those subjects (my knowledge of anarcho-socialist thought is limited to some Bakunin, for example). I just find certain reactionary (and often bad-faith) objections to be very tiresome and incredibly uninteresting. It would also be interesting, I think, if this were to be a thread for discussing contemporary leftist movements and news items through a leftist lens. But maybe that can come later, or maybe it's better for another thread.
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Nov 7, 2020 00:24
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I actually think the guitar guy was trying to engage in good faith FWIW.
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Nov 7, 2020 00:25
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I'm open to the possibility that I'm being unnecessarily curmudgeonly. It wouldn't be the first time.
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Nov 7, 2020 00:43
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Falstaff posted:I'm open to the possibility that I'm being unnecessarily curmudgeonly. It wouldn't be the first time. I'm 100% with you here and I guess maybe the best strategy will be to just not engage with those kinds of questions beyond maybe providing an initial answer. I likewise have exactly zero interest in getting distracted by more circular 'but what if it just can't work???' arguments. This may have the knock-on of not encouraging people with very little education on these topics from wading in but ideally if they read the thread they'll end up learning more than they would by rattling off surface level objections.
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Nov 7, 2020 00:59
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Falstaff posted:I'm open to the possibility that I'm being unnecessarily curmudgeonly. It wouldn't be the first time. I think you get standing to say "hey can we talk focus on x" when you're obviously spending time and energy on that, but I also think it's worth the time and energy to attempt to address superficial but good faith questions about socialism from people who don't have any knowledge. The ground state consensus of our society is liberalism. Welcoming curious walk-bys and meeting them where they're at is (within reason) also a worthwhile endeavor.
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Nov 7, 2020 01:17
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Falstaff posted:Yes, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear there. I absolutely am hoping we'll get some non-Marxist leftist theory and discussion as well - it's not something I feel comfortable contributing, myself, because I'm pretty ignorant on a lot of those subjects (my knowledge of anarcho-socialist thought is limited to some Bakunin, for example). The funny thing about that is that the difference is more down to factionalism than anything - back in Marx's and Bakunin day, their rivalry was actually quite friendly, even if it did end up in ridiculous drama with the International. Think 'two subforums shitposting at each other' more than 'two completely opposite philosophies.' I've recently read on I think Wolff's video that Marx himself remarked that debating Bakunin was the favorite part of many of his days, and that was because they agreed in like 95% of analysis, AND they both agreed in the analysis of what the 'end goal' is - Engels himself has outright stated that in true communism, state would disappear, which is exactly what anarchists suggest in their praxis! The point of contention in those days was primarily that Marx thought a transitionary period was needed, while Bakunin thought that the transitionary state would necessarily devolve away from true communism and in order to succeed, one needed to start implementing the 'end game' from the start. And since those implementations are so different, it's natural that one would support a transitionary party while the other would want to remove party as an entity. In other words, their difference was praxis, the implementation of theory, not so much theory itself. They are both still very much deeply rooted in Marxist analysis. The rift deepened at the start of the 20th century. Basically, you had two thinkers that would define the future of each branch, Lenin and Kropotkin. Kropotkin developed the theory of anarchocommunism in detail, as in, he described exactly what the praxis to make anarchy work needs to base itself on: radical democracy, expropriation, revolutionary direct action, the principles of well-being for all and 'from each according to ability, to each according to need.' He identified that revolution of any stripe needs to take care of material needs very quickly. He was also a famously altruistic and beloved person basically everywhere he went. Lenin, on the other hand, favoured a vanguard party and his contribution was very significant too, significant enough that Marxism-Leninism is actually different from pure Marxism. It's nuance, and it gets muddy because as things did not go to plan theory was often rapidly changed after 1917, but the differences weren't (and I contend still aren't) irreconcilable. The problem was that anarchists were not opposed to the ML revolution at the start, but once they started asking for things like actual ownership of the means of production (Kronstadt) the reaction was one of violence - ironically exactly as anarchists were fearing in their theory. That basically precluded those two schools of thought from coming together, but Kropotkin remained respectful of Lenin and considered him an unparalleled revolutionary, while Lenin himself considered Kropotkin a true thinker and a shining example of ethics to follow in everyday life. Anarchist flags flew during Kropotkin's funeral completely endorsed by the regime. By the way - EZLN, which I've mentioned multiple times, is if anything a synthesis of mostly anarchist praxis with a little sprinkling of ML. It fights hierarchies, but there is an organised quasi-centralised army - organised from bottom up, where soldiers in a unit pick their leader democratically. It is composed of autonomous units exactly as anarchist praxis demands, but to have organisation and drive, it has a bottom-up federated structure to make rebellion-wide decisions democratically. It has an army, but to safeguard against the monopoly of violence it both trains the civilian populace to resist AND gives a civilian absolute power over a soldier: a single civilian can suspend an army member instantly and without a court martial if they feel it necessary. So if you want, I can summarise Conquest of Bread, especially the 'relevant' info in the 21st century. But I just wanna stress that the difference is not as enormous as you'd think listening to members of both bicker, and it's a crying shame because historically revolutions whether armed or peaceful worked best when both these schools of thought worked together. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Nov 7, 2020 01:34
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DrSunshine posted:Where would someone find this? https://streamable.com/vmjf63 More seriously: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/a-world-rate-of-profit-revisited-with-maito-and-piketty/. Just the first thing I've grabbed on the topic. You can find lots of analyses but be wary! It's a thing that shows large variance due to tumultous effects like world wars and big recessions, which unfortunately means you can fiddle with the numbers really hard, and since this is so central to showing that capitalism is doomed neoliberal economists love attempting to find reasons why it's not actually true. But a simple linear fit - a great place to start when considering occam's razor - is very good considering the variance and the data we have; in addition to having a concrete materialist explanation that I've rather hastily summarised in that post. Better than mainstream economics have ever done as far as predictive power goes - peep the 2018 nobel prize for economics if you want to recognize how much of a joke that is. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Nov 7, 2020 01:46
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