There is a spectrum haunting C-SPAM. I, on the contrary,

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Pomeroy: Apr 20, 2020

Ferrinus posted:

1917 was the year of decimation. In March, nine men of the Ravenna Brigade were chosen for execution after their regiment protested over the cancellation of leave. More is known about this atrocity than most others because the brigade commander�s aide de camp (ADC) gave a statement to the commission of inquiry set up after Caporetto. Deployed on a notorious sector of the Carso, the brigade�s two regiments alternated their front-line tours with fatigue and labour duties in the rear. To keep up their spirits, the men were promised perks in the form of extra leave, which never materialised. When one of the regiments was ordered to relieve another unit elsewhere on the Carso, �there was a moment of discontent� in one battalion, whose men had been drinking. The battalion commander informed the brigade headquarters �as a matter of duty, but more to offload the responsibility�. The general commanding the Ravenna Brigade hurried to the battalion barracks. �We found the men a bit annoyed, tired, and almost all in dreadful physical condition, officers included.�

The CO and his ADC let the men air their grievances. For the most part they were amenable to reason, but a few shots were fired in the air. This prompted the ADC to telephone division HQ, which despatched �lots of carabinieri�. While the men calmed down and set off for their new posting, Division HQ sent staff officers to the spot and informed the corps commander, who telephoned the brigade ADC and thundered that the barracks should be burned to the ground and the offenders shot. The ADC tried to assure him that order had already been restored.

The divisional CO now got involved, presumably to cover himself vis- �-vis the corps commander. By the time he reached the barracks, they were empty; it was late at night and raining hard. The brigade CO reported that everything was in order and the troops were on their way to their new posting. �How many did you shoot?� asked the divisional CO. �None,� came the answer. �That�s bad, very bad!� exclaimed the divisional CO. Then the carabinieri found two soldiers asleep in the barracks. They had no idea that their company had left, nobody had woken them. The brigade CO told the carabinieri to put the men up against a wall and shoot them. One of the soldiers howled so desperately (�What have I done to make you shoot me? I�ve got seven children!�) that the carabinieri hesitated. The divisional CO spoke up: �Let us be done with this jabbering. Shoot them at once. Orders are orders.�

The brigade CO was relieved the following day. The corps commander ordered 20 soldiers to be picked by lot from the most rebellious company. Five of these men were selected for execution. This process presumably doubled the agony of those compelled to take part, and therefore also � in the corps commander�s view � the salutary deterrent effect. The firing squad shook so badly that six volleys were needed to finish the job. The ADC told the incoming brigade CO that the measures taken �seemed a little exaggerated�, and had shattered the men�s morale. �The soldiers trembled at the mere sight of me.� A fortnight later the Ravenna Brigade was transferred to the middle Isonzo, near Gorizia. To his astonishment, the ADC was called in to divisional HQ along with his new CO and told that he would be a member in a court martial of nine men involved in the rebellion. (�What!, I thought, won�t you let it drop?�) Before the court martial convened, the corps commander urged severity. The brigade commander�s reaction was terse: �That�s easily said. We each of us have a conscience.� Charged with reluctance (not refusal) to take up their new position, the men could not defend themselves because the court martial required no proof either way. According to the ADC, �nothing was established�. The prosecution called no witnesses. One defendant was a corporal who had fought in Libya, volunteered in 1915, and already been acquitted on similar charges over a different episode. His bearing impressed the court, which nonetheless sentenced him to death along with three infantrymen. The others were given ten years in prison. Refusing a blindfold, the corporal urged the firing squad to �Aim at the breast, and always serve your country. Long live Italy!� The brigade commander muttered in distress that he should have been promoted to colonel, not shot as a criminal.

The bloodletting was not over. The corps commander now ruled that all those men who had received capital sentences for desertion � due to returning late from leave � should be executed, as it would be wrong to show clemency when the brigade was �disturbed�. Consequently another 18 men were shot. The brigade commander reported that the entire brigade felt terrorised; it should be sent out of the line for a spell. The corps commander refused; if the measures taken did not restore discipline, he would take others. The brigade commander � �perhaps more concerned for his career than anything else�, as the ADC boldly remarked to the commission � raised no further objection.

https://erenow.net/ww/the-white-war/23.php god, but that makes for grim reading. Thank you, I doubt I'd have come across it otherwise, and it's important.

# ? Dec 15, 2020 07:15

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# ? May 23, 2024 20:16

uncop: Oct 23, 2010

Scrree posted:

lumpenproletariat is a confused term, since Marx wasn't fully able to disentangle his own concepts of legality and propriety from the class relations. the science has to advanced to where the current definitions are, iirc,

the proletariat are the class that reproduces itself through production, or C-M-C

the bourgeois are the class that reproduces itself through ownership, or M-C-M'

the lumpen-proletariat are the class that reproduces itself through theft, or ()-M-C

where () represents the ability to extract wealth from a area or populace by means of force alone. It could be as simple as a home-invasion or protection racket, or more complex means like achieving monopoly not through the domination of a market (as the bourgeois do), but through the suppression of a market all together (by attacking and destroying other suppliers of the product directly. claim a turf, and you can extract excess rents as long as you can defend it)

sakai's whole thing is to point out that while most conversations about lumpen-proletariats are focused on street gangs and small criminals, the police and the military are, at their core, lumpen institutions. this can be seen by the fact that as the american state has decayed, the straight up admitted theft (civil forfeiture) by most police departments has skyrocketed, and also helps elucidate some of the secondary political divisions between lumpen-police and their big-bourgeois liberal handlers.

Ahistorical. Peasants and petit bourgeoisie were the original classes reproducing itself through C-M-C thousands of years ago. Tributary landlords came soon after and were the original class reproducing itself by means of forceful extraction. The modern police and military, generally speaking, developed through a pragmatic bourgeois-landlord class alliance that basically wrapped the old landlord institutions into a bourgeois-constitutional cage where they'd only be permitted to do things that the bourgeoisie approve of. In most countries at least, cops and soldiers aren't in an employment relation, but in a servitude relation. Public servants are a complex question that was explicitly outside the scope of Capital, which didn't go deep into state affairs, but they do have an obviously integral relation to the bourgeois productive economy.

The lumpenproletariat are, above all, people who have been severed from their old class and that haven't been able to reconnect to the productive economy in a meaningful way. That's not the case with the police and military, they haven't been sidelined and abandoned to fend for themselves at all. The police in USA has been given freedom to steal from citizens in order to make money for the state, which is an age-old tributary method. And the bourgeoisie never got rid of tributary methods. They ruled their colonies in an explicitly tributary (rather than capitalist) manner. In the imperialist period, the development of capitalism in colonies, semi-colonies and neocolonies has been auxiliary, not principal. Monopoly capital doesn't want property to become capital just like that, it wants to keep regular people from being able to do so until it can steal it and give it to itself. And that's what it needs its massive international military and police network for.

# ? Dec 15, 2020 11:43

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

what comes to mind for me when marx talks about the lumpenproletariat as not being particularly revolutionary is the way that the mafia historically helped the fbi break up unions and such, but i suspect it may not be quite correct to cast mob guys as lumpen

# ? Dec 15, 2020 16:33

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

Ferrinus posted:

what comes to mind for me when marx talks about the lumpenproletariat as not being particularly revolutionary is the way that the mafia historically helped the fbi break up unions and such, but i suspect it may not be quite correct to cast mob guys as lumpen

Organized crime is pretty lumpen, especially at low levels. At the higher levels where it starts to intersect with ownership and business it gets more blurry, but that's a small number of people.

# ? Dec 15, 2020 16:40

Doktor Avalanche: Dec 30, 2008

GalacticAcid posted:

sure but the term is used for a specific online clique of [redacted]s loosely clustered around the Australian simpleton Aimee Therese and the pretty terrible site The Bellows.

they're stanning small businesses right now
their two main "theorists" are now gone after one was fawning over the other and the 2nd guy misunderstood it as criticism so he deactivated in a huff and the other guy then did it too for some reason
also:

# ? Dec 15, 2020 16:41

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Lol. Beyond puerile

# ? Dec 15, 2020 16:45

PERPETUAL IDIOT: Sep 12, 2003

GalacticAcid posted:

Lol. Beyond puerile

Marty MacMarty in: Beyond Puerile

# ? Dec 15, 2020 17:00

ToxicAcne: May 25, 2014

Working class in the dominant western media discourse means some high school educated guy who drives a pickup truck, shoots guns etc. It makes sense that this kind of "Working class" voted overwhelmingly for Trump, never mind that alot of these people are small business owners.

It's the aestheticisation of class.

# ? Dec 15, 2020 18:42

mila kunis: Jun 10, 2011

crosspostin'

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006...-on-das-kapital

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006...lism-cool-again

Online and on social media, popular historians are helping young Chinese reframe the country�s leftist past in a more positive light.

Fed Up With Capitalism, Young Chinese Brush Up on �Das Kapital�

With a new generation increasingly burned out by the �996� grind and liberal platitudes of their elders, can Marxism make a comeback?

The new consensus is reflective of a broader ideological shift among young Chinese, especially those born in the economic boom times of the 1990s and 2000s. Simultaneously confident in China�s rise and nostalgic for the relative egalitarianism, equality, and revolutionary enthusiasm of the Mao era, they�re willing to look past the turmoil of his rule in favor of the work he did laying the foundations of China�s resurgence.

[...]

Among the most prominent of these new views is the increased recognition of and appreciation for China�s �socialist period� (1949-1979). Beginning not long after Mao�s death in 1976 and stretching through the 1980s and �90s, many Chinese intellectuals and historians openly embraced the West, liberalism, and humanism as China�s future, while rejecting China�s own traditions and the revolution Mao wrought. Their work naturally reflects this tendency, and is frequently filled with nods to the �beacon� of the United States and dismissive attitudes toward China.

For young Chinese, who�ve grown up in a very different international, political, and economic milieu, it�s increasingly hard to relate to this outlook. Rather than viewing the Mao era as a failed utopian project, they increasingly credit these three decades � and the men and women who lived through them � as having produced the major advances in basic industry, society building, life expectancy, health care, cultural production, and national security on which their lives and prosperity are founded.

[...]

Of course, no reappraisal of China�s socialist period can avoid the question of Mao, and Industrial Party and other, similar articles are often flooded by comments from readers describing how their attitudes toward the former Chairman have shifted.

They talk about how they used to buy into the liberal and right-wing narratives that painted his time in charge as a disaster. When they got older, however, and began to consider not just China�s problems, but global issues from a truly independent viewpoint, they say they realized just how important he was to building the foundations of a strong China and keeping the country free from imperialism.

[...]

But articles on their own don�t make a movement; they�ve resonated so deeply because of how very different young Chinese experiences and attitudes are from previous generations. Put simply: Life under capitalism isn�t all it was cracked up to be.

Young Chinese born in the 1990s and 2000s grew up in an era of rapid economic growth and a corresponding rise in China�s overall national strength. Especially after 2008, when the West found itself mired in a global economic crisis of its own making and China grew to become the second-largest economy in the world, Western ideologies such as liberalism have gradually lost their post-Cold War cultural hegemony.

[...]

For my money, however, the most important motivating factor behind the embrace of the country�s socialist period is that young Chinese have lived and suffered under capitalism. Their recognition of and appreciation for the CCP�s early socialism-building achievements is underpinned by a broader reappraisal of the history and theory of the international socialist movement since the 19th century.

This reappraisal goes deeper than reproducing zombie narratives or 20th century rhetoric: It�s based on a vivid sense of contemporary life and reality. Young Chinese have spent much of their lives watching the decay of the global capitalist order, the rise of inequality, and the collapse of working class status. The earlier generation embraced pure market ideology, private enterprise, and capitalism, but to many young Chinese who work in the private sector their elders built, these ideas are associated not with unleashing productivity, but the droning pressure of �involution,� feelings of relative deprivation, and grueling work schedules like the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-day-a-week marathon known as �996.�

Indeed, almost anywhere you look online, there�s a palpable sense of anger and frustration at capitalism and market ideology. First, young Chinese are forced to work extreme hours with seemingly little to show for it, then they have to listen people like Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma lecture them about how working 996 is a �blessing� or watch as the wealthy profit from their investment and real estate portfolios without having to lift a finger. Recent years have even seen the resurgence of derogatory uses of �capitalist� and other highly loaded terms in popular discourse, as young leftists seek ways to vent their frustration.

[...]

And because they grew up in an educational system with mandatory courses on Marxism and socialism, even seemingly impractical or outdated concepts like class and �surplus value� become handy analytical frameworks when many students encounter difficulties later in life.

[...]

Interestingly, one of the most popular interpreters of the Marxist tradition isn�t Chinese at all, but the American academic Richard D. Wolff. Netizens have pulled videos of his lectures from YouTube and re-uploaded subtitled versions to sites like Bilibili under titles like �Why Aren�t You a Marxist?� Despite his academic background, Wolff has garnered praise for his clear-eyed analysis and accessible explanations of core concepts, and some of his videos on Bilibili have gone on to rack up more views than the originals. Closer to home, Bilibili has also helped popularize the work of Chinese agronomist Wen Tiejun, whose history, �Eight Crises: China�s Real Experiences, 1949-2009� has enjoyed a concurrent resurgence in popularity and sales.

# ? Dec 15, 2020 20:14

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

A really fascinating video about a small village that managed to become a cooperative.
The origin story is also interesting, because it has very different religious dynamics then we normally see. They originally became Christians in order to protect themselves from chinese and japanese imperialism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnK5ew37QVI

# ? Dec 15, 2020 22:03

croup coughfield: Apr 8, 2020; Can't post for 75 days!

Doctor Jeep posted:

they're stanning small businesses right now
their two main "theorists" are now gone after one was fawning over the other and the 2nd guy misunderstood it as criticism so he deactivated in a huff and the other guy then did it too for some reason
also:

so the "post left" is a bunch of liberal contrarians who ape leftist language while advocating for fascism?

# ? Dec 15, 2020 22:05

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

I think they can just be ignored without consequence

There's people who will call themselves about anything and say they believe in anything on the internet, it's almost never a good idea to dedicate your precious and limited time among the living to puzzling them out

Save that for the people with power and the people who can be won to our side, I.e. generally people who aren't internet cranks

# ? Dec 15, 2020 22:09

croup coughfield: Apr 8, 2020; Can't post for 75 days!

Mr. Lobe posted:

I think they can just be ignored without consequence

There's people who will call themselves about anything and say they believe in anything on the internet, it's almost never a good idea to dedicate your precious and limited time among the living to puzzling them out

if i was capable of live and let live i would never have created an account on this site and id probably be happier

# ? Dec 15, 2020 22:10

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; Can't post for 24 hours!

mila kunis posted:

crosspostin'

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006...-on-das-kapital

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006...lism-cool-again

Online and on social media, popular historians are helping young Chinese reframe the country�s leftist past in a more positive light.

Fed Up With Capitalism, Young Chinese Brush Up on �Das Kapital�

With a new generation increasingly burned out by the �996� grind and liberal platitudes of their elders, can Marxism make a comeback?

The new consensus is reflective of a broader ideological shift among young Chinese, especially those born in the economic boom times of the 1990s and 2000s. Simultaneously confident in China�s rise and nostalgic for the relative egalitarianism, equality, and revolutionary enthusiasm of the Mao era, they�re willing to look past the turmoil of his rule in favor of the work he did laying the foundations of China�s resurgence.

[...]

Among the most prominent of these new views is the increased recognition of and appreciation for China�s �socialist period� (1949-1979). Beginning not long after Mao�s death in 1976 and stretching through the 1980s and �90s, many Chinese intellectuals and historians openly embraced the West, liberalism, and humanism as China�s future, while rejecting China�s own traditions and the revolution Mao wrought. Their work naturally reflects this tendency, and is frequently filled with nods to the �beacon� of the United States and dismissive attitudes toward China.

For young Chinese, who�ve grown up in a very different international, political, and economic milieu, it�s increasingly hard to relate to this outlook. Rather than viewing the Mao era as a failed utopian project, they increasingly credit these three decades � and the men and women who lived through them � as having produced the major advances in basic industry, society building, life expectancy, health care, cultural production, and national security on which their lives and prosperity are founded.

[...]

Of course, no reappraisal of China�s socialist period can avoid the question of Mao, and Industrial Party and other, similar articles are often flooded by comments from readers describing how their attitudes toward the former Chairman have shifted.

They talk about how they used to buy into the liberal and right-wing narratives that painted his time in charge as a disaster. When they got older, however, and began to consider not just China�s problems, but global issues from a truly independent viewpoint, they say they realized just how important he was to building the foundations of a strong China and keeping the country free from imperialism.

[...]

But articles on their own don�t make a movement; they�ve resonated so deeply because of how very different young Chinese experiences and attitudes are from previous generations. Put simply: Life under capitalism isn�t all it was cracked up to be.

Young Chinese born in the 1990s and 2000s grew up in an era of rapid economic growth and a corresponding rise in China�s overall national strength. Especially after 2008, when the West found itself mired in a global economic crisis of its own making and China grew to become the second-largest economy in the world, Western ideologies such as liberalism have gradually lost their post-Cold War cultural hegemony.

[...]

For my money, however, the most important motivating factor behind the embrace of the country�s socialist period is that young Chinese have lived and suffered under capitalism. Their recognition of and appreciation for the CCP�s early socialism-building achievements is underpinned by a broader reappraisal of the history and theory of the international socialist movement since the 19th century.

This reappraisal goes deeper than reproducing zombie narratives or 20th century rhetoric: It�s based on a vivid sense of contemporary life and reality. Young Chinese have spent much of their lives watching the decay of the global capitalist order, the rise of inequality, and the collapse of working class status. The earlier generation embraced pure market ideology, private enterprise, and capitalism, but to many young Chinese who work in the private sector their elders built, these ideas are associated not with unleashing productivity, but the droning pressure of �involution,� feelings of relative deprivation, and grueling work schedules like the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-day-a-week marathon known as �996.�

Indeed, almost anywhere you look online, there�s a palpable sense of anger and frustration at capitalism and market ideology. First, young Chinese are forced to work extreme hours with seemingly little to show for it, then they have to listen people like Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma lecture them about how working 996 is a �blessing� or watch as the wealthy profit from their investment and real estate portfolios without having to lift a finger. Recent years have even seen the resurgence of derogatory uses of �capitalist� and other highly loaded terms in popular discourse, as young leftists seek ways to vent their frustration.

[...]

And because they grew up in an educational system with mandatory courses on Marxism and socialism, even seemingly impractical or outdated concepts like class and �surplus value� become handy analytical frameworks when many students encounter difficulties later in life.

[...]

Interestingly, one of the most popular interpreters of the Marxist tradition isn�t Chinese at all, but the American academic Richard D. Wolff. Netizens have pulled videos of his lectures from YouTube and re-uploaded subtitled versions to sites like Bilibili under titles like �Why Aren�t You a Marxist?� Despite his academic background, Wolff has garnered praise for his clear-eyed analysis and accessible explanations of core concepts, and some of his videos on Bilibili have gone on to rack up more views than the originals. Closer to home, Bilibili has also helped popularize the work of Chinese agronomist Wen Tiejun, whose history, �Eight Crises: China�s Real Experiences, 1949-2009� has enjoyed a concurrent resurgence in popularity and sales.

this is encouraging. also 996, Jesus Christ that sounds atrocious

# ? Dec 15, 2020 22:33

T-man: Aug 22, 2010; Talk shit, get bzzzt.

croup coughfield posted:

so the "post left" is a bunch of liberal contrarians who ape leftist language while advocating for fascism?

nice to meet you, post leftist :owned:

# ? Dec 15, 2020 23:46

PERPETUAL IDIOT: Sep 12, 2003

VictualSquid posted:

A really fascinating video about a small village that managed to become a cooperative.
The origin story is also interesting, because it has very different religious dynamics then we normally see. They originally became Christians in order to protect themselves from chinese and japanese imperialism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnK5ew37QVI

Chinese imperialism in Taiwan? Can't wait to see what these guys have to say.

# ? Dec 16, 2020 02:58

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/communistsusa/status/1338858164553334784?s=19

# ? Dec 16, 2020 03:02

Pomeroy: Apr 20, 2020

Doctor Jeep posted:

they're stanning small businesses right now
their two main "theorists" are now gone after one was fawning over the other and the 2nd guy misunderstood it as criticism so he deactivated in a huff and the other guy then did it too for some reason
also:

100 percent certain these guys would contrive some reason denounce any concrete form of struggle in which there would be an actual basis for cooperation with small business owners (rent control campaigns come to mind).

# ? Dec 16, 2020 05:54

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 217 days!

reminder that the working class by and large didn't vote

# ? Dec 16, 2020 07:20

Grapplejack: Nov 27, 2007

https://twitter.com/Tinkzorg/status/1339195667047194625/photo/1

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:03

Algund Eenboom: May 4, 2014

Epic reddit moment

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:04

jarofpiss: May 16, 2009

Grapplejack posted:

https://twitter.com/Tinkzorg/status/1339195667047194625/photo/1

i watched an aldi manager and some guy engaged in a fistfight in the middle of a 6 lane street on my way home from work yesterday. unfortunately there was a constable behind me so he pulled around and i assume arrested everybody

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:05

jarofpiss: May 16, 2009

it was in the street in front of an aldi btw so i assume the manager was on the clock

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:06

T-man: Aug 22, 2010; Talk shit, get bzzzt.

there is nothing in Marx's writing about posting on SomethingAwful so all true marxists should quit posting. i checked and we're not in Mao, Lenin, Stalin, nor Striner. luckily the greatest works of anarchism (my posts) mention the phenomenon often.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:14

ToxicAcne: May 25, 2014

What the hell is the transformation problem and why is it such a big deal? I'm reading Capital with Harvey's guide and Harvey mentions that individual prices not matching up with the value of a product is normal. It's in the aggregate average of prices that Value is reflected in price (Assuming that demand and supply are in balance). However, this whole thing seems to have been a big controversy in economics so I'm guessing Harvey's explanation is really simplified.

ToxicAcne fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Dec 17, 2020

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:17

namesake: Jun 19, 2006; "When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

ToxicAcne posted:

What the hell is the transformation problem and why is it such a big deal? I'm reading Capital with Harvey's guide and Harvey mentions that individual prices not matching up with the value of a product is normal. It's in the aggregate average of prices that Value is reflected in price (Assuming that demand and supply are in balance). However, this whole thing seems to have been a big controversy in economics so I'm guessing Harvey's explanation is really simplified.

If you can't show a connection between value and prices then you can't show the connection between labour and value and price which undermines the key point of Marxist LTV.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 00:57

Red Dad Redemption: Sep 29, 2007

ToxicAcne posted:

What the hell is the transformation problem and why is it such a big deal? I'm reading Capital with Harvey's guide and Harvey mentions that individual prices not matching up with the value of a product is normal. It's in the aggregate average of prices that Value is reflected in price (Assuming that demand and supply are in balance). However, this whole thing seems to have been a big controversy in economics so I'm guessing Harvey's explanation is really simplified.

Harvey goes into it in detail in The Limits to Capital, which is available as a PDF if you don't want to buy a hard copy. It comes up in a number of places, but there's a summary that begins around pp63-64. He includes cites to the literature and the key objections, which involve relating the price theories in V3 to LTV as it is expressed in V1. It's a problem that seems difficult to get very excited about from my (probably insufficiently informed) perspective, since the added value that appears following the production process does not exactly manifest ex nihilo at the moment of exchange (though it is obviously realized there by the producer), irrespective of the external conditions (including those factoring into SNLT) that affect the price at which the added value is realized. And while there are multiple inputs, in the typical scenario, labor is the key input for effecting the transformation by which value is added, the rest being, at various levels of complexity, tools and materials. I might be fairly far off, though, and defer completely to those with more background.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 01:55

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

oh is that it? crystal clear

# ? Dec 17, 2020 02:02

mila kunis: Jun 10, 2011

ToxicAcne posted:

What the hell is the transformation problem and why is it such a big deal? I'm reading Capital with Harvey's guide and Harvey mentions that individual prices not matching up with the value of a product is normal. It's in the aggregate average of prices that Value is reflected in price (Assuming that demand and supply are in balance). However, this whole thing seems to have been a big controversy in economics so I'm guessing Harvey's explanation is really simplified.

This was a good post on it:

https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/what-transformation-problem/

# ? Dec 17, 2020 04:24

T-man: Aug 22, 2010; Talk shit, get bzzzt.

is optimus prime a worker OR merely a means of production? the transformer problem

# ? Dec 17, 2020 09:32

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

T-man posted:

is optimus prime a worker OR merely a means of production? the transformer problem

every worker is, unto themselves, a means of production, one from which they are alienated through the commodification of labor

# ? Dec 17, 2020 10:19

Finicums Wake: Mar 13, 2017; Can't post for 8 years!

ToxicAcne posted:

What the hell is the transformation problem and why is it such a big deal? I'm reading Capital with Harvey's guide and Harvey mentions that individual prices not matching up with the value of a product is normal. It's in the aggregate average of prices that Value is reflected in price (Assuming that demand and supply are in balance). However, this whole thing seems to have been a big controversy in economics so I'm guessing Harvey's explanation is really simplified.

it's a big deal because it has allowed anti-marxists to claim that marx's (and most marxists') labor theory of value leads to contradictions, or is inconsistent. if the LTV is inconsistent, then all of marx's economic theories can be ignored because we know a priori that they're false. basically, marxist economics can't even get off the ground because its foundation is rotten.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 11:50

PERPETUAL IDIOT: Sep 12, 2003

Finicums Wake posted:

it's a big deal because it has allowed anti-marxists to claim that marx's (and most marxists') labor theory of value leads to contradictions, or is inconsistent. if the LTV is inconsistent, then all of marx's economic theories can be ignored because we know a priori that they're false. basically, marxist economics can't even get off the ground because its foundation is rotten.

Even if the LTV were inconsistent, that's just an excuse, really. My limited understanding is that current orthodox macroeconomics cannot adequately define what "capital" is, and yet this problem is largely swept under the rug.

# ? Dec 17, 2020 13:11

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

PERPETUAL IDIOT posted:

Even if the LTV were inconsistent, that's just an excuse, really. My limited understanding is that current orthodox macroeconomics cannot adequately define what "capital" is, and yet this problem is largely swept under the rug.

its this. the goto approach of orthodox economics towards marxism can be summed up as an endless quest for reasons to justify not engaging with the ideas presented at all because they know that they'd lose and lose badly

# ? Dec 17, 2020 13:23

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Cerebral Bore posted:

its this. the goto approach of orthodox economics towards marxism can be summed up as an endless quest for reasons to justify not engaging with the ideas presented at all because they know that they'd lose and lose badly

it is not even lose, it is that... poo poo, they operate on two entirely different planes of understanding

modern macroeconomics are based from new classical microeconomics, which at its roots, it is almost the philosophical opposite of what Marx et al were trying to achieve. The joke among economists is that microeconomics perfectly describe things that don't happen at all in reality while macroeconomics are terrible to talk about things that happen all the loving time

original microeconomics has definitely some useful ideas especially in the context of guys like Marshall who had some good takes from it, like elasticity and marginality (which are veeeeery useful in economic planning), but from that bundle of good ideas, basically feels like they started to model for the sake of using more math, and without the USSR to provide a counterweight in terms of economic thinkining, from the late 80s until mid 2010s you had micro as math bullshit central until some economists got so fed up that they started to talk with people from psychology and neuroscience to get an actual concrete reference on how people make decisions: voil�, behavioral economics came along and started kicking micro's rear end so much that only the stupidity of our time justifies it being taught "as it was" today

# ? Dec 17, 2020 16:35

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; Can't post for 24 hours!

what�s the Marxist position on not cleaning the snow off your loving car then driving on the highway? instant execution?

# ? Dec 17, 2020 18:08

THS: Sep 15, 2017

you�re thinking about it wrong. the marxist position is everyone takes the train

# ? Dec 17, 2020 18:12

unbutthurtable: Dec 2, 2016; Total. Tox. Rereg.; College Slice

does anyone have any recommendations for books about yugoslavian economics? Like the market socialist/worker-run enterprises under Tito and stuff

# ? Dec 18, 2020 02:36

Torpor: Oct 20, 2008; .. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

mila kunis posted:

crosspostin'

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006...-on-das-kapital

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006...lism-cool-again

Interestingly, one of the most popular interpreters of the Marxist tradition isn�t Chinese at all, but the American academic Richard D. Wolff. Netizens have pulled videos of his lectures from YouTube and re-uploaded subtitled versions to sites like Bilibili under titles like �Why Aren�t You a Marxist?� Despite his academic background, Wolff has garnered praise for his clear-eyed analysis and accessible explanations of core concepts, and some of his videos on Bilibili have gone on to rack up more views than the originals. Closer to home, Bilibili has also helped popularize the work of Chinese agronomist Wen Tiejun, whose history, �Eight Crises: China�s Real Experiences, 1949-2009� has enjoyed a concurrent resurgence in popularity and sales.

the Wolff man is big in china, thats mildly amusing.

# ? Dec 18, 2020 07:04

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# ? May 23, 2024 20:16

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

Torpor posted:

the Wolff man is big in china, thats mildly amusing.

I wonder how many public intellectuals talk about Marxism as a practical political philosophy in China

I'm sure many talk about it as a state religion, but that's like the difference between trade unionism and academic Marxism

# ? Dec 18, 2020 12:12

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > There is a spectrum haunting C-SPAM. I, on the contrary,

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