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Bald Stalin posted:Why do organisations in Europe and the colonies spend time debating whether or not to support or criticize China? How does it help organise and struggle in their own countries? america is exceptionalism
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Feb 3, 2024 01:50
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Mandel Brotset posted:america is exceptionalism also america regularly murders its leftist organizers before they can get too influential
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Feb 3, 2024 02:04
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fibblins posted:What is meant by "efficiency" here? It seems really strange to equivocate the concept of a market with "efficiency". It's a qualifying term: efficient at what, exactly? Without familiarity of that author's work, I would assume it is value efficiency, which is the more common usage of that term in such contexts. As a consequence of their social function, capitalists are indeed seekers of efficiency, in the sense that they want to obtain the greatest amount of surplus value with the least necessary capital to do so. Because of several factors that emerge from that, "efficiency" got conflated with those in the relevant discourse. To give an example to demonstrate: an industrial capitalist that seeks to increase their market share against international competitors is able to determine many areas of improvement that would allow them to do so. By learning the ins and outs of their industrial processes, the capitalist discovers that with developments in machine technology, their company will be able to outproduce the others by employing those in new production lines. As a consequence of this investment, a whole chain of economic efforts is activated and mobilized, creating many synergistic effects that reverberate as a whole. It's things like that that helped create the mythos of the captain of industry and the industrial titan, because those reverberating effects did transform the economic power and productive capability of entire countries. However, the critical part that almost always goes missing is that this wasn't deliberate in that sense; the industrialist was only doing so because they want more capital. It doesn't matter at all if what gets produced is turned to waste or there are people hungry or the medication could be more accessible. quote:But it seems like the planned economies' stifling of efficiency Yang talks about are problems arising from the logistical burden of trying to plan an economy without the aid of digital networks and computers. I think the USSR's Gosplan employed something like 3 million people performing calculations by hand to allocate resources, which I like to imagine could be done by a handful of computers, but I don't know enough about the inner workings of soviet planning to back any of these hunches up The computational problem is entirely correct and is one important reason of the Soviet economic faults (they did have computers but political infighting and bureaucratic quagmires essentially made them kneecap themselves about it), but without entering in that merit specifically, value efficiency and central planning are antagonists in several aspects. Because central planning is about solving economic problems and not sort-of accidentally doing that by seeking profit, it does things much differently from a systemic perspective. For example, it has a lot more consideration for redundancy (rotating machinery, extra personnel), resilience and durability, modularity and scalability (flexibility in production, having slack to increase, etc) and so on. All of that is directly impacting on efficiency, because having more of those "features" makes capital costs increase. However, one cool trick in political economy that was developed with the market socialism that the Chinese honed to spectacular degree was to use its state industries to provide a tremendously advantageous condition for its private enterprise, because among other things, their "inefficiency" results in very, very, very cheap input prices for everything they need in the consumer goods sector. This is one of the oldest complaints against China in the WTO (during the 90s it was almost always brought up), but because their profitability is so high, foreign financial capital just went "lol yeah so what shares are good" without given due consideration to the fine print. Because China has an excellent protocol of capital controls, that investor money? Much of it went straight to the Chinese state industries, which are now so developed that they have superior value efficiency with the added advantages of all centrally planned features, lmao
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Feb 3, 2024 02:21
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I'm reading the same book and it's pretty cool that every company is required to develop a local branch of the communist party once 3 cadre members have been hired there. What a smart idea
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Feb 3, 2024 03:56
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dead gay comedy forums posted:
they're seeking net profit and high x year avg share values, its am important distinction real productivity is gross profit/revenue, net profit is just describing the finances and personal gain if they sought gross profit over personally increasing their own relative income they wouldn't be as useless, that's much more how companies traditionally used to run because it's the only sustainable long term option but everyone forgot
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Feb 3, 2024 04:28
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FirstnameLastname posted:they're seeking net profit and high x year avg share values, its am important distinction That's the thing, because for an industrial capitalist, productivity and efficiency is how they are able to optimize the extraction of surplus value to then accumulate capital a financial capitalist (rentier, investor, speculator, any kind) has the same fundamental logic of accumulation, but skips productivity entirely because finance is far more efficient at providing return due to the nature of fictitious capital (i.e. compound interest)
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Feb 3, 2024 04:42
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dead gay comedy forums posted:That's the thing, because for an industrial capitalist, productivity and efficiency is how they are able to optimize the extraction of surplus value to then accumulate capital
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Feb 3, 2024 07:07
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Bald Stalin posted:Why do organisations in Europe and the colonies spend time debating whether or not to support or criticize China? How does it help organise and struggle in their own countries? Because it is the most successful Communist project in history and has many valuable lessons to impart. Also whether any given org is pro or anti-China is a good easy way to tell whether the organization is serious or a pig poo poo lagoon filled with wreckers.
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Feb 3, 2024 08:36
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For example: Is your communist org supporting and educating people about the most visible, successful, and powerful force in the world for worker’s liberation and communism? Or is it instead working to help the global capitalist hegemon slander the greatest emancipatory movement in the history of mankind? The answer might be of interest!
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Feb 3, 2024 09:06
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What lessons specifically about China now apply to say, organizers in the UK right now? Why is it helpful to spend any time educating people on China beyond "there's a lot of bourgeois propaganda about them" which applies universally to pretty much everything? Not talking about their revolution or Mao's contributions to scientific socialism, I'm asking in this context where OP is trying to defend China rn from criticism of it rn. Gimme your top 3 from these many valuable lessons.
Bald Stalin has issued a correction as of 09:14 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 09:11
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Bald Stalin posted:What lessons specifically about China now apply to say, organizers in the UK right now? Why is it helpful to spend any time educating people on China beyond "there's a lot of bourgeois propaganda about them" which applies universally to pretty much everything? Not talking about their revolution or Mao's contributions to scientific socialism, I'm asking in this context where OP is trying to defend China rn from criticism of it rn. Gimme your top 3 from these many valuable lessons. Ok in no particular order 1. For the interest of members and prospective members having the correct analysis on China, global protagonist, means it is less likely that your entire leadership has been suborned by the local security state, or are such poor marxist thinkers that they may as well be. Who wants to put in the work organizing for such a hopeless case if so? 2. If your organization is not supporting Red China it is definitionally a grouping of social fascists, defending China from unfair criticism can help allay members concerns that they may unwittingly be members of a social fascist front group. 3. The greatest Marxist thinker alive today, Chinese President Xi Jinping, has a living body of literature that through proper study and application can and will lead your organization to successfully complete the process of socialist revolution in your local area.
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Feb 3, 2024 09:31
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But I imagine though you are thinking something along the lines of if you are tabling/handing out trot newspapers/going to a DSA meeting and someone responds: “Communism?! Like in the dreadful, genocidal perfidious China under the brutalistic CCP?” And here you take a deep breath and have two choices: A. Be lower than a weasel and lie to them in order to flatter their own ignorance for the benefit of your highly compromised org: “No we are NOTHING like that! That is the bad evil kind of communism! The gross Chinese kind, with the genocide and oriental despotism,this is the good white kind of communism”. Maybe you successfully recruit them, and the addition of a confused anti-communist to your ranks helps you later down the road somehow, idk. B: Say “That’s right”. Tell them China owns, and everything they know about it is a lie. This is the truth and you don’t have to throw Actually Existing Communism under the bus. People will appreciate the truth, and properly educated they will see that Communism is an actually existing process they can practice alongside over a billion proud people and your org is not a cult of dead-ender Eurocommunists who have no valency in the modern world.
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Feb 3, 2024 09:57
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Bald Stalin posted:Why do organisations in Europe and the colonies spend time debating whether or not to support or criticize China? How does it help organise and struggle in their own countries?
genericnick has issued a correction as of 12:25 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 12:00
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Bald Stalin posted:What lessons specifically about China now apply to say, organizers in the UK right now? Why is it helpful to spend any time educating people on China beyond "there's a lot of bourgeois propaganda about them" which applies universally to pretty much everything? Not talking about their revolution or Mao's contributions to scientific socialism, I'm asking in this context where OP is trying to defend China rn from criticism of it rn. Gimme your top 3 from these many valuable lessons. rename this oval office Bald Trotsky
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Feb 3, 2024 12:13
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tristeham posted:rename this oval office Bald Trotsky seconded
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Feb 3, 2024 12:52
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fart simpson posted:seconded
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Feb 3, 2024 12:54
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im reminded of that goon in that 12 person strong group that put out a statement condemning china and cuba https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3808020&pagenumber=970&perpage=40#post537202005
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Feb 3, 2024 13:01
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China and Cuba ftw
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Feb 3, 2024 14:17
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mila kunis posted:im reminded of that goon in that 12 person strong group that put out a statement condemning china and cuba 😹
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Feb 3, 2024 14:36
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A fairly easy way to figure out if you are dealing with bullshit is to see whether the same critique of Communist Party of China applies to its neighbor in Vietnam. The CPV agrees with CPC on a lot of things not only in political economy, yet almost nothing is heard about them in Western media in the same way. Upon learning that the USA tries really hard to have favorable commercial relationships with Vietnam, maybe the answer becomes more evident
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Feb 3, 2024 16:17
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dead gay comedy forums posted:Upon learning that the USA tries really hard to have favorable commercial relationships with Vietnam are they trying to decouple from china and "couple" with vietnam instead?
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Feb 3, 2024 16:44
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vietnam has all the new manufacturing plants that haven't transferred all their capital to finished goods. once they've depreciated and capital is building factories in ukraine or utah or uganda or whereever, that will be the next site of coupling
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Feb 3, 2024 17:06
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Doktor Avalanche posted:are they trying to decouple from china and "couple" with vietnam instead? afaik they are trying to do a Kissinger but are being way worse at it and by this point come on the play is already known lmao
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Feb 3, 2024 17:22
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Doktor Avalanche posted:are they trying to decouple from china and "couple" with vietnam instead? They're looking for a South Asian Ukraine and Vietnam has fought a war with China within living memory. For Biden it feels like yesterday.
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Feb 3, 2024 17:36
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its a bit odd that all these places capital prefers going are run by communist parties. the us government is trying to force some of them into india at gunpoint and every company that goes there ends up with huge regrets
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Feb 3, 2024 17:38
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the US government isn't trying to move anything to india at gunpoint. A lot of the foreign investment in india just consists of indian businesses sending money abroad and then sending that money back in from tax havens.
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Feb 3, 2024 18:14
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If you're trying to organize something in the west for some reason and the people involved are stupid enough to buy into anti-china garbage then the core of your vanguard revolutionary party is being run by people who are not capable of thinking correctly about material reality. The entire movement doesn't have to be well educated on the entirety of human history but if the intellectual core of it are worthless imperialist dogs then you're doomed from the get-go.
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Feb 3, 2024 18:15
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yep
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Feb 3, 2024 19:17
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Lostconfused posted:Nobody expected history to just start happening again. Frosted Flake posted:Zodium can probably explain this better, but they did everything possible to destabilize their own system. So, where the Concert of Europe established after the Congress of Vienna lasted from 1814-1914, and repeatedly diffused emerging instability by rebalancing power, for instance the 1839 Treaty of London resolving the issue of Belgium, settling the issue of the Balkans at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, and Africa in the 1884 Berlin Conference, the End of History was run into the ground alarmingly quickly. dead gay comedy forums posted:It was a very unfortunate turn of phrase by Fukuyama of course, but a major factor of the sheer mania of the moment that led to concepts like "End of History" was that moment in time where none of those mechanisms were relevant. A superpower had its hegemonic view enacted. Zodium posted:stability is exactly what the capitalists pursued after the world wars. they were not stupid or unaware. the self-destructive tendencies of capitalism had brought the world to the brink of socialism via inter-imperialist war, and the solution they came up with was using ubiquitous feedback monitoring and cybernetic modeling to construct, through the intelligence agencies and military-industrial complex, a complex dynamical system which integrated and maintained stability of the capitalist world-system at all costs. this acted as a kind of anti-dialectical layer that afforded synchronized perceptual alignment within the core, such that whenever someone or something's behavior was out of sync, the base would shift to provide resistance and bring them back into sync. we can visualize it as something like these metronomes:
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Feb 4, 2024 15:10
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is David Harvey the dude who used to be pretty skeptical of china but moved towards cautious optimism in recent years
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Feb 4, 2024 23:01
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Orange Devil posted:China and Cuba ftw https://twitter.com/EmbChinaCuba/status/1753622054799069235?t=8rV053DKhipBHJpxdHmJ0w&s=19
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Feb 5, 2024 02:41
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Orange Devil posted:China and Cuba ftw
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Feb 5, 2024 02:42
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Tendency of Rate of Profit to fall. My #1 critique is the failure to address racism and sexism. This is a major issue for nearly all economic theories, but problematic for TRPF. Exploitation of surplus labor is a mandatory building block for TRPF. Holding everything else constant, the civil rights movement should have caused a significant decline in profit - as wages were increased for black and minority Americans. The movement aligns with a fall in profit. This is consistent with the Marxs formula, but complicated the usage of the time period as proof of trpf. #2 critique is very popular in cspam. Marx divides labor into productive and unproductive. During Marxs time, services was a minor secondary industry. It's since grown absurdly large. I'd tend to agree with most posters that services are overwhelmingly unproductive to society. Again holding all else constant, a rise in unproductive labor short in the short term increase labor market competition, yielding rising wages for all worker types, paradoxically (but in line with Marx) increasing profits. The 80s roughly fits this. Again accounted for by Marx, doesn't disprove TRPF, but also muddies using the time period as proof. #3 is the US has heavily relied on Keynesian policy the past century. QE and QT have enemorous impacts on profitability and must be accounted for when trying to measure profit. The late 50s was an era of QT. This should, and did, see a period of trailing falling profit. Except as already noted the civil rights movement was also underway and should be a cause of falling profit. Tl;Dr- TRPF is a good theory, but the limited historical data available is multi-causational, and as such pointing at a falling line isn't "proof" of TRPF. It of course isn't proven false either.
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Feb 6, 2024 21:29
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BillsPhoenix posted:My #1 critique is the failure to address racism and sexism where did you get that
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Feb 6, 2024 21:45
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Hillary alt spotted.
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Feb 6, 2024 21:47
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dead gay comedy forums posted:where did you get that Not Marx himself, but Marxists ignoring it when pointing to falling profits as proof, as described in that example regarding the civil rights movement.
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Feb 6, 2024 21:54
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agreed edit: no
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Feb 6, 2024 21:55
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BillsPhoenix posted:Not Marx himself, but Marxists ignoring it when pointing to falling profits as proof, as described in that example regarding the civil rights movement. Please elaborate because this is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone raise that idea ever and I am very much curious to see the why
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Feb 6, 2024 21:56
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BillsPhoenix posted:#2 critique is very popular in cspam. Marx divides labor into productive and unproductive. During Marxs time, services was a minor secondary industry. It's since grown absurdly large. I'd tend to agree with most posters that services are overwhelmingly unproductive to society. Services are commodities. Providing a service is the production of a commodity. Providers of services are paid less than the value of the commodity they produce for their employer. Being paid less than the value of the commodity one creates generates surplus value. The generation of surplus values is what separates productive and unproductive labor. Providing services for a wage is productive labor. Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 22:26 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 22:23
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I'm very confused. Before we pile on, I'd like some clarification from the OP. BP: Are you critiquing the tendency as wrong because it doesn't account for the phenomena of racism and sexism, or are you critiquing it because it's right despite not accounting for institutional bigotry? Either way, Marx definitely did account for those but I think it would be helpful to understand the direction you're approaching from.
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Feb 6, 2024 22:34
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