(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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Ferrinus posted:it actually IS the source of profit and my favorite insight from vol1, although i feel like i rushed through it a bit too much in an effort to cut wordcount. it actually has nothing to do with technological advancement or labor-saving devices that lower the value of commodities created with them, just the basic gameplay loop of, like, being alive this rules. Great explanation, don't stop!
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Mar 10, 2024 02:44
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Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:As someone mentioned MMT on this page, a question. How would you address family members who subscribe to the "taxes are what fund gov't budgets" way of thinking? I have a feeling, given most people on the planet are going to be seeing an election this year, that I'm going to have to field more questions about how our crumbling infrastructure is due to lack of money, and that's all because of the massive salaries of council staff and other civil servants and gold plated benefit scroungers. Also, productivity needs to keep going up magically via AI or whatecer and blah blah blah. The capsule summary is that a sovereign currency issuer is not constrained like a household. Monies received in payment of federal taxes don't go into some big account any more than come from said imaginary account when outlaid. We DO keep track, for accounting reasons, on tax revenue received and federal spending, and we call the residual things like "budget deficit" and "budget surplus," but the reason that a deficit can exist and vary from year to year is that we can freely float that money and then, if our policy dictates, we can seek to close that gap via treasury sales or other means. But that is purely a policy choice dictated by inflation-hawk thinking, and not a constraint in the same way that a household is constrained by how much money (or credit) they happen to have on hand. Put another way: a sovereign issuer cannot be placed into involuntary default on debts denominated in its own currency. They can default voluntarily because of the aforementioned policy restrictions; they can default on foreign debts involuntarily if they're experiencing a domestic currency crisis and can't bridge the gap, but they're sound on their own money if they want to be, by way of issuing — i.e., increasing some numbers in accounts at a few keystrokes. Hence "fiat" currency. It's literally right in the name everyone uses. It's hard to give a short answer to this question, since it involves flipping a lot of monetary fables on their heads, and therefore a capsule summary amounts to a lot of "trust me, bro." That said, you can at least do the loathsome but needful in such a situation and Appeal To Authority. For example: Here's the Bank of England itself, the institution that effectively founded modern money, describing the Horizontalists (and their successors, the MMTers) as correct that lending creates deposits, not vice versa. This is the endogenous money creation banks are responsible for. Here's a short published talk by Beardsley Ruml, former FRB NY Chairman, on why "Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete," delivered in 1946. Excerpt:  gradenko_2000 posted:I would say that it's failing, if anything, is that it doesn't really address the question of "why would the USA want to enact universal healthcare, in the first place?" - yes, the USA could finance it, if it wanted to, but even if you set aside the "how will we pay for it?" angle, anyone who opposes UHC is simply going to pivot to an entirely different reason, in good faith or otherwise I also agree with this. It pretty much just ends up being an easier way to make a technical case for full-employment social democracy among budget-concerned liberals. despite several MMT theorists being closeted marxisant types and expressly describing the employer-of-last-resort/job guarantee program as a solution to the reserve army of the unemployed, it still ends up treating class struggle as a mere technical issue to overcome, rather than one of domination constitutive of economic and political life — which is par for socdem reformism in general ultimately, the amount of work needed to bring left-MMTers' central proposals to life is probably a stone's throw off from what's needed to actually overthrow the bourgeoisie, since The Purpose of a System Is What It Does, etc. like, of course our sovereigns won't just hand us health care and housing; don't forget who our sovereigns happen to be at this moment in history! Aeolius has issued a correction as of 03:18 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 02:55
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Aeolius posted:The capsule summary is... SNIP That's the ticket, cheers. I actually forgot the BoE thing, despite having used that in the past. Wasn't aware of the FED one, so that will go in my armoury now. On the subject of MMT and Marxists, I stumbled across this again the other day and it seems to be a fairly common thing for MMTers to have foibles relating to those on the left, at least in my experience. I'm guessing because of the same thought terminating assumptions about the system we're already in.
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Mar 10, 2024 03:37
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Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:Somehow missed this thread, but having stumbled across Paul Cockshott's channel on YT putting me in the mood, am going to diligently churn through it as best I can. the following is not necessarily a Marxist analysis, and engages with the topic of (American) government funding as-is-where-is, but: the first point is that... taxes don't fund budgets - it's the other way around. Whenever the government wants to do something, it appropriates the money for it via the national budget, but the government is not required* to have a commensurate amount of money coming in from tax (or other) revenue before that money can be spent. Rather, the money for a bridge-building project, for the upkeep and/or expansion of the military, for paying government employees, etc., is simply created by the central bank. That money shows up, at the top level, in the bank accounts of the contractor for the bridge, and as the contractor uses the account in that budget to pay off employees or to purchase materials for the bridge, and so on, the money gets introduced into the greater economy as circulating currency, digitally or otherwise of course, if you keep introducing more of this "money created from thin air" into the system, then the relative value of a dollar can go down as a function of inflation. In order to prevent this from happening, the money has to be removed from circulation. And the mechanism for doing that... is taxes. It's not "the government takes in money via taxes, then has to distribute it among its projects via the national budget", but rather "the government allocates funding for its projects via the national budget, and taxation is a means of controlling the circulation of currency created by the funding of those projects" ___ the second point is to address the notion of the national budget being akin to a credit card bill, that the family has to pore over at the kitchen table, except with six additional zeroes tacked onto the end when a bank gives you, a person, a line of credit, the amount of debt you can take on, and the interest rate on that debt, is limited by factors like your level of income, and your age, and generally the bank's computation of your ability to pay. the same factors generally don't exist, or are on completely different scales, for a whole nation-state: - a nation-state can unilaterally increase its income/productivity at will; an individual cannot - a nation-state can generally be expected to live "forever"; an individual cannot - a nation-state can issue its own currency to pay off the debt that it takes on itself; an individual cannot because of these factors, even if we assume that the national budget is a "credit card", the interest rates and the credit limits on such a card are on an entirely different scale from what a bank would ever agree to issue to human beings. The bank would be completely willing to loan a country a billion dollars with an 0.25% interest rate with a 50-year payment plan because not only will the country exist for the next 50 years (or so one would hope), the country can also mobilize its politico-economic resources to generate that kind of exchange value if it ever has to, while also having the ability to simply print more money and/or replace the leadership of the bank, if they ever get refused (assuming such a conversation even happens) ___ * granted, the "balanced budget" argument among conservatives is that it SHOULD, but the underlying political goal here is to simply restrict what the government should be allowed to spend on, i.e. not on social programs
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Mar 10, 2024 04:47
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in vol3, marx classifies government bonds as a kind of fictitious capital. that is to say, a bond might pay out $100/yr, and if the interest rate is 5% might therefore be traded around as though it were $2000 of capital, but in reality it is no such thing because it absorbs and represents no labor or commodity or anything. it's just an arbitrary source of money. but, to capitalists, everything is an arbitrary source of money
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Mar 10, 2024 04:55
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So, money is blood and wealth hoarders are blood clots?
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Mar 10, 2024 05:01
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Rodney The Yam II posted:So, money is blood and wealth hoarders are blood clots? in an online argument i had recently i literally found myself talking about labor power as the 1.3 liters of blood contained in the average human body, yeah. as a worker, you sell your "muscle, brain and nerve" - your hit points, your stamina bar, your action points, whatever - to a capitalist, who actually collects the stuff produced and then gives you back a fraction marx called a hoarder an insane capitalist, and a capitalist a rational hoarder Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 06:15 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 05:31
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Rodney The Yam II posted:So, money is blood and wealth hoarders are blood clots? More like, money is carbon, billionaires are lignin-infused biomass, and communists are fungi.
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Mar 10, 2024 05:33
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Tarranon posted:that helps a lot thanks Also it is important, imo, to realize that actually there always must be LOTS of surplus labour power for a society to survive. This is because out of any society only a subset of its members perform labour, but everyone needs to be allocated fruits of that labour to survive. For example, babies don’t perform labour. This also means every society needs to decide who does the labour, and who gets to decide how the surplus gets distributed. And this basic fact is basically the reason that societies get divided into classes, each with their own interests, which in turn means that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.
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Mar 10, 2024 10:48
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Rodney The Yam II posted:So, money is blood and wealth hoarders are blood clots? This is a literal Marx quote from Capital vol 1, chapter 10: “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks“
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Mar 10, 2024 10:54
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Orange Devil posted:This is a literal Marx quote from Capital vol 1, chapter 10: Somewhat reminds me of the Steve Keen quote ”Labour without energy is a corpse; capital without energy is a sculpture.”
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Mar 10, 2024 14:05
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Orange Devil posted:Also it is important, imo, to realize that actually there always must be LOTS of surplus labour power for a society to survive. This is because out of any society only a subset of its members perform labour, but everyone needs to be allocated fruits of that labour to survive. For example, babies don’t perform labour. I agree with this, and it makes me think of (because of a deprogram episode, heh) everything that entails both logistically and otherwise (just in the abstract, as a wandering thought). Thinking about how in practice, it translates into the necessity of any movement trying to affect change needing to have a fully formed plan for exactly how distribution management should be done should they actually even begin to approach being able to exert any control over said distribution and resources. Specifically, things like the Black Panthers had begun assembling with free breakfast and medical assistance for local vulnerable people, and on a larger scale what groups like the Bolsheviks, CCP, or Ansar Allah each had defined and in place before they reached the ability to exert control over their respective region's infrastructure. all of which is a huge loving undertaking of planning that requires a group with collective actual and actionable knowledge and contacts within necessary industries/groups, local distribution networks, etc (not to mention the opsec/connections to do all that if you're trying to build an alternate parallel system in an actively violent repression) further reinforcing how important managing resources and distribution is to any functioning society, as these functions are only enabled by allocating some of that surplus labor power since this all goes above and beyond baseline daily survival. it also illustrates how those who are in control of western economies aren't stupid per se but merely understand that they can take as much as they want without regard for society, and have every reason and means to enforce their claim as violently as necessary, because there is no consequence to their doing so, unless/until there is one as the blowback to their actions mounts over time. Looking at what the Soviets ended up doing once they had control to make sure everyone had what they needed in a sustainable way while dealing with the reality of how to actually handle those logistics: massive amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy to bookkeep things, in a time right before advanced computing, all show that emphasis on controlling resources and distribution (which means understanding and measuring as accurately as possible what materials are where and who needs which in order to keep your society functioning) Meanwhile, within the US, the strongest physical resource + distribution organizations (amazon and walmart) are centrally-controlled planned economies unto themselves, leveraging technologies like RFID'd inventory tracking for just-in-time delivery, more-automated warehousing, etc, but in the service of maximizing profit rather than maximizing getting resources where they're needed for maximal benefit to the society, not unlike what computerization and ongoing advancements would have afforded the Soviet projects (and are actively benefitting China) anyway all that babbling to say yeah I agree that the surplus labor power and control over distributing and managing said surplus is critical to a society's survival. contesting that control breaks societies down along lines based on who believes how those resources should be managed and distributed, i.e. that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle
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Mar 10, 2024 21:27
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Yeah, I strongly believe the only path to a succesful revolution is through building parallel structures.
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Mar 10, 2024 21:42
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considering the labor theory of value, what have people written on the nature of trade between countries where the socially necessary labor for a given commodity is very similar but they have very different values for labour-power? Something like an agricultural commodity that requires specific manual labor. Instinctively it feels extractive even if you assume for the hypothetical both countries are non capitalist because that gap between labor power value could still exist.
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Mar 10, 2024 22:06
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In case you haven't realized: we literally live in such a world. The Chinese government very deliberately works to keep labour-power cheap by ensuring the basic necessities are cheap. So food, utilities, transport, etc. Shelter has been an exception but bringing down housing prices is actively being worked on right now. Meanwhile Chinese production is now developed to such an extent that there's no gap between socially necessary labour for advanced commodities in China and in the rest of the world. In many cases if there is a difference it's even in favour of China. Meanwhile in the West the most profitable thing to do is to extract rents out of basic life necessities from the populace at large, aka the working class. That's why insane rents and housing prices, that's why double digit inflation on food and (in Europe at least) triple digit percentage price increases on energy. The Chinese population, according to Western "experts" has "excess savings" which they present as a problem. Meanwhile the US population is loaded up to the eyeballs in credit card debt. You're right that something extractive is going on, but it's not China doing the extracting. And in case you're worried that China might misuse its advantageous position vis-a-vis other countries in the future, just look at what they are actually doing: they are investing into building infrastructure and productive capacities in pretty much any country willing to partner with them all over the world in anything at all they can find mutually beneficial. They're not interested in extracting only resources and bringing it all to China, they're literally building factories, ports, high speed rail and roads in other countries. Same as they have done and continue to do in China's poorest regions. Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 23:29 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 22:44
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Orange Devil posted:In case you haven't realized: we literally live in such a world. I agree with your characterization - am definitely not worried about China specifically. The original scenario I was considering that prompted the question was American deals with other countries to purchase cocoa, coffee, quinoa etc. But since I'm focusing on LTV i'm trying to consider the issue using just those tools and without bringing in the complicating/distorting effects of capitalism and the hard and soft tools america uses to force favorable trade deals with these countries and so on. The part I bolded definitely speaks to what I was considering - two nations at different levels of development can in theory find truly mutually beneficial arrangements, and that seems to be the path China's pursuing. To go back to my original post I'm thinking maybe I'm asking the wrong question, I'll percolate on it 
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Mar 10, 2024 23:19
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Orange Devil posted:In case you haven't realized: we literally live in such a world. I would say that in relation to Europe and the energy costs, that is primarily down to being cut off from Russia and having to source from the US or Qatar the NG needed to keep the lights on. This is simply neoliberal lack of foresight, seeing the idea of having to build their own energy independence in the way, say, France did (lol at Niger and uranium and EdF incompetence), as not being that important because of the backwards "gas station" that is the Russian state. State owned power companies would make it easier on the people, naturally. However, the EU and UK are basically finding out what happens when you have an energy shortfall and can only rely on the LNG of your supposed benefactors... for a price. Germany is especially up a creek with their economy being the biggest manufacturer one, not like the giant Excel spreadsheet industry of the UK.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:32
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Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:I would say that in relation to Europe and the energy costs, that is primarily down to being cut off from Russia and having to source from the US or Qatar the NG needed to keep the lights on. This is simply neoliberal lack of foresight, seeing the idea of having to build their own energy independence in the way, say, France did (lol at Niger and uranium and EdF incompetence), as not being that important because of the backwards "gas station" that is the Russian state. Yeah and who cut Europe off from Russian gas again? Seems like actually it is a prime example of neoliberal foresight, because now the EU and UK populations can only rely on the LNG of their supposed benefactors... for a price. Almost as if that'd be a huge motive for cutting off Europe from Russian gas to begin with. And while France was smart in the past it hasn't been investing in new nuclear as its old nuclear is nearing end-of-life, plus its finally losing its African colonies sooooo
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Mar 10, 2024 23:36
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I had hopes France may have been the one sane nation in regards to energy, but nope. The rot set in there a long time ago too, and the climate impacting on their reactors along with labour issues is the, how you say, pičce de résistance.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:41
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Tempora Mutantur posted:I agree with this, and it makes me think of (because of a deprogram episode, heh) everything that entails both logistically and otherwise (just in the abstract, as a wandering thought). Thinking about how in practice, it translates into the necessity of any movement trying to affect change needing to have a fully formed plan for exactly how distribution management should be done should they actually even begin to approach being able to exert any control over said distribution and resources. Specifically, things like the Black Panthers had begun assembling with free breakfast and medical assistance for local vulnerable people, and on a larger scale what groups like the Bolsheviks, CCP, or Ansar Allah each had defined and in place before they reached the ability to exert control over their respective region's infrastructure. another socialist text i read recently was this one by che guevara: https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1962/09/misc/x01.htm and it's basically what you're saying, like "okay we won but holy poo poo do we need a lot more guys who know how to administrate things but are still communists"
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Mar 11, 2024 00:27
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This is also why all the Talibs got office jobs after they kicked the US out and a bunch of them then went "well this sucks".
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Mar 11, 2024 00:56
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Ferrinus posted:another socialist text i read recently was this one by che guevara: https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1962/09/misc/x01.htm this piece hits hard rn
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Mar 11, 2024 01:12
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Orange Devil posted:This is also why all the Talibs got office jobs after they kicked the US out and a bunch of them then went "well this sucks". that was propaganda
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Mar 11, 2024 02:17
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Orange Devil posted:And in case you're worried that China might misuse its advantageous position vis-a-vis other countries in the future, just look at what they are actually doing: they are investing into building infrastructure and productive capacities in pretty much any country willing to partner with them all over the world in anything at all they can find mutually beneficial. They're not interested in extracting only resources and bringing it all to China, they're literally building factories, ports, high speed rail and roads in other countries. Same as they have done and continue to do in China's poorest regions. I cant remember at all where I read or heard it - either someone citing a text here, OR a youtube video of some african country's rep talking about BRI - but an analysis that's stuck with me is that China does BRI in part because it solves a problem of capital flight. If you can help boost the productive capacities of the countries you are dealing with, you then reduce the ability of your domestic capital to exploit that country's labor for their firm's/personal benefit, at the expense of the state they are defying. Whether this is something deliberate on CPC's behalf or merely a happy accident I cant remember. So the mutual benefit is not only material but also specifically political and strategic. Nation X secures its own footing with a trading parter that respects X as a sovereign nation, and China gets insurance against a capital class that aims to undermine its own domestic goals.
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Mar 11, 2024 02:45
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Ferrinus posted:another socialist text i read recently was this one by che guevara: https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1962/09/misc/x01.htm Preobrazhensky's The ABCs of Communism also talked about this, where they covered the issue of needing to incorporate administrators and professionals into the Soviet state even if they might not technically be avowed communists (yet) - how to get them on-side, and how to prevent them from becoming enemies
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Mar 11, 2024 02:46
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I've got a request for the brainiacs here. What is a good, punchy, elevator-pitch style explanation of commodity fetishism. It's one of the concepts that is core to Marx's works that I...don't necessarily struggle with, I get it I feel like, but whereas with most other things I can summarize them pretty well for when I'm converting people to godless communism, commodity fetishism feels like it eludes me, at least in a way that still retains the core of the concept. "It's viewing the product of labor as though it appeared from thin air" and similar feel grossly inadequate, and it's a concept that I feel is one of the really big ones that gets overlooked, especially when the people you're trying to explain these things to are western consumers where commodity fetishism and the worship of money are the national religion. It and the length of the working day are the parts of Capital that I remember you could really see people's worldviews shifting when they came up years ago in my Capital reading group. A way to erase social relations in such a way that they can be replaced by strictly monetary measures? edit - actually I definitely know all about this, I'm merely asking for the benefit of uhhh the lurkers.
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Mar 11, 2024 14:54
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just tell people to watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjW7yuwLV8
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Mar 11, 2024 14:58
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A decent elevator pitch, if your elevator breaks down for a couple hours
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Mar 11, 2024 15:53
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Maybe if I took some night classes to become an auctioneer....
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Mar 11, 2024 15:59
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Epic High Five posted:I've got a request for the brainiacs here. https://twitter.com/b1g_damage/status/1300210161773092866
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Mar 11, 2024 16:09
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That was Wallace Shawn?! What a legend.
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Mar 11, 2024 16:21
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Epic High Five posted:I've got a request for the brainiacs here. the most immediate thing to understand about commodity fetishism is that it is NOT about really wanting a fast car, but about liberal society treating commodities as fetish objects, i.e. as talismans imbued with mystical power that, in themselves, have desires and can make things happen. the all-encompassing Free Market basically interposes itself between you and your fellow human beings, such that if you go out to buy something for some money that thing's price appears to be an inherent property of its existence rather than a reflection of the fact that some other person or group of people made that thing, for you. except of course they didn't make it for you, either, they just made It, and sent it drifting off into the market on its own, with no thought to who was getting it or why they made it at all, except that making it was the only way for them to realize the value of their labor-power such that they could go on to buy commodities like food and water to quote a tweet on this topic i like: quote:The term commodity fetishism isn't meant to scold people for liking material things. edit: one extra note that helped me understand this when a comrade explained it: marx's original phrasing could be better translated as, instead of commodity fetishism, "the fetish character of the commodity". that is to say, he's writing about the way that commodities resemble those annoying guys from act 3 Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 16:58 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 16:46
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I used this as reference to give it a small lesson to the group haha Spun a yarn about the wall in the room, saying what it was made of etc, then what are the industrial processes involved, then the people in those processes, all up until there were bricklayers building up this wall, this building, to imagine what they did after that so on and on. Then I said that everything man-made around them has a narrative of its own, however, this implicit story becomes obfuscated by the very process of capitalism. It clicked immediately for them. While it isn't a super technical explanation, this exercise of imagination is by far and wide the most effective thing I have ever seen to talk about not just commodity fetishism, but alienation and ideological perception and so forth.
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Mar 11, 2024 16:57
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dead gay comedy forums posted:I used this as reference to give it a small lesson to the group haha i had a brief, weird discussion with a guy in a bar who was like you walk down the street and what do you see everywhere you look? that's right, rainbow flags!!! when i pointed out that he was seeing those flags hanging on privately owned businesses, and those businesses on private land, and that land patrolled by about eight thousand cops all playing candy crush, etc, he seemed nonplussed
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Mar 11, 2024 17:00
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Ferrinus posted:i had a brief, weird discussion with a guy in a bar who was like you walk down the street and what do you see everywhere you look? that's right, rainbow flags!!! so when you told him that, he seemed shocked and confused?
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Mar 11, 2024 17:13
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scary ghost dog posted:so when you told him that, he seemed shocked and confused? yes, that's exactly what i meant. he hadn't thought about it that way but it was an effective way to score a point re some stuff i had said about communism earlier
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Mar 11, 2024 17:19
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who do you think you're dealing with here. begone
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Mar 11, 2024 17:19
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unfortunatley i must ask for clarification whenever i see anyone use the word nonplussed. its impossible to know what people mean by it unless they add a redundant adjective for context
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Mar 11, 2024 17:23
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that's why i look it up every time i'm about to use it, to make SURE i haven't managed to misremember it this time around so as to end up losing rather than gaining posting cred
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Mar 11, 2024 17:28
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Ferrinus posted:that's why i look it up every time i'm about to use it, to make SURE i haven't managed to misremember it this time around so as to end up losing rather than gaining posting cred i only say it out loud so i can silently stare at the person i said it to until they either correct me or applaud me for using it correctly
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Mar 11, 2024 17:39
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