[Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

but what about a branded vs unbranded handbag that take the same amount of labour to produce, have the same use value, but the exchange value (monetary value?) of the branded handbag is 10x higher?
or is that not the value he means?

# ? Sep 7, 2022 20:29

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 19:31

unwantedplatypus: Sep 6, 2012

Communist Thoughts posted:

This part of the labour value theory I don't really get at the moment, because plenty of things that take less labour are sold for more than things that took more or the same labour to produce.
Or are we talking some idealised value thats seperate from their actual value at sale?

I haven't read far enough into Capital but I think this is where private property and price come into play.

Price is not the same as exchange value, if I have an average, but sentimental portrait I don't want to give up; I might demand a high price for it. If the buyer tried to resell the portrait to anybody else, they would have to sell at a much lower price, probably closer to the exchange value of the generic commodity "portrait". Price is a social construct that rests upon exchange value. My sentimentality increased the price but not the exchange value. The exchange value of apples might be $2, but if I have all the apples (and armed guards), I can bump up the price to $8. I've socially enforced artificial scarcity, and chosen to raise the price. Luxury brands have a higher price due to perceived higher social status, and often times they are perceived as having higher social status due to their high price.

However, prices can't get too far from exchange values without seeing things break a bit. If you introduce price controls on bread that are too stringent, the supply will run low; and you may see a black market develop for selling bread under a price closer to its exchange value.

unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 20:42 on Sep 7, 2022

# ? Sep 7, 2022 20:39

croup coughfield: Apr 8, 2020; Can't post for 55 days!

Communist Thoughts posted:

but what about a branded vs unbranded handbag that take the same amount of labour to produce, have the same use value, but the exchange value (monetary value?) of the branded handbag is 10x higher?
or is that not the value he means?

the branding artificially inflates the exchange-value, and it could be argued its use-value increases as a status symbol, but the economic value, which is the capital-v Value, is unchanged if the production method is unchanged. you could also argue that the labor of the marketing dept to develop the brand is whats represented in the final, increased price. but dont go confusing price with Value, price is the exchange-value.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 20:39

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Communist Thoughts posted:

but what about a branded vs unbranded handbag that take the same amount of labour to produce, have the same use value, but the exchange value (monetary value?) of the branded handbag is 10x higher?
or is that not the value he means?

effectively what your brand-name handbag producers are selling is not just the commodity but the social status connotated by the thing. so they're basically selling a piece of art, and art is wonky in terms of the LTV

# ? Sep 7, 2022 20:58

The Voice of Labor: Apr 8, 2020

both the labor and the exchange value of handbags are averages. which is to say, arbitrarily, $40 is the average price of a handbag, all the brand x sold to poors and all the designer stuff sold to richs and, arbitrarily, 15 personhours is the time to make one, from seed to finished good, or 1 hour from materials to finished good, averaged over the most efficient sweatshops to the least.

as far as the labor theory of value, tariffs and tastes kind of don't matter, the important thing is that before you didn't have a handbag and now you do have a handbag. all the use value and exchange value is the direct result of human labor. again, because otherwise you would not have a handbag to be ascribing value to

The Voice of Labor has issued a correction as of 21:36 on Sep 7, 2022

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:31

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

V. Illych L. posted:

effectively what your brand-name handbag producers are selling is not just the commodity but the social status connotated by the thing. so they're basically selling a piece of art, and art is wonky in terms of the LTV

yeah cause art would be my other example, other than crypto which i think also goes fucky with LTV

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:36

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

Communist Thoughts posted:

This part of the labour value theory I don't really get at the moment, because plenty of things that take less labour are sold for more than things that took more or the same labour to produce.
Or are we talking some idealised value thats seperate from their actual value at sale?

One way to look at is this: If you, me, and three other random people from the thread were put in an operating room with all the right equipment and a "how to brain surgery" book, how long would it take us to perform a successful brain surgery on a patient? How long would it take five people trained over many, many years in the roles to perform the operation? So in essence, the labor of those trained people for the task they are trained in is worth (time us idiots would take / trained labor time) times our labor for that job. The "socially necessary" labor is the time the trained people take to do it: you and I don't have jobs as brain surgeons because we would take far longer than that: too long to do the job for the procedure to be profitable.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:42

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Communist Thoughts posted:

yeah cause art would be my other example, other than crypto which i think also goes fucky with LTV

crypto's just gambling, it's not a thing that you buy

art is, as noted, the really wonky bit and last i read anything much about this i got the impression that it's not necessarily considered a commodity as such because it cannot be mass-produced in an interchangeable way.

which is to say, it can be trivially mass-produced in an interchangeable way but we've more or less arbitrarily decided that the reproductions lose it a ton of value so who the hell knows. walter benjamin wrote about this in his essay about the work of art in the age of machine reproduction, albeit from the perspective of the artwork itself.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:43

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

ive heard it said that fine art is little more than a money laundering vehicle.

originally, though, like a portrait commissioned by a rich person, that's not so different from having a deck built. the artisan is charging a fee related to the necessary materials, tools, and how much time it takes.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:51

croup coughfield: Apr 8, 2020; Can't post for 55 days!

art produced with the intent to sell is commodified art. it is a commodity, because of that.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:57

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

ive heard it said that fine art is little more than a money laundering vehicle.

originally, though, like a portrait commissioned by a rich person, that's not so different from having a deck built. the artisan is charging a fee related to the necessary materials, tools, and how much time it takes.

sure - you can have a commodity of a decorative painting. that would come in under the LTV. however, if anyone else than duchamp tried making a urinal it would just be a urinal. duchamp's actual urinal would cost you more; tracey emins' bed would cost you more if it were made *by tracey emins in an official capacity as Art* than if reproduced, even perfectly, etc. it's its own weird thing

# ? Sep 7, 2022 21:59

unwantedplatypus: Sep 6, 2012

V. Illych L. posted:

crypto's just gambling, it's not a thing that you buy

art is, as noted, the really wonky bit and last i read anything much about this i got the impression that it's not necessarily considered a commodity as such because it cannot be mass-produced in an interchangeable way.

which is to say, it can be trivially mass-produced in an interchangeable way but we've more or less arbitrarily decided that the reproductions lose it a ton of value so who the hell knows. walter benjamin wrote about this in his essay about the work of art in the age of machine reproduction, albeit from the perspective of the artwork itself.

Materially speaking its the same phenomena as brands or status symbols, its not its own special thing.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 22:03

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

V. Illych L. posted:

sure - you can have a commodity of a decorative painting. that would come in under the LTV. however, if anyone else than duchamp tried making a urinal it would just be a urinal. duchamp's actual urinal would cost you more; tracey emins' bed would cost you more if it were made *by tracey emins in an official capacity as Art* than if reproduced, even perfectly, etc. it's its own weird thing

the most complex labor on earth is putting poo poo out of context

# ? Sep 7, 2022 22:05

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

unwantedplatypus posted:

Materially speaking its the same phenomena as brands or status symbols, its not its own special thing.

yeah but you get into a bunch of uncomfortable questions about what provides the status value and why you can't just counterfeit it etc. and that leads into a rabbithole of Authenticity

# ? Sep 7, 2022 22:07

unwantedplatypus: Sep 6, 2012

V. Illych L. posted:

yeah but you get into a bunch of uncomfortable questions about what provides the status value and why you can't just counterfeit it etc. and that leads into a rabbithole of Authenticity

Authenticity is just exclusivity, denial of use causes artificially high prices in plenty of other areas. Doesn't matter if its socially or physically enforced. Counterfeiting something reduces its perceived status due to a commonly held belief that counterfeits are worth less than originals.

Its no secret that the world of art pricing is based upon perceptions of status; and the people often appraise works by the reputation of their creators. Even art from obscure artists that suddenly gain popularity and price is fulfilling a cultural trope that people enjoy.

unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 22:23 on Sep 7, 2022

# ? Sep 7, 2022 22:16

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."

I think a key part of assessing art with LTV is that commodities are selling for their values when you have a large commodity production and circulation system of that commodity. The value in the commodity is determined by lots of producers with slightly different production methods averaging out as the value in all the individual commodities regardless of the particular commodity so the socially determined part of that requires lots of buyers and sellers all working at once. In the same way monopolies can start setting prices far away from values one singular incomparable bit of art doesn't have the same social and market forces determining price so it's determined by other elements.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 23:25

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

things that don't have value (such as unworked land, or someone's silence) might still have prices, is the short version

# ? Sep 7, 2022 23:38

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Falstaff posted:

Would you care to summarize this argument? I'm not familiar with it.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

A quick and dirty summary.

It's the anthropological, bronze age palaces and temples argument again. The origins of money, insofar as we know it and use it, arises from accounts kept by the temples in the bronze age. The priesthood kept the calendar (which told everyone when to plant), established the systems of measurement, managed the production of ale (potable beverages, very important), and managed the production of precious metals to verify their purity for the purpose of trade with other city states. The temple answers more or less to the palace.

You're a farmer, you need ale. During the planting season, you get your ale from the alehouse. The alehouse is run by the temples. You don't have money. You have wheat that is growing. You run up a tab. Come harvest, the temple takes its cut out of what was produced at threshing time.

The next step: instead of keeping ledgers, mint a coinage that is symbolic of your credit with the temple. The palace and temples create this currency, spend it into the populace (maybe they're buying excess grain for their own granaries). And voila, you can use it to pay the state what you owe. It has value because you can use it to pay, in so many words, Taxes.

And because it can be used to pay Taxes, individuals will trade it amongst themselves in the market. It becomes the commodity of universal exchange.

I don't think this is incorrect, but for an even shorter summary: A government that levies taxes that are only dischargeable via the currency it issues — i.e., you can't pay your taxes in bitcoin, or linen, etc. — thereby creates a permanent baseline demand for that currency, which propagates into other parts of the economy. This permanent demand is what allows fiat currency ("token" money, in Marx's lingo) to stay aloft and not collapse outright while performing surrogate value functions. And then from there it becomes a matter of policy whether you want to peg that currency to a commodity or another currency or the like, or maintain floating exchange rates, as has been done with the dollar since 1971.

That's the capsule for "state theory of money" — force backs it in the last instance.

unwantedplatypus posted:

Fiat money is still a representation of crystallized labor time, and is still produced for its use as exchange value.

It's produced to be used, true enough, but it's not quite the same. When the US Treasury mints a coin, chances are that that coin is going to enter circulation through a bank or the like, rather than being brought to market with the aim of "selling" it for new couches in the Treasury. We might say it's superstructural — an entity of the politico-legal institutions that sit atop the economic sphere.

To draw out the contrast: In the last instance, a commodity finds its force in value — i.e., the practical vicissitudes of social production. In the last instance, fiat currency depends on state legitimacy and the threat of violence. This is not to say that they cannot operate similarly in practice, in a marketplace, but the story does not end there; it is still important to consider these forms' differences of origins, functions, and behaviors. Economic and political entities will express different laws and different limits independent of one another.

Fiat money (or "token money" in Marx) does end up, through the mechanisms described further up the post, entering into either fixed or floating relationships with commodities, and this is where the MELT usually enters the discussion:

Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital' posted:

To measure value and price in the same units, a conversion factor is needed. Marx frequently employed such a factor ... but did not give it a name. In recent years ... the term monetary expression of labor-time (MELT) has become popular. If each hour of socially necessary labor adds $60 of new value ... the MELT is $60/hr. Multiplying labor-time by the MELT, we get dollar figures; dividing dollar figures by the MELT, we get labor-time figures.

So, strictly speaking, it's better to speak of dollars as expressing value instead of possessing value, since value is a quality that does not exist outside of the commodity form. For the sake of a day-do-day practical discussions this may seem like a distinction without a difference — not likely to be something you're thinking intensely about while buying groceries (unless things have gotten into a real bad state).

But as someone once remarked, "All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided."

unwantedplatypus posted:

If gold coins were used as money, but not raw gold; would that be a commodity?

This is a super interesting topic, and you might be interested in looking into the Roman solidus, the gold coinage introduced by Diocletian, and its gradual decreasing percentage of actual gold from Diocletian through Michael IV, Constantine IX, Constantine X Doukas, Romanos IV Diogenes, etc., until Alexios I Komnenos introduced the first-ever "gold coin" with 0% gold. We might describe this as tension between political and economic forms, a condition that may not be properly felt until you get an external party in the mix — in this particular case, some very vexed Varangians. Around that point there was a precipitous monetary crisis that actually did see barter start to rear its head around Roman lands.

(MMTers often make a point along those lines: That a sovereign government cannot be made to involuntarily default on debts denominated in its own issued currency, but the debts denominated in other things/currencies do still pose considerable danger, especially if your attempt to print your way out triggers an exchange rate crisis.)

But anyway, yes, eventually gold settlement really became the province of nations and banks, and that's roughly where it still stands today, but in an even more complexly mediated way.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 03:44

unwantedplatypus: Sep 6, 2012

Aeolius posted:

To draw out the contrast: In the last instance, a commodity finds its force in value — i.e., the practical vicissitudes of social production. In the last instance, fiat currency depends on state legitimacy and the threat of violence. This is not to say that they cannot operate similarly in practice, in a marketplace, but the story does not end there; it is still important to consider these forms' differences of origins, functions, and behaviors. Economic and political entities will express different laws and different limits independent of one another.

Fiat money (or "token money" in Marx) does end up, through the mechanisms described further up the post, entering into either fixed or floating relationships with commodities, and this is where the MELT usually enters the discussion:

So, strictly speaking, it's better to speak of dollars as expressing value instead of possessing value, since value is a quality that does not exist outside of the commodity form. For the sake of a day-do-day practical discussions this may seem like a distinction without a difference — not likely to be something you're thinking intensely about while buying groceries (unless things have gotten into a real bad state).

Don't commodities also depend on state legitimacy and the threat of violence? The ability to produce a commodity for its exchange value is dependent upon the ability to deny its use value to others. This could be personal or social violence, but in most societies its state violence. A loaf of bread only has use as exchange value if access to its use value is dependent upon payment. Even if you have bread that you cannot sell, you are incentivized to deny it to those in need as it cuts into your profits. In your other post about the debt-based origins of currency, the initial stages involved debt in the direct form of commodities.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 04:08

Atrocious Joe: Sep 2, 2011

Falstaff posted:

The copy I'm using is translated is published by Wordsworth Classics of Literature and translated by Stephen Moore, Edward Aveling, and Ernest Untermann. No idea how it stacks up to other translations, though.

Assuming this was the first English translation, if anything is wrong in it blame Engels. He says he's responsible for how it turned out in the preface of the english edition of vol. 1.

quote:

When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became evident that an English edition of the work
was really required, Mr. Samuel Moore, for many years a friend of Marx and of the present
writer, and than whom, perhaps, no one is more conversant with the book itself, consented to
undertake the translation which the literary executors of Marx were anxious to lay before the
public. It was understood that I should compare the MS. with the original work, and suggest such
alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and by, it was found that Mr. Moore's
professional occupations prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as we all
desired, we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to undertake a portion of the work; at the same
time Mrs. Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the quotations and to restore the
original text of the numerous passages taken from English authors and Blue books and translated
by Marx into German. This has been done throughout, with but a few unavoidable exceptions.

The following portions of the book have been translated by Dr. Aveling: (I) Chapters X. (The
Working day), and XI. (Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value); (2) Part VI. (Wages, comprising
Chapters XIX. to XXII.); (3) from Chapter XXIV., Section 4 (Circumstances that &c.) to the end
of the book, comprising the latter part of Chapter XXIV.,. Chapter XXV., and the whole of Part
VIII. (Chapters XXVI. to XXXIII); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All the rest of the book has
been done by Mr. Moore. While, thus, each of the translators is responsible for his share of the
work only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 04:28

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

unwantedplatypus posted:

Don't commodities also depend on state legitimacy and the threat of violence?

Sorta. But the difference here is, again, the economic/political distinction. When we speak of the vicissitudes of production being the limit, we're effectively saying that nature itself seemingly dictates "you can only get this many doodads per person-hour," and this stands whether we're talking about ounces of gold or microprocessors... at least, until we develop better technology with which to sweet-talk her. Thus, we speak of socially necessary labor time and the like. You can layer additional violences atop that (and boy do we ever!), but this sort of constraint doesn't really enter into the figuring when we talk about getting dollars.

So, in one case, the fetter is socio-natural, and the other it's just plain social.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 04:30

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

I started reading "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844", and here's a bit from the Preface that caught my eye:

quote:

"The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly the English working- class have, to a certain extent, shared in the benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but even the great mass had, at least, a temporary share now and then. And that is the reason why, since the dying- out of Owenism, there has been no Socialism in England. With the breakdown of that monop- oly, the English working-class will lose that privileged position; it will find itself generally�the privileged and leading minority not excepted�on a level with its fellow-workers abroad. And that is the reason why there will be Socialism again in England."

it reminds me a lot of the prior discussion about how socialists in the imperial core need be able to navigate the reality that workers in the imperial core themselves benefit from imperialism

# ? Sep 8, 2022 09:46

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

gradenko_2000 posted:

I started reading "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844", and here's a bit from the Preface that caught my eye:

it reminds me a lot of the prior discussion about how socialists in the imperial core need be able to navigate the reality that workers in the imperial core themselves benefit from imperialism

great quote and a great book if you read around any bit where Engels talks about the subhuman Irish who are naturally disposed to live in filth

# ? Sep 8, 2022 10:22

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

John Charity Spring posted:

great quote and a great book if you read around any bit where Engels talks about the subhuman Irish who are naturally disposed to live in filth

lmao he talks about the trickery of the Polacks in like the first page

# ? Sep 8, 2022 10:26

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Trying to explain NFTs to Marx

# ? Sep 8, 2022 11:35

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

We're getting close to the end now... Only a couple posts to go.

Revisiting Surplus Value and the Organic Composition of Capital

With Variable and Constant Capital established as concepts, we can once again go back to the M-C-M� cycle and examine it from a different angle.

Capital (or M) is the sum of constant capital (c) and variable capital (v).

Capital� (or M�) is the sum of constant capital and variable capital AND surplus value. It�s surplus value that makes the difference between Capital and Capital� (or M and M�). In mathematical terms, C = c + v, and C� = c + v + s.

Got that? Good. Now we can talk about the Rate of Profit.

The Rate of Profit is the ratio between s and Capital (expressed as a formula as either s/(v + c) or s/Capital). If s and v are equal and c is zero, then you have a 100% profit rate. This is basically never the case, though, because c is always greater than zero. When c is greater than zero, then the rate of profit is going to be less than the overall surplus value... And when c rises, the rate of profit is going to fall.

This is the key rule explaining the tendency of the rate of profit (per investment capital) to fall, from which you get many of the crises of capitalism. More on that in the next section.

Marx calls the ratio of constant capital to variable capital the Organic Composition of Capital. When c increases compared to v (more means of production are deployed in relation to labour-power), then the organic composition of capital is said to rise; conversely, if it lowers then it is said to fall. As a Capitalist system matures, you tend to see the Organic Composition steadily rise � millions invested into the economy become tens or hundreds of millions which eventually become billions or trillions, all wrapped up in ever-more-expansive means of production.

Whether or not a society (at the macrocosm) or a workplace (at the microcosm) has a high or low organic composition of capital depends on the relative makeup of the labour-force employed there compared to the sophistication of the means of production. A cigar factory in the Dominican Republic circa 1920, entirely dependent hand-tools and manual labour, is going to have a low organic composition, whereas a modern mine with robotic exploration and excavation machines is going to have a high organic composition.

Competition, the Profit Cycle, and the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall

Competition is key to expansion of capitalist-owned means of production. Outside of a monopoly, a capitalist has other capitalists and firms doing the same thing, and against whom they need to eke out competitive advantages. Typically this is done through price.

Rarely, a capitalist may be willing to sell commodities at a loss for a competitive edge. Normally, though, they still need to make a profit. They can�t screw around with c, so that means reducing the average labour-time necessary to make their commodity � our v variable. (If it takes 15 labour-hours to make a car, then finding a way to make a car in less than this time allows the capitalist to reduce the price of their car without losing surplus value.)

The most reliable way to reduce is quite simple: Invest more in c. Tools of production tend to require less time to make than the time they save... The means of production are therefore labour-power multipliers. You reduce v by producing more for less.

What one side can do, so can the other. Cutting prices is met with cutting prices, innovation with innovation. In this way, productivity rises across industries.

But s derives from v. If competition requires additional investment in constant capital (c rises), then surplus value over investment will tend to fall.

Let�s say at the start of a competitive cycle, c=10, v=5, and s=5. This is a 100% rate of surplus value and a 1/3 rate of profit. Due to competition, the capitalist needs to invest in c to produce more, and this rises to 15. If s stands still due to competition, and c rises relative to v, then the rate of profit shrinks: s/(v + c) is 5/(5+15), and our rate of profit falls to 1/4.

If the rate of profit falls too low, then further investment becomes too risky to engage in. Taken to an extreme, you�ll see cash hoarding of the kind that (in part) brought on the Great Depression. Likewise, you can have too much value invested in constant capital, which leads to a crisis of liquidity.

Hence, we get Marx�s Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.

https://streamable.com/vmjf63

This is, of course, a tendency. There are exceptions to this tendency, some of which are very important. I�ll get into those next time.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 12:13

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

Communist Thoughts posted:

Trying to explain NFTs to Marx

The particular expression embodied in NFTs is... well, baffling, but it fits the trend predicted by many Marxist theorists about increasing commodification in areas that previously had little or none, greater rent-seeking behaviours, and the over-financialization of economies in the face of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This is what people mean (whether they realize it or not) when they talk about "Late-Stage Capitalism."

# ? Sep 8, 2022 12:21

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

gradenko_2000 posted:

lmao he talks about the trickery of the Polacks in like the first page

and where is the lie, i ask you

# ? Sep 8, 2022 15:53

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Engels had a lot of weird and Problematic stuff going on that it still surprises me that the brainless chuds and vampire-funded think tanks all focus like a laser on Marx. Still mad at him for revealing the blueprints to the masses of the system they were trying to install as the natural order as ordained by God I guess, though they won out in the end in our corner of the world.

Communist Thoughts posted:

Trying to explain NFTs to Marx

He certainly would've been aware of the tulip mania so I doubt he'd be shocked. The urgent caution against ever letting middle men and rent seekers gain power in an economic system isn't a Marxist thing in origin though, that comes from both religious instruction since the beginning of recorded history as well as the earliest pro-Capitalism thinkers like Smith. The need to cut this warning out of economic thinking is why we have the Austrian and Chicago school types and their children who are even more clueless in charge of everything now.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 16:15

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Epic High Five posted:

Engels had a lot of weird and Problematic stuff going on that it still surprises me that the brainless chuds and vampire-funded think tanks all focus like a laser on Marx. Still mad at him for revealing the blueprints to the masses of the system they were trying to install as the natural order as ordained by God I guess, though they won out in the end in our corner of the world.

I honestly think they just hyper-focus on Marx because it's called Marxism and they don't think about it any more than that or even realize that there are Marxist theorists besides the man himself.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 16:17

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Imagine how robbed of theory and intellectual accomplishment the world would be if there were an equivalent to Hearts of Iron IV back then. There's no way he wouldn't have been playing it 16 hours a day.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 16:22

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

<historical figure > would ahve been just like me fr fr af

😂😂😂

# ? Sep 8, 2022 16:23

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

AnimeIsTrash posted:

<historical figure > would ahve been just like me fr fr af

😂😂😂

That's true, and extends back to the emergence of behaviorally modern humans. It's an unfortunate blindspot people have and I'm glad you've acknowledged and risen above it.

# ? Sep 8, 2022 16:26

Sunny Side Up: Jun 22, 2004; Mayoist Third Condimentist

Falstaff posted:

A Brief History of the Rise of Modern Capitalism

Labour is even more powerful than capital. If capital is the super commodity, then, labour is the ultra-commodity. But it only takes up this role in a system of capitalism. Labour, to be an ultra-commodity, must be performed by the proletariat.

But if, as we have seen, labour-as-commodity is the source of profits and therefore the single most important element within the capitalist system, then we have to ask how the proletariat became the proletariat.

-Means of production: buildings, tools, raw materials, energy, etc required for production.

-Production: The combination of the means of production with human energy to create commodities.

When workers control their own means of production, they become what Marx terms Direct Producers. This was the norm for much of history � artisans, whether individually or collectively in groups, owned their own tools and their own workshops and they simply made use of production resources. This production was independent and self-sufficient.

But this wasn�t capitalism. So how did this system become capitalism?

Early capitalism in England was the Age of Enclosure and Expropriation � this would be during the 15th through 18th centuries, though you�d find it happening on a smaller scale in later centuries (and in some places in the world the process is still happening today in some fashion; from my reading Marx believed it was something every early capitalist society inevitably went through.) This was the process by which common land, used by peasant and artisan alike for their livelihoods, was fenced off and turned into property. Once so privatized, the aristocracy could profit off of it, whether by converting farmland into pasture for the raising of sheep, or simply by selling it off to the up-and-coming merchant class. This was performed with the force of law where possible, and through extra-legal means where not, and often with brutal violence in either case.

Under the classic feudal system, most workers were serfs who were tied to the land and managed by their aristocratic landlord, but by the 15th Century there were vanishingly few serfs left � they had been replaced by the free peasantry (at least, this was the case in England, which was the focus of Marx�s history study as one of the earliest examples of industrial capitalism). These were workers who did very little work for the nobles, instead working on a small slice of private land or a less-small portion of common land. This isn�t to say aristocratic landlords didn�t exist anymore, but they had become far outnumbered by small land-owning peasants. They, individually or collectively, controlled their own means of production and thus controlled their own destiny.

The first group of workers forced into proletarianism was the bands of retainers surrounding various important aristocrats, as the king dissolved these aides-de-camp in an effort to diminish the power of the aristocracy. This pissed them off, so they retaliated by seizing peasant lands in an attempt to build economic power, converting these lands from food-growing and mixed-use lands to sheep pastures, thereby taking advantage of the rising price of wool (which granted them far, far more wealth than they ever would have via taxation.) The peasants didn�t like this, but those that tried to resist were dealt with brutally.

As years went on the theft accelerated and became even more blatant; there was a massive theft of common lands managed by the Catholic Church during the protestant reformation, and the �Glorious Revolution� of 1688 saw the expropriation of state lands for private use of individual aristocrats. This was done with varying arguments of justification, all of which were spurious. See �the tragedy of the commons,� an idea put forth by British economist William Foster Lloyd in 1833 as one such justification. The thing is, this is a tragedy that never actually manifested in reality in any meaningful degree... At least, not until after Capitalism had been established as the dominant mode of production.

Whereas before your typical peasant would own a few acres they could call their own and use productively, now they were landless. Even today, a typical worker is lucky to own even so much as a garden.

This got so bad, with so many uprooted peasants deprived of a livelihood, that Queen Elizabeth had to introduce the Poor Relief Act of 1601, which was an at-the-time nearly-inconceivable tax on property used to alleviate the suffering of the poor. This was better than nothing, but it obviously didn�t fix things, and it�s worth pointing out that this was an exception to the general treatment of the new landless masses, who were far more likely to receive incredible violence from the powers-that-be rather than a helping hand. A few fun laws of yesteryear:

-A 1530 law criminalized vagabonding, condemned vagabonds to whipping for a first offence, loss of an ear for a second, and execution for a third.
-In 1547, anyone refusing to work was condemned as a slave.
-Under Elizabeth in 1572, �unlicensed beggars� 14 or older were flogged and branded. That�s for a first offence. (Repeat offences brought execution.)

This criminalization of vagabonds and beggars � a class of people largely created by enclosure � created a class of people desperate for the means of subsistence.

So what was the ultimate effect this had on the now-landless peasantry?

Without the means of production, the direct-producer can no longer produce. All they have left is their labour-power, which they must necessarily sell in order to survive. As soon as they sell their labour-power for wages, they become a proletarian, completely dependent on the capitalist for access to the means of production. By owning the means of production, the capitalist thereby holds control over labour-power as well.

It was only in this context that money was able to transform into capital on a large enough scale to sustain capitalism as a system, because it was only now that the vast supply of idle labour-power became available to purchase. Instead of being dispersed through the countryside, tools of production like spindles and looms were concentrated in the primitive factories of the early industrial revolution.

These early factories absorbed some of this idle labour, but left most would-be workers to rot � a situation that was all-too-favourable for the burgeoning capitalist class, as it gave them great power in determining the wages, working conditions, and even living conditions of those workers they deigned to employ. But capitalism gained momentum and encompassed more and more of society, until the majority of England�s workers became proletarians. As this conversion happened, the harsh laws used to discipline workers could (at least partly) fall into disuse:

Workers are free, under modern capitalism, to sell their labour-power. But of course they have no other option, since they are also free of all means of production.

This plays into another aspect of alienation, as well:

Theoretically, both proletarian and bourgeois are equal under the law. Both enter into the agreement of employment �freely,� after all; both control a commodity the other desires, and which they agree to exchange; each disposes only what they themselves control. But the money-owner must necessarily take a role of authority, with the worker fearful of being cut off from not only the commodity the bourgeois offers but also of the means of production by which the worker can turn their labour-power into something. This necessarily subordinates the worker to an alien power � an alienation of labour.

This is intrinsic to treating labour-power as a commodity, it must be separated from the labourer to be useful, and the labourer has no say in how it is used � that is the sole prerogative of the capitalist. And regardless, whatever is produced by your labour power, no matter whether it�s a hamburger or a jupiter missile, belongs not to you as the producer but to your boss as the capitalist. The use of one�s labour-power is alienated, and once sold it can never be recovered.

The freedom to enter into an arrangement with the capitalist is simply the freedom to enter a subservient role in which your labour-power is extracted and removed from your control. And it is this abstracted labour-power � distinct from your actual labour � that the capitalist actually pays for.

If you want a beautiful (and far more digestible and brief) explanation of the four main types of alienation and Marx�s evolution of thought from feuerbach to diamat, and a more clearly articulated progression of alienation under feudalism to the obscenely alienated state of capitalism (leaning on all works from M+E, but especially the newly released notebook translations from the MEGA), I highly recommend Saito�s Ecosocialism. IMO it helps with digesting the whole of Capital + Grundrisse.

I�m actually editing it down right now to be an even quicker read for my discussion group. I cut it to 1/6 the size and am now just double triple checking to make sure it�s still cogent and flows well.

# ? Sep 9, 2022 00:48

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Sunny Side Up posted:

If you want a beautiful (and far more digestible and brief) explanation of the four main types of alienation and Marx�s evolution of thought from feuerbach to diamat, and a more clearly articulated progression of alienation under feudalism to the obscenely alienated state of capitalism (leaning on all works from M+E, but especially the newly released notebook translations from the MEGA), I highly recommend Saito�s Ecosocialism. IMO it helps with digesting the whole of Capital + Grundrisse.

I�m actually editing it down right now to be an even quicker read for my discussion group. I cut it to 1/6 the size and am now just double triple checking to make sure it�s still cogent and flows well.

Post it bitch.

Edit: seriously tho I want to read it.

Cpt_Obvious has issued a correction as of 01:17 on Sep 9, 2022

# ? Sep 9, 2022 00:57

Sunny Side Up: Jun 22, 2004; Mayoist Third Condimentist

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Post it bitch.

Edit: seriously tho I want to read it.

Sure will do, I am about 2/3 done with the �smoothing out� just been busy (intended to finish a week ago)

# ? Sep 9, 2022 03:43

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

https://twitter.com/The_TUC/status/1568187693762318336

# ? Sep 9, 2022 12:31

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

Countertendencies to the Falling Rate of Profit

Capitalists don�t like low rates of profit. If a RoP falls too low, then the risk of further investment grows to great � not every commodity, no matter how cheaply produced, is guaranteed to sell. So even while the system pushes every capitalist�s RoP downward, there are nevertheless countertendencies that are sought out, such as:
-Discovering a new market
-Trade wars (and war wars) can open up new markets and offload the falling RoP to another market/nation while claiming more surplus for yourself.
-Monopolies means a capitalist doesn�t have to worry about competition driving prices down
-Increasing the relative value of labour-power to labour-hours

It�s the last of these that warrants the most examination.

For argument�s sake, let�s say necessary labour-time is 4 hours, such that a working-day of 8 hours thereby provides 4 hours of surplus labour. If the capitalist can increase the day to 10 hours without increasing wages, then they have gained an additional 2 hours. In this manner, s will rise without changing v.

These sorts of strategies to extract more variable capital from the same set of workers Marx calls the extraction of Absolute Surplus Value.

This doesn�t always happen through an increase in overall hours, however. You can also do this by keeping the working-day steady at 8 hours, but reducing the necessary labour-time to 2 hours � by, say, moving your factory overseas where workers are paid half as much as they would be in your own country. Savvy capitalist don�t even have to choose: They can find countries where they can put workers through 14 or 16-hour work-days with wages that amount to a fraction of an hour of necessary labour. Places that have only recently been proletarianized tend to fall in this category.

You can also make your workers work faster, getting them to produce in four hours what would it would have taken them five hours to make previously. This is the claim-to-fame of scientific management, which seeks to squeeze ever-more labour-power out of the worker in the same amount of time. If this means your factory is producing commodities faster than the average socially-necessary labour-time (your labour-hours are worth 5/4ths what your competitors� labour-hours are worth!), then you�ve not only protected your surplus value, you�ve gained a competitive advantage to boot (at least until your competitors take on the same strategies � see the way McDonalds put countless restaurants out of business, right up until their management practices became the industry standard for fast food.)

Marx posted:

No capitalist ever voluntarily introduces a new method of production, no matter how much more productive it may be, and how much it may increase the rate of surplus-value, so long as it reduces the rate of profit. Yet every such new method of production cheapens the commodities. Hence, the capitalist sells them originally above their prices of production, or, perhaps, above their value. He pockets the difference between their costs of production and the market-prices of the same commodities produced at higher costs of production. He can do this, because the average labour-time required socially for the production of these latter commodities is higher than the labour-time required for the new methods of production. His method of production stands above the social average. But competition makes it general and subject to the general law. There follows a fall in the rate of profit � perhaps first in this sphere of production, and eventually it achieves a balance with the rest � which is, therefore, wholly independent of the will of the capitalist.

Another, more subtle way to increase the Absolute Surplus Value is to reduce the amount of necessary labour required in a work-day. Individual capitalists tend to have less control over this (though they can enact a great deal of influence as a class), but you�ll see this in rising productivity in food production leading to lower food prices, which necessarily reduces the value of labour-power in the macro sense: Necessities cost less, so the cost of reproducing labour-power is also lessened, which means the workforce as a whole finds their labour valued less on average. You can even see this without a strict reduction of average prices across the whole of the workforce: Consider the way Walmart abused the food stamp program to ensure their workforce�s labour could be reproduced despite criminally low wages.

Sure enough the history of labour relations since the dawn of capitalism has been one of a back-and-forth between worker and capitalist. The worker wants to work as leisurely as possible for as much pay as possible, while the capitalist wants the worker to work as hard as possible for the least amount of pay. Capital works against the reduction of the workday with all its might, and whenever possible will seek to increase the workday.

We can see, both in early capitalism and increasingly today in late-stage capitalism, that the only way Capital�s desire to increase Absolute Surplus Value is through workers organized toward their own ends. But Capital is tricky � blocked from one path to increase ASV, like the tides it will seek another even as it steadily erodes whatever blocked it. As long as there exists labour to exploit in ever-greater amounts, Capital is able to counteract this tendency of the rate of profit to fall � even if it does it in fits and spurts, even if it is unable to avoid every crisis of capital that it faces.

While a capitalist acts in the microcosm, the class as a whole acts in the macro, and therefore the struggle is global. Places with strong, mobilized proletariat organizations (formal or informal) see all these strategies for increasing Absolute Surplus Value countered or minimized, while places with a weak, disorganized proletariat see their labour-power squeezed through many of these strategies. Until labour is organized everywhere, Capital will seek new horizons to exploit.

But none of this changes the fundamental tendency: When c rises, crises loom. (Or c rises = crises, if you will)

# ? Sep 9, 2022 12:41

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

And that�s it! This wasn�t as thorough as I�d initially hoped, but as I said at the beginning I ran out of time while doing my read-through. As such, I left out a bunch of stuff from vol 3 (my copy of Das Kapital is only the first two volumes, and I have a tough time reading pdfs, though I did use a pdf to review some concepts � like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall � that are dealt with mostly in vol 3.) If you�re interested in delving deeper yourself but don�t feel up to tackling the text on your lonesome, David Harvey�s lecture series is quite well-regarded.

Regardless, I hope this was useful and/or entertaining to at least a few goons.

If you want to know my suggestions for where to go next, here�s a non-exhaustive list, all of which are available in ebook and pdf if you look hard enough:

-The Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx: A short work, this was written as a critique of the draft programme of the United Workers� Party in Germany. It�s interesting because this is one of the few places where Marx gives us some idea of what, exactly, he feels qualifies (or doesn�t qualify) as socialism (specifically: How he would solve some of the primary contradictions of capitalism.)

-State and Revolution by Lenin: Written while hiding from the provisional government (he was going to publish the work under the name of F. F. Ivanovski), this wasn�t actually published until 1918 � after the revolution took Russia. Lenin describes the relationship between state power and socialist revolution, and many of Lenin�s ideas about the practicalities of building a socialist state. It�s widely considered Lenin�s most important work. Fittingly, it got its start by Lenin being a catty bitch with Bukharin.

-Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti: Probably the best non-fiction book I�ve ever read, an absolute banger. Ostensibly a review of clashes between socialists and fascists throughout history, it�s actually a lot more than that: Covers a ton of stuff, including history, imperialism, theory, media literacy, and more, written by a brilliant author at the height of his writing power. Can�t recommend it enough, really.

-Stalin: A History and Critique of a Black Legend by Dominico Losurdo: AKA the forbidden Losurdo. Only recently translated into English (though a guerrilla translation has been floating around the net for years), this delves into the many contradictory histories of the most infamous communist, Joseph Stalin.

-Why Marx was Right by Terry Eagleton: Written as a rebuttal against what Eagleton saw as the ten most common anti-Marxist arguments, this is also handy in providing examples of applying Marxist principles to contemporary (for 2011, anyway) society. A caveat: It�s been a while since I�ve read this one, but I remember it being witty, concise, and a breezy read. Might be worth a re-read, now that I�m thinking about it.

# ? Sep 9, 2022 12:43

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 19:31

Sunny Side Up: Jun 22, 2004; Mayoist Third Condimentist

Falstaff posted:

And that�s it! This wasn�t as thorough as I�d initially hoped, but as I said at the beginning I ran out of time while doing my read-through. As such, I left out a bunch of stuff from vol 3 (my copy of Das Kapital is only the first two volumes, and I have a tough time reading pdfs, though I did use a pdf to review some concepts � like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall � that are dealt with mostly in vol 3.) If you�re interested in delving deeper yourself but don�t feel up to tackling the text on your lonesome, David Harvey�s lecture series is quite well-regarded.

Regardless, I hope this was useful and/or entertaining to at least a few goons.

If you want to know my suggestions for where to go next, here�s a non-exhaustive list, all of which are available in ebook and pdf if you look hard enough:

-The Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx: A short work, this was written as a critique of the draft programme of the United Workers� Party in Germany. It�s interesting because this is one of the few places where Marx gives us some idea of what, exactly, he feels qualifies (or doesn�t qualify) as socialism (specifically: How he would solve some of the primary contradictions of capitalism.)

-State and Revolution by Lenin: Written while hiding from the provisional government (he was going to publish the work under the name of F. F. Ivanovski), this wasn�t actually published until 1918 � after the revolution took Russia. Lenin describes the relationship between state power and socialist revolution, and many of Lenin�s ideas about the practicalities of building a socialist state. It�s widely considered Lenin�s most important work. Fittingly, it got its start by Lenin being a catty bitch with Bukharin.

-Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti: Probably the best non-fiction book I�ve ever read, an absolute banger. Ostensibly a review of clashes between socialists and fascists throughout history, it�s actually a lot more than that: Covers a ton of stuff, including history, imperialism, theory, media literacy, and more, written by a brilliant author at the height of his writing power. Can�t recommend it enough, really.

-Stalin: A History and Critique of a Black Legend by Dominico Losurdo: AKA the forbidden Losurdo. Only recently translated into English (though a guerrilla translation has been floating around the net for years), this delves into the many contradictory histories of the most infamous communist, Joseph Stalin.

-Why Marx was Right by Terry Eagleton: Written as a rebuttal against what Eagleton saw as the ten most common anti-Marxist arguments, this is also handy in providing examples of applying Marxist principles to contemporary (for 2011, anyway) society. A caveat: It�s been a while since I�ve read this one, but I remember it being witty, concise, and a breezy read. Might be worth a re-read, now that I�m thinking about it.

Thanks for all this.

Like a typical ML, to add on some books�in addition to my aforementioned Karl Marx�s Ecosocialism by Saito, and surely recommended in the thread already, but if you want to go down the line of how to think rather than read others� analyses, a great followup is �Dialectical & Historical Materialism,� or any of the primers on diamat and Marxism available free in pdf form on foreignlanguages.press, and I�d follow that with Mao�s 5 essays on philosophy.

# ? Sep 9, 2022 15:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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