Is Marxism dead?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Is Marxism dead?

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Marxism is dead, and is now a spectre, :ghost:

~woooo~

# ¿ Oct 31, 2014 19:01

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:07

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

The key to distinguishing between stalinism and accurate historiography: Stalin's geopolitical decisions were correct. He correctly predicted that the western allies would appease Nazi Germany, delay helping the USSR for as long as possible and find any excuse to appease fascists in general. He particularly disliked Churchill because he had expressed pro-fascist sympathies pre-war, a dislike justified by his decisions during the war.

But he was also the greatest factor in the dysfunction of the USSR, not necessarily because Trotsky, Lenin or X would have 'been better', but that the power structure of a single all-powerful leader was his creation.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Nov 5, 2014

# ¿ Nov 5, 2014 18:19

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Do not respond to IWC. He will not argue in good faith. Ever.

Bob le Moche posted:

This however, doesn't mean that technological progress is "bad" or anything like that. It's more complicated than this. It is partly these increases in productivity that eventually push capitalism to its final point of crisis, and makes another mode of production possible. Socialism cannot happen unless the productive forces are developed enough first, but once they have been then the only obstacle to being able to both provide for everyone and work less is the capitalist order itself, where the means of productions are held by a minority while everyone else is struggling to find ever-scarcer jobs to survive. Seizing the means of production means the bourgeoisie reliquishing control over them, and they'd probably rather all the now-useless-to-them poor people be slaughtered than to let that happen.

But marx himself says something different, that the bourgeois' defeat is inevitable, because labor will still be necessary and thus laborers have power to exercise if they can obtain class consciousness. Your logic says that this is wrong, that actually the supplanting of labor weakens labor and thus the proletariat's defeat/mass-slaughter is inevitable.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Nov 6, 2014

# ¿ Nov 6, 2014 07:47

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

But the act of 'investing' does no work. Sowing the seeds, using the tools, adds value. That is, labor has increased the 'use-value' of the corn seeds into corn. Investing is providing the laborers with the capital and input goods you already own, either directly or as expressed in money for exchange at market price. The act of investing is not technically necessary as a part of growing corn, it is a social construction of a capitalist system. That is, investing is socially necessary because the class of workers themselves do not own the means of production, which would not exist without their own labor, but which does not belong to them, because their labor is expropriated through the ownership mechanics of capitalism.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Nov 7, 2014

# ¿ Nov 7, 2014 06:16

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

icantfindaname posted:

The decision to invest in one enterprise over another necessarily adds value, because some enterprises produce more return on investment than others. Like I said I could 'invest' in lighting hundred dollar bills on fire, but that would not give me any return. Capital must be allocated in a specific way to produce returns, it doesn't assume that pattern of investment randomly. Someone has to decide, whether that be a capitalist owner or a central planning board. This is what Marx, and the Marxists ITT, don't get or are willfully ignoring.

It does not add value, it transfers value inside the system. The fact that one enterprise may use that value more efficiently than another has nothing do with the act of investing, but is because of the laborers inside one enterprise or another, which add value. The act of deciding which enterprise may obtain capital does not add value. It is a kind of labor, but it is not directly involved in the process of production (that is, it does not directly increase the value of a good during production). But that labor is not technically a part of the act of investing: in fact, I can outsource that labor to someone else, and many people do. I can give my money to an investment firm, and it can invest it for me. It is still my money, the investment is still mine, but I've outsourced that labor of enterprise choice.

Marx was well aware of this type of labor, labor not involved in good production. Other examples include: teachers, security, cleaners, etc. The more you talk, the less it seems you actually know what you're talking about.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2014 06:29

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

asdf32 posted:

No, the things capitalist do are socially necesary.

But their status as 'capitalist' has nothing to do with it: their ownership of the MoP is not necessary.

icantfindaname posted:

It can't 'transfer value', the value didn't exist before it was created. There is no value in burning $100 bills. Value is a function of the utility of market actors, it's created by increasing utility. Value isn't inherent to labor, breaking rocks produces no value

The Marxist definition of 'value' is incoherent, it makes no sense

You keep moving goalposts and spewing out dumb little 'gotchas', but you can never seem to stick to one. Funny how that works.

Value can only increase through labor, but sure, you could do some labor that does not increase or decreases value. That's doesn't contradict that earlier statement though, because the direction of an if-then conditional actually matters. Marx called this distinction 'socially necessary labor'.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2014 06:44

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

icantfindaname posted:

So you're saying all value that will ever and could ever exist, already exists? That's the only way I can interpret this statement

I cannot see how you would ever reach this interpretation.

icantfindaname posted:

There'd be no need for a planning board if this were true, because the distribution of capital doesn't actually matter.

I never said that the distribution of capital doesn't matter, I said it creates no value in and of itself. You've yet to actually engage this statement, and instead made some dumb arguments about how not all labor creates value. Okay, sure, but you were the one who said that the act of investing 'necessarily increases value', but you cannot support that statement. Simply making tools available does nto increase the value of good production, they have to actually be used by laborers. In addition, the tools themselves are products of labors, and have some value. Thus, value hasn't been created by the act of investing, but it has been moved.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Nov 7, 2014

# ¿ Nov 7, 2014 06:58

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

What's you reasoning for how market economies evade the same problems, because I don't think they do.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2014 16:12

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Boner Slam posted:

It is well known that
a) People have an incentive to withhold or manipulate (or even just signal they might do so) private information which you need in pretty much every situation and
b) Centralized mechanisms very often can not provide a solution which both achieves its original goal and are robust to individual incentives
It should be noted that these results are very much indepedent from the behaviour you assume on actual humans - and to be sure all mechanisms including any form of market will have to deal with them.

This is nothing but magical thinking. You are just assuming a planned economy cannot work, and expect this assumption to not be disputed. You must justify it.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2014 06:45

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Those aren't 'reasons', they're at best conclusions and at worst rhetoric. They must be justified.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2014 07:12

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

ronya posted:

but the question is not "is it impossible to come to a decision, any decision", which even Arrow's theorem doesn't prohibit - it is "do the decisions thereby generated plausibly resemble what one might label as the general will of the voting group?"

The 'no-dictator' requirement doesn't actually make sense in terms of being unable to represent the 'general will', because it would impossible ahead of time to know who the 'dictator' will be. The fact that there may be a pivotal voter for any ranking system isn't actually that interesting to the topic at hand.

It's like using Godel's incompleteness theorems to argue against pursuing mathematical inquiry: it's not terribly relevant and at best a marginal concern.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Nov 11, 2014

# ¿ Nov 11, 2014 03:07

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

ronya posted:

I'm not sure how to interpret this remark. You may be confusing the theorem, or perhaps you are advocating voting for the dictator as a procedural concern but that doesn't evade the theorem inasmuch as re-introduce it at a later stage (of electing the dictator!), where the theorem will continue to apply in full force.

You do realize that the choice of voting system does fix the identity of the pivotal voter?

Do you understand Arrow's theorem? It's a proof that generates a very specific circumstance to show that not all 3 of its conditions can hold at once. But in real world terms, it's not particularly damaging, because those circumstances are unlikely and cannot be exploited (You would have to know ahead of time what everyone is going to vote for), and the assumptions that the theorem uses for what a voting system is are restrictive (IIA in particular). In philosophical terms, it at best shows that sometimes the general will cannot be conclusive - but that's only if you accept that those 3 conditions listed are entirely inseparable from the concept of a 'general will' (And again, IIA has some serious philosophical problems with it: repeated experiments have shown that human behavior about fairness does not conform to IIA). Like I said, it's at best a marginal concern.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Nov 11, 2014

# ¿ Nov 11, 2014 11:54

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

This is from a while back, so it may help to click that quote link:

ronya posted:

Arrow's theorem is a constructive proof that generates a set of conditions, not every voting profile is going to conform to those conditions. That is why I called those conditions 'unlikely'. But eventually, of course, they will occur, which brought me to my second point, that the conditions presented cannot be exploited - it's not ever possible for there to be an actual 'dictator' as we would understand it in a democratic system. But there's a deeper issue with all of this though.

You're taking arrow's theorem as some kind of disproof of democracy or it's effectiveness, but that is simply not the case. That is an abuse of the theorem. It simply proves that any voting procedure can never be immune to strategic voting. You brought up arrow's theorem to try and undermine the idea of a general will, but:

IIA is not a necessary condition for aggregating individual opinions into the general will: most voting systems do not seek (as a matter of design) to choose the candidate that is most liked, but the one that is least disliked. A change of vote over other candidates must then obviously matter. Your demand of the converse as a necessary part of any general will does not logically follow. It is special pleading on your part.
Arrow's theorem does not demolish the idea of an underlying consistent ordinal ranking. Arrow governs the transformation onto it from aggregating individuals and places constraints on that transform.
The claim that governing the state and governing the means of production are categorically alien tasks is, again, special pleading on your part.

And don't even play the historical game, let's compare democratic and non-democratic governments throughout history and see which one is most prone to instability. I can tell you, you will not be on the winning side my friend.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Nov 17, 2014

# ¿ Nov 17, 2014 19:57

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

You seem to think that business leaders don't have political power: they do, and they exercise it, regularly.

The distinction between 'economy' and 'politics' is illusory in terms of power, capitalist is a political-economic system and every business is a dictatorship. If you want all power to be accountable, then you need some kind of socialism.

Only democratic control of the means of production and the state grants ordinary people real power.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2014 04:42

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:07

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

You're not neutral, losing one's temper is a very human (if not becoming) response to disingenuous posting and aoelius has provided way more citations than asdf.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2014 13:30

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