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Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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TheNakedFantastic posted:

A large portion of marxist theory is more or less concerned with morality (although somewhat dressed up as a "science") and will never become irrelevant. Much of what he wrote concerning working conditions/relations and class are still relevant as well, it's just far removed from the day to day reality of many middle class 1st world workers.

I don't think there's that much morality involved in Marxist theory, I think it just is perceived that way by people whose economic interests are not those of the working class because Marxism can only appeal to them on a moral dimension.

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Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Obdicut posted:

There's a huge amount of morality in Marxist theory. Which is fine, there should be. It is based on morality, on a conception of 'species being', on an idea of what human social behavior 'should' be like, etc.

What do you see in Marxism that isn't moral? The analysis of the necessarily conditions that occur when capitalism moves forward?

Maybe I've just read the wrong books by Marx or maybe you guys are talking about the wider range of Marxist authors but (aside from the communist manifesto obviously) I find his analysis to be pretty much a descriptive theory of history/economics without much in the way of what things "ought" to be. Morally-charged terms such as "exploitation" are used, to describe specific well-defined phenomena, maybe this is what you mean?

This is one of the strenghts of Marxism to me. Capitalists in Marxism aren't "evil", their role is just more or less dictated by their situation within the economic order. Contrast this to the popular figure of the "greedy CEO" our culture often falls back to to explain away crises, or to the tendency to attribute structural problems to "corruption", where implicit in that is the conservative notion that the system is natural/good and the problem lies with the moral failure of individuals actors within it.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
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I would agree though, that whenever you have a relation of power existing in society, it is always to the benefit of the oppressor to obfuscate as much as possible the reality of this relation (for example through a justifying ideology). In that sense, openly pointing out the reality of how a social relation of power functions is a radical act that always benefits the oppressed. This is why I feel for example that Machiavelli's Prince, being widely read by not just princes, had a progressive effect overall, even though that wasn't the intent.

So in that sense Marx's entire work can be said to be morally charged, because anything that describes material reality and cuts through ideology when relations of power are involved is to the benefit of the victim, even (and perhaps especially) when such a description eschews the language of morality and ethics.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

What do you think the 'species being' is, then?

I always read it as basically meaning little more than "human nature" (and to be honest it's one of the things in Marxist theory I find a bit problematic/unnecessary and stay away from, but maybe that's because I didn't understand it correctly?)

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

It is absolutely central to Marx's theory, and it isn't 'unnecessary' at all. Marx makes the argument that productive work, and the connection with labor, is the central 'species being' of humanity, that without that our lives are suffering and alienated. That is the energy that infuses his criticism of capitalism; it is not primarily the unfairness of the distribution problem, but the divorce between the laborer and his labor, the alienation of people from themselves, society, and work through the atomization of labor that he concentrates on.

Marx's critique is that capitalism reverses the way things should be.

Hmmm thanks for these good points. I didn't realize how central "species-being" was to the concept of alienation because I've always understood alienation in an intuitive / first-hand-experience kind of way.

Obdicut posted:

All of Marx's economic analysis of the process of capitalism, the increased atomization and taking wages down to the minimum necessary for the reproduction of class, all of that only has weight and force because of the moral ideas behind it. otherwise, what's the problem with the capitalist system? Why is unequal distribution a problem?

To answer this - I still think it's possible to have a reading of Marx where the only "problem" with capitalism is that it's fundamentally unsustainable and carries contradictions that will eventually prevent it from reproducing itself and I personally find such a reading to be most valuable. I guess the notion of "natural == good" is so deeply entrenched in all of our minds that it would be a bit disingenuous to see the idea that capitalism goes against "species-being" as anything other than a moral argument against it, though.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

it might be the trivial observation that all systems change/fail, and so gives no weight or need to actually advancing the end of capitalism, since there's no reason to believe what comes after would be better or would be stable.

Again there is a lot of very valuable descriptive insight about history and economics in Marxist theory after you take out any part where capitalism "ought" to be replaced. Honestly I couldn't care less about the moral dimensions of his work and I see them as cluttering up an otherwise clear and elegant analysis. Keep in mind also that I'm saying this as someone who is very much dedicated to opposing capital in my praxis. I don't believe you need to understand Marxist theory as communicating a moral imperative to find value in it.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Slavery did not end because slave owners had a moral epiphany and realized it was the right thing to do. The institution of slavery ended (and only where it did in fact end) for material economic reasons - it was no longer sustainable.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

You need to understand Marxist theory as communicating moral ideas to make sense of it, though. Otherwise, why do you care about alienation, about the lack of remotely egalitarian distribution, or any of the rest of it matter?

Primarily because I have to sell my labor in order to survive and alienation + precarity sucks pretty bad so I'd rather do something about it.
Of course I want to believe that for moral reasons I'd be opposed to capitalism even if I benefitted from it overall because I, like everyone else, convince myself that I'm a good person.

Laphroaig posted:

Let me make the point I am driving at clear: A Marxist critique of chattel slavery as inherently unsustainable makes no sense because it evidently WAS sustainable for the entirety of recorded human history until the 1930s. It was displaced by another system, capitalism, and it was in many places displaced only forcibly after wars.

All these things are part of what is meant by "unsustainable" though: the material conditions of slave owning societies (production techniques, population density, etc) evolved to a point where a new economic system, capitalism, arose, and eventually because of these changes wage labour becomes more economical to the ruling class than slavery.

Very much on board with the idea that "stable == good" is a complete fallacy, of course.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

When you say it 'sucks pretty bad', from what perspective?

For the sake of argument: my own?

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

Okay. What does 'sucking' involve? How are you not making a moral judgement when you say it 'sucks'?

Right OK yeah sure in any discussion where you posit the existence of a freely acting agent you implicitly attribute its choices to a moral stance. It's very much because I'd rather not get bogged down in such discussions of philosophical concepts (not that I think there's no place for that) that I'd rather focus as much as possible on the descriptive materialist elements of economic theory, sociology, and political science.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Is it not OK for me to ascribe value (a moral judgement, yes) to a reading of a text which avoids claims about ethics? And to ascribe more value to this than I do to any ethical claims? This is what I meant with this post http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3677666&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post437175509

Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Nov 3, 2014

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Obdicut posted:

I don't understand what you mean at all. We're not talking about a text that discards claims about ethics. Furthermore, when you say that
" In that sense, openly pointing out the reality of how a social relation of power functions is a radical act that always benefits the oppressed." How on earth do you define 'oppression' in the absence of ethical claims?

Sorry I was trying to say: a reading which focuses on the parts of the text which are not about ethics. And of course I am myself making ethical claims and moral judgements. One of which is that I'm saying: I'd rather use intellectual tools other than those of ethical discourse when attempt to understand and describe society/politics/economics because I see this as more productive (yes subjective statement of value).

I don't really feel like this discussion is going anywhere :/

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Has anyone read Alain Badiou's ethics? I haven't yet but it's on my reading list: it sounds like it might address the frustrations I increasingly have been feeling towards ethical discourse in general as it relates to these problems. Evidently I'm having a lot of trouble expressing exactly what I mean here.

I have bourgeois friends who come up to me (who they perceive as their radical social justice friend) and ask things like "This person offered to do unpaid work at my company and I turned them down. I did the ethical thing, right?" like they're seeking validation from me or something, reassurance that even although they're a business owner they're a good person and not part of the problem. What am I supposed to answer to that? It's like my literacy with radical thought makes me some kind of spiritual guru for them? I get really frustrated at this because political economic critique shouldn't give a gently caress about this sense of individual moral purity and has nothing to do with it.

Discourse around morality really appears to be counter-productive more often than not in practice. Look at the way our culture thinks about racism for example. It's understood as this "sin" that bad people have and that everybody thinks they are themselves not guilty of. Racism is caused by racists who are evil and I am not a racist - what is this if not a complete obfuscation of the reality of structural racism that we all have a hand in perpetuating?
Which is the more liberatory stance? "My landlord is amoral and a racist", or "My landlord reproduces racist aggression towards me despite having the best of intentions because of the role they have within the institution of private property".

Does the working class need to believe stronger that freedom is good and exploitation is bad to become revolutionary? Or do they need a better understanding of the reality of the capitalist mode of production and how it operates in practice?

Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Nov 3, 2014

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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What difference does it make if the bourgeoisie is in fact not alienated and is quite fulfilled under capitalism?

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Here is an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning more about the kind of alienation the bourgeoisie is facing in our society: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FirstWorldProblems

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Kurnugia posted:

Marx was a insufferably boring writer, so none. I've read plenty of analyses regarding his theories of how the so-called oppressed workers would develop their class-consciousness, which underpins his conjecture that the dominant force of history is class struggle. Of course, the problem is that the whole division between "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" is completely arbitrary. It has to be, because in reality there is no such thing as a social class that would define people's position or fate in society. People are what they think they are, and there's a lot more to that than being "proletarian" or not.

How do you pay for your livelyhood? Is it primarily through owning shares in a company, rent from property, or some such thing? Then you're part of the bourgeoisie. Is it by entering a contract with an employer who pays you for your work? Then you are a proletarian. Most people will easily recognize themselves as currently belonging to one of these two categories.
The social class in which you were born is in fact the primary factor which determines your position in society and social mobility is pretty much a myth. Anyone who takes a serious look at the data knows this. Here is a recent article on the topic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...erything-wrong/
You display your ignorance with a lot of pride.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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icantfindaname posted:

I'm arguing that Marxism is a dumb bad ideology that purports to be in the objective interests of the working class when such a thing doesn't actually exist

You are arguing very well I am fully convinced by your posts which really display a mastery of the subject at hand

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Kurnugia posted:

Actually I do both, as do a lot of people I know. Meanwhile my best friend's father is an old-school communist, who own's his own metal workshop and employs three people. You say proletarian, I tell you I am not. Because I don't think of myself as belonging to any group that has any common interests with you. Of course you cannot understand this argument (because you're a marxist), that people's self-image is more important to them than their income class.

Also, just because America is a shithole doesn't necessarily mean things here are as bad as with you guys. Enjoy your broken rear end society I guess :shrug:

I'm sure the people who make the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and built the building you live in also own some stocks on the side in addition to working for a living. If they don't they just need to believe harder that they do.

Also where do you live and do you think that your society is a bubble that is somehow independent from the rest of the global economy?

Edit: if your friend owns a business that hires employees then he is an "old-school communist" in the same sense that the communist party of China is

Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Nov 3, 2014

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Kurnugia posted:

Is there a point in any of this?

The point is you don't know what you're talking about

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Typo posted:

Why?

Old-School Communists were pretty fine with exploiting labor as long as it's in the name of -their- ideology.

Oh wow sorry I totally forgot about to consult the very important source of "things right-winger pull out of their rear end without understanding anything about history or any of the words they use" before forming an opinion

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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I criticize Von Mises all the time because it's loving stupid poo poo and I know this because guess what: I've read it! O:

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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icantfindaname posted:

Explain exactly what alienation is if not what I quoted. I'm not going to get into a dick measuring contest of how many of Marx-sama's glorious writings I've memorized. If you can't make your own arguments without pointing to a stack of books why are you here?

Why and how do you work? If you work because the outcome of your work is something that you desire to create, and if you are in full control of how you work, then congratulations you are not alienated!
If you work creating something that you only care about because you get money for it that you need to survive, and if someone else tells you how to work, then sorry you seem to be alienated my friend :/

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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icantfindaname posted:

So you're saying Karl Marx knows better than I do how my life should be structured? Surely you're not surprised that such a theory isn't overly popular?

Wait did I say anything about how Karl Marx thinks your life should be structured? These are just words describing things that happen to people

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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USEFUL GLOSSARY of Marxist terms to help people CRITICIZE MARX better while sounding SMART and KNOWLEDGEABLE about the subject:

- Exploitation:
Let's say there's a firm that produces a product, it sells this product on the market for money. It then uses the money to pay the employees who made the product. If there is still money left for the owners of the company after paying the employees then "exploitation" is happening: simple! You can think of it as a different way of saying "profit".

- Alienation
Why and how do you work? If you work because the outcome of your work is something that you desire to create, and if you are in full control of how you work, then congratulations you are not alienated!
If you work creating something that you only care about because you get money for it that you need to survive, and if someone else tells you how to work, then sorry you seem to be alienated my friend :/

- Class/Proletariat/Bourgeoisie:
How do you pay for your livelihood? Is it by owning shares in a business? Rent from landed property? Ownership of private assets in general? If this is the gist of it then congratulations you win at capitalism and you are part of the bourgeoisie!
Is it by entering a contract with an employer where you sell your labor to them in exchange for a wage? Then sorry you are a proletarian :( You do things like produce things for the bourgeoisie at your job, pay rent to them so you have a place to live, and pay interest to them on your debts.

- Ideology
Careful: it does not mean "political opinions" in Marxism. Ideology is the set of assumption that we as a culture have about society that we're often not even aware of because we think of them as being "natural" or "universal" or "common sense" or "how things work". For example "hard work will be rewarded by success" is an example of an ideological belief. "women need to be protected" is another. "my country deserves respect" is another. The sphere of ideology is usually contrasted to the "material", which means: what is actually happening in the real world in practice.

- Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie / Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Today, in practice, the state represents the interests of the bourgeoisie and essentially works for them. The "dictatorship of the proletariat is an hypothetical situation where the state would instead represent the interests of the workers and work for them. If you use the term to mean "Stalinist totalitarianism" Marxists will be able to tell you don't know what you're talking about.

- Class Struggle/Antagonism
"Exploitation" as defined above, meaning "profit" is what the bourgeoisie, who own everything, relies on to keep existing as a class. The money a company makes that goes to the owners is money that doesn't go to the employees. This means that the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are in opposition with each other. In times of crisis this manifests itself in harsh ways and often leads to state violence being used against the proletariat.

Hope this helps! Feel free to quote this at people who use those terms without understanding them in the future!

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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asdf32 posted:

Here are massive problems:

Marx makes distinctions based on how you make your money - this distinction doesn't matter. You can be a filthy rich laborer.

Marx makes distinctions between whether you're exploited (his definition) or not - it's irrelevant. You can be a dirt poor owner.

This is true! Both of these things happen sometimes. However they are very rare exceptions which really don't matter when you take a step back and study the economy in the grand scheme of things. You'll find that the two examples you use are so rare in practice as to be non-significant if you look into it.
A dirt poor owner is not very likely to stay an owner for very long. A filthy rich laborer is very likely to retire early by acquiring capital.

asdf32 posted:

Marx claimed capitalism was doomed to failure. It isn't. It's the dominant mode of production.
Not just Marx claimed that, even Ricardo and most other liberal capitalist theorists made the exact same claim. It's pretty incredible to me that anyone would be so assured that any economic system is bound to last forever. What makes capitalism so special as to be the one final mode of production for human civilization when every other system has been replaced? Believing this sounds like quite the act of faith! During its entire existence capitalism has also been a lot more unstable and faced more frequent crises than any other mode of production. Today we're facing ecological collapse, unprecendented inequality, and instability all over the globe so it's undertandable that many people see in these things a reflection of the unsustainability of capitalism.

asdf32 posted:

The hilarious thing to me is that Marx was a smart guy. His main problem was that he was writing 150+ years ago when these distinctions seemed to make sense. But since his death we've had Marxist states rise and fall, seen capitalist states invent the middle class as we know it and we've seen capital ownership become as accessible as a Big Mac.

If you think for a second that Marx would have witnessed these things and not significantly re-evaluated his positions then you think less of Marx than I do.
The cool thing about Marxism is that it didn't end with Marx, and Marxists economists who witnessed all these things have been having debates and coming up with new theories to attempt to explain those things and understand them better the whole time. In contrast the theoreticians of liberal economics are holding onto to the very same tenets without empirical basis as they were decades ago despite the historical record proving their theories wrong over and over again. Any political economist worth its salt will tell you that while Marxism may not be the perfect economic theory to describe how capitalism works, it's certainly a better fit than anything out there - the more "mainstream" economic theories are typically primarily interested in coming up with justifying narratives for why the current system is good, while marxist economics focus on critique and deconstruction.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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asdf32 posted:

They're not rare.

The middle class also retires on acquired capital.

The middle class is disappearing. Retirement funds are being gutted left and right and fewer and fewer people have access to them. How do you define the middle class and what proportion of the world's population belongs to it? How much of a factor is the middle class when the richest 1% own 65 times the value of what the bottom 50% do?
The people who produce everything that your lifestyle depends on, who make your clothes, grow your food, built your home, assemble your ipod: do you think they will retire comfortably on a 401k?
If there is a middle class today things certainly don't look as if more people will belong to it in the future, quite the contrary since ownership is increasingly being concentrated in the hands of the few.

asdf32 posted:

Defend the utility of this distinction:
Corporate Lawyer: Exploited
Half starving subsistence farmer: Not Exploited

The half-starving subsistence farmer, by definition, exists outside of the capitalist mode of production. They are almost certainly negatively affected by the effects of capitalism in today's world, though.
The corporate lawyer is exploited by the firm they work at, according to the simple definition of exploitation used by Marx. This is a technical term and I don't think much should be read in it about whether they "deserve" the money they get on a moral level or whatever. It's an useful distinction within the broader context of a general analysis of how capitalism works: being an employee vs being a capitalist are fundamentally different ways of functioning within the economy.


asdf32 posted:

The world is more stable and less violent today than ever. Get your facts straight.
Are you referring to the recent Steven Pinker or Jared Diamond books? Other authors have pointed out some serious problems with their analysis but I don't think anything really hinges on this point: the claim that any economic system is going to last forever is a pretty outlandish one, and economists on both the left and the right state that there's good reasons to believe capitalism will have an end.

In Marx's case the explanation for why that is more than "everything else has had an end", though. It's based on an analysis of how capitalism develops over time which necessarily leads to this conclusion. Capitalism is always evolving and things like the ever-greater concentration of capital ownership, the development of production techniques and of automation, and the opportunities for expansion offered at any given time all contribute to its eventual collapse.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

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Best Friends posted:

Please tell me more about the incredible predictions Marxist economics has given the world and please compare them to "liberal" (real) peer reviewed economics.

Do you think Marxist economists aren't published in peer-reviewed journals or something?
Whenever a major economic crisis hits the great economist figureheads of the capitalist world all go "Wow we certainly didn't see this coming nobody could have predicted this!?" when Marxist authors had been laying out what would happen all along. No but really by all means do tell me how the amazing neoliberal economic policies that are being implemented by governments around the world as we speak are totally going to make everything better this time and not end up causing an even deeper crisis than in 2008. Please do I'm sure history will prove you right.

JeffersonClay posted:

Literally everything in this paragraph is wrong informed by your ideology and not materialism. Marxist economists are still trying to shoe-horn Marx's flawed labor theory of value into something that isn't provably false, orthodox economists are the only ones who actually care about empirical evidence and microfoundations for their theories, empirical support for Marxism is impossible because there are no natural experiments, nearly every academic economist would describe Marxism as either substantially flawed or useless, and there is significant debate within mainstream economics about the value of laissez faire capitalism, see: John Keynes, Paul Krugman, and Thomas Piketty.

Oh man the labour theory of value thing, classic! Yeah great let's have an argument about how different economic theories attribute a different meaning to the subjective term "value" awesome I can't wait.
How can you say there is no empirical evidence for marxist theory but there is for orthodox economics when they are literally both studying the same thing: capitalism, and using the same data. Do you think "marxist economics" means people writing policies for imaginary state-planned economies or something?

Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Nov 4, 2014

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Look at any capitalist country which enjoys a "high standard of living", look at what the citizens in that country consume, look at where the stuff they consumed is actually produced, look at whether the people who do this production enjoy a "high standard of living".
I should have added "Imperialism" to the glossary I think.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Tsarist Russia was a beacon of first-world economic development until the soviets hosed it all up and made it into a third-world shithole. Now that it's been integrated back into the global capitalist economy Russian citizens and of other eastern european countries enjoy a higher standard of living than ever before.

All third world countries used to be great places to live in for their citizens back when they were colonies under the british/french/spanish empires but those marxist revolutionaries ruined everything unlike with third world countries which maintained a capitalist relationship with the West and are currently doing amazing.

China would have become a bigger economic superpower than the US decades earlier had it not rejected foreign investors.

^^^
These things are what people in this thread literally believe

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Typo posted:

If the Marxist economists can predict crisis "all along" what prevents them from get rich by shorting the stock market?

Personally I'm playing the long game and shorting the entire capitalist economy ;)

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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asdf32 posted:

Socialism has literally zero economic answers for global poverty.

What the hell are you talking about? Socialism has plenty of answers for global poverty (what do you even think socialism is about???) and this is why Marxist movements are strongest and most influential in the third world while the only place where they are demonized to the extent they are in this thread is the Western world.

You know how American presidents say that what they're doing is for "democracy" and "freedom" because this is what americans believe in? In the rest of the world political leaders talk about "socialism" in the same way when implementing their own bullshit policies

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Nintendo Kid posted:

Name the specifically socialist solutions.
Well there's many options but for an obvious one how about seize back and redistribute all industries and land currently held by foreign capital? (which in poor third-world countries is basically all of them)
Also you can try making friends and forming some kind of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with them or some such.
I guess this usually leads to a violent imperialist reaction and a right-wing puppet dictator being installed by the CIA, but that's hardly the fault of socialism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nintendo Kid posted:

Declaring that you're supporting insincere policies doesn't seem smart, chiefo!

Sorry I think you misunderstood me? I don't think that's what I was doing. I might support the struggle of the working class against capital and I hihgly value marxist economic analysis but that doesn't mean I'll automatically fall 100% behind the policies of any politician waving a red flag.

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

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asdf32 posted:

So the sovereign nation of China builds stuff, puts it on boats and sends it to the U.S. why exactly?

Because it makes a few chinese officials/capitalists very rich in the process

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Nintendo Kid posted:

I don't think you quite get that the foreign powers tend to invest the minimum into the exploited country that they can to get their money back out, dig? We saw exactly what happened during decolonization, even when the new nations were able to halt the Eurofolk from taking back everything not nailed down, what they had built and what was in the country was a subservient system that could not be self-sufficient.

The USSR was formed by aggressive war powered by what happened to be a significant proportion of already trained and equipped troops. Not something poor countries tend to be "allowed" to have these days.

Like even without outside intervention, colonialist policies actively make it difficult for socialism to function to bring up those countries. They've been kneecapped, and had a ball and chain stuck on there for good measure.

Yeah no doubt you can't do very much to achieve full socialism in a pre-industrialized country but I'm pretty sure I'd rather live in a country where industrialization efforts are being led by an anticolonial leftist government than by the invisible hand.

Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Nov 4, 2014

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Nintendo Kid posted:

The thing is that it tends to be just "anticolonial" and "leftist" as buzzwords in those cases. Cuba's just about the only one's that's operated honestly.

I'd say plenty others were on track to operate as honestly as Cuba if it wasn't for foreign intervention, no?

Edit: take Burkina Faso for an example related to recent news

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Nintendo Kid posted:

They somewhat attempted it 30 years ago but I don't consider it recent news. The guy who started out leftist idealistic quickly got to purging and basically what you could call Pinochet tactics before the French backed counterrevolution came in.

Sorry the recent news is they overthrew Blaise Compaore 3 days ago

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Let's have a forum roleplaying thread where D&D posters reenact the historical events which lead to the formation of the fourth international it'll be so good!

The real question for our time is how would Slavoj Zizek have led the war against fascism?

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Nintendo Kid posted:

Yeah but gently caress that guy because he's a French puppet who's been gleefully allowing Burkina Faso to remain one of the worst educated, least infrastructure countries in the world. A straight up grade A fuckwad even if the people who are going to replace him probably won't be better.

Oh yeah no question about this, my hope for Cuba-style alternate history Burkina Faso was lying in Thomas Sankara, you were correct about that part

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


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Best Friends posted:

Great! So give me some examples comparing published Marxist economic papers and published uh, normal economist papers and let's compare their predictions. Very eager to see the economic paper that said a market crash was impossible by the way.

Why are you asking me to do your work for you are you a capitalist?

Marxist economics don't say a crash is "possible", they see it as inevitable and a fundamental feature of how capitalism actually works. In contrast orthodox economics (the word you were looking for is orthodox, or neoclassical+keynesian) keep faith in the magical thinking that crises can be avoided and posit solutions that only end up creating new and deeper crises down the line. They are consistently proven wrong over and over again; capitalism never once functioned according to the utopian vision that orthodox economists have painted of it and keeps producing crisis after crisis, it's pretty embarassing! Meanwhile the Marxian approach is consistently able to account for and explain the problems faced by capitalist economies.

If you're really interested in learning more about marxist economics these journals are good places to start to find published papers: "International Journal of Political Economy", "New School Economic Review", "Review of Radical Political Economics", "Rethinking Marxism", "Historical Materialism". Here's an easy-to-read 2008 essay which explains the most recent crisis, citing articles that predicted it before it happened: http://monthlyreview.org/2008/04/01/the-financialization-of-capital-and-the-crisis/ It also makes new predictions!

Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Nov 4, 2014

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Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


(This title paid for by money stolen from PDVSA)

Typo posted:

What are you talking about?

Pretty much all economic schools acknowledge boom and bust cycle as real thing, they might differ on how to respond to it, but even Laissez-Fairers acknowledges that it's a real thing.

This is an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_business_cycle_theory
From the first paragraph of your wikipedia link:

"RBC theory sees recessions and periods of economic growth as the efficient response to exogenous changes in the real economic environment. That is, the level of national output necessarily maximizes expected utility, and government should therefore concentrate on long-run structural policy changes and not intervene through discretionary fiscal or monetary policy designed to actively smooth out economic short-term fluctuations."

This is actually a pretty good example of exactly the kind of thing I was trying to refer to! The explanation RBC posits for why crises happens is not because of the dynamics of the economic system itself but because of made-up external "technological shocks" (which are nowhere to be found in the data), and the idea that the role of policy is to manage such fluctuations implies that they can, in fact successfully be managed. I urge you to take a serious look at the Marxian take on business cycles because you might find it to be much more explanatory.
Another thing is that marxist economics cite orthodox economists all the time and make use of their models while also critiquing them where they fail to be satisfactory, so if I sounded like I was painting a picture of two completely separate and independent fields that is not the case at all. The non-marxist side also occasionally pulls ideas from the marxist one, sometimes failing to acknowledge so (Piketty)

Typo posted:

Again, if they "predicted it before it happened", why is the person or people in question not rich from shorting the stock market?
I thought you were being tongue-in-cheek about this to be honest. In order to "become rich" through financial speculation you need access to a significant chunk of capital in the first place, and I think it's fair to say this is something that marxist economists understand. Even if you can see the general form that a coming crash will take and the reasons that lead to it there are still tons of unknowns (when exactly will the crash happen? Who will get bailed out and who won't?) Also I guess maybe they aren't really that interested in becoming capitalists for various easy-to-speculate-on reasons?

Obdicut posted:

You're fallaciously claiming that the theories of neoclassical economists have been implemented. They haven't. What we have is the ginormous hodgepodge of weirdness and bullshit that comes from our political system and the regulatory process.
That's a good point and it would be dishonest to point to, say, the ideas of a crackpot like Alan Greenspan (albeit a very influential one), as being representative in any serious way of the state of non-marxist economics. I'd rather a discussion about the merits of economic theories focus on their explanatory power with regards to understanding and analyzing the current economic system than to anything to do with policy so you can forget anything I said about that.


Vermain posted:

It should be noted that the "financialization hypothesis" for the 2008 crisis is a disputed one in heterodox economic circles. Andrew Kliman and the temporal single system interpretation (TSSI) camp view the fall in the rate of capital accumulation as a consequence of the long-term fall in the rate of profit since the post-WWII days. You can read his response to the financialization hypothesis here (Word document).
Yes that's an important point: non-orthodox economics are far from being homogenous and there is lots of debate within it.

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