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Flowers For Algeria posted:At least communism is good on paper ah, actually this is not true. Communism doesn't work on paper if humans are not equally transformed to a new, completely social identity (cf Marx). Which is also why Marxism is popular with sociologists, who over-socialize actors, and unpopular with economists, who under-socialize actors (cf. Granovetter about Embededdness). In all attempts towards non-capitalism so far, humans did not transform and the predicted result from theory is something like Venezuela. pretty simple which is btw a corollary to what you think the basis of Marx is ("Capital = Power"). If capital is not the determinant, other economic power relations become relevant. All economic allocation problems still have to be solved. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Mar 26, 2017 |
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Mar 26, 2017 11:57
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rudatron posted:literally none of that is true It's literally all true. Marx though that the Proletariat had to get rid of Capitalism to develop their social potential in the exact same way that the citizens had to break with the religious class earlier to develop the bourgeoisie. He literally writes that the pure, developed human is a social being who attributes the same weight to society and is indeed fulfilled by it and hence all the issues of communism are resolved ex-ante. Just as the religious class surpressed the citizens, capital makes it impossible for workers to achieve their "true human"way. If the social conditions were achieved, the human would naturally be free to be the social beings they are. I can source the quote, but it's a very basic tenet of all his writings around the time in Paris and Cologne and underlies, in my opinon, all his ideas about the concrete organization of communism. You know that Marx wrote more than just a critique of capitalism duder
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Mar 26, 2017 13:06
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Here are quotes from the 1844 manuscripts, but you will find this stuff elsewhere if you wanna look "In general, the statement that man is alienated from his species-being means that one man is alienated from another as each of them is alienated from the human essence" "Since human nature is man's true communal nature, men create and develop their communal nature by their natural action; they develop their social being which is no abstract, universal power as opposed to single individuals, but the nature of each individual, his own activity [...] but so long as man has not recognized himself as man and has not organized the world in a human way, this communal nature appears in form of alienation" "Communism is the positive abolition of private property and thus human self-alienation and therefore the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man [...] as the conscious return of man - conserving all the riches of previous development [..] as a social, ie. human, being. Communism as completed naturalism is humanism [..] It is the genuine resolution of antagonism between man and nature and between man and man. [...] The positive abolition of private property is therefore the positive abolition of all alientation, thus the return of man out of religion, family, state etc. into is human, ie. SOCIAL being.[...] The supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of human senses and qualities, but it is this emancipations precisely in that these senses and qualities have become human, both subjectively and objectively. The eye has become a human eye WHEN its object has become a social, human object [...]. Need and enjoyment have thus lost their egoistic nature and nature has lost its mere utility in that its utility has become human, that is social, utility." He also states how this communal being works (and why communism would work without money and poo poo) I am to lazy to quote directly but essentially production objectifies human essence and this would be enjoyable for the person. Furthermore "in your enjoyment or use of my product I would have had the direct enjoyment of realizing that by my work I had both satisfied a human need and also objectified the human essence". The producer would be "acknowledged as a completion of ones own essence" and would thereby realize that he was "confirmed both in your thought and in your love". "My work would be a free expression of my life, and therefore a free enjoyment of my life.", "Work would thus be genuine, active property". Communism works on paper exactly when you believe that human nature is communal, that humans will realize the social needs as their own and get free and genuine expression and enjoyment by doing their work for other human beings. If this is your principle axiom, then communism works on paper. This implies that we have to change from our "alienated self", in which I for example would not be happy to clean your toilets for free (and free here means REALLY free. Free of status, free of position, free of power!), to a social self in which my utility transcends as social utility and I realize your enjoyment of a clean toilet, directly, as my enjoyment and my expression of my human essence and vice-versa. This is literally what Marx writes (except toilet cleaning). So that's the extend to how communism works on paper. If you deny that it does not involve a substantial transformation of humans to a higher, social being, you are not reading Marx right. steinrokkan posted:It says that an atomized society is a dysfunctional, diseased society. Is that controversial? Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Mar 26, 2017 |
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Mar 26, 2017 13:40
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rudatron posted:You made a claim about Marx advocating 'transforming' people, and you failed to back it up. The quotes you have are dealing with alienation and freedom from oppression, not a magical utopian transition of people into a new and different kind of people. The quotes and the stuff below show what I was saying. End of alienation MEANS the transformation into a social being, described in detail. It says it LITERALLY right in the quotes you did not read. I am not going to copy down thousands of words, but there is a boatload of this sentiment in his writings and I am baffled that this is news to you. You either did not read those quotes, did not read the manuscripts, or any of Marx's works for that matter, or are trolling. Marx is very specific that about true human communal nature and it is a basic requirement for his third-form communism. Marx was cool&good but he was a man of his time and this was exactly the state of the art conclusion of his line of philosophical thinking at the time. I am sorry to critique your religion I guess, but maybe you wanna go ahead and read a bit more or something I dunno
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Mar 26, 2017 14:15
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steinrokkan posted:The transformation is simply the recognition of one's unfulfilled potential and the structures preventing its realization. It is a major step as a social phenomenon, but not some transcendental jump as far as the individual is concerned. wow, it's enraging how dishonest you are. He describes exactly the thought process when "utility has become human, that is social, utility.". The "return of man out of religion, family, state etc. into is human, ie. SOCIAL being." is a substantial change in the human condition in that "the eye has become a human eye WHEN its object has become a social, human object". As soon as this occurs, humans act completely different. Their utility, in four steps, derives through social action. Both society and man are defined through the conditions of the system. Marx could NOT be more specific on this: It is the HUMAN that changes in communism. In context, it is the same reason that humanism can and could not develop and be developed by people alienated by religion. This was a mental transformation of specific human beings that Marx saw as exact parallel to end of alienation through capital. He literally writes how people in communism would think differently and would act differently than people under capitalism and this is one of the pillars of communism by Marx. ugh
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Mar 26, 2017 14:28
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steinrokkan posted:I don't see how this is some unsurmountable problem that you make it to be. A critical social change of the same magnitude happened in the transition from feudalism to industrial society, and nobody bats an eye at that. The transformation comes from realization of the latent human aspects, not from the creation of some additional faculties currently lacking in humans. So? This is immaterial to the fact that it is a transformation, just as Marx said, and furthermore that the belief in these latent human aspects is a critical pillar of communist theory, as stated by Marx: the true human being is a social being. And social means acting and feeling, and enjoying and even loving in accordance with the societal wellbeing. In terms of theory it is the idea that humans become social optimizers, which they are not under private property, which Marx also writes. And certainly not now. So this change is important, and whether it is true nature, as Marx writes, or not, it is a transformation, as he also writes. You can argue all you want about this, but it is absolutely clear from Marx' works that he envisioned the end of alienation simultaneously as end of men vs. men problems of all kind (he wrote this literally). So if this does not occur as predicted, then communism can not be successful. And this is exactly the degree to which it works on paper. Do you believe that the true human nature is social?
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Mar 26, 2017 14:43
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Ferrinus posted:Wait a minute, though. Your quotes don't argue to that effect - you're reversing the order. Marx says that communism will transform human social identity, NOT that human social identity must first be transformed or else communism can't work. Now, sure, the former is a pretty tall claim and the latter is a commonly made argument, but they're not the same thing. Marx is the guy who says material circumstances give rise to social relations, not vice versa. dude I get that, I quoted him directly. I am not the "Marxist-who-hasn't-read-Marx" itt. But think for a minute about the details of communist production as given in the manuscripts. A consequence of what he is stating is that if Communism does not lead to this change in human behavior and really, utility, then communism can also not solve alienation of men to men, which necessitates exchange because people's welfare does not EQUAL social welfare, which is exactly the mode of production Marx wants. And we are not talking about approximate social welfare here. In a communal Marxian system, NO exchange of anything is AT ALL necessary. this is his point
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Mar 27, 2017 06:44
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Fiction posted:I'm pretty sure the labor theory of value has held up even into the model of 21st-century global capitalism. Not really. If you look at detailed elaboration, for example by Rosa Luxenburg etc, it's really a very simplistic way of modeling the economy that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It was good considering that Marx did take into account the state of the art of economics, which no Marxists does today, was competent to see its flaws, which few Marxists do in earnest today, and that he looked very detailed at the actual accounting flows in firms, which also no Marxist does today. But his modeling is much more restricted and less flexible than what came after him. Labor theory of value is pretty much dead just by the fact that Marx analysis itself is inconsistent (for example since he just simply assumes everything about prices, works in perfect and static markets and was never able, with good reason, to show that these assumptions actually make sense). Since he can be attacked in this sort of framework, he has not been relevant for a long time. Read Schumpeter! On the other hand Marx did get some mechanisms right that are still relevant and being worked on today. I would be happy to see Marx on reading lists of every economics program, but only to the degree that it is historically relevant. In my opinion, Marx does not deserve the quasi-religious following he gets now. His model is flawed and we can reproduce his results much more accurately in different settings. Seeing him as a prophet is also problematic seeing as his views of communist Utopia, taken as a parallel to Feuerbach, is really deeply flawed and even dangerous in my opinion (and history shows this). Even more, this religious following has destroyed the intellectual ability and progress of the left in the last fifty years almost completely. Marxist economics has not produced a single innovative thought since forever and it takes hold of much of the intellectual potential for left thinkers. The only innovative ideas come from other fringe groups of economics such as Post-Keynesians. But much of the potential is wasted on Marxist dogmatism, which why leftism as an ideology is unable to address concrete questions in the open-world economics of this time, has not produced impactful analysis and is generally in decline all over the world. This is also a consequence of following Marx, because following Marx to the letter means there is no need to account for further human development - he already dealt the finishing blow to capitalist economics forever (his own words). Yet, the world is changed. Yet, economics as a scientific pursuit is completely different than it was fifteen years ago. Marxism? lol. Mostly concerned with salvaging Marx himself. He deserves to be seen as an eminent thinker, economist, historian and sociologist, a giant of his time and a freaking great writer, but also defined by his time, by Feuerbach and Hegel, by Smith and Ricardo and very much in line of their thinking. It's true to say that too few people actually read Marx, and read more than just Capital. This includes economists, but it certainly also includes leftists. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Mar 28, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 16:21
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rudatron posted:The labor theory of value isn't exclusive with marginal theory, in fact most every single criticism leveled at the ltv can be leveled against marginal theory. Most? And what is marginal theory exactly? price equal marginal cost? If that is the level of Marxist theory, then it is dead. rudatron posted:Also marxist theory as a whole isn't inconsistent, and i'm going to need proof from you of that claim of yours. Read any book on the matter? I like Schumpeter but take your pick. rudatron posted:Claims of a 'religion following' is also nothing but ideological propaganda. Even in it's heyday, marx was treated as a major scientific figure of the marxist theory, not a prophet. Saying that marxism is 'religious' is based on absolutely nothing, and the only reason the accusation is leveled is pure ideology. Well if you had read my post you would know that claims of religion are leveled not against Marx's contemporaries, that is when he actually was inline with the science, but people today. I am not going to rewrite my argument but your point is none here. steinrokkan posted:Do people who claim Marx is a prophet of the radical left not realize that during his lifetime, Marx was only one of many competing socialist theorists and activists, engaged in a perpetual struggle to defend himself against intellectual opposition on the left as well as finding it hard to make any headway with leftist politicians of his day? So? What does this have to do with his position now? His theories on concrete communist institutions are just as questionable now as they were then, but they are not questioned anymore, are they? Which contemporary of Marx has such as following, and which contemporary has its own industry trying to revive and reinterpret his contributions? rudatron posted:The USSR didn't fall because of a clerical error, if fell because people lost faith in the system. Central planning as a method worked continuously for ~60 years. The fall occurred when people stopped believing it could maintain competitiveness with the West. It stopped because states like the GDR were bankrupt ten years before their fall. And USSR was based on sucking dry its surrounding neighbours. rudatron posted:But there's plenty of room for improvement. A belief that a planned system can do no better than what the USSR achieved, no matter what other variables you changed, has no empirical basis. That's the point though. It WOULD be interesting to think about central planning in a scientific context. We know much better WHY the USSR planned economy did not work out today, just as we know that p=mc is not true. But who would do the research? Social scientists are often Marxists. Since with introduction of communism, according to Marx, social issues and incentives literally disappear from the earth (see my effortquotes above), Marxists do not actually research anything (new). Sociologists and political scientists currently do not have the analytic chops and interest to think about centralized versus decentralized allocation mechanisms. This exact topic is of course a big issue in economics, and is researched quite deeply in terms of market microstructure, mechanism design, auction theory and somesuch. Sadly, there is no audience for grand theories in political economics at the moment. OwlFancier posted:Because megacorporations aren't a thing. OwlFancier posted:I mean sure there are companies with employees numbering several times the population of iceland that somehow don't operate on some kind of per-building feudal system but central planning clearly cannot work on a national level. Megacorps are actually built on a spectrum from market to hierarchy and there are reasons for that. Could I interest you in a throughout analysis of the supplier network setup for Daimler company? It's based on Theory of the Firm and New Institutional Economics, I know this because I have met the guy who did it, as alumni, at a presentation about this exact topic at my school of which the institute is researching exactly when markets are more or less efficient or better at X. Like, loads of people doing just that. So I could enlighten you on that but since every discourse here is dumb as hell and non-Marxist effortposts are trolled, you can research it yourself. So is it conceivable some parts of the economy could be planned? Of course, economic theory 100% supports this idea. But again, this simplistic argument "lol there's big companies, so we can have communism" is extremely dumb. And this intellectual level of the left is thanks to utopian, marxist ideology. Let me remind you, Marx was an actual scientists who engaged with the state-of-the-art research of his area. Leftists are ignorant about it and talk about stuff like "Marginal Cost Theory" and "Neoclassical Economics", things which don't even exist except in self-managed categories of the left. Which is why the left is dead or dying. rudatron posted:The debate isn't over, and contemporary economists like Piketty are essentially having to rediscover Marx. bullshit. You are a person who has not read Piketty, I take it? rudatron posted:I'll agree it's never a good idea to idealize people, but ideas can stick, and the idea that capitalism itself produces inequality, rather than merely being subject to it, matches what we have in the real world. Marx model is refuted by reality, from his price theory to his conclusions on profits. If a model is wrong, it is wrong. You can not argue a logic point from false premises. That is why it is dead, even if people find ideas in it. rudatron posted:The fantasy of capitalism as a pure meritocracy is nothing but self-serving Literally no one believes this strawman but you. White Rock posted:Holy poo poo! Cuba sure is doing better since the market reforms, and social democrats have nothing to do with communism. Weird BIAS posted:Wow that sounds like nothing of the Marx I read. Can you source where he says that or a commentator who drew those conclusions? Oh come the gently caress on Piketty==Marx yeah lol steinrokkan posted:Interesting you should say that, seeing as it has been radical capitalist apologists who tend to make most confident judgments about human nature (while opposing empiricism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School#Fundamental_tenets), Congrats, Austrians are as much of a joke as Marxists in a scientific sense. WE agreeeeeeeee steinrokkan posted:while non-authoritarian socialism trends towards an uncertain vision of society that is progressively managed in a deliberative fashion rather than set in stone based on a grand theory of the individual human nature. Venezuelan socialist after seizing a bakery literally "We are not perfect, but we will figure it out as we go along". I am serious, check the thread. Venezuela is exactly the thing that happens when you "wing it" as a political economic system. It's not exogenous, it's not surprising, it's just incentives. Wow. So deep. Cerebral Bore posted:Marx does not ascribe the aggregate behaviour of capitalists to human nature, but rather to material necessity brought on by the inherent logic of capitalist economy. yeah he also requires subsistence wages and labor cost price transformation and a uniform rate of profit which declines and a consistency between labor value prices of actual labor which he can not generate in his model, all of which are wrong, which is why he is wrong, and why everyone arguing solely on the basis of his model is wrong and on top of that just as much an idiot as an Austrian, scientifically speaking. Well, it would be time for a new theory which is actually not wrong, right? Well let's look at the intellectual output of left wing econ in the past 50 years. Nothing? poo poo let's try to revive Marx again. Hey, I the transformation problem is not a problem because... look at this accounting matrix. loving disgrace to Marx' memory actually Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 19:34
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The first Marxists who discovers that centralized mechanisms can actually do better in some cases is gonna become a loving superstar. So many verbal theories and case studies to write. Now if only they could read econ journals
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Mar 30, 2017 19:38
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Cerebral Bore posted:Just because you're ignorant of it doesn't mean that no further work within Marxist economics has taken place since Marx. People like Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran were adressing your list of problems over half a century ago, and in addition you've got a whole bunch of japanese Marxist economists like Okishio who have some pretty solid refinements of Marx. the problem is you can't because addressing the old paradigm is not the same as progress which is why Marxist econ has zero impact, while Piketty is making big bucks galore (hint: nothing to do with ideology. PSE is heterodox and red as gently caress) Marxism is dead and good thing it is Cerebral Bore posted:I sometimes have to read orthodox econ journals, but I prefer not to since I've got real science to do. this is why leftism is dying its u White Rock posted:I think most social democrats, at least of the old sort would disagree, since most of their party programs until the 90's had "work toward establishing a socialist state" as a major point until they all went the way of the dung pile that is "third way socialism". isn't one of the largest social democratic parties the SPD? They don't seem to fit your framework like at all which parties do you mean concretely? Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 21:24
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I have a paper from 201X something where Marxian economists were still trying to solve the transformation problem or a throughoutly shameful empiric analysis trying to show that this or that correlated with something Marx said. No matter how much dressing you put on it, a logically inconsistent theory is no basis to build a research program on. And that's why Marxian econ has not produced any fresh research and is basically just trying to justify its existence. There's just no impactful Marxian econ research to be found, and imo that's because it's dogmatically based on a incorrect theory. Compare that to mainstream econ. In the 90's, everyone was hot about equilibrium refinements to reduce the number of possible equilibria. Then, experimental econ started and showed that people do not play refinements, but they play Nash with irrationalities. And so all that high-theory equilibrium refinement died and nowadays there are extremely few people who are experts in it. Instead, everyone moved to behavioral econ and equilibrium concepts which are even less demanding than Nash. Of course the left doesn't understand this, as they see themselves as victims of some centrist conspiracy in econ. Nevermind that every field of econ has seen paradigm shifts that went completely against the classical approaches, incorporating sociology, psychology, biology, physics... econ is now behavioral, non-rational, experimental, network based, complex systems, non equilibrium based, agent based, evolutionary, incorporates status, social values, social identities... The point being is that Marxian econ is by definition fixed on one dogma and its basis is flawed. But instead of moving on and improving a theory, people just try to salvage the paradigm. It's research with the conclusion in mind. There's no conspiracy. There's gigantic departments like PSE, which is ranked #6 econ department in the world, and that place is left as hell. The reason Marxian econ doesn't succeed there just as anywhere else is because it is just bad research. Bad articles, bad arguments, dogmatic research with no contribution. Marxian econ is as dead as perfect markets, super specific equilibrium concepts and Neoclassic RBC Macro models. Just that Marxists don't see it. Instead of wasting all that intellectual potential, people could of course move on and try to find answers to actual questions of today. But they don't. uncop posted:It seems to me too that the Marxian ideal of communism is too utopian and relies on unverifiable assumptions about people, making it mostly a religion. Neither is Marxian economics useful for predicting anything, it just reminds us that you can should analyse economies based on how well they serve the people participating in them rather than concentrating on how well they maximize an abstract number. The number is only important insofar as increasing it actually increases general welfare. And non-bullshit economics influenced by Marx very much does exist, those economists are the ones warning us about letting the FIRE sector grow too large and so on. Social welfare functions are never an accurate representation of a complex demand system. Optimizing social welfare is about efficiency. A system can be efficient and also totally unfair and morally undesirable. Those are just different questions, and that's why nowadays so few people in economics make strong cases for political-economic systems (except when they are bought). If we could design an efficient planned economy, the question whether to implement it or not simply would not be economics, it would be politics. But as long as we have no solid proposal on that matter, it's just natural that economists are skeptical. Research however does ask the question if a centralized system is more or less efficient than a decentralized system, and to what degree that is implementable. And these things truly matter for a communist, or at least they should, because a non-planned economy also has inefficiencies associated with it, as does inequality and concentration of capital. But all that is a fart in the wind because Marx believed that communism comes first, and by definition it solves all human conflict and incentive problems, because literally all inter-human issues are created solely by alienation of workers. That is why no Marxian will ever need develop an understanding of whether centralized mechanisms are good or not, or how to structure a planned economy, or how to solve incentive issues. Because for Marxians, all that can be improvised until we reach full communism, at which point none of these things matter. In reality this means of course that the left will never have a workable program that people can actually believe in, except the endless opposition to inexistent strawmen like "marginal theory" or whatever. As long as Marxists dominate the intellectual left, there can be no progress. Instead, the saviors of the left are classically trained economists making a quick buck on some sensationalist books full with standard models. Left parties all over the planet are losing, all socialist countries are doing capitalist reforms or are basically collapsing, and the right is on the rise again. Edit: imagine for example an actual good paper published in AER stating: "Here's a precise argument why thing X in communism is actually more efficient than X in a market". That would be cool&good, and no one could say anything about. Hell, instead of communism, call it "centralized, transfer-sharing system" and you don't even need to content with ideologists. The issue is of course that Marxists dominating communist theory don't even know how to make such an argument. They only thing they understand is: "Capitalism is bad, hence communism must be better". It doesn't really occur to them that this is not how to make an argument, and that it is not an argument at all. Instead, one needs a research program showing step by step all the little things which are actually better in centralized allocation. But that's apparently too much work. Truth is, that sort of research program would take years. And it would take a lot of smart people. And that just doesn't jive with Marxists, because a) communism first, solutions later and b) all smart people are busy trying to solve the transformation problem. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 16:03
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