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Vermain posted:In addition to this, I really, heartily recommend anyone reading Capital and wondering what the bother is with all this technical mumbo-jumo to go check out Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England from the library. Engels writes with a barely contained rage - at times speaking with almost sheer incredulity - at the monstrously indifferent cruelty doled out onto the working class in the service of self-styled kings carving out their insignificant fiefdoms. The fact that these conditions have barely changed, having merely shifted location, lends the book the kind of modern relevance that lets you understand the emotions that compelled Marx to dedicate a significant portion of his life to writing a book with the breadth and scope of Capital. I think an early quote of his ("Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses.") summarizes perfectly what he hoped to achieve by writing it. As a companion to The Condition of the Working Class, people might also want to read Jack London's "The People of the Abyss", for a sort of journalistic account of London poverty circa 1900. Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" updates the theme to the mid-20th century. Nothing ever changes, and nothing ever changed.
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May 25, 2017 14:24
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Peel posted:god drat  - that or Marx calling out specific bourgeois economists for being loving stupid assholes in ever more inventive ways.
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May 31, 2017 11:38
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Ruzihm posted:I love reading Capital because so much applies today. This is just another instance of that--it sounds eerily like the question of replacing minimum wage workers with robots. Something that many people (even marxists) always, always forget is that the relationship between the costs of industrialisation vs mass human labour is not a fixed ratio but does and will vary constantly. Increased mechanisation and industrialisation devalues (through deskilling) human labour until it's so badly paid and menial that it's profitable again (this process also depowers the labouring class through temporary mass unemployment, leading to a race to the bottom for workers' rights as people accept worse and worse conditions in order to get any work at all). People who confidently predict the imminent robot takeover which leaves 99% of the population unemployed always forget this - they know that robots will be able to do everything, but they forget the other half of the equation. If there's a single penny of extra profit to be made by employing a human then humans will continue to be employed, because if your business doesn't employ them some other fucker's will. The coercively competitive nature of capitalism is one of the core themes of this book, and the capitalists aren't going to let everybody live a live of indolent post-scarcity luxury when there's still profit to be made by having us cleaning up poo poo for a starvation wage.
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Jun 6, 2017 16:54
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Jeb! Repetition posted:There isn't a penny of profit to be made employing humans at that point though. Even a starvation wage human is more expensive than a big ol Roomba. What you think they run on? magic and fairy dust? It takes a massive upfront capital investment to introduce automation; you need engineers and managers to oversee the process. You're gonna spend $1m a year on a robot to wipe poo poo out of toilets when you could employ half a dozen desperate people to do it for less than a 1/10 the cost. One of Marx's observations about automation and industrialisation is also that it's not a smooth or overnight process - it's characterised by a sort of pulsing cycle of high labour costs leading to limited automation, leading to mass layoffs, leading to a crash in the price of labour, leading to mass hiring (of a deskilled and weakened labour force) and expansion of production, the price of labour rising again, and back to step one. On a long enough timescale (like by the year 30,000AD) maybe your assertion is right, but that's hardly relevant to the idea of automation in the near future (like within the next century) when the discussion actually has a practical component.. communism bitch has issued a correction as of 17:52 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 17:49
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Jeb! Repetition posted:Yeah but there's way less people involve in maintenance and management than there would be as janitors. Otherwise the roombas would have no point. That's why it's gonna cause unemployment. Half the world is still using industrial automation that barely surpasses anything in Britain or America 150 years ago because they can do it cheaper with underpaid human labour, and you're scared of robots sweeping everything away overnight. It is not going to happen.
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Jun 6, 2017 18:19
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Jeb! Repetition posted:You can't outsource truckers, cashiers, janitors, or sewer workers (sorry Baloogan) to China and Singapore. You don't seem to be arguing the point you think you're arguing here. Some industries are threatened by automation. That's nothing new or exceptional. The industries are predominantly service based (as your post indicates) but this is just a product of western economies being service economies. This will probably result in a crash in employment and working conditions in these countries. This is nothing unusual for capitalism. Those outsted workers will be picked up by other industries which move in to exploit the flood of cheap labour. It's the same industrial pattern over again. The service economy has just been more historically resistant to it so it seems new and scary. Nothing exceptional is happening here. The robot revolution is just a part of the same industrial revolution that's been taking place since the steam engine was invented.
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Jun 6, 2017 18:36
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Thug Lessons posted:The reason this doesn't apply here is because it's never actually more profitable to hire a wage laborer than to use a self-driving car. You would literally have to pay them starvation wages, in the sense that you're not paying them enough to afford food and they eventually starve to death. It's true that everyone is going to see their wages plummet but there's also going to be a large proportion of people that are now permanently unemployed. You may as well say it's never profitable to hire a pinmaker (a job which, if I remember correctly marx analyses in detail in Capital) after inventing a machine that makes pins. It's a meaningless starement because of course some tasks get automated away. The fact that this time it might be your job is (im sorry to say) meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your labour will be devalued and you'll have to find worse work doing something else. If you're talking about some hypothetical magic machine which automates literally every single production and distribution-oriented task globally, making it impossible for a single human to ever work again then i'm sorry but in any timescale which will matter to you or your grandchikdren's grabdchildren you're a fantasist, and anyway i counter it with my imaginary proletarian AI that immediately destroys it.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:14
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A cyclical temporary growth in unemployment while production recalibrates to increased automation is exactly what I just said would happen. Masses of people would be unemployed, their collective labour price would bottom out. You'll probably see a regrowth in manufacturing in presently advanced western countries as it becomes profitable again. This would also be able to capitalise on your driverless trucks which would avoid the international shipping that currently predominates with manufacturing concentrated in places like China and India. Capital is not evenly spread globally, it doesn't develop globally at a uniform rate. It sloshes around the globe in a constant effort to minimise expenses and shorten the production and consumption chain. Nothing exceptional is happening. The future of total unemployment is nowhere in sight and is wildly hypothetical.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:35
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Jeb! Repetition posted:The response of "capitalism uh... finds a way" is way more fantasist. And anywsy, leaving aside new commodities if you think that everybody in the world has their current needs and desires met then lol okay buddy.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:41
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Not to be spiteful or anything but all i see in this discussion is a bunch of westerners (and i'm one too) who can't see past their own immediate futures abd interests, as if anything that threatens them is an unprecedented paradigm shift.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:44
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Thug Lessons posted:There will probably be more manufacturing in the US, but with less people working in it than there are currently. You should look at the automation of industrial and service work as being like the automation of agriculture, where we once had most of the population working on farms and now we have almost none. Now imagine that happening to to like half of the economy. There is no law of economics that says a given sector needs to employ x people. Again, look beyond the borders of America at what happens elsewhere, working conditions are very different, and many people live without basic necessities. Global production could probably expand many times over (absorbing suplus workers) and still fail to meet even the necessities that westerners take for granted, let alone the luxuries. We curreny have a situation where relatively small segment of the global population lives in matetial comfort while large populations are still not fully proletarianised where they live on the margins of capital in the developing world. These places need to be fully proletarianised and reach a comparable standard of industrial development and commodity consumption before you start worrying about everybody being superceded by the terminator. All that's happening at the moment is shift in the global status quo.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:02
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Thug Lessons posted:I look at this as an economic issue, not a moral one. But you'd be wrong to assume this is only going to to effect the West and that people in developing countries will be insulated from its effects. Weren't you just predicting that manufacturing was going to migrate out of China? What do you think that's going to do to the Chinese economy, and Chinese labor? How will farmers in Uttar Pradesh be affected by the falling price of crops? Yes, we can even automate agriculture, and have already started doing so. I'm not predicting that they're insulated because the basis of my argument is that the current process of automation is a natural development of capitalism, and not out of the ordinary, and they are part of the global capitalist sytem. Other populations are in the process of being integrated into that system. Almost every industry can be automated to some extent, and this will free up more labour to be exploited at a lower cost elsewhere in the system - either in the expansion of existing industries ir the creation if new ones. The future of total or near total unemployment is not on the horizon. I think you're focusing on this or that specific industry, and i'm talking about the global capitalist system of production generally.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:18
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Jeb! Repetition posted:For their for the labor price to bottom out as much as is necessary for this scenario basically every worker protection in the 1st world would have to be repealed. I don't see that as likely when populism is rampant and the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is talking about UBIs. Repeal of worker protections - why do you think this won't be attempted? I live in the UK where our government is looking to repeal the EU's working time directive, just as an example. Capital constantly pushes back against worker protection everywhere. it's inherent. I never denied that automation causes temporary mass unemployment so there's nothing to address there. I already said that every industry can be automated to some extent - the entirety of Capital vol.1 is an analysis of this process and its ramifications. communism bitch has issued a correction as of 20:31 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 20:26
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Jeb! Repetition posted:When I say employment I'm talking about in a given country because that's usually how it's measured. And the way you're repeating all of this stuff about AI somehow being a "natural development of capitalism" and there'll simply be new automation-free industries and niches in existing industries makes me think it's an article of faith for you and it's pointless to argue.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:30
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Thug Lessons posted:You can't expand industries indefinitely because you get into overproduction. You seem to not be accounting for population growth. Automation insn't expanding against a fixed and constant need for commodities - it's very likely outpacing the rate of growth, but (and this is my core point) there is enough global unsatisfied need for commodities to keep absorbing cheap labour for a very long time. Yes we may see surges of unemployment, but these are a natural, predicted, and observed trend in capitalism and industrial development.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:36
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Jeb! Repetition posted:Again though, we'd all have to become China in terms of worker protections and minimum wage for that to happen, and if automation eventually becomes cheap enough there'd be no point in working because the wage would literally be less than you need to stay alive. Also you're completely ignoring how loss of aggregate demand would make the surplus value extracted worthless. The world can't all be Singapore because you can't have Singapore without The West. No, i've implied (well explicitly stated) an expansion of productive capacity to capitalise on cheap labour and efficient distribution through automation of services. Those industries don't need to be completely or even mostly manual. This is the ideal for capital, but they won't be fully automated to the extent of total (or even majority) unemployment in any timescale that is relevant to a practical discussion because the demand for even basic necessities is not met in many places, and the provision of those commodities is a route to increased profit for capital.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:47
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Thug Lessons posted:You've already made a great case for why this won't happen when you underlined that people will be making a lot less money if they're working at all. You can't sell people more things while you're simultaneously reducing their wages.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:49
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Thug Lessons posted:Capital doesn't care at all about whether basic necessities are met, and that's the root of the problem. If you want to talk about a scenario where literally all production from raw materials to finished commodities is handled with no input from workers you can, but it's not relevant to a discussion of capitalism as a system.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:53
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Thug Lessons posted:No poo poo. Doesn't address my point at all. Yes it does.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:54
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Jeb! Repetition posted:Oberleutnant I really, really hope you reconsider this attitude for your own sake, because taking advantage of the upcoming crisis would be a way better strategy for Marxists than pretending it doesn't exist. To my mind the unhealthiest thing is the infatuation that many leftists have with the idea that capitalism will finally destoy itself any day now. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny if you look beyond the limited horizon of western economies towards places where capitalism and industrial development are still comparativelu underdeveloped with massive scope for growth. it's wishful thinking.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:08
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Thug Lessons posted:You seem fond of quoting Capital. Can you remind me what Marx said happens when the organic composition of capital rises too high and dead labor predominates over living labor? Yes, and that would be relevant if you could demonstrate that, globally speaking, Capital has reached (or is near to reaching) that point. It hasn't, and it isn't. Locally in certain economies it may be true (I would argue against it). Globally it's not even close.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:12
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Thug Lessons posted:I don't think it's the end of capitalism. It's just going to create a massive economic crisis, probably the biggest in modern history, and one that lays bear the folly of capitalism as explained by Marx: Marx's predicted final implosion of capital rests essentially on the system exhausting all available fuel (in the form of available workers and consumers) and reaching a point where it cannot grow any more. All automation actually does is push back the hand on the doomsday clock a little bit, by freeing up more cheap labour for capital to expand again - sometimes into new and different areas of production.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:21
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Ruzihm posted:I lust for the (further) development of industry that carries down dirt from mountains to put it into the ocean to combat rising sea levels.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:34
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Thug Lessons posted:I've done that again and again. If you want to cling to the idea that contemporary labor participation rates are set in stone, despite the fact that it's demonstrably false by looking at both historical and contemporary societies, then don't let me stop you. But I feel pretty confident I've explained my point well enough you can understand it. Thug Lessons posted:This discussion really underlines the necessity of reading and understanding volumes 2-3. If you think that there's some killer argument hidden in vols 2 or 3 then by all means share it. But from my memory the only standout point of relevance would be in vol 2, which lumps services (distribution in particular) in as a necessary element of the production chain with only cosmetic differences (that is it's the production of a change of location for the commodity) from conventional production. This would tend to support my argument that the automation of services is not particularly epoch-defining or something that heralds some serious shift in the nature of capitalism. It's only different from the invention of the conveyor belt in terms of scale. The fact that you made a vague reference to vols 2 and 3 without actually advancing a specific argument makes me wonder if you werent just hoping i hadn't read them and would take your remark on faith.
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Jun 7, 2017 02:49
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Thug Lessons posted:There's nothing hidden, volume three just describes crisis theory. But the problem you're having is more fundamental in that it makes no sense. You're saying that everyone thrown off by automation is going to see their income depressed to third-world levels, (which, I have to add, is a claim at least as bold as saying they'll be unemployed), and when I confronted you about how this, you know, would torpedo the entire world economy due to the lost markets you brushed it off and mumbled something about prices of production. Even in your own scenario you're positing effects that will lead to the greatest economic depression in the history of capitalism, but somehow it's also no big deal and just first world problems. There's always been crises who cares about the biggest? I'm really at a loss, I can't really conclude anything here beyond a) you don't care about automation and b) you don't know what you're talking about. My argument is very simply that the automation of services will not be so complete either locally or globally to produce a total collapse in global capitalism. You're positing that it will, and it really falls on you to justify how and why in far more detail than you have currently, because you're working off a series of assumptions as if they're inarguable facts, which they're not. In particular you need to address why you think that productive capital will not find a use for an influx of cheap labour made available in a developed country by mass unemployment resulting from this automation, bearing in mind that this has invariably been the case historically. Magical machines which take care of the entire chain of commodity production from raw materials onward are not a reasonable or realiistic answer to this question. communism bitch has issued a correction as of 03:18 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 03:10
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Thug Lessons posted:The problem is that the outcomes you're proposing imply that, and you're in denial about it because you think it's white people poo poo or something. No, it's because, as i've stated clearly and repeatedly, global industrial capital is underdeveloped outside of advanced western countries, and that they are not likely to have their workforces automated out of existence even if the west is - which as I just said, is not something you can predict in the near future based on any argument from historical observation. Hell, certain segments of the service industry have been partly automated out of existence in the past (domestic service with the explosion in household labour saving commodities such as white goods) and.... what happend historically? The labour was absorbed elsewhere. You're positing a cataclysm in capitalism based on nothing but wishful thinking.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:32
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