let's read 'Capital'

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > let's read 'Capital'

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

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.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 17:07

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 06:25

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Ruzihm posted:

Even having someone manage the roombas is still employing a human. for there to be profit there must be variable capital.

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.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

It sounds like you're talking about R&D, the cost of which is absorbed by firms making the autos (and mitigated by economies of scale), not firms buying and deploying them. And like I just said, of course if the initial investment is greater than the savings people won't do it, but that won't be the case (at least not for long).

Oberleutnant posted:

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..

Why in the world would it need to take that long? The crash in the price of labour has a floor (determined by either the minimum wage of the civil unrest threshold) and if that floor is above the cost of automated alternatives then the next step of that cycle can't eever happen. We've already seen this in manufacturing and it's about to happen in a whole bunch of new sectors because of AI. That's what automation fears are about.

This is confirming all my worst fears that Marxists are gonna be just as unprepared for the automation crisis as neoliberals because they can't get past outmoded definitions of "worker" and "productivity."

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 18:16

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

You can't outsource truckers, cashiers, janitors, or sewer workers (sorry Baloogan) to China and Singapore.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 18:22

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

What new industries could possibly move in at that point though? You seem to be taking it as an article of faith this will happen based on historical precedent, but AI ultimately has no historical precedent because it sets the denominator of the worker productivity fraction to zero.

Thug Lessons posted:

To a certain extent you can see this as just an extension of Marx's economic theories, specifically the tendency to replace living labor with dead labor. But it has enormous implications for Marx's political theories because it moves the proletariat from being the source of all value, (and therefore possessing immense political power as a result of the ability to withhold their labor), to being surplus people who live and die at the whim of the bourgeoisie.

Yeah, this is a much better Marxist take on it than "oh well capitalism is being capitalism and nothing will really change."

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 18:57

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Ruzihm posted:

Right, and with less variable capital involved, profit falls as competition catches up.

What does that have to do with unemployment.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 18:58

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Ruzihm posted:

if 99.9% of necessary things are automated, and you aren't employed doing the .1% of other things, life might really suck for you because the capitalists have even less money to spend on things like charity or get taxed towards welfare. Basically the more things get automated, the less useful welfare becomes.

You're making some big implications about how welfare, demand and capital would work in an automated economy, and I'd counter them with the fact that a combination of need for aggregate demand and civil unrest would probably get us a UBI or equivalent and it wouldn't hurt capital accumulation all that much.

At least that's the scenario where civilization doesn't collapse, which could also happen if neoliberalism tries to continue unabated.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

The point is that there won't be enough things left in 1st-world countries that anyone's willing to pay minimum wage for that we can achieve a reasonable level of employment. It's not about any specific job, it's about gigantic sector's disappearing with nothing to replace them. The response of "capitalism uh... finds a way" is way more fantasist.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 19:27

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Thug Lessons posted:

Anyway, you're mistaken, because there is a difference between producing more pins per labor input and excluding humans entirely from pin-making.

Yeah this is what I meant by automation making the denominator of the worker productivity fraction into zero.

Thug Lessons posted:

That said, you're of course right that not literally everything will be automated, but for example the Great Depression was just 25% unemployment. We're looking at much higher levels, upwards of 50%, maybe closer to 90%.

Now, 90%, that's something that I do see as being fairly far off but it doesn't have to get even half that high for an enormous crisis.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 19:29

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

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.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

No one serious is saying there'll be total unemployment. Again, it doesn't have to be total for a crisis.

Oberleutnant posted:

Well you'll have to take that one up with Marx, because one of the core arguments of Capital is that Capitalists find new desires and new commodities to soak up unused labour.
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.

I have absolutely no doubt that there'll be new desires and commodities, but for them to fulfill that purpose they'd have to be things that couldn't be provided by automation, which is unlikely. Even prostitution can be automated (thanks Japan), and not everyone is an artist even if there was a sudden huge increase in patronage.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

I don't have a job that's in danger of being lost to automation, but the fact that you see some kind of bias explains a little about how recalcitrant you are to listen to why these things are gonna happen.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:14

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

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.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:24

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

I'm phone posting so i'm not going to tormet myself by separating your points out as you did mine but.

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.

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.

Oberleutnant posted:

I haven't once said there'll be completely automation-free industries, however many industries which can be almost entirely automated in the west still use masses of cheap labour elsewhere because it's more profitable to work this way where labour is weak and unprotected. This is what will happen with increased automation in the west.

You implied the new industries that arise to exploit western labor would be non-automated, because otherwise how would the exploitation happen and how would there not be the unemployment?

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:38

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

Thehistoryofcapitalism.txt

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.

Well at least now you're acknowledging the unemployment will happen, even if you still can't quite bring yourself to face the magnitude of it.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:40

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

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.

Yep, this is what I mean by the aggregate demand problem and needing a US for your Singapore.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:41

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

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.

That logic doesn't make sense though. Why does demand for necessities mean automation won't be employed to meet them? And that still doesn't say anything specifically about what's gonna replace the Western jobs lost to automation.

Oberleutnant posted:

Capital extracts surplus value from the production of commoditie. The definition of a commodity is given (iirc) on the first page of vol.1 as a thing which people are prepared to buy because it fulfils some need. If it's not necessary or desired people will not buy it.

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.

It's pretty drat relevant to capitalism in practical terms and also to Marxism.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:58

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

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.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 20:59

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Oberleutnant posted:

You're fundamentally misrepresenting my argument. Or your own. Yes workers should always be ready to fight back in times of crisis, but the argument that is being put forward is that an upcoming crisis created by automation in the west represents an existential threat to capital that is different to any previous upheaval, and I don't believe that's the case. It is simply part of an ongoing process that won't reach the level of total collapse for many generations.

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.

I don't think automation's gonna destroy capitalism unless the policy response is wrong in which case it'd destroy a lot more. And I'm not rooting for that because I'm a capitalist.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 21:13

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Dreddout posted:

Who really needs to read Capital when Andy Ancap can explain Capitalism in YouTube format?!

I genuinely think telling people to go read stuff is one of the biggest weaknesses of the left.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 23:23

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Modest Mao posted:

hi I heard quantum field theory might be our best explination for reality could you please explain all of it to me right now, in a not boring way, no math, and no I will not read

If quantum field theory was politically controversial then yeah, being able to explain it to a layman would be useful.

Modest Mao posted:

I have no actual desire to understand something myself and apply it in my own life I just want some soundbites to yell at conservatives on chat forums pls, tia

If you just want to apply it to your own life why would you tell other people to read it?

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 01:55

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Ruzihm posted:

if they ask about capital vol 1 just give em one of these

I saw a good version of this where instead of capitalists it was boomers and instead of workers it was millenials.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 03:14

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 06:25

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Ruzihm posted:

Are there any critiques of UBI that analyze it from a marxist perspective? My first inkling is that it's just a relabeling of variable capital--at least a portion of welfare is variable capital that is spent on preparing the next generation of workers, anyway.

But what are some of its effects in marxist terms?

Depending on how the ubi is funded, I could see if welfare costs go down as those who need significantly more help can't afford their needs without significantly more money than the average welfare concession. Those people die and the average cost of helping the unemployed goes down, resulting in lower costs of reproducing that society & therefore higher profits.

Does it increase profit/accelerate the accumulation of capital by increasing the rate of turnover because the welfare is given out as money instead of needs?

If we fixed capitals gains tax you might be able to look at UBI as the most universal and general possible form of Marxist wages.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2017 19:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > let's read 'Capital'