[Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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Danann: Aug 4, 2013

LittleBlackCloud posted:

soup kitchens will not make the american left effectual. lol.

don't get me wrong it is good to take money and use it to feed the poor, but absent a greater program, it's little more than charity.

My experiences with food not bombs have also taught me that authorities will try to stop you from feeding people anywhere it could be seen. I don't know if it's easy or possible to get grants from gov for this, but it is possible to talk to local grocery stores about taking away their stuff that would otherwise be thrown away. It's hard though when you're competing with established foodbanks. I can also tell that it's easiest to organize things like that if you have some sort of non-profit status. Also are you really an anarchist if you haven't dived into a dumpster?

Considering what happened to the Black Panthers' breakfast program, an actually effective social program that both propagandized and serviced the community would make push the group into the most wanted list of the FBI basically immediately. If this group wasn't getting its locations raided by the police and targeted by the national media block on a daily basis upon gaining even a whiff of momentum, then it is because the program and the group are too ineffective to make a large scale change.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2021 21:15

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 15:54

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

mycomancy posted:

So what kind of real M-L wins can be pointed to? Not being a poo poo, would love to know.

China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, USSR, Venezuela, maybe a few others I'm missing.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2021 23:16

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

bi crimes posted:

how would one characterize the model of governance of the current Chinese state? ive read a lot of takes on this but it often seems to have an anarchist (liberal) bias. it generally seems hard to find decent analysis in English about post Mao China

https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/socialism-with-chinese-characteristics

This Qiao Collective list is a good overview of contemporary Chinese socialism. It's a lot of reading though.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2022 20:40

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

hammer and sickle good and classic imo

# ¿ Jan 24, 2022 05:02

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

The Voice of Labor posted:

forestry and agriculture. a 50-100 year project to relocate urban populations into rural areas. enuring society against capitalism and counterrevolution by promoting self sufficiency and removing capital's cornerstone, densely concentrated labor.

massive tree farms with 400 year harvest cycles, even more massive conservation areas with no timber harvesting. communities of 50k-100k tops, each centered around a small college for research and education. each housing unit consisting of the housing unit and 5x the area of the housing unit in arable land. the gap caused by loosing out on economies of scale compensated for by having a healthy and educated labor force.

come, join me in my anime rpg hi tech pastoral utopia

i can't feed my family on perfectly spherical cows in frictionless vacuums nor can i use it to build tanks to fight external counterrevolutionaries op

# ¿ Jan 25, 2022 22:50

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://www.internationalmagz.com/articles/trains-against-capitalism

quote:

Trains Against Capitalism

The Soviet Union was born on the railroad. The October Revolution triggered not just a civil war but an invasion by the armies of fourteen foreign powers; utterly outnumbered, the Red Army won through superior organization and speed that only the railways could provide. From Moscow and Petrograd they radiated outward, liberating every city they could reach with their armored trains. Though the fortunes of the Bolsheviks varied dramatically over the years of the civil war, if a city was connected to either urban center by rail, once it turned red it would remain red.

In the years that followed, the Soviet Union built one of the greatest systems of railways the world has ever seen. It�s an often repeated statistic that in 1917 the Russian Empire had a less industrialized society than France in 1789; to advance from this point to construct nearly 150,000 kilometers of railroads in a few short decades is unparalleled. When the Blitzkrieg finally reached Stalingrad in 1942, Adolf Hitler complained that �we are discovering railway lines that are not on the maps.�[1 ]

Today, the railways of the former Soviet republics are sadly diminished; Russian Railways, their primary heir, maintains an operational length of only 85,000 kilometers. They are a casualty of the same wasting disease that has eroded railways and mass transit worldwide for the last half-century: neoliberalism.

Ferrocarriles Argentinos, the state-owned railway corporation of Argentina, once oversaw a network of 47,000 kilometers, making it not only the largest national railway in the Latin America but the sixth-largest in the world.[2] Neglected by successive administrations, the railways diminished and were eventually privatized in the 1990s at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund. Railway employment, once in the hundreds of thousands and controlled by a powerful union, was reduced by over 80%. Inter-city passenger service was reduced by 70%.[3] Today, only about 15,000 kilometers are used to transport freight in Argentina,[4] and 10,000 kilometers of rail have been dismantled entirely. In Mexico, a country of over 120 million people, rail privatization in 1995 marked the end of all passenger rail service, which so far has not returned.

Despite the incredible advances that rail technology has seen in recent years, much of the world�s railways remain obsolete and underutilized. The United States is the worst offender in this category; though it currently maintains the largest national rail network, less than 1% of it is electric. Trains powered by diesel fuel are only 30% as energy efficient as electric trains, as well as louder, more dangerous, and more directly tied to air pollution. This is in part another consequence of privatization: US freight transport corporations use diesel locomotives due to lower up-front costs, disregard for the externality of emissions, and the prioritization of short-term profits over long-term investments in modernization.[5]

In our era of climate change, it should be obvious that the airplane and the automobile are not the best future of transportation. The United States, which has less than 5% of the global population, currently emits 14% of the world�s greenhouse gases,[6] and of this, nearly one third is produced by the operation of motor vehicles, the single largest category of emissions.[7] Apart from a handful of very small countries[San Marino, Monaco, Iceland, and New Zealand, which combined have a total population of less than 5 million], the US has the most motor vehicles per capita in the world at an astounding 816 vehicles per 1000, over twice as many as nearly every other country.[8] Recent data also suggests that producing a new car creates as much emissions as driving it.[9] If the other 95% of the world were to drive as much as the US, the current total global rate of emissions would double�at least.

Nevertheless, the short-sightedness of private capital has ensured that this is the road upon which we will travel. Passenger rail service, the only possible alternative for the developing world, cannot be constructed in any significant quantity without heavy state intervention. The slow but steady expansion of Europe�s high-speed passenger rail network has been exclusively constructed by state-owned and subsidized entities. Japan is sometimes cited as a success story of privatized high-speed rail�yet the vast majority of its network was already constructed before the state-owned Japanese National Railways was privatized in 1987,[10] and new rail construction ever since has invariably still been paid for by the government and then leased to the heavily-subsidized private sector. Taiwan�s single high-speed line, initially touted as the largest such project to be wholly financed by a private company, took nearly a decade to construct and fell into such financial difficulty that the government took majority control only two years after it began service.[11]

The capitalist world�s futile struggles to profit off of rail transport confirm through empirical, statistical evidence what economic theory has long held: trains aren�t for making money. That is to say, rail transport must function as a public good if it is to ever be viable.

High-speed rail, the only possible large-scale alternative to burning billions of gallons of jet fuel every year, is extraordinarily expensive. Even the process of upgrading existing rail corridors to modern speeds nearly always entails the construction of brand-new railroads, as a straight line and a low elevation gradient are required for a train to maintain speeds of 200 or 300 kilometers an hour. This results in costly excavations of hillsides to bore tunnels, the construction of massive bridges to span rivers and canyons, and the placement of elevated columns across countrysides to sustain a level track. The new Boten�Vientiane railway, which opened in December of 2021 and stretches hundreds of kilometers across the mountainous terrain of Laos, is nearly two-thirds tunnels and bridges by length.[12] To suggest that the construction, maintenance, and operation of such a colossal piece of infrastructure could be paid for through ticket sales and still deliver a profit is absurd. Such a business model would at best result in a train that was accessible solely by passengers who were ultra-rich.

To make a world of rail a reality, we must instead return to the path blazed by the Soviet Union, and make use of its tools: central planning and public spending.

In sharp contrast to the United States� concrete nightmare, and putting Europe and Japan to shame, over the last fifteen years the People�s Republic of China has chosen to spend on railroads, and spend big. Its high-speed rail network, begun from scratch in 2007, is now over 40,000 kilometers long�not just the largest in the world, but larger than the total length of all other high-speed lines in the world put together, and enough to wrap around the entire circumference of the Earth had it been placed in a single straight track. Over the past four decades, forty new metro rail systems have been built in the PRC with a total length of over 7,000 kilometers.[13] China�s railways serve over three billion passenger trips annually[14], and this only scratches the surface of their ambitions.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese government is working to build badly-needed rail infrastructure throughout the global south�infrastructure that the world cannot do without, if those countries are to develop along a sustainable path. In the past year alone, in addition to multiple new high-speed lines within China, Chinese state-owned enterprises completed new inter-city railways in Laos and Nigeria, and Vietnam�s first urban metro system in Hanoi. Currently, high-speed railways are also under construction in Indonesia and Thailand, with even more still in planning stages.

Managing the steep costs associated with these projects and maintaining the pace at which they are completed is only possible with a high level of economic planning. Year after year, western economists and �experts� (such as the libertarian Cato Institute) bemoan the massive debts incurred by Chinese state-owned railway companies (which are owed to Chinese state-owned banks, making the �problem� somewhat irrelevant), and the inability of its passenger lines to generate profit or even break even. And year after year, more railways are built and put into operation without uproar in defiance of this hidebound capitalist logic. Because, when taking into account the greater picture�not just the company�s bottom line and quarterly earnings but the total environmental and economic impact, high-speed rail is not just profitable but quite comfortably so, to the tune of a 6.5% return on investment. According to a study by a Chicago-based think tank, upon calculation of the difference in total operation costs when high-speed rail trips were substituted for airplane trips, plus the total time savings multiplied by the riders� average hourly wage, China�s high-speed rail yielded a $2.4 trillion total benefit to a $2 trillion total expense.[15]

To overcome decades of neoliberal indoctrination and bring mainstream thought around to this paradigm�that public infrastructure costs money rather than loses money, and that that cost is spent to benefit the people, not the owners of private capital�is no easy task, and when confronted with the systemic hostility to these ideas that the capitalists have purchased, it may seem as mammoth a task as building a transcontinental railroad, or winning a civil war. But it needs to happen, for all our sakes. There is no alternative.

posting this article to say that trains are good and communist

# ¿ Jan 30, 2022 09:07

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/British-Raj-siphoned-out-45-trillion-from-India-Utsa-Patna.html - A relatively short article interviewing Utsa Patnaik and how British imperialism took ~$45 trillion USD from the Indian subcontinent.

quote:

New Delhi: When renowned economist Utsa Patnaik began to sift through old tracts of British economic history in order to understand the nature of fiscal relations between London and colonial India, the fate of the Kohinoor wasn�t much in the news; Shashi Tharoor hadn�t yet spoken in favour of reparations at Oxford University�a speech which went viral; and not many books had been written about the thousands of Indian soldiers who fought under the British flag in the empire�s many wars overseas.

While the past few years have shed additional light on the colonial experience, there is much that we still do not know. For example, how much money was really taken out of India? In a collection of essays published recently by Columbia University Press, Patnaik attempts to make a comprehensive estimate. Over roughly 200 years, the East India Company and the British Raj siphoned out at least �9.2 trillion (or $44.6 trillion; since the exchange rate was $4.8 per pound sterling during much of the colonial period).

To put that sum in context, Britain�s 2018 GDP estimate�a measure of annual economic output�is about $3 trillion. In the colonial era, most of India�s sizeable foreign exchange earnings went straight to London�severely hampering the country�s ability to import machinery and technology in order to embark on a modernisation path similar to what Japan did in the 1870s. The scars of colonialism still remain, Patnaik says. And yet, in an India where historical slights are endlessly litigated and towns are arbitrarily renamed, an adequate accounting of the enduring burden of colonialism is perhaps yet to be undertaken. Excerpts from an interview:

In a recent paper, you suggest Britain drained out nearly $45 trillion of wealth from India. Could you put that quantum of money in perspective and what difference it would have made to the Indian economy?

Between 1765 and 1938, the drain amounted to �9.2 trillion (equal to $45 trillion), taking India�s export surplus earnings as the measure, and compounding it at a 5% rate of interest. Indians were never credited with their own gold and forex earnings. Instead, the local producers here were �paid� the rupee equivalent out of the budget�something you�d never find in any independent country. The �drain� varied between 26-36% of the central government budget. It would obviously have made an enormous difference if India�s huge international earnings had been retained within the country. India would have been far more developed, with much better health and social welfare indicators. There was virtually no increase in per capita income between 1900 and 1946, even though India registered the second largest export surplus earnings in the world for three decades before 1929.

Since all the earnings were taken by Britain, such stagnation is not surprising. Ordinary people died like flies owing to under-nutrition and disease. It is shocking that Indian expectation of life at birth was just 22 years in 1911. The most telling index, however, is food grain availability. Because the purchasing power of ordinary Indians was being squeezed by high taxes, the per capita annual consumption of food grains went down from 200kg in 1900 to 157kg on the eve of World War II, and further plummeted to 137kg by 1946. No country in the world today, not even the least developed, is anywhere near the position India was in 1946.

What was the system in place to orchestrate this drain of wealth? Why wasn�t there any large-scale local opposition to it?

All the colonising powers put in place tax collection systems. The very name for the district administrator was �Collector�. When the Company first got revenue collecting rights in Bengal in 1765, its employees went completely mad with avarice. R.C. Dutt, a civil service officer in the British Raj, documented that between 1765 and 1770, the Company trebled the tax revenue in Bengal, compared to the erstwhile Nawab�s regime. You know what that means for a peasant who is already quite poor? The Nawab was collecting sufficiently high taxes, so when the Company took over and forcibly trebled collections over five years, people were driven into starvation. There was a massive famine in Bengal in 1770. Out of a population of 30 million, the British themselves estimated that 10 million died.

From 1765 up to the takeover by the Crown, the Company was using a quarter to a third of net revenue collections to purchase export goods from the peasants. This was an abnormal use of taxes and the peasants themselves did not know they were getting diddled. If the same Company agent who collected the producer�s tax had at the same time bought his goods out of that tax, then the producer himself would have said: dal mein kuch to kala hai (something fishy is going on here). But the Company agent who bought produce out of the tax money was a different person and did so at a different time from the Company agent who collected the tax. So, the producers did not connect the two.

The market is an amazing thing: it obscures real relationships. A large part of the producer�s own tax payment simply got converted into export goods, so the Company got these goods completely free. The later mechanism after the Crown took over was a further development using bills of exchange. The only Indian beneficiaries of this clever, unfair system of linking trade with taxes were the intermediaries or dalals. Some of modern India�s well-known business houses made their early profits doing dalali for the British. Income tax on businesses and professionals was virtually non-existent until WWII.

What happened to the money that was drained out of India? What was it used for?

The modern capitalist world would not exist without colonialism and the drain. During Britain�s industrial transition, 1780 to 1820, the drain from Asia and the West Indies combined was about 6 percent of Britain�s GDP, nearly the same as its own savings rate. After the mid-19th century, Britain was running current account deficits with Continental Europe and North America, and at the same time, it was investing massively in these regions, which meant running capital account deficits too. The two deficits summed to large and rising balance of payments (BoP) deficits with these regions.

How was it possible for Britain to export so much capital�which went into building railways, roads and factories in the U.S. and continental Europe? Its BoP deficits with these regions were being settled by appropriating the financial gold and forex earned by the colonies, especially India. Every unusual expense like war was also put on the Indian budget, and whatever India was not able to meet through its annual exchange earnings was shown as its indebtedness, on which interest accumulated.

As under the Company, under the Crown too, a third of India�s budgetary revenues was not spent domestically but was set aside as �expenditure abroad�. The secretary of state (SoS) for India, based in London, invited foreign importers to deposit with him the payment (in gold and sterling) for their net imports from India, which disappeared into the SoS�s account in the Bank of England. Against these Indian earnings he issued bills, termed Council bills (CBs), to an equivalent rupee value�which was paid out of the budget, from the part called �expenditure abroad�. So, Britain had complete command over all the international purchasing power that Indian producers had earned. Even if a part of it had been credited to India, we could have imported modern technology and started industrializing long before Japan did under the Meiji restoration in the 1870s.

The world has changed considerably since the 19th century and China�s recent foray into Africa is sometimes referred to as new age imperialism�

It would be quite incorrect to call either Chinese or for that matter Indian entrepreneurs in Africa as modern imperialists. This is a ploy that the North uses to deflect attention from the crimes that they committed against our people, after getting forcible political control. Britain and other countries taxed the colonized, took their foreign earnings, and drove them into hunger.

Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs in Africa are merely trying to do business in agreement with independent governments. We can never hope to replicate the development path that Northern countries followed. They dealt with rural displacement and rising unemployment through massive, permanent out-migration, mainly to the Americas. That option is not open to labour-surplus India or China. We need to develop an industrialization strategy that preserves employment and livelihoods.

As trade barriers are once again going up, which is reminiscent of the British empire�s policy on Indian cloth imports, are there any lessons India can learn on this front from the colonial experience?

The lesson we have to learn is to disengage. I am not unhappy at the idea of protectionism in the West. Because, frankly, we have to turn our eyes inward. We have an enormous domestic market and its purchasing capacity needs to be raised. We must trade more with other developing countries. And trade on terms which are not exploitative�essentially what is called fair trade. The developing world must start thinking in terms of cooperative solutions. Some barriers to trade with the Northern countries is also essential, because the dogma of �free trade� was promoted by them to serve their own interests at our expense.

Transnational companies are trying to change our cropping patterns towards export crops, as they did during the colonial period. They want free access to our agriculture, because they cannot ever produce the crops we can, particularly in winter. The new globalisation is all about the North accessing fresh fruits and flowers from the South in the middle of winter. Tropical countries should be banding together in order to use the year-round productivity of their lands as a bargaining chip to obtain better terms of trade for their farmers. Today�s advanced world population, to this day, is highly dependent on the ex-colonial world for its standard of living. Nearly 70% of the 12,000 items sold in a modern supermarket in the West has a tropical import content.

The terms of trade are still not fair. Yet, many still adhere to the belief that the advanced countries became advanced because they are terribly innovative and entrepreneurial. Very little of real history is taught to either Indian or British students. In the Cambridge Economic History of India, for example, there is not a single word on the stringent protectionist policy against Asian textiles that Britain maintained from 1700 to 1846. Nor is there a single word on Britain�s appropriation of India�s entire export surplus earnings for 180 long years from 1765 to 1945.

While independent India maintains cordial relations with Britain, there has been much political tumult of late with regard to Mughal history. Both the Raj and the Mughals are regarded as outsiders. How do they compare?

The Mughals did come from outside, but then, waves of migration have always come from outside. What the Mughals did was exactly what the Rajasthan princes also did. They taxed the people, but in moderation, and spent all taxes within the country. They settled here and did not retain any permanent ties with their places of origin. Clearly, the Mughals can in no way be equated with the British because there was no export drive, no cheating of local producers, and no tax-financed annual drain out of the sub-continent.

As an economist interested in history, what is your view on the idea of reparations? Should Britain return the large sums of money that you suggest it drained out of India?

Not only Britain, but the whole of today�s advanced capitalist world flourished on the drain from India and other colonies. Britain was too small to absorb the entire drain from colonial India. So it became the world�s largest capital exporter, which aided the industrial development of Continental Europe, the U.S., and even Russia. The infrastructure boom in these countries would not have been possible otherwise.

Colonial drain helped to create the modern capitalist world, from North America to Australia�all regions where European populations had settled. The advanced capitalist world should set aside a portion of its GDP for unqualified annual transfers to developing countries, especially to the poorest amongst them. Britain, in particular, morally owes reparations for the 3 million civilians who died in the Bengal famine because it was an engineered famine.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2022 21:44

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://www.peacelandbread.com/post/how-the-west-is-underdeveloping-itself - Long form article about how developmental economics had its blindspots followed later on by how the West had extracted value from its (neo)colonies and deindustrialized itself for the sake of warding off the falling rate of profit.

snippet from article posted:

...

Parasitic and Autogenous Development in the Core

Parasitic development is certainly not new. Colonialism in all its forms, from the mercantilist settler-colonialism of the early American colonies, to the more advanced imperialist colonisation of Africa, has involved a parasitic relationship of some sort. However, I would suggest that until relatively recently, all forms of parasitic development were matched by a degree of autogenous development in the core. In the colonial and early imperialist stages, these two forms of development were relatively co-dependent, as parasitic development relied on autogenously-produced military and economic power to maintain a hold over the colonies, while autogenous development relied on parasitic expansion in the colonies to overcome European imperialist stalemates and �export the contradictions� (overproduced goods, surplus labour, etc.) produced by domestic crises.

These are more-or-less historical truisms, but the process deserves elaboration. The settler-colony of New Zealand serves as a good example as it has undergone four identifiable processes which illustrate different aspects of parasitic and autogenous development, both as a core nation in the present day, and as a semi-peripheral colony in its early history:

It has relied on autogenous development in Britain:
The New Zealand state�s early history was marked by repeated appeals to Britain for settlers, investment, and military support. The industrial expansion occurring in Britain, itself the product of both intensified exploitation of British workers and imperial profits from the creation of forced markets in India and China, created the conditions for a British military, economic, and population growth that far outstripped any autogenous potential in the colony. An enormous imperial force was required to defeat the Māori Kīngitanga (itself often militarily superior, but economically inferior)[67] in the 1860s,[68] which was maintained largely at the insistence of the Pākeha colonists. In the 1870s, the colony expanded through a series of massive loans from British banks, while encouraging British immigration.[69] It is deeply unlikely that the New Zealand colony would have established itself without considerable British aid.

It has been hindered by parasitic development in Britain:
Early in the colony�s history, British capitalists conspired to create more favourable conditions for investment through interfering in the colonial land market and raising land prices,[70] immiserating early settlers as part of a conscious effort to escape domestic �over-capitalisation and revolutionary tensions.�[71]

It has benefited from its own autogenous development:
After considerable foreign capital investment, the New Zealand economy became largely self-sufficient from the 1900s to the 1970s, dominating the world�s wool and refrigerated shipping markets and creating the world�s highest standard of living for the majority Pākeha population.[72] This was dependent upon, but never less than equal to, concomitant parasitic development.

It has benefited from its own parasitic development in the Pacific:
Since the Seddon Prime Ministership New Zealand played the role of �junior imperialist� in the Pacific, subjugating island nations. These island economies, as well as the pre-1950s semi-independent Māori economy, served as vast reserve armies of labour, creating a racialised wage hierarchy that enriched Pākeha workers and �plugged gaps� in the main economy.[73]

At this point it is worth pointing out that none of this is to suggest the co-dependence of autogenous and parasitic development in the colonial and early imperialist eras constituted some sort of �interdependent� development with relatively equal trade-offs. At each stage there were winners reaping the benefits of development, and losers who remained underdeveloped, usually Māori and Pacific peoples. Nonetheless, we can see from the New Zealand example that autogenous development was usually matched by some degree of parasitism, and vice-versa. Even if autogenous development was unlikely to succeed without some degree of parasitism, most development which took place in this era was the result of the intra-national exploitation of workers from the majority national group (Pākeha), whereas parasitic development existed in a supporting role to increase industrial outputs (eg. through Pacific phosphate increasing farming output), ensure a labour supply, or act as a �market of last resort� for New Zealand industry (in the case of the Pacific, by providing a market for huge quantities of low-quality corned beef ).

This was to change. On 26 July 1984 the neoliberal revolution began in New Zealand. Bruce Jesson captured the mood of the year in Only Their Purpose is Mad over a decade later:

�[T]he economy was controlled by producers[74]; these days the economy is run by financiers. A new �lite has evolved globally, and the country is now run for the benefit of rentiers, not producers. Within New Zealand, there has been a phenomenal growth in that strata of society that identifies with finance, a growth not just in numbers but in political and social impact. This strata represents internally the external appearance of financial markets on a massive scale. Finance has its own culture and, through a process of osmosis, this culture has spread throughout New Zealand society. It is the spread of this finance culture that has underwritten the New Zealand transformation.�[75]

...

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 02:52

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/RodericDay/status/1494331587298684937

never read animal farm but holy poo poo what a vile piece of anticommunism propaganda that orwell published

makes me glad to have only experienced it secondhand at most

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 08:22

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

if you fail the dc40 will save the hobgoblin converts you to communism

# ¿ Feb 21, 2022 06:30

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

gradenko_2000 posted:

and so I'm left with the conclusion that question left hanging in Chapter 5, is answered by the implications of Chapter 6: Britain moved to coal-powered steam engines not because of a lack of water, not because steam engines were cheaper, and not because coal as a fuel was cheaper, but because waterworks were fundamentally incompatible with the notion of private property.

somewhere out there is a communist hydropunk world with trains and minimally utilized fossil fuels

# ¿ Feb 23, 2022 05:37

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/strike_dr/status/1511920997833842689

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 05:52

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/primarycatdad/status/1535772821753933824

quote:

A McDonalds hamburger costs $2.09 at the register. McDonalds internal documents show that the raw materials (patty, bun, etc.) cost $0.34. A McDonalds employee makes $11/hr on average with a shift manager making $15/hr. Shifts are 8 people on average. That means McDonalds pays $77 + $15/hr in wages to a shift (total $92). The average McDonalds makes $2.7 million/year in sales. That is $308/hour, or roughly 147 hamburgers every hour at $2.09.

Subtracting the wage of the workers ($92) and cost of materials ($49.98), this means there is $166 in surplus value accumulated every hour by the capitalist.

If we take the value of the 147 hamburgers and distribute it among the workers who completed them and placed them into circulation, we get $258.02 ($308-$49.98) divided among 8 workers for $32/worker/hour as compared to their
$11/hr wages.

The rate of exploitation of the McDonald�s workers is thus, when the raw materials are taken as constant capital and not variable capital, is 32:11, roughly 3:1.

This means, that of each hamburger, if 34 cents is raw material and the sale price is $2.09, there is $1.75 attributable to the work of the McDonalds employees in the store. We can divide that value among the 8 workers, and we�d come up with 21 cents per hamburger created by each one.

However, let�s look a little more carefully, not merely from the point of view of the McDonald�s capitalist, but from the point of view of the imperialist.

The beef patty in a McDonald�s hamburger weighs 1.6 ounces. According to the corporation, the meat is a combination of chuck ($4/lb), sirloin ($9/lb), and round ($7/lb). The prices of these meats is from the US beef markets.

We can take the average of these three prices: $6.50/lb. For the amount contained in a hamburger (1.6 ounces), this comes to roughly .65 cents ($6.50/16 = .40).

As you can see, this is more than the entire value of the raw materials in the McDonald�s hamburger. Even if they receive a twenty-five per-cent discount for bulk operations, that�s still 49 cents per hamburger.

One of the top countries supplying beef to McDonalds is Brazil, which shouldn�t be a surprise: the Brazilian ranching industry supplies a huge amount of worldwide beef, and grows it on land assarted from the Amazon.

A Brazilian livestock handler makes 16 reals/hr, which is $3.21 USD. Brazilian beef costs a mere $1.76 and $2/lb. We can see why. The price of Brazilian beef is so much lower because the Brazilian worker�s wage is so much lower.

Why is that?

Imperialism.

The labor market of Brazil is artificially depressed by fascists like Bolsonaro, who are put into power by US interests to keep prices low. US monopoly capital also destroys the quality of life in imperialized countries because this
is how the socially necessary labor time is determined for reproducing the labor force.

If the Brazilian beef costs 34 cents for 1.6 ounces while the reproduction cost of the Brazilian ranch hand is $3.21 an hour, then we may establish a ratio - roughly $3/hr to 30 cents or $1/hr to 10 cents. If the ranch hand made $11/hour just as the metropolitan workers do, this would be an increase of 3 and a half times, increasing the Brazilian beef cost to $1.19 for 1.6 ounces.

If we wished to maintain the price equilibrium by which the hamburger is sold at $2.09, this would require an equalization of wages between the metropolitan worker and the peripheral worker. That is to say, because the hamburger is worth $1.75 in labor ($1.75+$0.34=$2.09) from the metropolitan worker, we must equalize the $1.75 in metropolitan labor with the $0.34 in peripheral labor.

If we were to divide these into two equal parts, that is, $1.04 worth of peripheral labor crystallized in the meat and $1.04 worth of labor in the metropole for the finishing of the meat into a final product, that is a change of $0.71 in favor of the
peripheral worker.

For each hamburger made, the metropolitan worker is paid 3x the wage of the peripheral worker. The metropolitan worker cooking the burger on the grill, assembling the worker, dealing with angry customers, and selling the burger; the ranch hand is enduring near-slave conditions on the Brazilian plain.

The metropolitan worker is directly paid 3 times more for their labor, the hamburger�s cost is depressed for all metropolitan workers, the metropolitan capitalists (the monopoly capitalists) provide other social safety benefits to
keep the class consciousness of the metropolitan workers from developing, and they also concentrate the high-waged, final finishing work for products and the management positions within the metropole.

These are the wages of imperialism.
Lots of quote tweets etc. demanding I account for credit, interest payments, advertising, salaries for HR and executives, franchising fees, rent, machinery, etc.

I didn't factor in any of the standard constant capital valuations for a reason: it obscures the point, which is the law of unequal development and the imperialist forced underdevelopment of the periphery. The pay for the entire cavalcade of non-productive or marginally productive executives, HR reps, advertising, etc., etc., all comes out of the 11 hamburgers sold after the first 7. So do the salaries of the CEOs.

Rent actually isn't a factor for a McDonalds because the corporation owns the ground. The franchisee pays the corporate office rent, but the corporate office pays no one.

These costs are all marginal - as are the electricity and water costs and the degradation of the grill, etc.

The grill itself costs around $3,000 but can make an untold number of hamburgers, imparting to the hamburger a mere fraction of a fraction of a cent.

The typical annual mcdonalds power bill is $40,000. That works out to $4.5/hour or 3 cents per burger at the average rate of 147 burgers per hour.

The cost of upper management is mostly faux frais which can be eliminated, or non-productive labor which is parasitic, etc. There is still PLENTY of value to cover the necessary work at higher levels.
And obviously there are things other than burgers made at a McDonalds - each product has a different individual rate of exploitation for the workers (for example, the soda is hugely exploitative and mostly mark-up).

Important, however, is that most of the profit is not from MARKUP (charging more than a thing is worth) but from THEFT (stealing and refusing to compensate the legitimate labor of the worker).

marx would probably write a hundred thread tweet about burgers if he were alive today

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 04:24

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

MLSM posted:

https://twitter.com/GabrielRockhill/status/1541458038011355141?s=20&t=tp7Lb6oS0YG75C-1NtikSw

quote:

�Fascism and Communism Are the Same�

One of the most consistent political claims advanced by Adorno and Horkheimer is that there is a �totalitarian� equivalence between fascism and communism, if it manifests itself in socialist state-building projects, anticolonial movements of the �Third World,� or even New Left mobilizations in the Western world. In all three cases, those who think they are breaking out of the �shackling society,� are only making things worse. The patent fact that Western capitalist countries offered no significant bulwark against fascism, which arose within the capitalist world, and that it was precisely the Soviet Union that ultimately defeated it, does not seem to have caused them to reflect on the viability of this benighted and simplistic thesis (which is to say nothing of the importance of socialism to anti-colonial movements and the uprisings of the 1960s). In fact, for all of his moral opining on the horrors of Auschwitz, Adorno appears to have forgotten who actually liberated the infamous concentration camp (the Red Army).

Horkheimer had formulated his version of horseshoe theory with particular clarity in a limited circulation pamphlet published in 1942, which broke with the Aesopian language of many of the Institute�s other publications. Directly accusing Friedrich Engels of utopianism, he averred that the socialization of the means of production had led to an increase in repression, and ultimately to an authoritarian state. �The bourgeoisie earlier held the government in check through its property,� according to this millionaire�s son, whereas in new societies socialism simply �did not function,� except to produce the mistaken belief that one was�through the party, honored leader, or the supposed march of history��acting in the name of something greater than oneself.�[65] Horkheimer�s position in this piece is perfectly in line with anarcho-anti-communism, which is a very widespread ideology within the Western Left: a �classless democracy� is supposed to emerge spontaneously from the people through �free agreement,� without the supposedly pernicious influence of parties or states. As Domenico Losurdo has insightfully pointed out, the Nazi war machine was ravaging the USSR in the early 1940s, and Horkheimer�s call for socialists to abandon the state and party centralization therefore amounted to nothing less than a demand that they capitulate before the Nazis�s genocidal rampage.[66]

Whereas there are vague suggestions at the end of Horkheimer�s 1942 pamphlet that there might be something desirable in socialism, later texts would bring into full relief their unequivocal rejection of it. For instance, when Adorno and Horkheimer were considering making a public statement on their relationship to the Soviet Union, the former sent the following draft of a planned co-authored piece to the latter: �Our philosophy, as a dialectical critique of the overall social tendency of the age, stands in the sharpest opposition to the politics and doctrine that emanates from the Soviet Union. We are unable to see anything in the practice of the military dictatorships disguised as people�s democracies other than a new form of repression.�[67] It is worth noting in this regard, given the overwhelming lack of materialist analysis of actually existing socialism on the part of Adorno and Horkheimer, that even the CIA recognized that the Soviet Union was not a dictatorship. In a report dated March 2, 1955, the Agency clearly stated: �Even in Stalin�s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure.�[68]

In 1959, Adorno published a text entitled �The Meaning of Working through the Past� in which he recycled the �shameful truth� of �philistine wisdom� referenced in this earlier draft, namely that�in complete conformity with the dominant Cold War ideology in the West�fascism and communism are the same because they are two forms of �totalitarianism.� Openly rejecting the vantage point of �political-economic ideology,� which obviously distinguishes these two warring camps, Adorno claimed to have privileged access to a deeper social-psychological dynamic that unites them.[69] As �authoritarian personalities,� he asserted ex cathedra, fascists and communists �possess weak egos� and compensate by identifying themselves with �real-existing power� and �great collectives.�[70] The very notion of an �authoritarian personality� is thus a deceitful crotchet aimed at synthesizing opposites via psychologizing pseudo-dialectics. It begs the question, moreover, of why psychology and particular ways of thinking appear, at least here, to be more central to historical explanation than material forces and class struggle.

In spite of this attempt to psychologically identify fascists and communists, Adorno nonetheless suggested, in the same text, that the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union could be retrospectively justified due to the fact that the Bolsheviks were�like Hitler himself had said�a menace to Western civilization. �The threat that the East will engulf the foothills of Western Europe is obvious,� Adorno claimed, �and whoever fails to resist it is literally guilty of repeating Chamberlain�s appeasement.�[71] The analogy is revealing because, in this case, it would mean appeasing the �fascist� communists if one did not directly fight against them. In other words, as obscure and convoluted as his phraseology is, this appears to be a clarion call for military opposition to the spread of communism (which is perfectly in line with Horkheimer�s support for the U.S.�s imperialist war in Vietnam).

Adorno�s fierce rejection of actually existing socialism was also on full display in his exchange with Alfred Sohn-Rethel. The latter asked him if Negative Dialectics had anything to say about changing the world, and if the Chinese Cultural Revolution was part of the �affirmative tradition� he condemned. Adorno replied that he rejected the �moral pressure� from �official Marxism� to put philosophy into practice.[72] �Nothing but despair can save us,� he asserted with his signature panache of petty-bourgeois melancholia.[73] Adding, for good measure, that the events in communist China were no cause for hope, he explained with memorable insistence that his entire thinking life had been resolutely pitted against this form�and presumably others�of socialism: �I would have to deny everything I have thought my whole life long if I were to admit to feeling anything but horror at the sight of it.�[74] Adorno�s open indulgence in despair and simultaneous abhorrence of actually existing socialism are not simply idiosyncratic, personal reactions but are affects arising from a class position. �The representatives of the modern labor movement,� Lenin wrote in 1910, �find that they have plenty to protest against but nothing to despair about.�[75] In a description that anticipated Adorno�s petty-bourgeois gloom, the leader of the world�s first successful socialist revolution then proceeded to explain that �despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.�[76]

Adorno also pursued this line of thinking, or rather feeling, in his criticisms of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist student activism of the 1960s. He agreed with Habermas�who had himself been a member of the Hitler Youth and studied for four years under the �Nazi philosopher� (his description of Heidegger)�that this activism amounted to �Left fascism.� He defended West Germany as a functioning democracy rather than a �fascist� state, as some of the students argued.[77] At the same time, he quarreled with Marcuse over what he judged to be the latter�s misguided support for the students and the antiwar movement, explicitly claiming that the answer to the question �what is to be done?�, for good dialecticians, is nothing at all: �the goal of real praxis would be its own abolition.�[78] He thereby inverted, through dialectical sophistry, one of the central tenets of Marxism, notably the primacy of practice. It is in this context of turning Marx on his head that he repeated, once again, the ideological mantra of the capitalist world: �fascism and communism are the same.�[79] Even though he referred to this slogan as a �petit bourgeois truism,� apparently acknowledging its ideological status, he unabashedly embraced it.[80]

Idealism is the hallmark of Adorno and Horkheimer�s reflections on actually existing socialism and, more generally, progressive social movements. Rather than studying the projects that they denigrate with any of the rigor and earnestness with which they sometimes approach other topics, they rely on stock representations and anti-communist canards devoid of concrete analysis (although they occasionally reference a few of the anti-communist publications, like those by the rabid cold warrior Arthur Koestler, that were amply funded and supported by imperialist states and their intelligence services).[81] This is particularly true in the case of their vilification of socialist state building projects. Their writings on the topic are not only remarkably devoid of references to any rigorous scholarship on the matter, but they proceed as if such serious engagement was not even necessary. These texts genuflect to the dominant ideology, stalwartly insisting on the anti-Stalinist bona fides of their authors, without being concerned with any of the details, nuances or complexities.

One cannot help but wonder, then, if the students were not correct when, in the late 1960s, they circulated leaflets asserting that these Frankfurt scholars were �left idiots of the authoritarian state� who were �critical in theory, conformist in practice.�[82] Hans-J�rgen Krahl, one of Theodor Adorno�s doctoral students, went so far as to publicly besmirch his mentor and the other Frankfurt professors as �Schei�kritische Theoretiker [poo poo-critical theorists].�[83] He voiced this lapidary critique of these stalwart defenders of ABS Theory when he was being arrested, at the behest of Adorno, for a university occupation related to his involvement in the Socialist German Students� League. The fact that the author of Negative Dialectics called the police to have his own students arrested is a standard reference point amongst his political critics. As we have seen, however, it is only the very tip of the iceberg. Far from being a bizarre anomaly, it is consistent with his politics, his social function within the intellectual apparatus, his class standing, and his overall orientation within global class struggle.

there's like nothing new under the sun lol

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 07:22

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/revdefeat/status/1542654603027615744

shocked that amnesty is in service of american imperialism

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 18:45

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/LunaOi_VN/status/1545064271490326529

https://twitter.com/LunaOi_VN/status/1545067909168259072

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 00:32

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

gradenko_2000 posted:

Woodpeckers work on the excavation of wood. The bills are their tools. Striking their sharp-nosed hammers with a signature mechanical sound, they can bore mouth-sized holes into tree trunks, like shafts for mining ants and termites, beetles and their grubs. Because the tools are at one with the bodies of the birds, they cannot be concentrated. No master woodpecker can collect bills and pile them up on a central site and tell the other members of the population, their faces strangely flat, to submit to his command and get access to the tools they need to break through the bark or refuse and starve in freedom: for this reason, if for no other, property relations among woodpeckers are impossible. Their equipment for metabolism cannot be distributed between owners and non-owners, nor can it be collectively controlled by a commune.

This is the essence of ‘property relations’: a matrix of positions for the members of the species vis-à-vis the means of production. Or, in the more elaborate definition given by Brenner:

– a set of rules, as it were, for how humans relate to their equivalents of bills and beetles.1 Now humans create, of course, toolboxes infinitely larger and more varied than their own bodily organs. ‘Nature,’ Marx says, is their ‘original tool house,’ out of which they assemble advanced implements for spinning, boring, grinding, pressing, cutting, throwing, pumping and any number of other activities. Humans alone can fan out over the earth as a whole, construct instruments out of whatever useful material they encounter and annex them to their bodies: make the earth an ‘inorganic body,’ in Marx’s words – a sort of prosthetic extension of themselves.2 No other species can be so flexible, so universal, so omnivorous in relation to the rest of nature – but for the very same reason, no other species can have its metabolism organised through such sharp internal divisions.3 If a broad set of extra-somatic tools is a distinctive feature of Homo sapiens sapiens, it is also the point where that species ceases to be a unity. Precisely because the bills required for breaking through the bark of matter may draw upon all forces of nature and open the wide earth for appropriation, some humans can be cut off. A material, a machine, a prime mover can become private property. The individual might need them like she needs her own lungs, but they are outside of her body, caught by others in a net, versatile and off-limits, and so she may have no choice but to go via a master to access them: she is snared in property relations.

Before that capture happens, human beings are a bit like woodpeckers, in the sense that they are united with their means of production – not physically, but socially. On the land, in the household and the guild, farmers and artisans possess their own tools, the individual producer relating to the earth as ‘the workshop of his forces, and the domain of his will,’ still at one with the means ‘like the snail with his shell’.4 Capitalist property relations begin the moment that bond is broken. Deprived of what they need for their subsistence, ex-farmers and ex-artisans no longer own anything but a capacity to perform labour, or labour power, naked and unequipped, a mere potential screaming for tools with which to work. On the opposite side of the fence, they confront a class monopolising those same means of production as private assets. A historical divorce has occurred, in which producers and means have been separated from each other.

But the distance cannot be allowed to last. If people who own nothing but their own labour power never got in contact with the means of production, they would be unable to work and feed themselves: ‘No boots can be made without leather.’5 If, on the other hand, the land, the frames, the piles of leather remained untouched by the fingers and hands of working people, nothing would come out of them, and they would be of no worth to their proprietors. While the separation is the unshakable foundation for capitalist property relations, it has to be overcome, momentarily but continuously, for society to reproduce itself: producers and means must be reunited. Now the capacity of a living person to perform labour – her ability to exert muscles and mind, expend energy, operate her body parts during hours of concentration and strain – is quite a different thing from a pound of leather or a mule or a wheel; indeed, these are incommensurable entities. Hence their reunification can come about only via the mediation of a universal equivalent against which anything can be exchanged and in whose reactor all qualitative characters dissolve: what we know as money.

The worker needs money too. She sells the right to dispose of her sole property – her labour power – for specified periods of time, in return for a quantum of the universal equivalent – the wage – with which she can purchase the goods needed for her metabolism. Both at the end and at the beginning of the cycle, she possesses commodities: first her labour power, then a sack of potatoes and a fresh set of cutlery and a dingy apartment covered for another two weeks. The formula she follows is Commodity – Money – Commodity, or C – M – C for short.6 The one C is distinguished from the other by its qualities, or its use-value: bare labour power is of no utility to its owner, but food and utensils and shelter are essential objects of consumption. But now consider an agent who starts off with money. Venturing out on the market, it is he who purchases labour power and means of production – say, a hundred workers ready to weave and be paid for two weeks at a time, a factory building, a steam engine, power looms, warp and weft – and thereby affect the reunion like an indispensable matchmaker. The result is a fine calico, which he sells on the market. For this he gets money. The cycle has come to a first end, in accordance with an opposite formula: M – C – M, beginning with money and ending with money, the commodity phase a mere passage to the ultimate goal.

But why change money for money? One sum of money cannot be distinguished from another in quality, only in quantity. The sole point of the exercise is the difference between the amount of money thrown into circulation and the amount yielded at its end – to pocket an increment in exchange-value, or, simply put, to make more money. The full formula is thus M – C – M´, the M with a prime signifying that the sold commodities command higher exchange-value than the ingredients acquired to produce them. Our agent has garnered a profit. That is the whole purpose of the procedure, and given the chasm between labour power and means of production as commodities on a market, there can be no other. The two are brought back together in the hands of the capitalist, inserting himself as a permanent ‘middle-man’ or screen between the partners, purchasing them with the single aim – he has spent money, after all – of reaping a monetary gain.7 In a society that has undergone the historical divorce, capital is the necessary medium for arranging a productive rendezvous between incommensurable entities that can never be discontinued nor fully completed. The interpolation must never cease.

‘I conceive that a capitalist will not risk his money in business without he covers a profit,’ said cotton manufacturer G. A. Lee from Manchester to a Parliamentary commission in 1816.8 He would never do so if he expected to make a loss. If the business forecast told him he would get back 95 percent of his initial outlay, the capitalist would be wise to keep the money in his bank account; if it said he would stand a good chance of getting 100 percent of the expenses covered but no more, he would still be prudent to abstain from the investment. The effort would be pointless. One might perhaps imagine a capitalist who repeatedly banks on his own losses, but this person would be a mad deviant guaranteeing his own disappearance; similarly, one could visualise a capitalist who keeps placing his assets in ventures that give him zero in return but no losses – perhaps this is a philanthropic gentleman who appreciates the outlets for what they actually do. He would certainly not be a very successful capitalist, rather running the risk of being overtaken by others who have adopted the full formula: anything else than the profit motive requires sacrificial dispositions on his part. The sole rational goal for him as a capitalist is profit. Logically and historically, the quest for it is inscribed into capitalist property relations as their one ‘driving fire’.9

So the capitalist cares naught for the material qualities of his goods: ‘He does not manufacture boots for their own sake,’ nor cutlery to put on his own table, nor houses to accommodate his children, but items to be sold to others. But he cannot sell the idea of boots or cutlery or houses. For his goods to attract demand, they must be such articles, endowed with a minimal use-value of allowing for walk on uneven terrain, scooping up food or shielding against cold and rain. To earn his profit, the industrial capitalist must take a detour through nature, setting up some version of ‘the metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence’ within his precincts. Here the materials of nature are appropriated not for their own concrete comforts, but for the sole purpose of embodying exchange-value: ‘Use-values are produced by capitalists only because and in so far as they form the material substratum of exchange-value, are the bearers of exchange-value.’10

...

Capital is quantitative in nature: thus it recognises no end point. It reconverts the profit from the first circuit into more labour power and means of production for the next, moving on relentlessly through reinvestment, ‘expanded reproduction’ or simply accumulation of capital; it resumes production on a larger scale, and on a larger scale again, so that the Stoffwechsel ‘changes into a spiral’.16 For every consecutive circuit, capital will ceteris paribus appropriate greater chunks of nature.

...

If output were to be fixed, the profit from the first cycle could not be reinvested in additional machinery and workers in the next: it would have to be consumed, devalued or both. The only way for capital to throw it back into production and keep accumulating at the same rate of profit would be to pay workers less, fire some of them while output stays the same, avoid taxes or obtain subsidies and other services from the state – measures whose potentials would quickly be exhausted. ‘When growth is impossible, further accumulation of profits by capital can only have the effect of continuous transfer of income from wages to income from property,’ or, ‘in other words, if profits cannot be made by growing the pie, it is to be done by cutting the rest in smaller slices.’18 That strategy is doomed to hit a wall. Rates of exploitation cannot rise indefinitely; at some point, the rate of profit would inevitably slide down towards zero, and since it is the lure of profit that motivates investment, capitalists would simply cease operations and refuse to set production in motion – or move their capital to someplace else, where the constraint on output does not apply. Then there is also the hypothetical possibility that GDP could grow while throughput stays flat or falls thanks to a declining material intensity of production, a decoupling of value and nature.

Whence, then, does profit come? Hidden within the production phase – C…P…C´ – there must be some source of increase in exchange-value, something with the curious ability to create more such value than it costs: what is it? The Marxian answer to this riddle is, of course, labour power. If it takes four hours for a power loom weaver to produce cloth whose exchange-value equals her wage, she might well go on working for another four or six or eight hours, even though her reproduction – potatoes, cutlery, rent – has already been secured. If I buy a bicycle, the cost of it bears no relation to the distance I can go with it; within its physical capacities, I can spin the pedals for a time entirely unrelated to the price.19 A similar blessing is bestowed upon the capitalist, with the critical difference that the commodity of labour power does not have a particular use-value like the bike (transportation from A to B) but the general use-value of generating fresh exchange-value: once she has worked for the four hours required to cover her wage, the operative can be spun to continue manufacturing cloth, or whatever other commodity is being produced, for sale on the market. During the remainder of the day, she produces surplus-value, which becomes profit when related to the invested capital as a whole, so that capital accumulation is in fact the production of surplus-value: ABC of Marxism, and still the most plausible account around. After all, labour is the activity that sets anthropogenic products apart from those of raw nature; if profit had any other source, ‘money would be growing magically on trees’ and capitalists could just walk around picking it like a golden fruit.

Thus capitalist property relations give rise to 1) the profit, 2) the compulsion to chase it incessantly, 3) the necessity of growing material throughput – all stemming from the fundamental intra-species fracture. Capital is the expanding gas forming in the cracks and hollows between the better part of humanity and the rest of nature. By its very definition, it is the circulatory, spiral-like process of valorisation or self-expanding value; but it is also – by its very definition – the relation between capitalists and workers, for capital exists ‘only by sucking in living labour as its soul, vampire-like’; but if labour is its soul, extra-human nature is its utterly corporeal body. In the tracks of self-expansion, capital must deposit a ‘mass of commodities’ that is ‘constantly growing,’ a mountain range of transformed matter rising through the social ridges.21

# ¿ Jul 12, 2022 15:05

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/bidetmarxman/status/1547237104593145856

quote:

When reading predictions on the collapse of dollar hegemony, it can be hard to grasp what it means in material terms:

The USD is going to begin to sink to its true value.

But what is its �true value�? 🧵

Despite only accounting for ~10% of global trade, 85% of global trade settlements are made in USD. This creates a continuous demand for USD above and beyond what would otherwise exist. In this way, the value of the dollar is massively propped up relative to other currencies.

Countries must hold a large portion of their foreign reserves in USD because up until recently, the dollar was required to purchase crude oil on the international market, leading to the emergence of the petrodollar.

This requirement to pay for crude with USD is maintained primarily through a simple agreement: in exchange for depositing their dollars back into banks on Wall St and Lombard St, OPEC states are defended militarily by the US.

This recycling of petrodollars back into US banks is a key mechanism behind why the US has been able to finance federal deficit spending for decades with no reduction in purchasing power of the dollar. But the foundation of this arrangement is beginning to show cracks.

The cracks in dollar hegemony are materializing in seemingly mundane ways. Those wanting to buy Russian energy now must pay in Russian rubles. China, through its BRI, is structuring loans in Chinese yuan. It may seem absurd to learn that the world didn�t already operate like this

The ultimate irony is that this loss of hegemony was precipitated by the US itself earlier this year when they illegally seized Russia�s dollar reserves, conclusively demonstrating to the rest of the world that the sovereignty of reserves held in USD is an illusion.

So if the USD is indeed losing value, why is the Euro falling against the USD?

The Euro is currently falling as a result of their subservience to the US in its proxy war with Russia. EU exports are becoming more expensive due to skyrocketing energy costs and govts around the world are rebalancing foreign reserves in anticipation of impending EU turmoil.

However, increased demand for rubles, due mostly to Russia�s new insistence on being paid for gas in its own currency, demonstrates that the buoyancy provided to the USD by forcing the EU�s head under water is likely short lived.

What then is the �true� value of the USD? What portion of current demand for dollars is �real�?

Some estimates believe this could be as little as 30% of its current value. If so, the cost of imports would more than triple (eg. a $30k imported vehicle would now cost 100k).

With demand for USD decreasing as foreign reserves shift to more diverse baskets of currencies, the dollar will depreciate. This will start gradually but can easily snowball, especially if triggered by a disruption to the continuity of the US government.

A selloff will rapidly flood forex markets with USD and crash its price. The Fed may intervene to prevent the entirety of the excess demand from evaporating, but ultimately an equilibrium price will be reached that is founded on real demand for US exports.

The lowered USD may temporarily make US exports more attractive, HOWEVER, a large number of US exports rely heavily on having inputs of cheap raw materials and labor. And as we already saw, the cost of these imported inputs will dramatically increase as the dollar value falls.

The proxy war in Ukraine was an attempt by the US to use the EU�s economy as a desperate buttress against dollar hegemony erosion. But ironically, this move will only serve to precipitate a more dramatic collapse, as the US increasingly isolates itself through sanctions.

Conversely, the sanctions are also directly fostering the strengthening of trade between countries outside the western hegemonic structure.

The true value of currencies in a post-USD hegemony global economy will be determined by the demand for goods/services they produce.

So how much will a unit of western labor be valued relative to global south labor once the largest mechanism of imperialist exploitation crumbles?

To afford a washing machine, the average Sri Lankan needs to labor for 4 months. It takes the average person in the US half a week.

The US�s new equilibrium point will either involve socialism or it will involve a historic collapse of living standards. There is no third option.

After hundreds of years marked by colonialism and imperialism, we are entering an age in which the unique contributions of individual countries to the global economic web will finally be reflected in their currencies, leading to more just stores of value.

The US�s military protection of OPEC countries of course comes with an important caveat: do NOT under any circumstances try to create an alternative to the petrodollar!

dedollarization is going to make for some interesting times shame about all the fascists though

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 21:19

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

In Training posted:

NY has diamond mines?

it's where all the diamonds go to be made into their value added jewelry form

the raw materials come from elsewhere naturally

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 21:41

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

fart simpson posted:

did he finally read any marx or is that still too boring for him

I believe the excuse offered these days is that Marx is an old white man.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2022 17:24

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

evilpicard posted:

Who said it's easier to imagine an end to capitalism than the existance of an American labour party?

You sure you're not mistaking it for "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."?

# ¿ Aug 7, 2022 22:07

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://invent-the-future.org/2018/01/why-doesnt-the-soviet-union-exist-any-more-part-5-perestroika-and-glasnost/ - good article on how gorby is such a piece of poo poo

quote:

Gorbachev�s initial steps in the economy were interesting but inept. The first big reform was an anti-alcohol campaign with partial prohibition, announced in May 1985. Intended to help alleviate the major problems the Soviet Union was experiencing in terms of public health and labour productivity (particularly absenteeism), the reform consisted of a price hike for all alcoholic drinks, reduced production of vodka and wine, an increase in the minimum drinking age (to 21), stiff penalties on drunken behaviour, the banning of alcohol consumption in the workplace, and various regulations in relation to the sale of alcohol.

Well-intentioned as the campaign may have been, it was a near-complete failure and had damaging side effects. Kotz and Wier point out that �while a slight increase in sobriety may have resulted, this campaign, like the American experiment with Prohibition after World War I, had unforeseen harmful consequences. Illegal private production arose to meet the unsatisfied demand. Private distillers stripped the retail stores of sugar, causing severe shortages. And an estimated 20 billion roubles in tax revenues were lost on alcohol sales during 1986-88�.10

quote:

The politburo went on to introduce a package of economic reforms that bore some resemblance to the Kosygin-Liberman reforms (discussed in the second article in this series12). The centrepiece was a proposal to allow state production enterprises to determine their own output levels, on the basis that the enterprises had more insight into their capacity, resources and circumstances than the central planners did. Gosplan, the central planning agency, was to withdraw from micromanaging enterprises and switch to long-term goal-setting. Kotz and Wier note: �The economic ministries were to end their day-to-day management of production. Republican, regional and local soviets were to be granted a larger role in overseeing the economy of their respective areas. Within enterprises, workers were to be given expanded power over decision-making. These reforms embodied the leadership�s idea of democratising and decentralising the economy, within the framework of public ownership and economic planning�.13

....

The most immediately visible result of Gorbachev�s reform package was to create shortages of certain goods. Enterprises were now able to determine their own product mix, but there was no corresponding change in the market for those products: prices remained fixed by the state, and therefore most enterprises simply focused on producing those items that had the highest mark-up. Allen Lynch writes: �Most Soviet factories simply stopped making low margin consumer items, and massive shortages of everyday items quickly set in (eg salt, sugar, matches, cooking oil, washing powder, baby clothes, etc). By mid-1989, coal miners in Donbass had no soap to wash with after a long day in the mines, a development that triggered massive strikes and a coalition of workers and intellectuals against the Soviet system and Gorbachev himself.�15

quote:

Late in 1987, Gorbachev pushed through a major decrease in state purchases of industrial output, thus forcing the enterprises to sink or swim in the open market, regardless of whether they were anything approximating �viable� without their guaranteed monopoly. �Against the better judgement of Prime Minister Ryzhkov and Ligachev, Yakovlev [Gorbachev�s closest adviser] and Gorbachev pushed to shrink the state orders � the guaranteed government purchase of Soviet industrial output at fixed prices � from 100 percent to a mere 50 percent of the whole of industry. Reducing state orders to such a degree meant that, in one leap, half of Soviet industry would gain autonomy to buy and sell its output in a new wholesale market � trade between enterprises � with prices set by fluctuations in supply and demand� The Gorbachev plan proved utterly reckless. It plunged the economy into chaos. In 1988, consumer shortages proliferated and, for the first time since World War II, inflation appeared�.16

With the enterprises thrown into chaos and often struggling to sell their produce in a newly-competitive market, state revenues suffered a sharp reduction. Sitaram Yechury writes that this �led to a situation where the government had to increasingly resort to budgetary deficits. In 1985 the budget deficit was a modest 18 million roubles which rose to nearly 120 billion by 1989 or 14% of the Soviet Union�s GNP�.17 The fiscal deficit drove austerity: �during Gorbachev�s leadership, import of food grains and consumer items fell by the equivalent of 8.5 billion roubles.�

quote:

Gorbachev also moved to change the class composition of the Communist Party. Before the 1988 Party Conference, he said very candidly that only people who supported his programme were eligible to be delegates: �There must be no more quotas, as we had in the past � so many workers and peasants, so many women, and so forth. The principal political imperative is to elect active supporters of perestroika.�34 Cheng Enfu and Liu Zixu observe that, �in the name of promoting young cadres and of reform, Gorbachev replaced large numbers of party, political and military leaders with anti-CPSU and anti-socialist cadres or cadres with ambivalent positions. This practice laid the foundations, in organisational and cadre selection terms, for the political �shift of direction.��35

Later in 1988, Gorbachev moved against the more traditionalist (that is: communist) members of the party leadership. The most senior official, Andrei Gromyko � a key negotiator at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945, foreign minister from 1957 to 1985 and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1985 until 1988 � was removed from the politburo. Nikolai Baibakov was fired as head of the central planning agency after two decades, in spite of his vast wealth of experience (which included overseeing Russian oil production during World War 236). Yegor Ligachev, who had become increasingly vocal in his critique of perestroika, was demoted from head of ideology to head of agriculture. As the communists were systematically removed from the party and state leadership, supporters of �radical reform� were promoted, including a certain Boris Yeltsin.

Ligachev�s role as head of ideology fell to Alexander Yakovlev, Gorbachev�s closest political adviser and widely regarded as the �godfather of glasnost�, wielding what Keeran and Kenny describe as �the most powerful and pernicious influence of anyone on the entire reform process�. We now know that Yakovlev had long since given up on his commitment to Marxism and had his heart set on transforming the Soviet Union into a multiparty parliamentary democracy and market economy along the lines of Canada (where he had spent ten years as Soviet ambassador). Initially he hoped this could be achieved through reforms, but he reveals in his memoirs that, with the reins in his hands, he decided that nothing less than counter-revolution would do.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 23:29

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfG0USvDTew

The CGTN mega projects documentaries are pretty good "How It's Made" type videos but updated for conditions in China ~2019.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2022 03:12

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://grossmanite.medium.com/beca...ty-dbc3e7b478ea

quote:

Automation is abolishing the source of profit, making socialism an economic and technical necessity for the first time
Grossmanite
27-34 minutes

The general rate of profit tends historically towards zero. Source: Estaban Maito

Since the inevitable evolution of production from mechanisation to automation is abolishing capital�s theft of commodity-producing labour�s labour time � the sole source of profit � capitalism is losing its ability to create enough exchange-value to preserve and expand the total value of capital and is sooner or later likely to spiral into a crisis of worldwide hyperinflation followed by the worst collapse in production since the 1930s.

Socialism (the lower stage of communism), whereby private enterprise owned by the few is turned into social enterprise owned by all, with output based on demand and break-even planning rather than exploitation and profitability � thereby abolishing system-inherent causes of recession � is therefore becoming an economic necessity *for the first time*.

Because the mechanical technological mode of production is a binary one, the (non-binary) singularity of the system of fully automated production we are heading towards is also making socialism a technical necessity.

Combined with ongoing technological leaps (precision fermentation, genetic engineering, 3D printing, etc.) and a transition to emissions-free, i.e. additive and non-labour intensive forms of production (3D printing, liquid thorium, microbial fuel cells, hemp bioplastics, etc; capitalism being dependent on subtractive, labour-intensive production) socialism will therefore increasingly enable sustainable abundant material wealth *for all*, leading to higher communism, when the state becomes irrelevant and withers away.

Is worldwide hyperinflation really looming?

➤ A third �one in 100 year� financial bubble in three decades � there had been no equivalent since the 1929 Wall Street Crash � engulfing the world economy has been labelled �the everything bubble� (the previous two being the 2000�01 dot com bubble and the 2007�09 housing bubble) because it now encompasses every asset/debt class for the first time.

➤ Official US national debt-to-GDP � driven by private sector debt heaped onto the backs of the public � hit an all time high of 137.2% in 2021, having averaged 64.54% since 1940. The record high aggregate global debt is unsustainable since the tax base needed to repay it is shrinking in relative terms.

The �everything bubble� encompasses all debt asset classes for the first time.

Global debt across all sectors increased by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion. At over 322% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that put global debt 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2007�09 financial crisis Emerging market borrowing, led by China, inflated the global debt mountain to a record $303 trillion in 2021.

Nation-states that fail to push their debt back below 90% usually go on to default on their debt (fail to repay it) and go bankrupt. The actual figure has been estimated to be 2.5 times higher (as of July 2019) and 2.5 times higher than the global money supply (as of 2015, up from two times higher in 2013).

As of 23 November, 21% of all US dollars in circulation had been printed in 2020, taking the figure to 75% over the past 12 years. The dollar is being devalued at record speed, but this only reflects the devalution of commodities, driven by innovation � the quicker and more abundantly commodities are made, the cheaper and less profitable each commodity tends to become.

The record high debt figures have been matched by an unprecedented explosion in the money supply as central banks have electronically �printed� money to buy up all the corporate debt that is partly responsible for making corporations unattractive to investors. The (US) Federal Reserve�s balance sheet rose from $900bn in September 2008, during �the global financial crisis�, to $9 trillion in 2020 � an unprecedented 10-fold increase.

Money printing of course �devalues the money supply� per dollar; but is actually a reflection of the devaluation of capital arising from exponential leaps in absolute productive output and the manifesting shortage of exchange-value being created by commodity-production, i.e. per commodity (see below). E.g. 10 commodities produced in 5 hours having previously taken 10 hours to produce cost half as much as they did before.

➤ Lifting the US economy out of recession has required on average since 1958 a baseline interest rate cut of 6% (in order to cheapen capital to incentivise lending and borrowing); but since the (worst ever) stock market crash in March 2020, rates were already near zero, having been cut after March 2020 from 0.75% in the UK and 1.75% in the US. Neither country had ever gone below 1% before 2010, but have been more or less stuck at zero since 2009.

Going lower still into negative rates � or perhaps even keeping short term rates at zero and bringing down medium and long-term rates � would require even more money printing and debt purchasing than after March 2020.

It may also involve charges on bank deposits, bans of high dominations of cash (to convert it into stocks and bonds in order to lower interest rates, hence the so-called �war on cash�); and charges on low dominations; wealth taxes; and �bail-ins� whereby banks stave off insolvency by seizing assets from customers or converting deposits into equity.

�The Buffet indicator� � total market capital of stocks divided by GDP. The average value of the US stock markets is historically around 50�100% of GDP, but it has climbed to over 200%, indicating an enormous, unprecedented financial �bubble�, the third in the past three decades. Before that there had been one since the bubble that preceded the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

All this may reinflate the global bond (debt) bubble for another few years or so, but such options are limited � there is only so much cash that can be converted into stocks; and will also require increasingly massive amounts of central bank money printing to push up the prices of bonds (thereby lowering interest rates). How negative can negative rates go? There must be a limit.

The trillions of dollars of sovereign debt already subjected to negative rates, meaning investors are essentially paying for the privilege of lending money to the capitalist state, has been remarkably and increasingly high since 2014. Banks, many of which are already close to going bust, have warned that making base rates too negative would make them unprofitable.

➤ Eventually even the richest countries will default on their debt. Public bailouts just about saved most major banks in the 2007�09 crisis, thanks to a sufficient devaluation and centralisation of capital (the necessary solution to every capitalist crisis/recession), accelerating rises in monopolisation, poverty and inequality.

�The decrease in interest rate is a symptom of the annulment of capital only inasmuch as it is a symptom of the growing domination of capital in the process of perfecting itself � of the estrangement which is growing and therefore hastening it�s annulment.� � Karl Marx / �The rate of interest is related to the profit rate in a similar way as the market price of a commodity is to its value�. The general rate of profit, in fact, reappears in the average rate of interest as an empirical, given fact.� � Henryk Grossman

➤ Eventually central banks will run out of cash to convert into stocks and the debt bubble will burst as profitable investment declines and interest rates therefore start going back up, making government debt increasingly expensive to pay-off and leading to surges in debt-to-GDP and panic selling as investors realise that the government is broke.

➤ Bondholders will dump bonds and instead panic buy hard assets, especially precious metals, adding to the potential for hyperinflation. Central banks may be forced to purchase dumped bonds, sending national (public) debt ever-higher.

➤ Capitalists also use inflation/hyperinflation in a crisis anyway to effectively torch wages, debt and taxes, i.e. in order to centralise capital into fewer hands and rewiden profit margins. They do so partly by imposing artificial scarcity through cuts to production, raising demand relative to supply. (A study published in July 2022 found that, by doing this, capitalists raise energy prices by 70�80%.)

Automation is abolishing the source of profit? What?!

➤ Of the roughly 750 currencies that have existed since 1700, less than 20% remain.

➤ British pound sterling has lost more than 99.5% of its purchasing power since its adoption as official currency in 1694. The US dollar has lost more than 96% of its purchasing power since 1913, having barely changed in the previous 140 years when the rate of the economy�s growth (relative to its size) was much higher. The vast amount of that figure, 91%, has come since 1949, when the US supplanted Britain as the world�s imperialist superpower. The figure since 1970 is 85% (93.5% for Britain), when the US, Britain and Europe entered their first major post-WWII recession and the technological (digital/computing/automation) revolution really took off, with currency�s link to gold becoming a restraint on economic growth (since gold�s finite nature limited the number of dollars that could be printed and thus invested in production).

➤ GDP growth rates are trending towards and already closing in on zero, having been around 6% in the 1960s and below 2% since 2000.

Decade-by-decade average GDP growth rates in what the World Bank defines as �high income countries� are trending towards zero.

➤ The aggregate global rate of profit is also trending historically towards zero, having fallen from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s.

➤ Between 1964 and 2014, the average lifespan of S&P 500 companies shrank from around 60 to 18 years.

➤ The Energy Return on Investment (EROI) on fossil fuel has fallen from above 100:1 (a return of 100 units of energy for every 1 invested) before the 1930s to around 3�6:1 in 2019. Indeed, in April 2020 the price of US oil fell below zero for the first time ever. The value of Saudi Arabia�s oil infrastructure is predicted to fall from $2bn to minus-$800bn by 2030. According to Sid Smith, all forms of energy production are becoming unprofitable. (The fossil fuel industry only remains �profitable� because of its parasitic dependence on public subsidies of $16bn a day.)

➤ Production costs and consumer commodity prices have trended secularly/historically towards zero, since commodities tend to become cheaper the faster and more abundantly they are produced. For example, whereas the world�s fastest supercomputer in 1975 was worth $5m ($32m in 2013�s money), the price of an iPhone 4 released in 2010 with the equivalent performance was $400. Aerospace companies producing propulsion systems in 2010 for $24m in 24 months are now 3-D printing their engines for $2,000 in two weeks. (Source: Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, p. 123).

One gigabyte of data storage, for example, fell from around $200,000 in 1980 to just $0.03 in 2014.

While it took 13 years and billions of dollars to sequence the first human genome, the cost had fallen to below $100 by 2017.

Such developments mean companies are increasingly likely to find it cheaper to produce �at home� instead of exploiting overseas labour and transit workers (who transport commodities).

As Rethink X states: �Our food system is being transformed as we learn how to make affordable high-quality proteins and other molecules [through lab-grown �cellular agriculture� and �precision fermentation� (programmed microbiolisation; a form of automation)] without the need to grow plants and animals. The DNA of a single soy plant or chicken will be enough to create an unlimited quantity of soy or chicken proteins. Our newfound ability to design and produce infinite organic compounds like we design apps or videos will likely distribute the power to engineer our own food cheaply, sweeping away the industrial dairy and meat industries.�

In 2000, the cost of producing one kilogram of one type of molecule through precision fermentation cost $1 million, but in 2020 the cost had fallen to around $100. In 2020, precision fermentation was on course to become cost-competitive with bulk animal protein, which stood at around $10 per kg for casein and whey, by 2025. It is expected to fall below $10 per kg by 2025, before becoming five times cheaper than traditional animal proteins by 2030, and 10 times cheaper by 2035. As soon as a company like Nestle starts buying its milk this way � as it must to rewiden its own profit margins � the conventional farming industry will collapse.

�The capitalistic mode of production� is never able to get out of that �vicious circle�� this circle is gradually narrowing� the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end.�
� Friedrich Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, 1877

➤ Machines cannot sell their labour power (capacity to work) and are therefore unexploitable; i.e. they do not produce surplus value, i.e. surplus labour time, the time the worker (wage-slave/proletarian) works beyond their necessary labour time (the value of their labour power and cost of subsistence). Surplus labour time is thus surplus value that the capitalist appropriates from the worker and realises through the sale of commodities.

The real measure of value is labour time, since this is the one thing that all exchangeable commodities have in common that makes them exchangeable (via a third, universal commodity, the money-commodity). The value of all commodities is the same as their combined necessary labour time, driven down to the minimum by competition and innovation.

If the worker creates eight hours worth of value a day, she only keeps what she needs to pay to reproduce herself and her dependents (living costs/necessary labour time); three hours, for example, with the other five (surplus labour time) going to the capitalist. The capitalist continually needs to increase and maximise surplus value production, i.e. towards eight out of eight hours in our example. Profit is therefore essentially unpaid (surplus) labour (time).

At the same time, as productivity rises through innovation, the costs of subsistence tend to fall, and so the rate of exploitation (the ratio of surplus to necessary labour time) can actually rise while living standards rise (at least in terms of the absolute number of commodities consumed).

Capital�s exploitation of labour�s labour time is obscured by the money-wage relation, what Marx called the commodity fetish (gold being the money-commodity).

The trend of increasing surplus labour time cannot, of course, exceed 24 hours a day, making the expansion of surplus value production historically limited. Although workers cannot physically work round the clock, capital�s plundering of personal/private data from smart phones and computers is now moving the dynamic towards 24/7 exploitation in a way that was not possible in the past (and stealthily reintroducing/expanding child labour). Data is now more profitable than oil.

Furthermore, the necessary labour time of the most productive workers in the automation age � scientists, engineers, coders, etc. � is high, since the character of their labour is increasingly complex. It includes the cost of their qualifications, computers and other equipment. Their surplus labour time is therefore high in absolute terms but increasingly low in relative terms. Producing a unit of data invariably takes almost no labour time at all, for example.

Because the means of production are consumed during the production process, their value is only preserved by absorbing the labour time of the workers who at the same time replace the consumed means of production. (Oil is consumed during the production of oil, for example.)

So as productivity rises, the amount of surplus value absorbed by the means of production tends in the long run to fall, and so the value of the means of production also falls until it becomes unprofitable to invest in.

➤ Services workers are relatively unproductive/unexploitable � in terms of surplus value produced per commodity � since they only tend to handle finished/near-finished commodities. Even Africa and Latin America have been deindustrialising (moving from manufacturing to predominantly services-based workforces) over the past decade.

➤ Automation, a necessary development due to accumulation�s ongoing need for ever-rising productivity growth and also driven by capitalist competition � not to mention humanity�s natural tendency to innovate to save labour and enhance the quality of life � is therefore abolishing the source of surplus value, exchange value and profit.

To be more precise, automation is the final expression of capitalism�s self-abolishing tendency.

➤ Capital itself is a generally ever-growing fetter (restraint) on investment, innovation and productivity growth, which has spluttered below 1% in the 2010s, since the ever-rising overaccumulation or surplus of capital, expressed in debt, or disused or destroyed means of production (or that which is reconverted into productive capital via devaluation), is an expression of the increasing unprofitability of (re)investing in production (hence increasing trillions of dollars hoarded in tax havens, or chucked into speculation, waiting for profitable investment opportunities in production to turn up).
Rethink X also predicts total systemic collapse this decade.

➤ Capital accumulation is approaching a historical limit as capital�s absolute value is only preserved if it grows sufficiently:* an ever-greater proportion of surplus value has to be dedicated to accumulation, meaning the consumption funds for both the capitalist and the worker eventually begin to decline absolutely, provoking capitalists to ramp up attacks on both their competition and the working class. The outlay on wages has to be slashed; workers are replaced by automation to raise productivity (and robots don�t even need sick pay etc.).

In such circumstances, the Canutes who do not fight for socialism can only fight for fascism, slavery and world (probably nuclear) war (since the accumulation crisis is forcing nation-states into intensified competition, as evidenced by the rising trade wars (which hit record levels before the presidency of Donald Trump and Brexit).

*If the value of capital is 100 and the surplus value available to reproduce that 100 is 75, there is an overaccumulation of capital of 25. By expanding production and deepening the rate of exploitation, capital can be devalued, to say 90, and the amount of surplus value needed to reproduce and expand (or valorise, i.e. create enough value) capital raised to 95 so that the overaccumulation is overcome. Any devaluation, however, tends to be offset by absolute growth (whereas each unit is devalued); and in the long run the growth of capital value tends to outstrip the growth of surplus value production as the pool of exploitable labour shrinks relative to the growth of capital (machinery/automation). Devaluation postpones the tendency for accumulation to breakdown on the one hand but on the other decreases the amount of labour time contained in each commodity. (See Henryk Grossman, The Law of Accumulation and the Breakdown of the Capitalist System.)

➤ Another way of looking at the situation in historical terms: just as the number of slaves in the US declined as a percentage of the population (from approx. 25% in 1790 to 16% in 1860) before slavery ended (via civil war); manufacturing workers have declined as a percentage of the US workforce from 26.4% in 1970 to 8% in 2018.

(The decline of slavery relative to the rise of waged labour, along with its exhaustion of the soil through extensive farming, compelled the slave-owning South to expand and export slavery, compelling the North to fight back to maintain capitalist production. As the civil war progressed, it became clear that abolishing slavery throughout the US was the only way to save the Union and US agriculture. More generally, before this, slavery was unenforcable in urban and factory settings � and the limits of man meant he had to be supplemented by mechanical machines, to raise productivity � necessitating the transition to waged labour.)

➤ The means of production evolve and improve �organically� in order to meet the demands of capital accumulation � although innovation and the tendency for machinery to grow relative to labour is also historical; both continue under any system due to man�s inherent tendency to seek labour-saving and life-enhancing innovations � but eventually demand new relations of ownership. Just as slavery and feudalism became increasingly inefficient forms of production that not only prevented countries from becoming richer but made the bulk of their populations increasingly poorer, the same is now increasingly true of capitalism and the private ownership of the means of production. (Production is already socialised � goods are produced to make available for sale to all of society � in terms of consumption, including the consumption of labour by capital, meaning labour is also already socialised.)

The commodity, the basis of capitalist society, is dually characterised by exchange value and use value (utility), but the evolving deindustrialisation, servicisation, automation and digitalisation of labour has evolved a new economic-technical basis to society whereby exchange value is withering away, leaving one that demands a new political-legal superstructure based solely on use value; i.e., the public/social/human ownership of all production and services; centrally planned, break-even utility production; and the replacement of money by a (non-transferable) voucher system pegged to labour time.

Put another way: the economic-technical basis to the social formation known as capitalism is both a value composition (constant capital:variable capital, or c:v (the value of the means of production: the value of the outlay on labour power/wages)); and a technical labour composition (means of production:living labour, or MP:L). Constant (dead) capital is withering away due to the dwindling size of and now exponentially rising productivity/capacity of variable (living) labour.

So whereas capitalism has long been a dualistic, mechanised system of production, it is now rapidly evolving into a singular, automated system of production � socialism.

Whereas computing operations, for example, are binary, quantum computing operations are non-binary, existing on a spectrum.

(Hence why sexual, gender, biological (emerging from post-manufacturing labour, (domestic) labour-saving innovations, rising technical capacity, etc.), racial (capital�s need to cheapen and expand the exploitable labour, colonialism, immigration, mixed-raced generations) and national binaries (monopolisation, trade connections, the internet) are already noticeably starting to wither away. These socially/politically/economically constructed binaries � which emerged only approx. 13,000 years ago with the advent of private property (which in turn emerged out of the neolithic/agricultural revolution and the surplus produce, barter and trade it introduced), before which (approx. 287,000 years of human history!) the state and war also did not exist � will not be �abolished� in the first years of communism but continue to wither away in a natural, historical, evolutionary way over many decades and centuries as new and increasingly ambitious generations embrace increasing amounts of free time and higher technical and productive capacities that enable them to increasingly break free from the confines of binary structures and thinking. Indeed, the quantum sciences are increasingly debunking classical physics and proving Marx�s realisation that matter is a kinetic, fluid process rather than made up of billiard-ball like atoms.)

In socialism, the technical labour process is no longer slowed down (by recessions, surplus capital, commercial secrecy, etc.) or conditioned by the valorisation process.

➤ The problem for capitalism is that it eventually runs out of labour and labour time to exploit; use values to commodify; and industry, land and services to privatise and atomise.

(Re. atomisation: splitting one area or thing into two lengthens the amount of labour time employed and enables you to charge for it twice: so splitting the road up into millions of cars instead of far more efficient trams or trains etc. is far more profitable; making and selling billions of individually-owned wifi is far more profitable than providing wifi for a whole street or area, and so on. (This is not to say that socialism will ban individually-owned cars � just that they could be used a lot less and made more efficiently, cleanly and sustainably. In fact, sports cars have recently become unprofitable to make, other than for a very lucky few, and will therefore need socialism to become viable again. Perhaps roads that become unused because of better public transport could even be turned into recreational racing tracks.))

➤ A fully automated system of production � including the microbiolisation of production of food and fibrous (plant-based) structures that will significantly reduce our dependence on the intensity of intensive farming and mining � will involve so little human labour per unit produced that there will be nowhere near enough surplus labour time for capital to exploit.

So capitalist production will break down all but absolutely before production has been fully automated, necessitating socialist revolution and the public ownership of the means of production.

What makes socialism the economic solution?

➤ Since the private sector is increasingly monopolised and dependent on long-term central planning (eliminated internal markets, forecasts, stock coding, etc.) and state (public) subsidies (including tax cuts) � trending towards 100% of income and therefore nationalisation � taking the means of production under public ownership, a �final merger�, and centrally planning the economy as a whole, is becoming, for the first time, an economic necessity.

Competition in capitalism itself leads to monopoly, since the merger of two or three companies enables the combined force to outcompete a third or fourth competitor. Further examples: the car industry and the food industry.

Corporate tax cuts are a form of subsidy, indicating that the private sector is increasingly dependent on the state for its income.

➤ Since the private sector is losing its ability to employ value-creating (commodity-producing) labour � it does so only if profitable � society, via the state and state enterprises, must take over responsibility for employment, enabling actual full formal employment. (�Full employment� in capitalism discounts lumpenised/destitute �economically inactive� workers.)

➤ Since the workforce is now almost entirely services-based, economic stability can only be established by an applicable system, whereby value is created not by for-profit commodity-production but by break-even utility-production.

➤ Since fiat currency is dying a natural death, with cash also disappearing in relative terms � not due to any conspiracy as such but because: only so much cash can be stored physically; accumulation demands increasing efficiency in circulation and turnover; and cash must be converted into bonds to lower interest rates � it must be replaced by a non-transferable digital voucher system, with the �currency� pegged to labour time.

Workers will therefore receive all the value they create during the working day (instead of having part of it appropriated by capitalists), paid in units of labour time worked, minus contributions to universal public services, defence (while needed) and so on. A grading system will probably be needed to incentivise types of work (night shifts, for example) and productivity rates. Combined with public ownership and full employment, this system will institutionalise equality of labour (the right to receive all the value you create), underpinning equal rights (whereas rights under capitalism only really exist if you have money) and limiting economic inequality to a minimum; while consistently raising living standards for all (especially via general falling prices).

And since digital vouchers will be non-transferable, cancelled like train tickets once �spent�, the centralisation of wealth into the hands of a few becomes impossible.

Capitalism (left) vs socialism

➤ In the long run, as full automation, 3D-printing, lab-grown food, etc. become increasingly diffuse and localised, the divide between producer and consumer will increasingly disappear, bringing about economic independence and abundant (extremely plentiful) material wealth for all, meaning class and the state will become increasingly irrelevant � both will therefore wither away. So, whereas capitalism has a long-term tendency to centralise wealth and power, socialism has a long-term tendency to decentralise wealth and power.

Essentially, socialism completes what capitalism started but could not finish.

➤ Precision fermentation and 3D-printing are forms of additive manufacturing, as opposed to until now subtractive manufacturing � metal or trees subtracted from mines or land, for example. So:

Subtractive and mechanised production = limited/scarce production (capitalism)

Additive and automated production = unlimited/abundant production (communism)

Extremely optimistic and perspective is very imperial core imo, but I find it to be a decent explainer on why automation is beneficial under a socialist government while automation under a capitalist government would just sharpen the contradictions as they say because of the difficulty in compensating workers who fuel consumption.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2022 23:55

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://chroniclesofhaiphong.substack.com/p/combat-nihilism-revolutionary-optimism

quote:

Combat Nihilism: Revolutionary Optimism in the Age of U.S. Imperial Decline
The sun is setting on the so-called "civilization" of the U.S.-led West, exacerbating already unbearable conditions. Opposing nihilism becomes all the more important.
Danny Haiphong
4 hr ago

Hurricane Ian. The threat of nuclear war. Inflation. Mississippi�s water crisis. Any one of these developments have the potential to send even the most clear-headed individual into a state of nihilism and despair. And this is just the short list of calamities currently plaguing humanity.

Life under the decline of U.S. imperialism is far from easy. Little relief exists from the toxic stress induced by poverty, debt, racism, militarism, social isolation, and mainstream media propaganda. Exhaustion is widespread. Trust in the institutions that form the fabric of U.S. society is incredibly low. These conditions have ripened the fruit of nihilism which is growing in abundance in the United States.

In Combat Liberalism, Mao Zedong condemned the liberal worldview as �a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension.� Liberalism generates empty and hollow faith in a system designed to exploit and oppress the masses. Anger in the establishment causes some to rise up in protest, others to seek scapegoats, and still others to internalize the pain. But in the United States, protest has been criminalized and repressed with state violence. Nihilism sprouts from liberalism�s destructive seeds, breeding disappointment and despair in a social order that was always predicated on the most brutal forms of class rule.

Nihilism most often takes the form of a persistent hopelessness that accepts oppressive conditions as an unchangeable phenomenon. History, class struggle, and the heroic resistance of the people are relegated to a status worse than non-existent. Capitalist dogma becomes religion. �The news� is taken as a universal truth even if distrust in mainstream media reaches peak levels. Phrases like �it is what it is� or �there is no alternative� become etched into the consciousness of the oppressed.

The most immediate antidote to nihilism is revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism isn�t rooted in a blind hope that change will come at some unknown point in the future. It is cultivated by the acknowledgement that only through participation in the struggle to liberate the people can the lives of the people be transformed. Revolutionary optimism is bolstered by a deep curiosity in and knowledge of the history of class struggle. Social change is treated as a science, one with distinct properties and elements that are both inevitable and profoundly dependent upon the actions taken by the people.

Revolutionary optimism thus analyzes all phenomena from a dialectical materialist lens. Dialectical materialism observes the motion of contradictions and how their development leads to new contradictions. Imperialism lays the basis for its own destruction but won�t fall on its own. Revolutionaries make the conscious decision to play a leading role in the creation of a new socialist planet but understand that the objective conditions before us present both a hinderance and an opportunity to build such a world. U.S. imperialism has indeed become more volatile and mired in crisis after crisis. The more that U.S. imperialism contracts economically and loses political legitimacy at home and abroad, the more repressive it becomes.

Mass incarceration, torture, austerity, privatization, surveillance, censorship, and endless war have all intensified in the last three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union to ensure that a coherent socialist movement would never arise again. This has caused the class struggle to retreat in the command center of imperialism, the United States. But even here, the emergence of mass protest movements such Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street have given birth to electoral arrangements meant to suffocate the birth of a socialist movement in its crib. The ruling class has placed a significant emphasis on repressing these movements and incorporating large sections of its participants in the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the so-called �Squad� arose from the ashes of Barack Obama�s masterful service to the elite as an escape valve back into the Democratic Party�s graveyard of social movements.

The dialectic is clear: masses of people are politically supportive of universal, socialist-oriented policies like Medicare for All but the Democratic Party stands in the way of building an independent mass movement toward actual socialism. The class struggle in the United States may be fractured and fragmented but the toiling masses are sitting atop a bubbling cauldron of unrest amid a number of unprecedented economic and geopolitical crises. U.S. militarism threatens nuclear conflict with both Russia and China, and the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is rapidly accelerating in this direction. U.S. and E.U. sanctions on Russia�s critical energy sector are a major catalyst in the unending spike in prices that has increased the immiseration of the working class and sent the world capitalist system on the way to its third economic crisis in fifteen years.

Under these conditions, revolutionary optimism must spring forth from the potential opportunities to organize an independent, socialist-oriented mass movement. This means first and foremost confronting the Democratic Party�s stranglehold on the definition of �socialism� and �leftism� in the United States. Socialism and leftism cannot be relegated to electing Democrats out of fear of the GOP or supporting whatever reformist policy is the flavor of the day for the Democratic Party�s most progressive-sounding opportunists. Socialist and leftist politics champion the capture of genuine power for the working class and the oppressed, by any means necessary. They are decidedly anti-imperialist and stand in unconditional solidarity with the oppressed nations and peoples around the world fighting for the right to determine their own destiny as enshrined by international law.

Internationally, the contradictions are more favorable for combatting the scourge of nihilism. China is fast on its way to the status of modern socialist country and leads in the world in key areas such as poverty alleviation, renewable energy, high-technology, modernized public infrastructure, and more. Russia stood up to U.S. imperialism in a major way by asserting its right to exist amid NATO military encirclement. Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, Eritrea, and several others have stood up and defended their sovereignty and social gains in the face of U.S. aggression and economic sanctions warfare. And all of the aforementioned countries, led by China and Russia, are forging deep economic, cultural, political, and military bonds in an attempt to create a multipolar world system that can overcome the challenges of unipolar U.S.-led imperialism.

Nihilism festers when the masses are forced into a state of isolation and desperation�two major consequences of the endless austerity and war waged by the U.S.-led imperialist system. To combat nihilism means to embrace revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism is not merely a mindset, but a duty to fulfill our commitment to liberation of the masses from an outmoded system in decline. And it isn�t simply reacting to a hope for a better future, either. Revolutionary optimism is realizable when a concrete analysis of concrete conditions leads to a higher level of consciousness that a better world is not just possible, but a process that is very much alive in the here and now.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2022 03:49

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/After__History/status/1576354634322436096

dividing my whole life in to a series of five year plans sounds cool ngl

# ¿ Oct 11, 2022 20:14

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/dramaticirony/status/1579970317136826368

:thunk:

# ¿ Oct 13, 2022 22:31

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/1204_pd/fiscal-requirement-welfare-state

quote:

The Fiscal Requirement of A Welfare State
Prabhat Patnaik

THE post-second world war period had seen a spate of welfare state measures in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in Europe, in emulation of what the Soviet Union was effecting. Capitalism had to accept these measures, notwithstanding its hostility to them, because it was in the midst of an existential crisis, weakened by the war, shaken by the upsurge in working-class anger, and terrified by the spread of socialism in Eastern Europe. With the subsequent consolidation of its position, however, its hostility to welfare state measures manifested itself openly. It tried to roll them back, though, thanks to the resistance of the workers, it did not have the success it would have wished; even a person like Margaret Thatcher could not succeed in dismantling the National Health Service in Britain. At the same time ironically, capitalism derived a degree of legitimacy from the welfare state, with its claim that, far from being predatory, it was indeed a system guaranteeing people�s welfare.

The maintenance of the welfare state however has meant a substantially higher tax-GDP ratio compared to the earlier period in European countries and also compared to the current figures for countries that have skimped on welfare provision. In the list of countries arranged in descending order of tax-GDP ratio for the year 2020, 29 of the top 30 countries are from Europe, both West, and East, that is, countries which have had a legacy of either Communist or Social Democratic rule; the only non-European country is Cuba which again is not only under Communist rule but whose welfare state measures are admired all over the world.

Communist governments adopting welfare state measures and raising the resources required for this purpose through high levels of taxation, and this arrangement persisting even after the collapse of communism, should not come as a surprise; what is striking however is that West European Social Democracy too has maintained a high tax-GDP ratio to finance its welfare state provisions. France tops the list with a tax-GDP ratio of 46.2 per cent, followed by Denmark (46.0), Belgium (44.6), Sweden (44.0), Finland (43.3), Italy (42.4), and Austria (41.8). The inescapable conclusion that emerges is that the maintenance of a welfare state requires heavy taxation, that is, heavy interference by the State in the pattern of income distribution that is spontaneously generated by the market.

None of these European countries has been characterised by GDP growth rates as impressive as those of the high-growth economies of today even in the heyday of the so-called Golden Age of capitalism in the immediate post-war years; their rates of GDP growth have fallen to even lower levels in the period after the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008. India, by contrast, while its officials keep patting themselves on the back for its being a supposedly high-growth economy, has abysmal welfare state measures, and, not surprisingly, a tax-GDP ratio (18.08 per cent) that is towards the lower end of the scale.

Three propositions follow from these findings. First, the so-called �trickle-down� effect of GDP growth is a completely vacuous concept. The outcome of the functioning of unfettered capitalism can never succeed spontaneously in raising the level of welfare of the mass of the working people. This is because capitalism can never function without a reserve army of labour, one of whose main functions is to keep down wages even as labour productivity keeps increasing, so that the share of surplus in social output increases, leading to larger consumption by the capitalists and their �hangers on�. The workers do not automatically get the benefits of economic growth under capitalism. True, if they organise themselves, they can fight for and even obtain better living conditions; but in such a case they would also force the State to increase the tax-GDP ratio with which to provide them with a higher social wage. The crucial determinant in other words is their capacity to fight effectively, not the rate of economic growth whose benefits are supposed to �trickle down�.

Exactly the same can be said about the belief that despite low levels of taxation, a high growth rate of GDP will automatically put so many resources into the government�s hands that it will be able to spend adequate amounts for raising the welfare of the working people. This is a completely misplaced belief: the transition to a welfare state never occurs by stealth or by small accretions of supposedly benevolent measures; it occurs as a break-through, of which the mobilisation of the requisite resources through a substantial rise in the tax-GDP ratio is a reflection.

The second proposition is the following. Not only does GDP growth not lead to a welfare state per se, but in fact, fetishising GDP growth becomes a means of preventing any transition towards a welfare state, of creating a false narrative that the working people would become actually better off by allowing transfers of resources to capitalists so that they can undertake larger investment and thereby usher in larger GDP growth, than by insisting on transfers towards themselves for the creation of a welfare state. The latter position is even pejoratively called �populism� and debunked as being wasteful and short-sighted because it entails the distribution of so-called �freebies�. This fetishisation of GDP growth is used as the argument for keeping the tax-GDP ratio low, for any increase in it, which would typically require taxing the capitalists, is supposed allegedly to destroy their �enterprise�, and hence their inducement to invest, thereby damaging GDP growth.

The reasoning here of course is analytically wrong: capitalists do not invest more just because they have larger resources at their disposal; their investment decisions are governed by the expected growth of the market and hence do not increase simply because they are given larger resources through transfers. But even this analytically-erroneous argument is used to discredit any demand for a welfare state and subvert any move towards it. What the experience of the welfare states around the world shows however is that the tax-GDP ratio has got to be increased greatly for achieving such a state, involving substantially increased taxation of the capitalists and completely ignoring the argument about its damaging growth prospects. The demand for a welfare state in other words must overcome the fetishization of GDP growth which is part of bourgeois apologetics.

The third proposition relates to the dialectics of exclusion. As resource transfers are made from the government budget towards the capitalists to stimulate GDP growth, and as the relative magnitude of transfers increases with the onset of recession and stagnation that typically constitutes the denouement for neo-liberal capitalism, fewer resources are left even for the paltry welfare expenditure that was being made earlier from the budget. This results in privatisation of education, health, and other essential services, which leads to the further exclusion of working people from all these services. Since the transfers made to the capitalists do not cause any increase in investment or even produce much immediate increase in their consumption, the reduction in welfare expenditure that matches such transfers, has the effect of reducing over all aggregate demand. This has the effect of lowering the�GDP growth rate so that the effort to raise the growth rate in this manner has paradoxically the very opposite effect, but this becomes an excuse for further increases in transfers to the capitalists which has the further effect of reducing the growth rate. Since the obverse of such transfers is a reduction in welfare spending, the scale of such spending progressively diminishes. In short, we move further and further away from any prospects of a welfare state rather than moving towards it.

We in India are currently in the midst of such a dialectic. Such is the pressure on fiscal resources both because of the low tax-GDP ratio and the increasing scale of transfers to capitalists under the misguided idea of promoting investment and GDP growth, that the central government is even winding down the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which had earlier served as a lifeline for the rural poor.

There are, to clarify and recapitulate, two distinct problems with GDP-growth fetishism that is propagated in the current era of neo-liberal capitalism: one, the analytical error underlying the claim that giving larger transfers to capitalists leads to higher investment and hence growth; and two, the claim that higher GDP growth itself leads to greater welfare for the people even if the tax-GDP ratio is small. The experience all over the world shows that building a welfare state requires a huge increase in fiscal effort.

A short essay and its arguments about how the welfare state is created by deliberate action by militant labor and proletarian governments, why trickle-down does not correlate to the creation of a welfare state, and finally how the redistribution of resources to capitalists leads to a decrease in demand that under neoliberalism only contributes further to decreased economic growth.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2022 04:04

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

Cool thread explaining the development of monopoly capitalism and its developments after Lenin's death:

https://twitter.com/urcommunistdad/status/1608491284309614595

quote:

Thread by @urcommunistdad on Thread Reader App
18�23 minutes

Monopoly capitalism is a phase of capitalist development distinct from and emerging out of the preceding period of competitive capitalism which birthed both classical bourgeois and Marxist economic theory. Let's talk about the history and contradictions of the monopoly system. 🧵

In competitive capitalism, innumerable small capitalists compete with one another to produce the maximum amount of a commodity at the lowest possible price. Capitalists gain market share by introducing labor-saving technology and undercutting the competition on price. Larger capitals which can afford increasingly expensive machinery out-compete small capitals, which are absorbed or forced to take their chances in high-risk emerging industries with lower capital requirements. Over time, oligopoly replaces free competition within each industry. Free competition does not vanish, but is relegated to marginal and emerging industries. Monopoly (or at least oligopoly), which was the exceptional case in the time of Ricardo and Marx, became the norm in the industrial economies at the beginning of the 20th century.

This shift had profound geopolitical and social implications. The emergence of monopoly capitalism coincided with the decline of the British empire and its vast markets. Once the "workshop of the world," British capital now had to compete with French, German and American capital. Capitalism had always required new markets for its self-expansion. This took the form of colonial conquest and direct rule. Native industry was destroyed as colonial markets were forced open at gunpoint, subjected to competition with advanced Western industrial giants. By the 1890s, the great powers had converted the entire face of the globe into a network of colonies and semi-colonies. Further expansion would have come at the expense of other colonial powers. The Spanish-American War marked a new imperialist era which culminated in WWI.

Lenin convincingly connected these trends, making monopoly capitalism the cornerstone of his theory of imperialism, which he defined as essentially, "the monopoly stage of capitalism." The emergence of monopoly capitalism made inevitable the cataclysm of world war. Along with the domination of monopoly capital over free competition, Lenin pointed to the emergence of finance capital, its domination over industrial capital and the formation of national financial oligarchies and industrial cartels as a development of the greatest consequence. The Bolshevik Revolution, Great Depression, two World Wars and decolonization transformed the monopoly capitalist world economic system in profound ways. Great as they were, Lenin's theoretical contributions cannot substitute for analysis of developments he did not live to see.

This thread will focus on the developments and tendencies within monopoly capitalism which characterized the monopoly capitalist system in the 50 years following the Bolshevik Revolution. The primary source material is Baran and Sweezy's epoch-making Monopoly Capital (1966).

Before proceeding, I would note that some of the tendencies observed by the authors were subsequently negated by the crises of the 1970s and emergence of neoliberalism. I hope to address these changes in a future thread, but first we will treat the system neoliberalism displaced.

The early period of monopoly capitalism was dominated by the tycoon. Men like Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller stood above and exercised a controlling influence over a constellation of individual corporations, forming an "interest group" sure to coordinate their policies. By the 1920s, decades of monopoly superprofits combined with the dilution of ownership stakes resulting from the death of the first generation of tycoons allowed most monopolistic corporations to free themselves from the external financial control typical of the previous period.

Management of the typical unit of monopoly capitalism, the giant corporation, passed from the hands of the rapacious individualistic tycoon to a new breed of company men, who admittedly contrasted quite favorably with their unpopular predecessors. Many bourgeois observers claimed the new managerial strata formed a kind of neutral technocracy, separating control from ownership, and that "soulful" corporations had forsaken their single-minded pursuit of profits and now sought to balance the interests of various stakeholders. Closer inspection and subsequent experience showed this hope to be misplaced. In reality, corporate management represented not an independent class, but the most active and leading strata of the bourgeoisie. Management and ownership formed a harmonious and integrated unit.

What had actually transpired was that the imperatives imposed upon the individual capitalist - foremost among them that of accumulation - had been transferred to the corporation, which remained as laser-focused on accumulation as any penny-pinching 19th century industrialist. In addition to the imperative to accumulate, the modern corporation increasingly took on the public-relations burdens of the old tycoon: conspicuous consumption and philanthropy.

And yet, the modern corporation and its cadres of professional managers differed in key ways from the individual capitalist they replaced. These differences profoundly impacted the development of modern capitalism through the present.

1. Unlike the individual capitalist, the corporation is immortal. Since its timeline is theoretically infinite and the scale of operations immense, the corporation tends to be highly risk-averse, expending great efforts to create forecasts and other forms of economic planning.

2. As a result of both its scale and risk-aversion, the oligopolistic corporation adopts an attitude of live-and-let-live towards other large corporations. This "corespective" attitude developed as a response to the cutthroat competition characteristic of the robber baron era.

Price wars, the primary weapon of competition, proved devastating to large capitals vying for a monopolistic position in an increasingly capital-intensive industrial economy. These titanic clashes resulted in a price collapse and the Long Depression of 1873-1896. Looking to staunch the bleeding, the anti-trust movement was formed as an alliance of convenience between struggling tycoons and disgruntled farmers and workers. Anti-trust laws helped prevent full monopolization, leading to oligopoly in nearly all major industries. A tacit agreement emerged between oligopolistic corporations to avoid price cutting as a legitimate weapon of competition, effectively allowing large corporations to charge markup prices consistently higher than the value of commodities.

Although the displacement of the competitive by the monopoly pricing mechanism represented a fundamental change in the global economy, bourgeois economics confined its investigation to micro-economics, largely ignoring the macro-economic effects of the substitution.

"The effects of thoroughgoing reintegration of the two levels of analysis... are nothing short of devastating to capitalism's claims to be considered a rational social order which serves to promote the welfare and happiness of its members"

The task largely fell to the under-appreciated Polish Marxist economist Michał Kalecki, who not only discovered Keynes's General Theory before Keynes himself, but integrated a measure of the "degree of monopoly" into his analysis, which influenced Baran and Sweezy.

What does the monopolistic price system look like, and what are its effects? Simply put, "under competitive capitalism, the individual enterprise is a 'price taker', while under monopoly capitalism the corporation is a 'price maker.'" Unlike small producers, monopolists can and do set their prices. Higher prices will simply yield lower sales. According to traditional monopoly theory the monopolist will set his prices at the exact point at which the cost to produce an extra unit match the revenue it would earn.

However, monopoly capitalism is not characterized by true monopoly so much as by oligopolistic markets. Under such conditions, prices cannot be lowered without considering what competitors might do. Any reduction in price is likely to trigger retaliation, harming all parties. Large corporations therefore work together to effectively ban price competition, via direct collusion or indirect methods like price leadership. The result is "downwardly sticky prices" which can rise but rarely fall. Price competition does not disappear entirely, but is increasingly confined to emerging industries. Here price competition serves to cull the weak and lead to the emergence of a few major players. Once consolidation is complete, price collusion takes over, and surplus rises.

Although labor unions are able to capture a share of the increased economic surplus (and some come to form a "labor aristocracy" indifferent or favorable to imperialism as Engels and Lenin observed), their share of surplus declines in relative, if not absolute terms.

However the greatest burden of monopoly pricing is born by primary producers in the global south, whose products experience a long-term decline in the terms of trade relative to manufactured goods of the advanced economies, a point made by the Patnaiks in A Theory of Imperialism.

The authors here turn to Baran's concept of "economic surplus", originally laid out in The Political Economy of Growth. Distinct from Marx's definition of surplus value, economic surplus refers to a society's production above and beyond the basic consumption of most people.

Actual surplus refers to the total value a society actually saves or invests in the form of new capital goods. Potential surplus refers to the quantity of surplus which could be achieved if waste and the excessive consumption of ruling classes were eliminated.

All societies generate a surplus, although its forms and the means of its disposal varies widely. Surplus can be absorbed through the excessive consumption of a ruling class, investment and savings, or waste. Of these, investment is the key sustained long-term economic growth. Societies which neglect investment experience stagnation, making the problem of surplus absorption critical in the study of development/under-development. The ratio of investment to surplus, termed the Baran Ratio, is a key indicator of economic growth.

The stagnation of the feudal economy can be attributed to an irrational disposal of surplus, as nobles neglected investment in favor of wasteful consumption, the construction of castles and cathedrals, and wars of conquest. Competitive capitalism completely upended this trend. As processes of capital accumulation by an emerging bourgeoisie gradually subjected surrounding feudal society, both the magnitude of the economic surplus and the relative share of investment increased. Not all countries benefited from this arrangement. Many underdeveloped and postcolonial nations seeking development struggled with the problem of absorption, with surplus tending to be extracted to the core or wasted in excessive consumption by a comprador class.

With the rise of monopoly and the substitution of competitive with monopoly pricing, there emerges a Tendency of the Economic Surplus to Rise. With this change, problems of surplus absorption appear in the form a tendency towards stagnation and depression, as Lenin observed.

Increasing surplus can be absorbed through consumption or investment. Since capitalists' consumption has practical limits, "the investment-seeking part of surplus tends to rise as a proportion of total income. Whether this tendency will be realized, however, is another question." An increasing surplus struggles to find investment outlets, as consumption and therefore aggregate demand shrink relatively. Such profitable investments as exist are soon saturated, leading to a surplus of productive capacity, discouraging further investment & causing stagnation. Excess productive capacity means plants sit idle, workers face unemployment & low capacity utilization yields lower profit rates due to fixed production costs. Monopoly pricing counters this tendency by shifting profitability schedules upwards allowing even lower utilization.

Monopoly capitalism is thus characterized by a chronic oversupply of productive capacity in excess of demand. Put another way, potential economic surplus far exceeds actual economic surplus. The problem, unique to monopoly capitalism is always "too much" rather than "too little."

Although it remains silent on the underlying causes, bourgeois economics recognizes the problems of low capacity utilization and stagnation resulting from an insufficiency of aggregate demand, with Keynesianism emerging as a means of shoring up lagging demand in the post-war era. Generating an increasing surplus while failing to create adequate corresponding investment outlets, "the question for monopoly capitalism is not whether to stimulate demand. It must, on pain of death."

Unable to create endogenous investment outlets for an increasing surplus, the capitalist system must look to exogenous stimuli to stimulate demand and absorb surplus. These take the major forms of sales and marketing, state expenditure, militarism and imperialism.

The particular form which surplus absorption and demand stimulation takes is determined by the interests of the oligarchy, with government expenditure on public services disfavored relative to socially corrosive alternatives like marketing and militarism. Although geopolitical interests remain central, US militarism must be understood in light of its economic function as means of surplus absorption and demand stimulation. The reality, often missed by progressive critics, is that without it the economy would sink into depression.

The socially irrational phenomena which characterize contemporary society are best understood in light of the heightening contradictions of the monopoly capitalism system, which must dispose of increasing surplus without making recourse to improving the well-being of its people.

For further reading about Baran and Sweezy's work, its impact and criticism, check out the article on Monthly Review.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2023 02:48

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

Raskolnikov38 posted:

what if a party didnt suck

# ¿ Jan 29, 2023 05:37

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/Insert66438804/status/1612218605667745792

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Jan 30, 2023 04:10

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/BadSocialisms/status/1620066698794766338

# ¿ Feb 4, 2023 10:08

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/Claude_kon/status/1622851910373097472

:hmmyes:

more seriously i'll be surprised if the USSR portrayal in this game is positive overall despite the vibes and tropes in that trailer

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Feb 10, 2023 09:50

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://redsails.org/dividends-are-not-royalties/

quote:

Dividends Are Not Royalties
Michael Parenti
10�12 minutes

From Dirty Truths (1996).

It has been frequently noted that IQ examinations, while professing to measure innate intelligence, are riddled with racial, gender, and class biases. Thus a low-income, inner-city youth, confronting a seemingly innocuous phrase like �behind the sofa� on an IQ test, may find it unfathomable, not realizing that it is simply a middle-class way of saying �in back of the couch.�

Along with IQ exams, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) has come under fire. Going through my file, I came across a story, clipped years ago from the Washington Post (4/28/89), noting that the Center for Women Policy Studies found that the SAT was biased against women. The center reported that about one out of every seven questions favored males over females, specifically questions about sports, science, war, and business. A more recent story in the New York Times (5/26/93) reiterated the charge of gender bias.

One claim made for the SAT is that it is designed to predict a student�s college performance. Not true. Men consistently outscore women on the SAT, yet women earn higher grades both in high school and college. But, because of the gap in SAT scores, women are less likely to win scholarships or gain entry to certain schools and programs.

While agreeing that there is gender bias in the SAT, we might also wonder about the test�s unexamined politico-economic bias. What caught my eye was an example offered in the Post article of the questions that favored males. Males are more likely to answer correctly the comparison: �Dividends is to stock as royalties is to writer.� According to the SAT, the correct answer is �true.� Presumably, both dividends and royalties are seen as income, while stock and writer are the respective income producers.

Wait a minute, I thought. What is so correct about that parallel? It is just such thinking that leads some people to accuse me of being a �capitalist� because I earn royalties on my books. But income accrued from stock ownership is something apart from salary or wages or royalties earned from hard work. (�Royalties� are analogous to dividends only when they refer to profits on land, oil, and mineral rights that go to the landowners, something quite different from the royalties that go to writers.)

Dividends from stock represent profits from capital investment, money you make without having to work. The author of a book does not make profits on his or her book. She or he earns an income from the labor of writing it, proportionately much less than the sum going to those who own the publishing house and who do none of the writing. Likewise, those who do the other necessary labor of editing, proofing, printing, and marketing the book do not receive profits. They are paid a portion of the money that the book will make and, like the writer, that portion will be less than the value added to the book by their labor.

The sum going to the owners is profits, the dividends on the stock they own in the publishing house. It is a portion of the value added to the commodity by the labor power of others. It is what federal tax forms used to call �unearned income� and with good reason. Again � it cannot be said too often � profits are what you make when not working. This explains why, in most instances, the secret to getting rich is not to work hard but to get others to work hard for you.

While corporations are often called �producers,� the truth is they produce nothing. They are organizational devices for the expropriation of labor and for the accumulation of capital. The real producers are those who apply their brains, brawn, and talents to the creation of goods and services. Capitalists like to say that they are �putting their money to work,� but money as such cannot create more wealth. Of itself, not all the money in the world can build a house or harvest a crop. Even in regard to what is called �productive capital,� machines and other mechanisms and technologies cannot of themselves produce anything. They need human labor to become productive and are themselves the products of previous human labor.

What capitalists really mean when they talk about �putting their money to work� is that they are putting human labor to work, paying workers less in wages and salaries than they produce in value, thereby siphoning off the surplus for themselves. �Surplus value� is not only a Marxist concept but a reality of life � so much so that the capitalists themselves talk about �value added� meaning more or less the same thing as surplus value: the value that the workers add to the product over and above the wages they are paid and other costs of production.

This expropriation of the value created by labor is the biggest rip-off that working people (including writers) endure. While it is easy for all of us to see the money taken from us by the government, in the form of taxes deducted from our paychecks, it is less easy to see the far greater wealth taken from us in the form of the value created by our efforts and pocketed by those who do not work.

Typically, in an eight-hour workday, the value of the products that workers create in the first two hours of labor will equal their wages. For the remaining six hours, they are performing surplus labor time, creating surplus value that is taken in by the shareholders, bondholders, and others who do not work. It is from this surplus value (or �added value� as management would say) that the corporate capitalists make their profits, after paying off overhead costs, interest on loans, advertising fees, and what little taxes they sometimes pay.

Consider the U.S. Census Bureau�s Census of Manufacturers, which reported that in 1987 workers in twenty manufacturing industries produced an average $95,519 worth of product per worker a year, or $1,837 a week. Yet the wage paid averaged only $394 a week. So the $64 subsequently taken from the worker�s paycheck in taxes was far less than the $1,443 in surplus value pocketed by the owners. This constant and massive transfer of wealth from those who produce it to those who pocket it explains why the net assets of the four hundred richest Americans is $300 billion, while the net assets of the one hundred fifty million poorest Americans is zero.

This process of expropriation of value explains why the owners of big commercial publishers of books, newspapers, and other publications enjoy such immense wealth while most of their writers live at the subsistence level. In 1975, when I published an oped piece in the New York Times, I was paid $150. Eight years later I published another in the Times and, despite the intervening inflation, I again was paid only $150. Today, almost two decades since I first appeared in that illustrious publication, the fee is still $150. I got the same munificent sum for an Op-ed piece I published in the Los Angeles Times. Furthermore, neither of these newspapers � nor most other major publications � pay permission fees or reprint fees to authors. That means the piece might get picked up by various other newspapers who then pay a fee to the Times � but the author sees not a penny of it. Some of the major magazines, known as the �big slicks,� not only have frozen their fees but have reduced them over the years. Forget about trying to keep up with inflation; freelance writers are not even keeping up with the nominal earnings of the 1970s � even without accounting for inflation.

To get an idea of how poorly paid writers are, consider the following. At a meeting of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the National Writers Union, the chair asked for a show of hands of those who had earned over $5,000 from their writing in the previous year. Of about thirty persons, I was the only one who raised his hand � and that�s only because I had a textbook that had enjoyed some college course adoptions.

Writers will tell you about their many grievances, about publishers who lie about sales figures and withhold royalties, about manuscripts accepted then never published, about book publication dates that are postponed for as much as three or four years, about books that are published only to have their distribution deliberately and completely aborted � �privished� it is called � usually because the publisher decides the book is politically unacceptable. Writers will tell you about payments and kill fees never collected, about articles completely rewritten and distorted by clunky-styled editors, about having no say regarding framing, titling, headlining, and rewrite. And they will tell you about major magazines and big publishing houses that have grown rich off their labor.

So a correct analogy would be: �Dividends is to stock as profits is to publisher.� Leave the writer out of it, unless you want to say: �Wages is to workers as royalties is to writers.� To repeat: Authors make money off their own hard work, and usually not all that much. Unlike the publisher, they make nothing from the capital investment on their books because they don�t have any capital invested. Like the proofreaders, editors, printers, and sales representatives, writers create value through the direct application of their mental and physical labor. A portion of the value they create goes to them. The rest goes to the investors.

What the Washington Post article and the study it reported on both missed was the political and class bias in that particular SAT question. The �correct� answer is true only if we accept the capitalist ideological presumption that treats the pocketing of value by investors as identical to the creation of value by writers. Both investor and writer supposedly are �working� in partnership to create �earnings.� Tell it to Forbes, not to us underpaid scribes.

The Post quotes a New York state judge: �After a careful review of the evidence, this court concludes that SAT scores capture a student�s academic achievement no more than a student�s yearbook photograph captures the full range of her experience in high school.� Well said. All I would like to add is that at least one of the SAT questions captures the ideological biases and disinformation of a capitalist system all too well, biases that are so thoroughly ingrained as to go undetected and unchallenged in the very investigations that purport to expose bias.

Cool 10-12 minute read of a snippet from Parenti's Dirty Truths. It'll also help with cases where the worker/capitalist divide is not immediately obvious as in the case where writers earn royalties while capitalists earn dividends.

# ¿ May 10, 2023 20:47

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

The MIC is also a good way to soak up all of that money just floating around because:

1) It neither spurs development of the means of production or directly improve said means of production.
2) The MIC does not meaningfully employ many people or creates the conditions for aforementioned employees to become political.
3) It is profitable.

In other words, the MIC avoids the catch-22 of other industrial sectors where it crashes profitability and makes it possible for the lower class to learn how to produce and organize among themselves while remaining profitable.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2023 01:55

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

Emergency Measures - A translated article from 2019 about the development and achievements of PRC computer industry.

Teaser posted:

�Emergency Measures�: The Foundation of China�s Computer Industry

The first steps and subsequent development of China�s domestic computer industry benefited greatly from the close attention of Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou. After the founding of New China, this ancient country, which was once impoverished and weak, ushered in a scientific and technological Renaissance with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China attaching great importance to the development of science and technology. In January 1956, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held a conference on intellectuals, and Premier Zhou presented a report which issued a call to the Party and the country to �march towards modern science.� In his speech on the last day of the conference, Chairman Mao called on the Party to strive to grasp scientific and technological knowledge, and to struggle to quickly catch up with the world�s most advanced levels of science, thus giving encouragement to the country�s workers in science and technology. With the strong support of the state, the relevant parties started the crucial work of developing a domestic computer industry.

After the founding of New China, the electronics industry was managed by the Communications Department of the Military Commission. On 29 October 1951, Zhou Enlai approved the �Report on the Construction of Radio Parts Factory and Electronic Tube Factory� by Wang Zhuan, Director of the Communications Department of the Military Commission and Director of the Telecommunications Industry Administration, expressing his agreement and giving specific recommendations on design, layout, trade negotiations, and other issues. In January 1953, the first Chinese computer research group was established by Hua Luogeng at the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the task of �studying the principles and design of electronic computers and experimenting with their main components.� In 1953, the Bureau of Telecommunications Industry finally became the Tenth Bureau of the Second Ministry of Machinery Industry after Premier Zhou�s approval, and a number of electronic factories in the Jiuxianqiao area of Beijing, such as 738, 718 and 774, began the production of computers. China�s computer industry officially had started.

On 10 February 1956, a delegation of Soviet scientists came to China for a short period of time to give lectures and help draw up scientific plans. When Premier Zhou learned about the power of computer-based word processing and parsing functions, as well as their active use in foreign militaries, he immediately expressed a strong sense of urgency, as China�s capabilities were still meager. He believed that China had to make a determined effort to catch up, and that computers had to be linked to the military and applied to industrial production as soon as possible. Luo Peilin [8] and Ling Ruiji [9], who had participated in the early development of China�s computer industry, recalled that, when the Premier heard that we did not have the computing capabilities at present, he forcefully stated: �Solely relying on the power of one department we cannot produce a computer, but under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, centralizing the entire country�s strength, could it not be done?�

Premier Zhou felt that the development of computer applications in the country�s industrial production and national defense was a very necessary and urgent task, and therefore formulated and proposed an �emergency measure.� The reason why it was defined as an emergency measure is because at that time the visiting Soviet experts helped to develop a significant amount of scientific planning, and it was necessary to delineate the key projects that were �emergency measures� in order to prioritize the necessary work. On 20 May 1956, the Scientific Planning Commission officially submitted �Emergency Measures� to the State Council for consideration, and on 5 July 1956, the Commission officially released the text of the �Four Emergency Measures.� The �Emergency measures� included computers, semiconductors, radio electronics, and automation; four areas where China�s development was still very weak, but which held major strategic value.

On 1 January 1957, following Zhou Enlai�s request, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the General Staff Department of the People�s Liberation Army, and the Second Ministry of Machine Building, signed an �Agreement on Cooperation in the Development of Chinese Computing Technology� as the implementing units of the �Emergency Measures.� The three parties agreed to establish a research base for the development of computing technology by assembling talents in an unconventional way. The organizational principle was �centralization first, then decentralization.� First, experts from the Second Ministry of Machine Building and the army were assembled at the Institute of Computing of the Academy of Sciences to build a general-purpose electronic computer, and then the experts returned to their original units to establish working groups to develop computers.

In 1957, China submitted to the Soviet Union the �List of Projects for Cooperation between the Chinese and Soviet Academies of Sciences,� the first item of which was computing technology. The �Scientific Research on Computing Technology and the Establishment of an Industrial Base� became a major scientific research project in Soviet-Chinese cooperation. This technology transfer covered a full technology ecosystem, including theory, technology, devices and processes, from research and development to production and application, the organizational systems, institutions, and personnel training in all aspects � not just the imitation of a few machines. According to the �emergency measures,� the Chinese Academy of Sciences sent a 20-member internship team to the Soviet Union to study for 18 months. After returning to China, they became the core of computer professionals and discipline leaders domestically, and three key academicians emerged from this group.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, Peking University, and the University of Science and Technology of China conducted four training courses in computer science and computational mathematics within six years, training nearly 800 students who became the backbone of the computing industry. In 1958, approved by the Party Central Committee, 287 senior college students who were originally studying automotives, electrical machinery, and management were transferred to Tsinghua University to train in automated control and computers, and other colleges and universities also transferred several students to computer majors. Wang Xuan of the Department of Mathematics at Peking University was one of the aforementioned students. He answered the nation�s call and chose the direction of computational mathematics, and later became a famous mathematician. He invented Chinese character laser phototypesetting technology, became a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. By 1966, there were over 6,000 students enrolled in computer science programs across all domestic colleges and universities.

In 1959, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated rapidly, and Khrushchev withdrew all Soviet experts from China, leaving China with very little Soviet technical support. [10] At that time, the difficulties that the impoverished and technological backwards New China faced were more than a hundred times larger than what Huawei faces today from U.S. sanctions.

Under the technological blockade of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, China could only follow the development route of domestic independent design and production. It was just as Chairman Mao said: �Blockade us. Blockade us for eight or ten years and China�s problems will be solved.�

The �emergency measures� gave full play to the advantages of the national system and the synergy of large groups. Computer science in the New China rapidly developed from a small research group to a professional institute, and Zhongguancun in Beijing became the �cradle of computers.� The �emergency measures� built the electronic computer industry into a new industry covering scientific research, education, industry and national defense in China, and computing technology and computational mathematics were upgraded from mere scientific disciplines to critical national tools.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2023 07:50

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

dead gay comedy forums posted:

I mean, transistor research and development is one of the main party directives established by the Central Committee, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (which is permanently represented in that committee). The Chinese technological base has been closing in transistor size independently this last decade, quite impressively so. AFAIK Huawei already got commercial chips in the 5nm process in 2020 (designed in China, but made in Taiwan); don't know how they are currently doing in the GPU field, but iirc China was two generations behind AMD/NVidia the last time I heard.

but wait

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-21/china-s-top-chipmaker-makes-big-tech-advances-despite-us-curbs#xj4y7vzkg

So SMIC got ahead of Intel last year in providing 7nm fabrication, lol

Yeah, in the four-ish years since the original article was written the PRC has made great strides in indigenizing their supply chain all across the board. It was just that when Trump originally levied sanctions on them during the trade war, the consequences of Buy not Build was that a depressingly large amount of the computer industry could be cut off had Trump gone full bore with the sanctions.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2023 20:30

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://globalsouth.co/2023/07/10/michael-hudson-why-the-u-s-economy-cannot-re-industrialize/

quote:

[00:39:35] Hudson: It�s not what you say, it�s not that America �allowed� other countries to go ahead, that was the deliberate policy, from Clinton on. They wanted to get rid of manufacturing labor here, in order to create what Marx called, a reserve army of the unemployed. They wanted to create unemployment here, by hiring foreign labor instead of American labor, and in the process, to make huge profits for companies, multinational firms, that produced abroad, with lower priced labor, from the United States.

So, it�s not that they allowed China to do something to pull ahead, America pushed these other countries to develop. That was part of the American�s anti-labor policy. And if you don�t realize that the aim is to cut living standards and reduce wages, except to the extent that wages can be spent on interest, to the financial sector, insurance, to the health providing sector, and housing sector, and rents for the real estate sector.

If they can�t provide this, the function of labor is not to produce commodities, as occurs under industrial capitalism. It�s not to be employed by manufacturers, to use equipment, to produce goods or services, it�s to serve as a market for the fire sector. That really is the guiding line, and it was the guiding line in Rome, which is why Rome fell apart.

It�s been the reason why countries, who let an oligarchy develop, end up pushing their own economies into obsolescence, and a kind of dark age. It�s policy, and most of all, it�s the policy of the Democratic Party�s administration here. Yeah. So look at what the laws do, and how the Supreme Court is there to prevent any kind of re-industrialization in the United States.

You cannot re-industrialize in a way that the original slaveholding authors of the Constitution would have approved of, if they were there today. They would be like the billionaires of Microsoft, and Facebook, and the others. That would be their philosophy.

Michael Hudson made a bunch of points that in retrospect flow logically from each other. Deindustrialization and thus class war against the non-bourgeois are also why the touted reindustrialization of America under Bidenomics is going to be a poor imitation of the PRC's policies. With the present technology available, either the proletariat grow in sophistication and leverage due to working the new factories or our pampered bourgeois refuse to even let go a slightest bit of power and thus continue the course of stripping the means of production bare for slightly higher profit over last quarter.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2023 04:56

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

indigi posted:

I think BRI investment is beneficial to labor in the way that infrastructure creation/improvement sort of intrinsically is but not in an organizing sense true

It's a (2-year) old Redsails article, but Yanis Varoufakis was able to get COSCO to help out with pensions and using the proper union labor:

https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/#inequality-and-socialism

quote:

Yanis Varoufakis explains how this respect and solidarity for expanding �progressive forces� works out in practice:

When I was Minister of Finance I had a very interesting experience with COSCO, one of the Chinese national companies that in the end bought the Port of Piraeus.

When I moved into the Ministry I found the contract from the previous government, that had already sold the Port of Piraeus for a pittance and other ridiculous conditions to the Chinese, under the guidance of course of the European International Monetary Fund. In other words, as a minister, I was bound to a particular deal that was terrible for Greece. And I went to the Chinese, and discussed it with them, and I was really astonished.

I said to them: Look, you�re paying too little, you�re not committing to a sufficient level of investment, and you are treating our workers as fodder. You�re effectively subcontracting labor to horrible companies that exploit the workers, and I can�t deal with this effectively. I proposed to them we to renegotiate the contract. So instead of getting 67% of the shares of the port, they would get � with the same price � 51%. The remaining shares would go into the Greek pension fund system, in order to bolster the capitalization of the public pensions. Secondly, I want you to commit to 180 million euros of investment within 12 months. And thirdly, proper collective bargaining with the trade unions and no subcontracting of labor. And to my astonishment, they said okay!

Can you imagine if that was a German company, or an American company? That�s what I�m saying. [6]

In other words, the PRC are willing to accommodate local socialists who gain control of political power and can explain how rotten previous deals were.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2023 10:06

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 15:54

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

lol i wonder why there are more tankies now

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 02:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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