[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

(Thread IKs: dead gay comedy forums)

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Decided to do something aside from running and playing video games a few weeks ago and read Origin of the Family.

I really like all the parts that basically boil down to "person X was stupefied that the arbitrary framework he forced on this group of people made no sense and had several outliers, except when you stop forcing the framework it works out just fine"

Took me a long time to get through it because every page had me rambling to random friends about the stuff I read

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# ¿ Jul 26, 2023 20:06

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 22:09

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

being repeatedly imprisoned because of ideological conflicts that are completely unrelated to me is the most praxis I've ever performed

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 21:09

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

ThatBasqueGuy posted:

so if im to "read the thread" do i just go from page one and run it down ooorrr

For a specific subject I just jump through the quotes in replies until I reach the beginning of it.
I don't have enough theory in my brain to make meaningful questions, so I just lurk and write down book recommendations.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2023 17:52

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Flournival Dixon posted:

you can listen to socialist theory at the gym too, most of it works just fine on audiobook except for kapital vol 1 because of all the math equations

I find that anything more intense than a regular walk just gets my body to focus on the exercise itself, so I hear but don't listen and end up just having to rewind often.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 06:00

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

no time for "stable profit" when we may wake up tomorrow with the news that the entire economy collapsed overnight

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 19:25

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

BillsPhoenix posted:

Marx was wrong. Capitalism defeated communism.

Somehow, Communism returned

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 21:14

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Dreylad posted:

Maybe they don't know that the Instant Pot creator sold the company to a VC firm (that had also bought up other kitchenware companies like Corel, Pyrex) and then just ran it into the ground by other Instant-brand kitchen appliances.

I'm still getting a grasp on the language of Marxism so this is going to be clumsy but it seems a defining feature of neoliberal capitalism especially where the search for profit drives capital through things like private equity to find something that is profitable and extract as much profit as possible before it collapses, in part because of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Ultimately it seems like all "sustainably profitable" companies aren't really sustainable, because either economic collapse destroys the fundamental profitability of the company or capitalists eventually seek out and extract as much short-term profit out of any corporation leading to its long-term unprofitability.

The current investment impulse in tech to not just invest in something profitable but something that promises constant, endless growth over demonstrating immediate profitability, while company founders hope to be bought out by a bigger company makes it seem like this is an overly complicated shell game.

turns out that when a state can't actually allocate funds strategically and instead just hope for the market to sort things out, the market just continuously generates bubbles.
No new foreign markets to exploit, less and less national industries to cannibalize, all that's left is to go all in on whatever new fad appears in the market while hoping you're not left holding the bag.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 21:26

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Youtube recently tossed me in the direction of Paul Cockshott and I found his videos pretty great, binged them the whole week.

One place I saw criticism towards him was his point on Unequal exchange, the general gist of it being that it doesn't exist in the act of exchange itself.
Posting links just in case someone is interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIUK7d8bRM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD-7o1jLxc8

Anyone know of any articles or books that discuss this a bit more in depth? I personally found his explanation to be reasonable, but it'd be nice to get some counterpoints that aren't from reddit or youtube comments.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 17:27

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

I do remember reading about it here, but can't find it now searching explicitly for "unequal exchange" here or in the asia thread.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 18:55

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

I'm not really learned enough to criticize it myself, it's why I wanted to bring it here.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 19:14

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

The Voice of Labor posted:

unless you're trolling or totally brain wormed, don't discount your intuitions. it's platonic point and a necessity for socialism and democracy that having ethics and being able to reason are things everyone can do. if something seems wrong to you, or right, there's probably a good reason you think that way even if you don't have the scrabble words to express it or the althuser citations to back it up

I'm not really discounting my intuitions, just recognizing that I don't currently have the knowledge to analyze what he's saying point by point and in the overall idea in a way that's convincing enough to myself.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

To summarize the idea in a very practical way: unequal exchange (as conceived by Arrighi) can be understood with someone like myself who works remote for foreign companies to earn in USD. I get paid a better wage than local for the same (or equivalent) work, but someone working there earns much more than me for the same work.

Cockshott seems to glitch his brain when considering productivity differentials and forgets entirely about composition of capital (technology, machinery, methodologies) and labor composition (education, savoir-faire, tacit professional knowledge, etc) not being the ultimate determinant factor of wages - it is organized class action. It was very well into the industrial revolution that chartists and the labor movement began to fight back in England and actually gain the first wage increases, because almost none of the gains of scale and productivity were being shared with workers. Nowadays, a skilled worker who has a relevant trade in the main Western economies earns almost always above the productivity differential factor in comparison to someone in the periphery, but the productivity differential itself isn't enough to make for the wage differences.

Incidentally, that plays a strong factor into neoliberalism: unequal exchange makes foreign labor so cheap that takes out the inherent advantage of the productivity differential (being able to produce more, better and lots more adjectives here) by cratering labor costs.

Aeolius posted:

good post

thanks a lot for the explanations and the recommendations. It's hard for me to get in the mood to spend hours reading, but spotting this bit while watching his videos got me quite curious about this topic in particular.

also I had no idea about the transphobic stuff lol

Halser has issued a correction as of 20:35 on Feb 17, 2024

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 20:28

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Aeolius posted:

I cannot claim to know PC's mind; I'd like to think he knows better and is just making a mistake amid his enthusiasm to box a shadow. But I've also seen dumber turns from smarter people, so, who's to say?

from the way he explains UE in the videos I mentioned, it does seem like he's arguing with a different definition of it other than the generally accepted one.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 22:52

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

I decided to stop being scared of words and started reading Capital. The specific edition I found had a lengthy introduction that repeatedly and heavily recommended me to start by reading Section II instead of I, while also skipping V.

I'm following through with that recommendation and I'm a fair way into Section II now, but any idea why that's recommended?

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 17:18

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Transformation of money into capital. The short preface that recommends this is by Louis Althusser, though there's some other introductions by brazillian professors in the PDF I got.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1969/preface-capital.htm

I kinda wanted to skip the long introductions, but at the same time I thought I might as well be patient about reading through it, so I don't burn out. The stuff I've read in part 2 so far isn't anything new to me, but it's good to see those ideas being explained in a more robust way.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 18:00

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

I don't know what Section II is. If you want to get your blood pumping, read Chapter 10 first. That's the one that talks about the working class in England. iirc that was a contender for the first chapter, but marx wanted to treat capital as a serious treatise, so the first chapters are dry, dense, and academic.

After chapter 10, read the first three chapters. Take a break for a couple days. Read the first three chapters again. Don't feel bad if you still don't get it. Press on through the rest of the book. He will revisit the themes and terms from chs 1-3 time and again, and each time it will become clearer.

After you finish book, go back and read chapters 1-3 again. Compare how you feel now with how you felt when you first opened the book.

yeah, I mistranslated the naming conventions since I'm reading a brazillian version. I don't mind it being dry so far, it's actually clarifying in a way.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 18:10

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

The bit at the end of Chapter 7 of Volume I is vicious. I like how it acquires a less "apathetic" tone when it really starts highlighting how workers are exploited. It's a nice touch.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2024 04:32

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

hubris.height posted:

ooooooohhhhh. the distinction between exchange value and use value in that section was lost on me, thank you. so you could make 2 coats with the same amount of labor, which would net you two uses (use-values) but if you were to exchange it for something of equal labortime cost, it would be worth less in exchange value by virtue of having the same amount of labortime involved in the production of 2?

remember value is based on socially necessary labor.
If some combination of circumstances lets a factory produce twice as many coats in a day(but only that factory on that day), they'll still be exchanged as if they contain the average amount of labor required to produce a coat in society. It's only when the increased productivity becomes the norm that they'll be worth relatively less by comparison.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2024 06:04

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

BillsPhoenix posted:

Honestly, this thread has convinced me most of the terminology confusion is intentional. Not by Marx, but by Western powers, controlling the early English translations.

was that your previous username?

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 02:20

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Orange Devil posted:

This is very crucial imo, because if you study western economics (don't ever do this, it will intentionally configure your brain incorrectly, as a joke) nobody there reads any of the classical economists, including the ones they ostensibly love and trot out like Smith and Ricardo. You only get concepts they are credited with, and which are then presented wildly out of context and often flat wrong from what the original author was saying, for example Smith's invisible hand.

Like for real if you want the scales to fall from your eyes go read the actual texts written by Adam Smith and pay particular attention to when he uses the invisible hand (almost never, actually) and what he actually means by it (not at all what your intro to econ textbook said). Yet if all you got was a mainstream western economics education you'd think the invisible hand was the central concept of Smith's contributions to the field.

Marxists are the only people interested in economics still regularly reading 19th century texts.

I remember when I had (micro) econ courses in uni the teacher told us with reverence of Schumpeter because he apparently went and read drat near every important work published before him, annotated it, and then came up with his own rebuttals and arguments (and then got credited for coming up with creative destruction even though the idea is in Marx' work) and that very much made it sound like this motherfucker did something extremely exceptional and may have been the last to do so, back in the first half of the 20th century. It just speaks to such a povery of intellectual tradition.

Anyway, what I'm saying for the non-economists, if you ever wonder "wow, no economists read Marx?", well, they don't even read Smith or Ricardo. I'd be surprised if at this point any of them even read Keynes or Schumpeter. Maybe if you're lucky they read Friedman.

Sometimes I get the feeling mainstream political economy is sort of stuck in the equivalent of newtonian physics forever.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 13:40

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

That's really interesting to read the morning after I spent a hours in a rabbit hole that started with materialism and that led me to overanalyzing Corinthians 13.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 14:02

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

mycomancy posted:

So if modern neoliberal so-called capitalism doesn't even follow the theory and designs of its so-called founders, what the hell kind of system is it? Is it literally a pyramid scheme stapled on top of feudalism or what?

Neoliberal capitalism is just a better "shaped" capitalism, I feel.
Smith/Ricardo/etc didn't really found capitalism, they just tried to understand its form. It emerged out of evolving social relations, and those social relations during their time still had stronger elements of previous relations, so it was less "pure", so to say.

The shaping of capitalism over time shows us what it truly is and always was. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a good way to look at it is to investigate how media is and was commodified.

In the relatively recent past you had to buy VHS/CDs/DVDs/etc to consume media. I found commodified media in this form to be a bit hard to understand under marxist concepts(having conceptualize the much more concrete congealed labor in the production of the DVD itself as well as the abstract congealed labor that the media in it contains) , but when it approaches its "true" shape(when information storage itself becomes private property) it's much easier to do so. Streaming services abstract away the unnecessary parts of the exchange to reveal it's just money for time, which applies to everything under capitalism.

Halser has issued a correction as of 14:49 on Mar 6, 2024

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 14:40

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

I think a simple way to look at it is that you can only be certain of the use value of a commodity at the moment of consumption. In any other situation, its use value is theoretical, just a possibility.
If you had a machine that just infinitely produced coats, would all of them have a use for society? Or only the ones that are actually worn by someone?

If it's the latter, how do you know which of the infinity coats actually have a use value? You know which of the coats produced were actually useful because they were, you know, used.

If you buy two coats and use only one, you can intuit that the other coat may have a use value in the future(if your current one gets ripped, if you gift it to someone to wear it, etc), but you can only know for sure when that coat is used, regardless of how many possible situations you can imagine it could be useful in.

it's how I see it anyway

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 03:06

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

mycomancy posted:

Wow look at all you loving chumps getting baited by a guy who came up with the concept of an anti-coat. All y'all need Stalin.

You're talking as if the average person in this thread isn't absolutely itching to exercise their brains

Basically this

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 02:07

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

BillsPhoenix posted:

I had a great post about prisoners dilemma lost to the probe, I'll try and rework.

Anti coat was poor phrasing, I'm not referring to negative utility or anything like that.

I was thinking about something like what if someone like Mike Lindell made a coat. Except unlike a regular coat this one has no function. And unlike the pillow, has failed marketing, so literally no one buys it. He only invented it as a cash grab, never wanting one himself. Let's call it a my-coat instead.

Would this terrible product, designed only as a cash grab that failed, have use value?

If I look at it from utility and capitalism, it's utility is none.

working hard to learn how to make a coat that absolutely can never be used as a coat

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 18:27

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Son of Sorrow posted:

What if the coat was made by a chud, huh? What's Marx got to say to that?

I forgot who Mike Lindell was lol

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 20:04

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

dead gay comedy forums posted:

For the benefit of our readership in this exciting intellectual exchange:

I, for one, hope that Bills continues to shitpost here so we can get more of this

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 20:26

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

BillsPhoenix posted:

I clearly have a lack of understanding of Marxism and difficulty understanding. Your literally are formally trained in Marxism, and have a difficulty understanding modern western economics, despite your claims to the contrary.

that's where you're wrong buddy
I have difficulty understanding everything, not just economics, and never made claims to the contrary

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 21:31

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Are there any notable thinkers in China? I imagine they'd have more fertile ground for this kind of development.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2024 05:22

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

dead gay comedy forums posted:

it's great that more people in this thread are reading it than in any other time that I can think of really.

(for those who are reading along, doing questions, writing stuff, collaborating in general: you are cool as gently caress. You are awesome.)

I genuinely believe Bills had a positive impact in this thread

# ¿ Mar 17, 2024 02:09

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

at what point of my marxist education do I get to learn how to make savage burns?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2024 23:32

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

mycomancy posted:

I've not read either (but I will now!), so is there a concise reason for why the subjection of women was the opening shot? Like, is it simply that masculine-skewed humans tend to be stronger on average than feminine-skewed humans? Forgive the weird terminology, trying to be inclusive.

IIRC Engels argued that the development of productive forces with agriculture skewed power dynamics in favor of men, which contradicted the matrilineal inheritance/ownership existing in this stage of society. This necessitated a change in how families were organized to shift power towards men, and to allow for patrilineal ownership, men also had to possess women as part of their property.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2024 19:19

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Tsitsikovas posted:

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is such a pro read. I've always enjoyed this little bit of sarcasm in it

I took so long to read it because every page got me to rant about how cool it was to a friend. I recommend it to everyone, it really surprised me.

Again, thank you to people online for having takes so awful that it gets people to recommend good books.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2024 23:40

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

hubris.height posted:

I'm curious on the difference noted by this footnote. i read the before and after and I don't really see why it requires a note at all. Is this a matter of some controversy and if so,what over?

I'd guess the "socially fixed" bit may be misinterpreted in some ways, like saying the share of social labor expended in this specific process is not something that can change.

But that's just a guess, really.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2024 05:15

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Ferrinus posted:

yeah use-value can't be "negative" because use-value isn't quantitative in the first place. something either satisfies a function or it doesn't.

that's actually the problem with the term "anti-coat". it sounds like something that somehow cancels out or inverts a coat, like it saps the warmth that wearing a coat normally affords you or something. but that's stupid. many things just happen not to be usable as a coat. the classic example of the thing-without-use-value is the "mud pie", which is not an anti-pie. it's just a blob of mud or poo poo or whatever that no one wants and hence no one will buy from you

it's a weird attachment to the framing of an explanation instead of what it's trying to explain. If you're getting to really esoteric thought exercises like "anti use values" then the actual point of the concept being described has been lost for a while.

Halser has issued a correction as of 07:51 on Apr 13, 2024

# ¿ Apr 13, 2024 07:49

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

If I buy a car, and then I rent it out to someone else, is the amount of money I get before the wheels fall off back to equal to what I paid for it?

No. I get more, or I wouldn't do it. That's Rent. My profit comes from Ownership. That is over and above the labor exploitation that went into the manufacture of the thing, which I had nothing to do with. Rent, especially land rent, is unanimously considered to be parasitic in classical economy, unnecessary overhead that degrades a nation's ability to compete with other nations in the acquisition of Wealth.

Marx's contribution is to demonstrate that a similar parasitic relationship necessarily exists within the process of production as well.

Software licensing is Rent. Anyone in business who uses Windows, regardless of what they produce, pays Rent to Microsoft.

Imagine you rent an apartment. You have to pay the Rent. To get the Rent, you go to work. The money you get is less than value you create, and you give it to someone who is getting more $ out of their tenants than what they paid for the building. There is a Double Exploitation here. See?

The Uber issue is somewhat complicated. Uber strikes me as simply an obfuscated employment arraignment. The independent contractor form is all kinds of hosed up, but the substance is that they are employees.

Apps taking a cut of sales, like Steam or App store? That's ordinary Rent.

I read an excellent article and watched an excellent video on this just now, but it's in portuguese, so.
https://reunioes.sbpcnet.org.br/72RA/textos/CO-VirginiaFontes.pdf

basically, you don't have to directly own the means of production to extract surplus value from labor.

While uber drivers technically own the means of production(the car and the phone), Uber does control the means through which the worker has the ability to use the means of production and connect with the consumer market. Nowadays, you effectively can't just use your phone and car to make money as a driver, you have to use their platform to find customers, and as such your ability to effectively use the means of production you own is taken from you.

It's a sort of abstraction on the historical form of domestic labour, as I see it.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 03:26

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

well, it took a fair amount of time, but I finally finished Capital.

I'm not much of a reader in general so I don't have a lot to compare it to, but the thoroughness of the historical analysis and the explanation for the concepts that arise from it is honestly just brilliant. I'll definitely have to go back to it many times to get a full understanding of it all, but I feel like I'm much better equipped to actually do materialist analysis.

With that said, should I just jump into Vol II immediately? The list of books that are worth reading grew exponentially as I read through Capital and got more interested in some of the concepts it examined, especially now that I feel I actually have a shot at understanding them and the discipline to go through them. I even feel like I should re-read Origin of the Family, too.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 05:45

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

and thanks for Bills for giving me the little spark in my brain that said "dude you need to actually read theory".

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 05:48

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

I think it would be good for me to read a bit about brazillian history, put the theory into a more relevant context.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:15

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Thanks for the recommendations!
I've been watching Jones Manoel pretty consistently lately and that's a point he hammers on frequently, and I have to admit I know a lot more about politics and history outside of Brazil than in. Doesn't help I'm a cave troll that rarely if ever engages with people IRL, too.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:14

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 22:09

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:

This was my reply when I was in the train then lost signal and started thinking more about it.

But I do find it hard to parse his actual post for a reason.

It's hard to parse because it's meandering.
While you really shouldn't waste time arguing with people that have no interest in actually learning things, I think the two important things to remember is that the labor theory of value talks about averaged, socially necessary, productive labor, and that the LTV states labor time is the primary determinant in prices, not that it's the only variable that does it.
A concrete airplane has no value because all labor spent making it is useless for society.

Though in his own view an airplane made entirely out of palladium would be a pretty good thing to do due to the price/mass ratio lol

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:32

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