(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
|
It took a while and I kinda regret it, but Kruschev lied... I'll start with I didn't know the secret speech well, so that part was interesting. As far as literally every piece being a lie - it's simply absurd and it didn't even feel like the author really believed it. Some of his points were valid, but felt like obvious lies. Stalin wasn't the worst war time leader. The Moscow trials... likely had at least some treasonous people and Krushev had a bit too much to personally gain from that revision. I regret reading it though because I read it before looking into Furr. An American educated, American professors, outside look at a "radical" take on Soviet history is stupid. There's simply no reason an American would have the secret scoop or method on Soviet history. His take on Poland is insane. I did realize there are a number of completely non ironic views here that Stalin was literally the most morale person ever and any attack on him was an attack on communism and just.... lmao at the cognitive dissonance.
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:29 |
|
|
It did reaffirm that the history of the Soviet Union is complex and very difficult to ascertain nearly any level of truth as a westerner, rather nearly any view can be take as affirmation of pre existing beliefs. While Stalin had flaws and certainly acted for personal gain, I'm open to the idea that there was a large scale, masses driven communist reform and ers under Stalin, that kruschev did lie about as part of a consolidation of power. Kruschev seemed to be the better statesman as well, probably to the detriment of the population.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2023 20:27
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:*literal pages of discussion in critique of stalinism in this very thread* Have you tried reading this thread? I've said this before but it's funny that communism - a concept for the uneducated masses, is this highly gatekept, intellectual, you wouldn't understand it theory.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2023 00:24
|
|
|
Capitalism = theft and the celebration of theft at individual, corporate, and national levels. Communism = sharing, especially sharing a hatred of thieves.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2023 00:27
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:two weeks ago a 68 years old woman that only had the most basic education here and worked pretty much almost all of her life as a domestic servant was raising questions about Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky with far more insightful critique than any such “but actually…” posting Specifically she asked...? E: I should have said stupid not uneducated. Correlation doesn't make it a rule, especially when educational access is a barrier.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2023 01:38
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:so not only that, but also imperialism imposes indirect costs by making our own stuff more expensive to ourselves because said dumbassery Reply to the P/I thread, which felt like the a derail there as it's burgers. A recentish change with western imperialism has added so many indirect/tangential costs, it's getting harder to even see a benefit for the exploiting nation (US) as a whole. Foreign bribes have always been a minimal cost, but internal bribes - via superpacs, have skyrocketed. Where as foreign bribes can at least be argued as having value for the Imperialist, domestic can not. Shipping costs, supply chain costs for a single corporation discounts the full cost to the stealing nation. Ships, trucks, labor, etc is a limited resource. By creating an excessively long chain, the burgers may be cheaper, but every other product using these resources has an increased cost. While measurable, McD has incentive to not report, and will use aforementioned bribery to ensure it won't get regulated, creating recursive domestic bribery costs as competitors for these items use bribes to get their own priorty/reduced costs of these items. A discrete example of how excessive this recursive bounce has become is the USN and Panama canal. Traffic in the canal is so heavy, they auction of passage priority, generating billions in revenue. The USN is not exempt and will pay the auction fees, which is then a direct cost increase to the imperialists population which is supposed to be exploiting Brazil for cheaper beef. It's very difficult to ascertain how much these extra costs end up being vs producing the beef locally, but the economic benefit to the imperialist nation's population is questionable. Globally it's catastrophically dumb, evil, and inefficient.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2023 21:12
|
|
|
Something interesting about the value of exploitation is that the recursive competition makes it deteriorate over time. United Fruit Co was able to successfully make huge profits, with minimal supply chain impacts because they were one of the first. Today McDonalds is so much later that the additional costs impact many, many other industries. I think the US economy largely reflects this - the 50s and 60s saw insane wealth growth for most Americans, an unstainably rich and large "middle class" As exploitation continued, returns diminished and household wealth decreased. Setting aside math, the consolidation of wealth can't really explain this - a few hundred yachts and private jets is not nearly enough physical goods to offset the missing housing, cars, and other stuff that's now lacking in the US. Using dananns post - the consolidated wealth is almost all purely fictional money - not based on goods or even services.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2023 21:09
|
|
|
my dad posted:I would caution against seeing financial capital (and finance institutions) as an abstraction. I tried to break it into parts, the fabricated fin capital is growing in size and importance, but is relatively new. Both the recursive increased costs of exploitation and the fabrication of fincap (as opposed to fincap theft like the US did with Bretton woods in nam) seem like attributes of end stage capitalism - they're not sustainable. I know most anti capitalist theory is that it's inevitable and a core problem with capitalism, I'm not sure I agree. I'll point to the collapse of UK as an example. A huge imperialist, titan of capitalism collapsed, but as a whole capitalism kept crushing it - in a capitalism continues to grow as a practice. I suspect if the US collapses China will end up being the next champion. They've already started to move into some of the practices.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2023 23:21
|
|
|
Did the Soviet Union have parks? Green spaces or 3rd places have been disappearing rapidly in the US - I remember explicitly being taught the USSR didn't have any. As I think about it now though... I don't even know how the concept works in theory or execution in communism - you don't really need to have a space protected from capitalist development the same way the US does.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2024 17:49
|
|
|
As I asked I knew my education about parks not existing was probably a lie but lol ofc western parks started off as paid escapism areas. Unrelated to parks, have been watching the ww2 5 came back refence films, it's surreal watching hardcore US propaganda extoll the free peoples fight of the Soviet Union against the nazis.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2024 18:10
|
|
|
Not a very active thread. Dcgf - you posted an IMF chart in the ww3 chat, which brings up a major issue I have with economic data. When taking about the IMF, there's a lot of justified criticism in their methodology and intentions. There's also been significant changes to data gathering, treatment of outliers, computer analysis and more. A discrete example world be how US census designers and the actual boots on the ground takers treated Native American populations over the short history of the US. How do you account for these major flaws when approaching economic theory?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2024 22:16
|
|
|
I wasn't familiar with Popper - I'll be cautious about the term falsify in the future. That's not what I was trying to say . I'll try to clarify it a bit. First - I'm fully on board with LTV and surplus labor. While there may not be 'perfect' unfettered free capitalism examples, every execution of capitalism in practice has exploited labor. There's also a mountain of evidence to support it, many statistically sound studies. The counter arguments even in theory are rather weak. The 'perfectively competive' market theory starts failing with simple additions like barriers to entry. One of the most horrifying things I've witnessed first hand is watching two different people struggle with the basics of finance get introduced to Capital and "getting it". A light bulb goes off and they understand their path to "success" or self enrichment is best achieved by exploiting others. In regards to the IMF specifically, they're not "opposite" Marxism. There's many different economic theories and the reality is complicated enough there aren't really opposites, rather many varying theories. I suspect the IMF uses TRPF as one of many variables in long term forecasting. As biased as they are, they're more of a for profit bank than they are a research institute. I'll have a follow up about trpf more specifically.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2024 04:38
|
|
|
Marx was an innovative political economist. Marxists are is a loose collective of those that have realized the horrors of colonialism, will debate all at the pub, thrive on psedu intellectualism, relentlessly avoid compromise, all whilst collecting their well earned welfare payouts.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2024 00:23
|
|
|
Tendency of Rate of Profit to fall. My #1 critique is the failure to address racism and sexism. This is a major issue for nearly all economic theories, but problematic for TRPF. Exploitation of surplus labor is a mandatory building block for TRPF. Holding everything else constant, the civil rights movement should have caused a significant decline in profit - as wages were increased for black and minority Americans. The movement aligns with a fall in profit. This is consistent with the Marxs formula, but complicated the usage of the time period as proof of trpf. #2 critique is very popular in cspam. Marx divides labor into productive and unproductive. During Marxs time, services was a minor secondary industry. It's since grown absurdly large. I'd tend to agree with most posters that services are overwhelmingly unproductive to society. Again holding all else constant, a rise in unproductive labor short in the short term increase labor market competition, yielding rising wages for all worker types, paradoxically (but in line with Marx) increasing profits. The 80s roughly fits this. Again accounted for by Marx, doesn't disprove TRPF, but also muddies using the time period as proof. #3 is the US has heavily relied on Keynesian policy the past century. QE and QT have enemorous impacts on profitability and must be accounted for when trying to measure profit. The late 50s was an era of QT. This should, and did, see a period of trailing falling profit. Except as already noted the civil rights movement was also underway and should be a cause of falling profit. Tl;Dr- TRPF is a good theory, but the limited historical data available is multi-causational, and as such pointing at a falling line isn't "proof" of TRPF. It of course isn't proven false either.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 21:29
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:where did you get that Not Marx himself, but Marxists ignoring it when pointing to falling profits as proof, as described in that example regarding the civil rights movement.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 21:54
|
|
|
I'll let a MIC goon respomd to the services are productive labor comment. For my positions - I am fully a believer in the theory of exploitation of wages or surplus wages, surplus value. I'll caveat the US doesn't teach it this way, but it's my belief and in line with Marx. TRPF is a good theory. I think it's one of many factors at a macro level. I don't think it's the only factor, nor do I believe it must result in a collapse. This is where I differ with Marx, and I don't belie e a lot of theories and claims that build off "inevitable collapse". But... I'm western educated and have appreciated the engagement and dispelling of ridiculous things I've been taught so I'm poking at stuff where I can.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 23:08
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:Please elaborate because this is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone raise that idea ever and I am very much curious to see the why Which part? The civil rights movement causing an increase in wages? This is a core part of modern minimum wage arguments and inequality.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 23:12
|
|
|
FirstnameLastname posted:wages, growth, and profit arent the same thing An issue with studying Marx in the modern era is terms he used have been now used for other items. He did also use some terms interchangeably with different meaning. Growth is one I know - he uses it as Growth if economy to describe the feudal to capitalist to communist society change. He also uses Growth to describe the acquisition of wealth/capital by capital owners in a capitalist society, helping them further entrench themselves about the laborers.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 23:27
|
|
|
So I want to be clear - Marx sometimes uses Classical Economic terms in unique ways. This isn't a fault or issue with Marx. But using it as a "you don't understand" clause to me says you only know Marx, not other economic theories. Profit as part of trpf has a lot of different methods of being calculated in execution, even if the theory is simple.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 23:53
|
|
|
I have. I'm not sure what is missing. I have no critique of the theory. My critique is the pointing at a chart and saying profits are falling is flawed. There's multiple variables at play which can explain falling profits. But because there's multiple variables it also doesn't mean trpf is wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 00:06
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:to help you out, this is the part where you are criticizing and not offering a why. Ah OK, I see. I'm not criticizing the theory for addressing racism or sexism. I'm criticizing pointing at a chart of world profit declining, and saying the decline of profit is proof. The movement as a whole significantly increased the cost of labor for capitalists, it wasn't just a shifting of money from one worker to another. I haven't seen this related to trpf, rather as an explanation of the labor crisis of the 60s. But it would relate to trpf as this would explain the decline, not trpf.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 00:23
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:Before elaborating further: what about prison labor in the USA + combined with corporations doing industrial transfer to LatAm + Asia? I see prison labor as the continuation of slavery, which has generally declined long term but never been eliminated. Short term slavery in the US via prisons does seem to be on the rise, the recent report reiterated how difficult it is to measure. Industry transfer is a lowering of wages. The 90s should see an initial rise in profits, but then as industries saturate that benefit should disappear. Similar to civil rights in the US, a country implementing worker rights should cut into that profit, which will kick off a new industry transfer. It will all get a bit noisy. A salt mind in Australia should be profitable? In the US it wouldn't be prudent. E: ignoring corruption/bribery issues with oz mining, it wouldn't be a good idea. BillsPhoenix has issued a correction as of 01:01 on Feb 7, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 00:49
|
|
|
FirstnameLastname posted:also note it's the tendency for the mean rate to fall Like 95% of macro economics work this way. Even most of the ones called "law of". Part of why economic is a soft or social science.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 00:52
|
|
|
You know marx was a respected economist right? And that the soviets had economists? And China does today? It's a study of resources, behavioral incentives (now it's entire own branch), and the impact at a micro or macro level.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 01:19
|
|
|
Mila Kunis posted one of the charts that seems to come up a fair bit on the topic. Dead Gay posted the IMF chart in another thread which broadly aligns. I haven't seen a stock market chart that generally trends downward.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 01:42
|
|
|
Thank you dgcf for the great reply, it'll take me a bit to respond.Orange Devil posted:Yeah, it's like global warming. You gotta look at long-term macro trends, and it all looks like a whole bunch of whatever for a long time and then suddenly HOLY poo poo EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE WTF No it's not like global warming. This is a common sentiment on reddit too. As I and others have said, economics is not a hard science. Global warming is backed by hard science. Can you respond to the services are actually productive and fill a need? I've seen you address this problem well in other threads as an issue with the western defense industry. I see it as a major flaw in capitalism - regardless of relation to trpf.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 21:46
|
|
|
I'll start with capitalist support of TRPF. This is partly to address the claim that the west doesn't teach or use the theory. E&Y - one of the big 4, a capitalism giant models TRPF - at a corporate, industry, and to a lesser degree national levels. It's just called something else - the profit stress warning index. They differ from Marx in that they think things can be done to prevent a collapse - a major difference, but they still believe it's a very real risk at a corporate and industry level.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 22:14
|
|
|
Profitability. It's not profit, I'm very aware. But it's also not a cleanly agreed upon term when you leave theory and try to measure it. As an example, this chart is a measure of profitability - by a US institution biased towards defending capitalism. Nothing here is a lie, but unlike the Mila Kunis chart - it doesn't go down: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W273RE1A156NBEA And for the people that are gonna claim that's a corporate profit thing, it's not - here's a chart showing corporate profit, not profitability from the same source https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPATAX
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 22:26
|
|
|
Salt mines - a great example. I think we'll get to the root of our disagreement. I want to also clarify - I'm criticizing the empirical evidence used to support trpf. Not defending capitalism. I agree with your assessment about profitability in the industry declining steadily from the peak. But I'm going to use it as empirical proof that trpf is wrong. The decline is not new to this industry, but it not only still exists - it still fulfills the same purpose of maximizing utility (classical economic term) of salt in the market. How? The reason, at least according to western capitalism, and that I believe, is competition. The Pareto Efficency/Effect - at which point resources have been maximally efficiently allocated. High level, PE says that once efficiently allocated, resources can not be reallocate without harming an existing allocation. In case of the salt industry - there are enough companies today to saturate the market, so starting a new one would be a poor investment because it must take away from existing companies. PE isn't opposite of trpf. Without trpf, PE can't exist on the producer side. But it does provide an end - via a cap on how far competition can go, which means capitalism does not have to inevitably implode. The salt mines of today back this theory.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 23:32
|
|
|
First I'm rejecting the analogy to global warming. 2nd I'm rejecting the claim that western financial world doesn't use trpf or understand it. 3rd I'm angrily ranting at posters claiming I'm making up terms or don't understand profitability. The last post is the one with merit, I'm rebutting dead gays use of salt mines as empirical proof of trpf, by saying its empirical proof of PE.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 23:47
|
|
|
Eh, I'm hoping I get a rebuttal of PE. If yall wanna defend services as productive and then claim that's what Marx would do, that's on you.
BillsPhoenix has issued a correction as of 00:34 on Feb 8, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 00:20
|
|
|
Six Sigma is a services. Say a small bakery hires a 6 sigma consultant. The ideas aren't even applicable, yet this isn't uncommon in the US. Not only does this consultant not provide surplus value, or products - they meet daily with the bakers for 6sigma meetings. The 6sigma consultant did not buy and remove a commodity. Instead they removed labor, reducing what the bakery had produced, eliminating the commodity that way. Under capitalism this had become prolific, with 6 sigma consultants wasting labor in every industry. In communism, manufacturing consultants wouldn't be assigned to every industry.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 00:57
|
|
|
I appreciate the response, but attacking PE, or my terrible posting style, doesn't address the issue. There are still salt mines today. They fully fill the salt utility. Why? I was introduced to PE explicitly as the fundamental reason why capitalism is more efficient than communism. Boston Ice mining was the explicit example. This is not a theory I've come up with on my own.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:00
|
|
|
To clarify - finance classes at a ranked uni, but not Chicago. That doesn't mean it's right, but this wasn't bar talk. PE as an attack of communism is used in the theoretical perfect world (that admittedly didn't exist) to argue Capitalism will only put labor into Caital until the rate of return (suplus labor extracted in marx terms) is less than the rate of return placing that labor into another piece of capital. This was precursored by a deep dive into the Boston Ice Mining industry, an industry with essentially zero barriers to entry, thus making it extremely competive. The industry did not grow as large as resources possibly would allow, because there was no market demand for it. This introduced the concept of market limits. Next barriers to entry was introduced, as a reduction in competition, providing a limiting factor there. It's certainly not how the theory was introduced 100 years ago, but it has been used that way.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:16
|
|
|
Cuttlefush posted:now im gonna kick your rear end There's no way you hadn't realized I'm from a western capitalist background. Dead Gay is too, he's just seen the light. We're never going to agree I think.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:23
|
|
|
Aeolius posted:Western economists, for ideological reasons, tend to dispute it, but yeah, the financial world itself can certainly notice it from time to time. It's me. I'm rejecting it, but I'm trying, and failing to do it on empirical arguments, not ideologies. I very much would like to be proven wrong, that trpf is inevitable. But I'm not buying the salt mine argument.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:29
|
|
|
On that we can agree 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:35
|
|
|
If the empirical evidence is there, then yes! My issue, using salt mines specifically, is that trpf fails to address the lack of a collapse. Profitability has fallen. I brought up E&Y because even western economics has to account for the tendency. But Marx uses it as a building block for an inevitable collapse. Salt mining has not collapsed, and still produces the maximum utility of salt. The application of PE as I was taught does explain this lack of collapse. It must hurt existing salt mines to add a new competitor, because the market is at capacity. So there is no room for growth, but there is also no need for a collapse. So unfortunately for me, my ideology isn't being rejected, it's being reinforced.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:42
|
|
|
I currently believe capitalism is essentially inevitable. There's a lot of serious flaws to capitalism, causing an environmental Armageddon is one of them. I'm not approaching trpf from the ignorance argument "you must prove to me". The theory is solid. But I don't see it in execution. The salt mines still exist and still produce. I combine trpf with pe and can resolve. Large capitalist firms like E&Y combine trpf with other ideas formulaically, I didn't invent this.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 02:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:29 |
|
|
Salt mines utility fulfillment is to state the industry hasn't experienced a partial collapse or crises resulting in an inability to fill societal demand as a result of the loss of profitability. I understand you apply the loss of profitability not at a industry level, but as a whole. Starting with salt mines, capital was reinvested, reducing labor - and thus definitionally reduce profitability; which is surplus labor value. The companies do this do gain a competitive edge, and profit. But profitability is falling, which is not profit. Focusing only on salt mines here - they are still producing profit. A new salt mining company isn't coming into existence, we all agree on that. I'm now going to differ and point to PE as the reason. Adding a new set of labor (via a new mining company) to salt mining will actually produce profit (not profitability). So why isn't it done? Because adding to a different industry will produce more profit. I'm starting to see why my posting is hard to follow...
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 03:26
|
|