(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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In Training posted:been thinking about the pending rail labor action and wondering when the last time there was a single time where US labor flexed this kind of muscle. obviously it's not happening yet, just curious if there's been a period in the last 50 odd years where there was a national shutdown of such a fundamental industry. have american oil workers ever walked out? a coast-to-coast postal service strike? Air Traffic Controllers is the obvious touch stone but I just cant see the biden admin having such a hardline response. If a democratic president pulls a Reagan the party's entire faux labor relationship would go up in ash overnight, membership of every AFL-CIO affiliate would tune out of the political arena at best and start to oust their union leadership at worst.  maybe christmas can come early this year, and by early I mean delayed into next year by several months due to shipping issuesSunny Side Up posted:There’s this good video by this channel Swoletariat called Limits of Intersectionality that I like. It isn’t reductionism, it’s looking for a permanent rather than temporary (or false!) solution. I liked the explanation from The Deprogram - Importance of Intersectionality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww6PtQeeJn8) which framed it as you need both as the skeletal and muscular systems of a movement; essentially, ignoring the real differences between how people are treated/what they've experienced in favor of purely class, is as misguided as treating those experiences as wholly independent from class
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Oct 30, 2022 17:52
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Nov 3, 2022 07:31
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you all are expecting an awful lot from a raccoon that a witch turned into a human anyway, what's a good zizek starting book? I'd like to add it to my pile of "books I will read 2-3 chapters of before moving onto the next and never completing even one book"
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Nov 17, 2022 16:40
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thechosenone posted:But given Chile wasn't exactly a world power, what does it mean if the central power of the world has to use fascism to stay afloat? I'd imagine this screws the pooch for other regimes, since you can't really fascism well if bigger fascists are then immediately sucking up what you were trying to use to stabilize yourself. not if the central power exports the tools and training necessary to rule through fear and brutality
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Dec 7, 2022 22:57
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The manifesto is (relatively) short and readable, capital is the one that's gonna be ultra dense reading the manifesto is nuts because it was written 150+ years ago and describes so much of today https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
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Dec 25, 2022 17:59
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Epic High Five posted:Magic and making things up. I think the current brand of copium is "basket of goods" which is an idealized form of the broader economic methodology of just adding and removing stuff from their analysis until they get the output they want this also is how you get "I paid Bill $100 to eat his own poo poo, then Bill paid me $100 to let him punch me in the mouth, so we generated $200 of gross domestic product." that is what capitalists actually believe. imo the biggest and most important distinction between any kind of communist ideal/socialist transition is the notion that the society is based on material conditions i.e. Real Things, not make believe bullshit (which ofc is also where a lot of derailing comes in from wreckers arguing what is/isn't real, and why the baseline is "everyone gets food, shelter, healthcare, and education." anyone denying that is a huge piece of poo poo.) in a socialist society, value would never be exchange-based but rather use-based (i.e. socialism: "does this actually fulfill a need that people in our society have? it does? ok let's figure out how to make it/fulfill that need" vs capitalism "I have designed a car that breaks down after X miles, so that you need to buy a new one much faster than if I built it properly, and it will cost the consumer far more in total than a single well-made vehicle as well as taking far more resources that will be wasted, thus depriving others from those resources. I am a loving genius.") Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 22:28 on Dec 26, 2022 |
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Dec 26, 2022 22:18
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I need to read a lot more (starting with finishing capital and imperialism) but a question I always had was why there was such strict prohibition on drugs in soviet states and whether or not alcohol was truly excluded like I get the obvious answer (productivity/drugs definitely make you stupider than if you don't abuse the poo poo out of them) but uh... still.
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Dec 26, 2022 22:38
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mawarannahr posted:I don’t think they’re saying that. Marx shows how capital is based on material conditions. the notion promoted by capitalists is that it’s based on other things, and the vast majority of them probably believe that sincerely. correct, and much better put than what's below here sube posted:What do you mean by capitalism not being based on "material conditions"? I'm saying that socialist governments/societies are guided based on the lived material conditions that their citizens occupy day to day, i.e. the material conditions of the human beings and families and communities who simultaneously are the reason for any society and governing body able to exist at all while being bound by said social body. Socialist societies act to measure and maximize (are "based on") the material conditions of people e.g. reducing homelessness populations, improving literacy rates, ensuring food and housing availability, understanding aggregate population stats tied to health outcomes like blood pressure, etc. They're applying what humanity has learned since the advent of the written word to make things better, essentially. My point was that what I've described is how I understand what makes a fundamentally socialist government/society distinct from non-socialist or anti-socialist govts/societies, is that a socialist society is based on improving the material conditions of its people. Any society not doing that would be non-socialist at best, anti-socialist at worst. Capitalism, being an anti-socialist society, and American Capitalism in particular as a concrete example that has openly and actively worked against socialist societies throughout its history, both internal and external, is based on material conditions only insofar as the material conditions of its corporate persons and the specific humans that form those corporate bodies, i.e. the capitalist class. American Capitalism literally and openly places profits above the human beings outside the capitalist class, i.e. labor, despite labor forming the societies corporations feed off of and rely on to exist. Any benefits from capitalist social policy to labor are happy side effects; any consequences for labor are externalities. A capitalist does not care if a homeless camp is bulldozed, much less that it exists at all or why; only that it does not hurt the social objective: profit. and buddy, lemme tell you, those homeless fuckers destroy housing prices!! (Given all the poo poo I wrote, saying capital is based on material conditions is pointless to me, because the entire point of understanding the material conditions that constitute the interconnected systems of humanity's existence on earth is to improve that. Saying that you're based on material conditions to destroy earth and humanity's future is bullshit. I can also see how this is a complete misuse of "material conditions"/a made up definition by me, but  my words fail me and I'm only left with longwinded shitposts.)
Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 00:19 on Dec 27, 2022 |
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Dec 27, 2022 00:16
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sube posted:Not to nitpick too much, but I'm not sure I agree that "any benefits from capitalist social policy to labor are happy side effects" - as the state within imperialist societies plays an important role through its social measures in fostering a dependent proletariat to be used in capitalist production, as well as maintaining a reserve army of labor. Though, of course, that at the same time its object is its continued position *as* workers, i.e. perpetuating its oppression. Though I might be overanalysing what you are saying that's what i'm saying, and yeah if you already acknowledge that capitalist social policy is there to ensure you have a dependent, oppressed workforce, you are by definition not helping them, anything that benefits them short-term is a secondary effect since the objective is the long-term exploitation and oppression of labor, not to actually meet the needs of labor (i.e. the vast, vast majority of people in the society) PopZeus posted:how do non-Labor Theory Value proponents claim profit is generated? is it only a function of price/supply/demand to them? Homeless Friend posted:how do megacorps pay 0 in taxes? by making no profit. revenue doesnt exceed operating cost. there is no profit. its definition is up to convience yes finance is so fuckin insane wait till you start to think about "so wait, why does the value of a US dollar change against the value of, say, a british pound? who is recording these changes?" because lol buddy lemme tell you about the very loving real concept known as a Market Maker; someone wanted to know what capital is? capital is having so much money that you set the loving value of money. you may be familiar at least in name with one of the world's largest market makers, Deutsche Bank, a real stand-up group of individuals with nothing of particular note in their corporate history quote:After Adolf Hitler came to power, instituting the Third Reich, Deutsche Bank dismissed its three Jewish board members in 1933.[27] In subsequent years, Deutsche Bank took part in the aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses, provided the owners of “aryanized” businesses were in the know about their Jewish status beforehand; according to its own historians, the bank was involved in 363 such confiscations by November 1938.[27][28] In 1938, German bank Mendelssohn & Co. was acquired.[29][30] During the war, Deutsche Bank incorporated other banks that fell into German hands during the occupation of Eastern Europe. Deutsche Bank provided banking facilities for the Gestapo and loaned the funds used to build the Auschwitz camp and the nearby IG Farben facilities.[31] quote:Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the Allied authorities, in 1948, ordered Deutsche Bank's break-up into regional banks.[35] These regional banks were later consolidated into three major banks in 1952: Norddeutsche Bank AG; Süddeutsche Bank AG; and Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank AG.[35] In 1957, these three banks merged to form Deutsche Bank AG with its headquarters in Frankfurt.[35]
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Dec 27, 2022 01:04
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well nevermind
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Jan 20, 2023 18:02
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Fish of hemp posted:Trotsky said that Stalin was bad. drat, maybe this trotsky guy is alright; a bullet is much cheaper and more humane for everyone involved than a prison camp
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Jan 24, 2023 21:08
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reminds me of that article posted about a school losing its poo poo over a teacher reading The Sneetches because the kids slowly started to ask "did... did we treat some people like poo poo? for no reason??" wow that was two weeks ago, felt longer https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/education/2023/01/09/olentangy-schools-halts-reading-of-dr-seuss-book-during-npr-podcast/69791362007/
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Jan 26, 2023 15:30
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my main takeaway is that I need to start a religious cult that all but in name is socialist their god? Beardus.  "We cry 'Save us, Beardus!' But Beardus only saves those who help themselves *and* others. We must keep ourselves strong so that we may better help our loved ones withstand the assaults of evil, family-killing ultrawealthy and their bootlicking cronies; those foul subhumans who would poison your whole town for pocket change then charge you for the antidote and demand to be praised, hiding behind their paid killers as they demand profit at your expense and suffering."
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Feb 14, 2023 16:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:Socialism is a transitory period to building communism, where the new socialist [political] economy is enforced by the state (as controlled by the workers) genuinely asking: is it reasonable to say that communism is an ideal that guides concrete socialist decision making, and that the expectation one should have as a socialist/communist is that socialism would be where we permanently chase the unobtainable, utopian communist stateless society, rather than communism being considered an achievable goal at all? my context here is: - the (possibly flawed) understanding that by "stateless" Marx/Engel meant that officially-given-authority-to-use-force States would wither away because there would be such a massive cultural unification that individuals would no longer need to be coerced by said force to act for the good of society (and yes I did wiki this with no reading context that I can remember) - that I can't tell if it's my own capitalist/shitlib brain worms still kicking around or what, but even conceptually, I cannot really envision a worldwide classless, stateless society I can envision a world where communism becomes *the* enduring human zeitgeist, with socialism its hegemonic avatar as more and more groups of people within states act for the good of humanity; that worldwide socialist society with a shared sense of identity has to deal with an at best self-excluding non-communist population or at worst openly hostile anti-communist population, yeah. absolutely. Capitalism and Communism switch positions in terms of both cultural and geographical influence, it would be fuckin glorious. i.e. socialism essentially wins, but not a stateless society where everyone acts for the good of the society, because even a majority of humanity acting for the good of society without the coercion of state violence still leaves a chunk of humanity not acting for the good of society. I think with the hindsight of the last hundred fifty years, we can see that coercion (be it through ill-advised force or skillful organization and communication) is necessary to keep people at least acting often or even just mostly for the greater good. The only other way they will is out of their own volition, which while great and does happen with obviously many people making that hard journey of self discovery to see that communism is the only fuckin way, doesn't work forever; the idea that people will become communist and stay communist is obviously untrue and can still be short-circuited as the USSR and humanity sadly found out, and I don't just mean individual corruption but things like mistakenly thinking that privatization/accepting neoliberal thought wouldn't be corrosive to the communist project (arguably the result of individual corruption in terms of demagogues anyway). Similarly, the expectation that there would be some clean way of converting or otherwise, uh, "removing" all non-communists seems... unlikely, if not unrealistic (and I GUESS A BAD IDEA. maybe.) so again, not seeing how you really get away from a state apparatus, even if it's something like a federation of otherwise independent Totally Not States, Just Self-Organizing Regional Demarcations, Bro, The Lines Are Merely Suggestions which band together according to previously agreed-upon contingency procedures if there's a crisis that requires mass mobilization/coordination (because even with everyone wanting to act towards the common good, not everyone is a great organizer or knows how to channel that intention the best way, so some kind of structure that is essentially a state seems a necessity to me, especially during crisis but even just day to day). So yeah, that's why I can only really view communism as the guiding-light ideal for socialism, and end up just calling it all communism since it's easier even though it's really just permanent socialism/bandaiding poo poo nonstop. which just feels more realistic and achievable than a stateless society. it's also acceptable if the answer is just "read more, post less" even tho the latter is evergreen Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 09:19 on Mar 2, 2023 |
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Mar 2, 2023 09:16
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mawarannahr posted:moving this post here as it's a bit much for the cyber thread (context and previous excerpts here) quote:Society has been broken up, rendered fragile and fragmented by thirty years of perpetual precarization, uncontrolled and rampant competition, and psychic poisoning produced and controlled by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi, and their criminal media empires.  only up to page 50/the purgatory chapter and it's so good. I have to keep putting it down cause I can't even articulate how it makes me feel, just lots of "ahh thanks for the words to describe that" while navigating that gutpunch feel of having so many lovely things described so well. real curious to see where he goes from here/how he reaches the closing of the book (I jumped to the end just to see if he elaborated explicitly on poetry/the sensuousness of language and its role in overcoming the irreversibility of where we're at and now i'm eager to finish reading it so I can re-read it and better absorb all this) thanks for this! e: tho lol 30 years of "perpetual precarization, uncontrolled and rampant competition, and psychic poisoning" is just 1992 to 2012, been going on to fuel capital for a helluva lot longer than that but I suppose he means how finance capital in particular has weaponized these things in new and exciting ways at scales never seen before to bring us to where we are today Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 07:09 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2023 07:03
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mila kunis posted:not necessarily contradicting you but adding on - this guy makes the case that propaganda is indeed powerful but doesn't lead to auto brainwashing, people seek it out for themselves or passively accept stuff out of convenience for material reasons lol that's the gervais principle applied to society, which yeah, probably https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/  in rao's case he's arguing that it's based around the ability to interact with the actual power brokers of an organization (Sociopaths/Elites), are unaware of the power dynamics in play at all (Clueless/Masses), or are aware but unable to act on those dynamics for whatever reason though they want to/can try to (Losers/Rebels) he specifically cites the role of the Sociopath as creating a narrative people can buy into Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 21:53 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 21:48
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Ferrinus posted:it should be noted that (i'm pretty sure) the gervais principle guy is some kind of lesswrong freak gently caress. what he writes in gervais principle in particular absolutely lines up with my experiences in various levels of corporate bullshittery, so I just kind of like the framing/narrative, but that sucks.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:13
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Brain Candy posted:definitely not some dusty-rear end 19th century answers that didn't make it into the 20th century let alone the 21st While there aren't many, there are some major co-ops that survive, Mondragon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation being one of if not the largest examples It's still a better model than dumping all your profit into a rich fail kid's bank account, and it still hates dipshits who can't work together because their feeble minds don't understand why they still need management/leadership even if said leaders are chosen by and serve only at the desire of the workers In Training posted:I think worker co-ops are a helpful additive to a milieu of other worker self organization, in addition to trade unions and communist political parties. Any approach to revolutionary socialism that highlights a single tactic that is going to solve all our problems is of course laughable also this, it's just one tool
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Apr 7, 2023 17:16
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I'm pretty sure that the abortion/child labor aspects are in no small part due to ongoing Lee Atwater/Southern Strategy mindset effects, i.e. still heavily rooted in the white supremacist superstructure that is if nothing else still able to exert force today, quite effectively unfortunately sure maybe it's purely patriarchal ideology specifically making GBS threads on women for abortion rights, but regardless, these things gently caress up poor people (both white and nonwhite but moreso nonwhites) more than rich white people who can ensure their children at best get computer toucher jobs that foster their life-long careers while maiming poor black kids working in a slaughterhouse; same thing with abortion access, rich daughters can travel to an abortion green zone to keep their futures intact, poor daughters can literally get hosed and just eat the consequences and deal with it i.e. the goal isn't necessarily abortion or child labor laws, or maybe it is but it doesn't matter because it does gently caress over non-whites/non-rich-people (racial and class warfare) much more than rich whites because that's what american demon cracker leadership is and has always been focused on Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 22:51 on Apr 15, 2023 |
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Apr 15, 2023 19:02
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it's been unreachable for two days for me this did at least force me to finally get a physical copy of capital Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 06:51 on Nov 10, 2023 |
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Nov 10, 2023 06:47
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Frosted Flake posted:Marx included demobilized soldiers and prostitutes, which have been controversial, for different reasons, since the cultural turn. Both are parasitic on the existing socioeconomic order, but saying a group is parasitic hurts people’s feelings, so “sex work is real work”, even if it’s not, and comrade anarchist troops were welcomed with open arms until the Ukraine War, or Syria, when to everyone’s surprise they adopted the State Dept position immediately. how's a sex worker a parasite? trying to grasp the reasoning here I'm (still) dumb as hell and poorly read, but my understanding is that marx and engels both viewed sex workers more as victims (if not at least side effects) of the capitalist system rather than exploiters of it, closer to what Fat-Lip said re: them being unproductive labor but labor nonetheless
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Dec 18, 2023 04:27
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Boeing is making maximally efficient use of bolts, and Norfolk Southern is making maximally efficient use of Ohioan homes for soaking chemical spills, while Raytheon and GenDyn are making maximally efficient usage of US military personnel, ipso facto capitalism cannot be stopped
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Feb 8, 2024 03:18
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I applaud the very patient posters who created some real interesting posts out of this conversation because jesus loving christ
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Feb 9, 2024 00:07
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Dreylad posted:Going to Europe and visiting the major art museums there was eye-opening because American money keeps a lot of them running and supports their restoration work. Almost every museum was supported by art clubs made up of the ultrawealthy from various American cities. communal money laundering mats
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Feb 10, 2024 19:52
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BillsPhoenix posted:If exploitation of labor is a fundamental tenet of capitalism, then trpf must be true that's right because exploitation of labor IS indeed a fundamental tenet of capitalism or else there would be literally zero reason ever for someone to make hundreds of times more than someone who they employ you cannot get blood from a stone and capital MUST constantly grind for more blood (exploited labor resulting in profits) so that it can defend itself against ever more predatory capitalists who would otherwise take them over and or "disrupt" them and or otherwise use something to ensure that they are the *most* profitable, biggest, able-crush-competitors force to ensure its own survival as a corporate vehicle for wealth to those able to take control of any given entity and constantly doing that leaves less and less for the actual material laborers that said capital relies on, to the point you start to get to things like barely paying people to make money/enshrining slavery into the american constitution and saying it's absolutely legal, cool, and good to be a slaver so long as you own a private prison BP, you appear to have read even less than I have. if you sincerely want the knowledge you claim you want, read capital and read imperialism. if you genuinely cannot read them, why are you trying to get understanding of these topics? what are you trying to change about yourself? because all of your posts indicate you still cannot move past "capitalism is salvageable" which belies an *very* deep ignorance of what exactly capitalism has "done for humanity" especially once there were alternatives available BillsPhoenix posted:and communism must be inevitable. this is not guaranteed, the choice is communism or barbarism/fascism/hell on earth/capitalism/cloud feudalism/another dark ages/take your pick of names for "we hosed up, as a species." Tempora Mutantur has issued a correction as of 03:39 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 03:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:...the import of this result is buried in what appear to the student to be difficult problems in mathematics, rather than a fundamental reason to abandon supply and demand analysis.  fuckin perfect, the whole excerpt
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Feb 15, 2024 03:58
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BillsPhoenix posted:Also when looking for a super generic "that's why capitalism is efficent" the IMF came up. They claim profit (as an output for capitalists to earn) is a requirement of capitalism so... yeah. 1) did you read this post: because if not, go back and do that, then answer: 2) what is your takeaway from reading the excerpt in that post and how does it relate to the ongoing conversation you're driving? what insights about your own reasoning, if any, did it provide you?
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Feb 15, 2024 04:40
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Feb 21, 2024 01:47
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BillsPhoenix posted:I don't believe in objective economic data. It does not exist. With immense effort, on extremely narrow topics, decent confidence interval can be derived. Sometimes. I cannot wait to see how this prevalent idiotic-as-gently caress worldview handles the coming century of human history. having met dumbasses like this in real life they are all, to a man, adequately competent at one thing and stupid as gently caress everywhere else, in ways easily demonstrated that have to be consciously ignored through will and or deep ignorance, just like BP lol somehow, they have concluded that due to their mediocre talent and middling skill in one area, they're loving supergeniuses about everything else! all cognitive dissonance of their own worldviews slides away across the frictionless surfaces of their minds. as if their very disconnect from their own humanity/how they view themselves apart-from instead of a-part-of the world is a virtue or some poo poo instead of avoidable blindness; as if they are noble for choosing to stay inside the cave with their shadows with BP's posts, it's very funny (in an annoying as gently caress way) to encounter even the facsimile of someone who obviously lives as if self-delusion a vital survival skill far more useful than trying to do something worthwhile, or even considering what "worthwhile" or "objective" or "truthful" or "authentic" means, or at least fundamentally feeling the difference on a reflexive level without having to consciously justify it, just... goddamn, a bit or not, shitheads like BP do exist, and how unlucky for them but also how extremely unlucky for the rest of us, since they either need a lot of help or are irredeemable pieces of poo poo that otherwise need to be kept away from things they can gently caress up until such time that they can demonstrate basic awareness and respect of other people, if ever depending on the individual. yet again I find myself wishing I was better read to know if Marx or Lenin or Mao or Deng or someone wrote on this, especially given how Stalin's approach could broadly be considered, uh, one way to do it. Mechafunkzilla posted:Imagine having this guy in a reading group i would genuinely question my opinion of whoever brought them; imagine living with them
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Feb 22, 2024 21:44
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it's been a challenge to apply it to capital but usually when I'm dealing with a complex book I read through the whole thing not even stopping when I don't understand poo poo, but just to reach the end and realize like "oh ok that's all of it" and then I go back to the beginning and re-read it since now I have a bit more context for the parts I don't understand, and it makes it easier to dig into the parts I struggle with as I reach them again
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Feb 24, 2024 22:55
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Orange Devil posted:Also it is important, imo, to realize that actually there always must be LOTS of surplus labour power for a society to survive. This is because out of any society only a subset of its members perform labour, but everyone needs to be allocated fruits of that labour to survive. For example, babies don’t perform labour. I agree with this, and it makes me think of (because of a deprogram episode, heh) everything that entails both logistically and otherwise (just in the abstract, as a wandering thought). Thinking about how in practice, it translates into the necessity of any movement trying to affect change needing to have a fully formed plan for exactly how distribution management should be done should they actually even begin to approach being able to exert any control over said distribution and resources. Specifically, things like the Black Panthers had begun assembling with free breakfast and medical assistance for local vulnerable people, and on a larger scale what groups like the Bolsheviks, CCP, or Ansar Allah each had defined and in place before they reached the ability to exert control over their respective region's infrastructure. all of which is a huge loving undertaking of planning that requires a group with collective actual and actionable knowledge and contacts within necessary industries/groups, local distribution networks, etc (not to mention the opsec/connections to do all that if you're trying to build an alternate parallel system in an actively violent repression) further reinforcing how important managing resources and distribution is to any functioning society, as these functions are only enabled by allocating some of that surplus labor power since this all goes above and beyond baseline daily survival. it also illustrates how those who are in control of western economies aren't stupid per se but merely understand that they can take as much as they want without regard for society, and have every reason and means to enforce their claim as violently as necessary, because there is no consequence to their doing so, unless/until there is one as the blowback to their actions mounts over time. Looking at what the Soviets ended up doing once they had control to make sure everyone had what they needed in a sustainable way while dealing with the reality of how to actually handle those logistics: massive amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy to bookkeep things, in a time right before advanced computing, all show that emphasis on controlling resources and distribution (which means understanding and measuring as accurately as possible what materials are where and who needs which in order to keep your society functioning) Meanwhile, within the US, the strongest physical resource + distribution organizations (amazon and walmart) are centrally-controlled planned economies unto themselves, leveraging technologies like RFID'd inventory tracking for just-in-time delivery, more-automated warehousing, etc, but in the service of maximizing profit rather than maximizing getting resources where they're needed for maximal benefit to the society, not unlike what computerization and ongoing advancements would have afforded the Soviet projects (and are actively benefitting China) anyway all that babbling to say yeah I agree that the surplus labor power and control over distributing and managing said surplus is critical to a society's survival. contesting that control breaks societies down along lines based on who believes how those resources should be managed and distributed, i.e. that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle
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Mar 10, 2024 21:27
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BillsPhoenix posted:Raw materials have an exchange value equal to the value generating labor used to extract and get the raw materials to a marketplace. no. exchange value is inherently arbitrary. when one half of the exchange can opt to murder/threaten the other half, directly or indirectly, the value ceases to have any useful metric beyond navigating the systems of arbitrary exchange values (i.e. markets) maintained by the practitioner more willing and able to exert violence to enforce their arbitrarily set exchange values. this is why the only sane way to run a society is focusing on the (also arbitrary) use value i.e. making sure people have what they need, full stop. exchange value can be used as markers for items beyond necessities, but again, purely arbitrary in its value, not something that can be meaningfully modeled outside of its usage within the system that sets said arbitrary exchange values.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:51
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