/lit/ - Literature

>>20151904
The first section of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Schumpeter is pretty thorough a critique of Marx. He presents an economic argument to refute the surplus value theory.

The surplus value of labor hinges on employers paying laborers less than what they're worth.
What is profit? In an economic sense, it is simply revenue minus costs. Marx's error is that he only considers labor (employees) as a cost, and excludes capital (basically everything else). If you consider only labor as a cost, then it's easy to see where Marx is coming from- it would be necessary to pay the employee less than they help you earn through revenue in order to make a profit. However if capital exists too, then the equation looks much different. It's entirely possible to pay their employees more than they're worth (raise the cost of labor) while compensating for that through lowered cost of capital, and still profit.

And in fact, I would wager that this is the case for many modern businesses. Companies can get money back through capital in the form of stocks and bonds, appreciating real estate they might own, amortized but functional equipment, countless things. All of which are things that let the employer pay the employee more than they help bring in. For some companies, it's not even entirely necessary that they make a profit on paper for them to keep operating, Tesla being the leading example. By Marx's definition, that employee would be worth literally nothing but I can't imagine anyone thinks that Tesla's employees aren't well compensated.

>Sit back and listen to some music
>Suddenly hit with an overwhelming sense of inadequacy knowing that no matter how good my writing becomes, it can never compete with the raw emotion evoked by a single song
>No amount of purple prose can draw such vivid mental images as sound.
It's an interesting feel, but then I try to remind myself that music isn't conveying a world, it's just awakening what's already inside of you.

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>>8355486
I first tried reading it in highschool, a lot of his references really went over my head. Just read it this summer (after first year of Uni) and I got a lot more out of it. It helps if you're at least semi-familiar with earlier absurd thinkers (ie Kierkegaard). Reading The Stranger first also acts as a good intro to some of the ideas expressed in Sisyphus. Also,

>inb4 start with the greeks

It does actually help to a degree. Camus is definitely working from the western philosophical tradition, so one needs at least some understanding of what came before him.