/lit/ - Literature

>>12744277
Bullshit. The only historical teleology of capitalism comes from the secondary effects of the affluence created by the entrepreneurial spirit. The academic intelligentsia, who are sustained by, yet estranged from the entrepreneurial cycle of creative destruction, seek social critique and stasis as validation for their own existence. What results is the creation of a bureaucratic managerial gynocracy that brings about social and economic stagnation.

>The essential point is not whether labor is the true ‘source’ or 'cause’ of economic value. This question may be of primary interest to social philosophers who want to deduce from it ethical claims to the product, and Marx himself was of course not indifferent to this aspect of the problem. For economics as a positive science, however, which has to describe or explain actual processes, it is much more important to ask how the labor theory of value works as a tool of analysis, and the real trouble with it is that it does so very badly.

>To begin with, it does not work at all outside of the case of perfect competition. Second, even with perfect competition it never works smoothly except if labor is the only factor of production and, moreover, if labor is all of one kind.3 If either of these two conditions is not fulfilled, additional assumptions must be introduced and analytical difficulties increase to an extent that soon becomes unmanageable. Reasoning on the lines of the labor theory of value is hence reasoning on a very special case without practical importance, though something might be said for it if it be interpreted in the sense of a rough approximation to the historical tendencies of relative values. The theory which replaced it–in its earliest and now outmoded form, known as the theory of marginal utility–may claim superiority on many counts but the real argument for it is that it is much more general and applies equally well, on the one hand, to the cases of monopoly and imperfect competition and, on the other hand, to the presence of other factors and of labor of many different kinds and qualities. Moreover, if we introduce into this theory the restrictive assumptions mentioned, proportionality between value and quantity of labour applied follows from it.4 It should be clear, therefore, not only that it was perfectly absurd for Marxists to question, as at first they tried to do, the validity of the marginal utility theory of value (which was what confronted them), but also that it is incorrect to call the labor theory of value 'wrong’. In any case it is dead and buried.

Was he right, /lit/?

>>11039245
what if innovation itself is what makes capitalism inherently unsustainable? (btw schumpeter looks like a goblin). When American conservatives talk about capitalism, they talk about this imaginary 18th century jeffersonian utopia of yeoman farmers and independent craftsmen that has no connection at all to contemporary high tech financialised post industrial capitalism. Any divergence from the ideal must be due to big gubmint failing to properly venerate the entrepreneur or something. microeconomics and contractualism are al in all a pretty reductive model of the human, don't you think? do you see yourself as nothing more than an utility maximizer?