/lit/ - Literature

>>23518059
I was thinking about this today. Modern pop "Marxists" really have nothing to do with Marxism. There are real modern Marxists around, but many of the people who consider themselves as such barely demonstrate competency in Marx or economics in general and basically say "fuck capitalism."
Modern "marxists" are usually anti-racist, Marx himself was racist as fuck, borderline white supremacist really, and didn't include racism as part of his program for revolution or whatever. Or LGBT rights or any of that. It was mostly about economics.
To answer you more directly, idk what the fuck these people are talking about. The reason they don't demonstrate competency regarding capitalist econ is because they don't seem to understand Marx to begin with

>>23518089
with you having this in mind, now imagine how us real marxists feel, degenerates flood our space, we feel pure pessimism

>>23518100
To be clear I don't think it's good that Marx was white supremacist. I think that's bad
But the economic stuff has some value despite it all
Just don't know why these people idolize Marx while coming from a largely social justice perspective

>>23518125
well no, he wasn't a white supremacist

>>23518143
I'm not even being flippant or overly politicized, but objectively speaking it seems like he was. He regularly compared the "negroes" (he used a different word) to apes, and hated Jews despite being ethnically Jewish. In his letters, he seemed totally down with the European zeitgeist at the time, the idea that Europe was the most advanced stage of human racial evolution, and at varying points wrote about exterminating lesser races he didn't think deserved to exist, most notably, the slavs. Those bits about extermination are what has me saying supremacist rather than merely racist.
I still value some of his writing but he does seem to be, in an objective sense, supremacist and I never really saw any recant of any of that

>>23518059
Communism was debunked by history, so now all that’s left is weird social rejects.
You can look at something like the Romanov murders, just as a brief example. Obviously this doesn’t apply to Marx himself who died long before these events, but the basic principle stands.
The Soviet Union refused to publicly acknowledge the Romanov murders until the 80s, because it was a horrible embarrassment to them. The Chinese communists made a point of leaving their last emperor alive, as a way to show that Chinese socialism was superior to the soviets. Field Marshall Zhukov once met one of the Romanov killers, he refused to shake his hand and said “I do not shake the hands of executioners.” The reason behind all of this is simple: no matter what social or economic model you support, raping and killing young children in front of the corpses of their parents is pure evil.
But modern communists will say things like “the Romanov murders were good, actually” and make yes chad memes about them. This is because modern communists are usually just sadistic pedophiles with no ideology. They are school shooters who dreamt of going higher and killing millions. They picked communism arbitrarily, they could have easily latched on to nazism instead.

>>23518163
Explain communism to me

>>23518059
>Why are modern Marxists and anti-capitalists so reluctant to study capitalism and mainstream economics?
Because this is a strawman you constructed.

>>23518059
>reluctant to study capitalism and mainstream economics?
Why are the adherents of chiromancy are reluctant to study astrology?

>>23518059
Because Marxism isn't really economics per se but rather a philosophical and moral position, Thus they reduce the entire field to Smithian individualism and Marxian collectivism. They never really reexamine the labor theory of value solely because they do not care about the the underlying logical framework but the moral implications.

Mainstream economics is based on the idea of scarcity of resources and marginal utility, both of which marxists reject as bourgeosie propaganda without an actual critique. Some marxists unsurprisingly aren't even familiar with the Austrians and if they are familiar with Keynes, they see him as advocating for the eventual collectivization of labor democratically even though he himself hated communists. Beyond that, their rigidity ignores game theory, international trade, general equilibrium and other tools of analysis strictly becuase their prophet did not believe in it. Decreasing marginal returns in agriculture were first discovered in 1760s by Turgot, an economist marx never mentioned, instead of relying on Carl Menger's pricing calculations in the 1880s, the Soviet Union did not discover decreasing marginal utility until the 1970s and Leonid Kantorovich was compelled to invent linear programming, a whole new field of mathematics to address the issues of allocation. The Soviet- Romanian car company Dacia built cars that, unbeknowst to the authorities, was valued less than the sum of its parts as italian manufactures literally profitted from scrapping the new cars they bought.

Again marxism is a moral position, they have no weight in mathematics, philosophy, or logical.
>but muh hegel
Obscure and inferior metaphysics to general equilibrium

>>23518176
is he wrong? anti-capitalists in economics departments are few and far between and the precious few who are there don't have nearly the same breadth of scope and depth of comprehension as Marx had. even if you think that economics is a spook and major economics departments have been taken over by muh neoliberalz who deny leftists entry to universities you could still have some leftist autists writing grand treatises against capitalism while living on NEETbux like Marx did. yet we have nothing of this sort and you can always expect a leftist to be hilariously misinformed on modern capitalism

>>23518059
Modern economics is founded on empiricism, which is laughable in the social sciences.
Marxian CRITIQUE of POLITICAL economy starts from entirely different premises. The analysis doesn't begin with the individual, but with the commodity as a social phenomenon.
Neoclassical economists are liberal ideologues, individualism for them is of the utmost importance. They insist on empiricism, yet the crisis that plagues psychology also plagues economics.
Economists make baseless assumptions about human nature, which are not historical.
There are Marxian political economists, but they are obviously not supported by the mainstream economists, as they dare to critique capitalism.

>>23518173
How do you not know what communism is? Read a book instead of asking strangers on /lit/ to spoonfeed you

>>23518059
>Marx criticized capitalism but he also demonstrated a high degree of familiarity with economic orthodoxy of his day,
is this banter?

>>23518059
Why don't any Marxists try to use Sraffa?

>>23518211
Andrew Kliman does, I believe.

>>23518211
Because then >>23518192 someone would bring Ian Steedman. And the same logic that crumbles the neoclassic mainstream, would topple down marxist dogmas as well.

>>23518203
Damn

>>23518211
They do.
>>23518199
There are several anti-capitalist economists, more than a few of which enjoy mainstream attention. They are certainly not all Marxists, but all of them bear his influence.

>>23518193
Marx's economic ideas make sense, but they only really make sense in a post-scarcity environment. Outside of that, they don't, but he appeared to be hinting at this himself. He considered capitalism a progress stage over feudalism and a necessary phase that would someday be outmoded.

>>23518201
I would agree that the empiricism in modern economics is a destructive turn in the field but not only is empiricism creeping into poli sci and sociology departments, neoclassical economics truly is a theorerical but self-referential field. Applying theory to the real world is philosophically sketchy but yields political results.

>Economists make baseless assumptions about human nature, which are not historical.
This is a projection. Marxism makes overly strong essentialist assertions without sufficient proof and is internally inconsistent. Marxism can literally be reduced down to a linear view of historical progress, that goes against millenia of metaphysics.

>>23518248
>Marxism can literally be reduced down to a linear view of historical progress, that goes against millenia of metaphysics
In its most vulgar, reductionist form, sure.

>>23518192
>>23518211
>>23518223
I'm not really a Marxist but Marx-adjacent and I'm wondering if someone could give a little bibliography that would provide a crash course in Post Keynesian economics without getting balls deep, since economics isn't my favourite subject

>>23518248
>Marxism makes overly strong essentialist assertions without sufficient proof and is internally inconsistent.
I would partially agree here. Marx himself was not the reason for the sometimes very 'rigid' understanding of the world via a marxist perspective, it would rather be Engels, Kautsky and Lenin.
Internal inconsistency isn't a problem for the temporal single system interpretation in any case. Neoclassical economists essentially forgot about the Cambridge controversy, for example.
>Marxism can literally be reduced down to a linear view of historical progress, that goes against millenia of metaphysics.
I would say that it is mostly the fault of Engels. I would suggest going back to Aristotle and Hegel and that is what the Frankfurt school, the Neue Marx-lektuere and others do.

>half the threads on /lit/ are about Marx
please... just move on...

>>23518234
No it doesn't
In marx's view:

Profit = Price - value of labor
Price = value of labor + profit
Value of labor = input of labor
Marx thus observed a tedency for the rate of profit to decline but speculated on how and instead beleives it is do to the inherent contracdictions of capitalist mode of production

The neo classical view:
Price = quantity supplied = quantity demanded
Profit = Price - Total cost
Total cost = (wages * input of labor) + (rent * capital)

In this definition, profit is when the product more valuable than the labor and resources that went into its creation. Here the tendency of the rate of profit to fall remains true IF AND ONLY IF the number of workers increase while everything else remains the same. Hence why companies do not hire more employees than what they need.

>but they only really make sense in a post-scarcity environment
There are a finite amount of land and resources on Earth.

>He considered capitalism a progress stage over feudalism and a necessary phase that would someday be outmoded.
There is no structural difference between a medieval champagne fair and a commodity exchange market or central bank.

>>23518234
Post scarcity is impossible.
And an economic system would be completly meaningless inside a post scarcity society.

>>23518280
You didn't even read Capital. Go read it first before talking about Marx.

>>23518059
Because we aren’t as smart as those people anymore. We’re all dumb fat mutts. At least in the USA.

>>23518291
I did and it was fucking trash. Go find another Kike's book to worship.

>>23518307
You didn't! You don't know how the tendency of the rate of profit was formulated.

test

You know what I was thinking, why can't economic planning work in the sense of literally taking into account people's inputs and delivering on them (of course within reason). Sort of like the economic planning bodies receive the wishes of the consumers and deliver on them, like they were some e-commerce giant. Economic planning in the USSR worked in that they were basically guessing what the people wanted, this created huge inefficiencies, but now with computerized instant communication it would be trivial to know what exactly people want and produce accordingly to satisfy needs

>>23518618
We already have that; the government didn't need to get involved. Literally nothing would be gained if it did.

>>23518059
Probaly don't won't another Marx popping up unless he's sponsored by the powers that be.

Because the majority of Marxists still cling to the economic orthodoxy of the Second International, which deviates from Marx's thought by making his theory of value into a vulgar, Ricardian correspondence in quantity between labor and value. This forced most major Marxian economists, from Mandel to Cockshott, to basically wholesale reject modern economics in favor of whatever data they could gather which would show a strong correlation between value and labor. However, there was still a vibrant minority of German and German-influenced Marxists (Heinrich, Kurz, Postone, Millios, etc.) who were able to understand a far more abstract ltv in line with Marx's own views, that was able to still engage with and criticize neoclassical economics without being forced to defend some Smithian, primitive ltv that Marx himself explicitly criticized as being historically-specific to capitalism.

>>23518630
no, that's not what we have. capitalism doesn't respond to needs, it manufactures them.

>>23518630
We don't, companies do not produce knowing what people want, this is why there is so much waste, all they have to go by are trends signaled by prices but those are not reliable, certainly not as accurate as literally knowing what people want and then producing accordingly

>>23518812
it does both. are you suggesting a socialist government would respond to needs better? that's not the track record.
>>23518829
so companies are never formed to satisfy a need that is going unfulfilled? you have a child's view of how the world works.

>>23519073
The thing is that companies cannot predict the future, so they can overproduce something, then they need it to sell it at a discount, even sell it at a loss, or if they don't find any buyer they will have to literally destroy those goods, Amazon destroys billions worth of goods for this same reason
In a paradigm where production happens on demand you wouldn't have that waste, the market is an outadated way to gauge preferences, we can gauge preferences directly now

>>23519242
What does your response have to do with socialism? Are you claiming it would do a better job? You don't seem to have a coherent point...you just seem to be whining about unattainable perfection vs. existing good.

>>23518059
Gegenstandpunkt routinely publishes articles and books criticising contemporay economics, their booklet on marginalism being their best work.

>>23519242
>the market is an outadated way to gauge preferences, we can gauge preferences directly now
How can we? People's preferences are usually unconscious and thus there's no reliable way to access their preferences with 100% accuracy which is why Auctions (essentially inverted competition) are so effective. Leon Walras wrote extensively on this subject. The type of information needed to outperform the price system would be the aggregation of the exact point where a consumer would want to buy a good to the nearest cent along with said individual's subjective measurement of utility compared with other goods. The calculations must be so rigorous and precise that it could only happen under transhumanist singularity. Its very hard to concieve of a world where those conditions would be met but this is what mainstream economists call general equilibrium. This is where I believe Hegelian metaphysics falls short to pre-socratics such as Heraclitus and Parminedes. I personally believe that our material world as we percieve it must necessarily be the optimal calculation and everything is already complete.

>>23519355
Is it another "aaaaaaa NATO bad Russia kind of bad but also not really" kind of newsletter?

>>23519651
As the Cambridge controversy showed, supply and demand is not such a well supported theory now (when it comes to price formations).
>subjective measurement of utility
When I had statistics 101, we were specifically warned that people do not think "ah, I rate how I like bread at 3/10 and Coca Cola at 4/10, thus I will buy the Coca Cola", because people inherently do not think in such marginal terms so to speak. It is a grave assumption by marginalists, another spook ordained by ideology.
Sufficient computational technology can allow us to calculate what could be called the natural price of a commodity via the average labor-time and organic composition of capital as the transformation index. We can, then, if we calculate the average labor-time for, say, bread, calculate the long-term natural price without needing a market.

>>23519934
What's wrong with a market? It works without "sufficient computational technology", which is most of the world. Are you even capable of designing and maintaining such technology, or do you expect others to do that for you? Do you even know the first thing about technology?

>>23520009
>What's wrong with a market?
Anarchy of production. Calculating negative externalities perfectly (when it comes to, say, climate change) is impossible in a market, because to get the kind of information necessary for perfect compensation you would need to make open the production mechanisms of all companies, something which would in practice harm competition (restricted knowledge about improved means of production is an incentive for competition in the market)
Markets themselves create 'needs' for people. There is no natural need for alcohol or drugs. However, the market, being able to create demand (via marketing), pushes people into developing a new kind of need - addiction. In some cases, stopping consumption of alcohol too quickly can kill you. It's not a problem for economists so much as it is a problem for political economists.
>Are you even capable of designing and maintaining such technology, or do you expect others to do that for you?
We have the internet today, don't we? Sharing information between different planners, factories, real time data regarding production is possible in a planned economy. This is already of course done by large private companies with internal planned production, but it doesn't have data on the rest of the market.

>>23518227
>There are several anti-capitalist economists, more than a few of which enjoy mainstream attention.
Such as?
>inb4 le nordic countries

>>23519934
>As the Cambridge controversy showed, supply and demand is not such a well supported theory now (when it comes to price formations).
No it doesn't. That debate is over the feasibility of keynesian aggregation in Macroeconomics. A lot of macro is bullshit but Micro (Supply and demand, marginalism, partial and general equilibrium) is robust.

>When I had statistics 101, we were specifically warned that people do not think "ah, I rate how I like bread at 3/10 and Coca Cola at 4/10, thus I will buy the Coca Cola", because people inherently do not think in such marginal terms so to speak.
You are conflating ordinal utility with cardinal utility. Obviously people can rank their preferences of goods otherwise we would be able to make any decision at all. Pricing is the self referential valuation of goods in terms of a certain good rather than an absolute measurement, since the same can be said of mathematics. This is how barter has historically been done ( ex: I like guns so much more than tobacco that for me, 1 musket is worth 100 lbs of tobacco) currency, though not physically required, is supposed to be either a useless or imaginary good/commodity that stabilizes the relative values and creates a measurement of pseudo-cardinal utility, prices expressed in terms of money.

>Sufficient computational technology can allow us to calculate what could be called the natural price of a commodity via the average labor-time and organic composition of capital as the transformation index. We can, then, if we calculate the average labor-time for, say, bread, calculate the long-term natural price without needing a market.
Prices are far too dynamic to model in a computer. It's foolish to think real world prices can be reduced only to two variables: labor time and capital consumption. An accurate computational system must account for supply and demand fluctuations, technological advancements, labor efficiency, geopolitical events, weather, consumer behavior, transportation, and cultural cultural factors. So until we have the abililty to predict the weather and the exact position and momentum of an electron, bypassing markets and price system is too impractical be anything other than a fantasy.

>>23520074
So, in your perfect planned economy, people wouldn't be able to buy alcohol or drugs, because they don't "need" it. Guess what? Not everyone is a passionless autistic robot like yourself. And you have yet to describe why your "planned economy" will work any better than what we already have. What you call "anarchy of production" is needed in order to cope with unexpected events and advances. "Central planning" involves perfect information on the state of the world and the state of the future, which is completely impossible, and "sufficient computational technology" (which you don't understand and can't design) won't change that. Would your "planners" have allowed SpaceX to dominate space launch vehicles, or would it have decided corruptly for NASA, and other hideously inefficient government-sponsored enterprises to keep their monopoly? You have a child's view of how the world works, plus an unhealthy dose of megalomania. That's all this is about, but you're too immature to realize it.

>>23520085
If you really flex your brain muscles you might remember this guy Piketty who was kind of a global phenomenon that spawned a huge renewed interest in global inequality and income distribution that remains to this day.

>>23520139
>unironically name dropping Piketty
We have nothing to discuss anon. I hope you have a good evening.

>>23520145
Why would mentioning arguably the most famous economist alive not be a relevant response to the assertion that anti-capitalist economists are irrelevant or displaced from academia?

>>23520074
>There is no natural need for alcohol or drugs. However, the market, being able to create demand
Maybe people naturally have desires - Buddha

>>23520125
how can there be a government in a society without private property? nonsense post

>>23520115
>Obviously people can rank their preferences of goods otherwise we would be able to make any decision at all
If so, let us picture a scenario where bread is equally as valuable (whatever that means) as a bottle of water. What is exactly equal here? These are fundamentally different items and cannot be compared as such. This is an issue Aristotle himself encountered and left us with the thought that there is nothing equal when it comes to commodities.
Marx, however, did try to find out the substance behind barter - labor-time. By throwing the idea of the value-form away and declaring that value is subjective, you only give up, not find a new solution.
Speaking of ranking different commodities is simply not possible, because you cannot compare qualitatively different products without the value-form.
>Prices are far too dynamic to model in a computer.
Marx provides long-term average prices for commodities. As far as I am aware, he admitted that supply and demand played a crucial role, especially in the short term, but the average price turns out to be based primarily on labor-inputs.

>>23520125
>people wouldn't be able to buy alcohol or drugs,
Not necessarily, but alcoholism would not be anywhere near as prevalent, as the socialist state has no interest in poisoning its own population. The atomized, selfish capitalist doesn't really care if he pollutes and destroys the world. All for capital accumulation.
>And you have yet to describe why your "planned economy" will work any better than what we already have.
It will get rid of a base amount of unemployed people in any capitalist economy. In fact, unemployment could potentially be zero, but this is not possible in a capitalist system.
>What you call "anarchy of production" is needed in order to cope with unexpected events and advances.
Imagine if we knew that there was an asteroid that would wipe out humans in a few years. The market has no mechanism whatsoever to reorient itself into what essentially would be war production here. A planned economy would be able to quickly reorient production to this issue.
> "sufficient computational technology" (which you don't understand and can't design)
I'm not sure if you're trolling here or if you are referring to the economic calculation problem. We absolutely can know the state of production in a planned economy with the internet and digitalisation. It's irrelevant what the actual technology here is. It could be a computer that calculates labor-time and transmits it to whatever planning commission exists for forming natural prices.
>or would it have decided corruptly for NASA, and other hideously inefficient government-sponsored enterprises to keep their monopoly?
You're kidding me. For decades NASA has been able to innovate... until the funding was dropped. SpaceX itself receives subsidies from the US government, it is not exactly a normal company.

>>23520204
For all your fellating of Marx, recall that his ideas have NEVER WORKED. They inevitably lead to COLLAPSE.
>commodities
What about finished goods, especially technological ones? Marx's ideas barely work in a pre-industrial economy with indistinguishable interchangeable products.
>alcoholism would not be anywhere near as prevalent
Yeah, the Soviet Union was a model of teetotalism. You are an incredible dumbass.
>get rid of unemployment
I'd prefer that the bottom n%, the ones who are truly incompetent, remain unemployed. Hiring the incompetent literally does no one any good.
>hurr durr asteroid
The market is far more likely to have the technology to stop it, even if the government is the one paying for it. Remember, the government doesn't even make its own nuclear missiles...General Electric does. Also, try focusing on present, every day problems.
>we absolutely can know the state of production in a planned economy
But that state is irrelevant, because it doesn't reflect the state of demand, nor does it cope with changing tastes and technological advances.
>NASA
Their last hurrah was the Space Shuttle, which was way too expensive to operate. SpaceX now has truly reusable launch vehicles (that land themselves) and does so for far less. SpaceX is paid by the U.S. government for launch services; that's not a subsidy, that's a purchase.
Once again...you have a child's view of how the world works, with an unhealthy dose of megalomania, and furthermore, I put it to you that you've never accomplished anything in your life, and are in no position to demand we all conform to your bizarre dysfunctional scheme. This is clearly a massive cope for your own insecurity and incompetence.

>>23520204
NTA but the fact that you believe 0% unemployment is humanly achievable at all just shows that you either haven't taken or didn't pay attention during Econ 101 and thus makes me think you may not be well educated in the matter, not to mention that a lot of your points rely mostly or solely on assumptions with little regards to the history of communism and capitalism.
The government you describe in which "alcoholism would not be anywhere near as prevalent" is completely ignorant of the fact that alcoholism has been rampant in several leftist government such as the USSR, Cuba, and China.
Your point about the asteroid disregards almost every instance of when a country has gone into total war mode since the turn of the 20th century.

>>23520232
>For all your fellating of Marx, recall that his ideas have NEVER WORKED. They inevitably lead to COLLAPSE.
And who's ideas did work?

>>23520247
Freedom works. Ideas competing with each other for functionality and popularity works. The anarchy you're so afraid of works.

>>23520265
>Freedom
Wow, I can't believe I can pick what to watch on netflix. Such freedom.
>Ideas competing with each other for functionality and popularity works.
You are not immune to propaganda, kid.
>The anarchy you're so afraid of works.
Actually Revolutionary Catalonia didn't work because everyone but the people of Catalonia really wanted to share their 'competing ideas'

>>23520275
>strawmanning this hard
Please just stick to posting your sperging on twitter

>>23519651
Imagine a socialist economy where the planning bodies receive people's preferences directly and in real time, like let's say 5000 people want a particular sofa, another 5000 people want another sofa and so on. You'd know exactly the quantities of sofas to produce (unlike how it was in the USSR where they just guessed and that led to shortages and excess inventory in other items) It would be like production on-demand, you would need constraint on what people could demand of course, which is the role played by money in a market economy, so you'd have to come up with some constraining mechanism but that kind of economy would be way less wasteful and disfunctional than what we have now in a market economy

>>23520297
>reactionimage.jpg
>greentexting in 2011+13
>not respecting musk's freedom enough to call it X
>not addressing anything I said in my post
ISHYGDDT

>>23520204
>What is exactly equal here?
It means you are indifferent to the two bundles of goods. Question, Do you see labor as a means to an end or as an end in of its self?

>but the average price turns out to be based primarily on labor-inputs.
Assuming diminishing returns do not exist. This was first discovered by Ibn Khaldun well before Adam Smith.

>>23520302
>Imagine

>>23520369
Is freedom choosing which basedjack to post?

>>23520303
You didn't address anything in >>23520232, hypocrite.

>>23520460
Is freedom accusing anons of being the same anon?

>>23520243
It is not achievable in a capitalist system, because there always has to exist a reserve army of labor.

>>23521072
It's not just capitalism though. The dynamic, non static nature of any economy means equilibrium is always shifting. So if you managed to create 0% unemployment, a combination of population growth and development would immediately shift equilibrium and create either new worker shortages or displacement of old jobs

>>23521077
You can have excess jobs.

>>23521077
Ancient societies virtually had zero unemployment, simply because it was necessary to work and there was no benefit for the ruling class from unemployment.
The economy would be less 'dynamic' so to speak, because it would be a planned economy with no competition between planners. Planned economies have historically had more stable economies and are much more resistant to economic crises (the USSR during the Great Depression, for example)

>>23521077
>we shouldn't try to make the world better because actually the population will GROW so that makes the world bad, actually
I'm ending my 6 month lurking streak to tell you how retarded the comment you just made is. And I'll wait the 60s to comment it too.

Modern Marxist Leninists only feel the need to analyze capitalism on a surface level because it no longer needs to be understood. It has become ascendant since Marx's time, and supplanted the previous feudal classes. It has become rotten and malignant, and doesn't need to be fully understood so much as supplanted.

But, we do these analyses but the current Marxist movement is very disorganized, much more so then it was in the time of Marx. It was somewhat organized during the Stalin era, but at the moment its incredibly fractured. The closest thing to a global leading party is the KKE. When we are infighting for the most correct answer to "What is to be done" in 2024, we cant actually analyze capitalism like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao once did. Pao-yu Ching for example, is a Maoist who writes about the capitalist restoration of China and the economic means for-which it was achieved.

A lot of the modern literature is focused on analysis of Neoliberalism usually. For example, Chris Harman wrote Theorising neoliberalism in 2008.

tl;dr: 1. we do. 2. you don't know be cause we spend our time infighting 3. its also just not as needed as it was in the past

>>23521072
Wow I had no idea that toddlers and people in coma can be part of the workforce, same with old people and people with non-functional disabilities

>>23521130
Homelessness was very well documented in Ancient Greece and Rome. In many cases the "unemployed" would either sell themselves or be forced
into slavery.

>>23521164
If labor truly were the source of value then why would a business not hire as many workers as possible? Why did the Soviet economy grow the fastest during the the holodomor and NEP?

>>23521120
There are many jobs people either dont want or don't have the skills for. Forcing people to work these jobs is counterproductive.

I'm convinced Marx wasn't doing what Marxists do.

>>23519242
Get a job. Literally get a retail job.

>>23519934
Get a job. You need to spend less time in school.

>>23520074
Getting a job will force you to go outside and interact with real human beings, where hopefully you will have the opportunity to reflect on your worldviews and how they can only exist on this website.

>>23520204
I take back what I said about the retail job, become a landscaper because you need to touch grass.

>>23521130
Source for that ancient societies claim?

>>23518192
>Capital does not have a fixed 'physical' quantity
"Fixed" is so ambiguous without further context that this could in fact mean nothing at all. The fact is that capital can be quantified, and that its ability to produce outputs stems from a physical presence. "Fixed" only matters in terms of the arbitrary divide between long-term and short-term.

>>23520204
>If so, let us picture a scenario where bread is equally as valuable (whatever that means) as a bottle of water. What is exactly equal here? These are fundamentally different items and cannot be compared as such. This is an issue Aristotle himself encountered and left us with the thought that there is nothing equal when it comes to commodities.
Equivalence is fundamentally an arbitrary relationship if two things are not identical in every manner.
What it means is that if one person is a baker and has hundreds of loaves of bread while another person has a stream of fresh water he can bottle, the bottler will trade the water for the bread in a 1:1 ratio (because that's what we assume).

>>23518163
It'd be a shame if capital had an embarrassing history of unmitigated atrocities.

>>23518618
You're completely correct and people don't address this. The problems that communism faced are basically obsolete and now there's no reason why large scale allocation systems couldn't be more efficient. It's hardly a pie in the sky thing to do, we just now have the tech to do it.

>>23518618
We sort of have them, in the form of e-commerce chains and trading algorithms. The key difference is that they have the corporate interest of maximizing profits rather than the central planner's theoretical goal of maximizing social utility.

>>23521936
People are still skeptical of giving algorithms any sort of real authority over them, and the fall of the USSR has people skeptical of excessive nationalization of industries.
This is also somewhat compatible with a capitalist (or pseudo-capitalist) economic vision where private businesses exist that run their own ventures, but are subject to a government agency controlling the means of distribution and the financial capital.

>>23521767
>The fact is that capital can be quantified
Your fate, as per its relation to the Saturn rings' trajectories, too.

>"Fixed" only matters in terms of the arbitrary divide between long-term and short-term.
No exact measurable one-to-one relationship -> no measurable supply/demand curve -> religion

>>23518059
Marx is a joke.

He saw Adam Smith, got triggered, and literally just made up some unreadable bullshit.

I can guarantee you that all those retards who are "Marxists" never read his garbage and at best just looked at some quotes.

I read so many economics books, but I never could finish Marx. His writing is just trash tier and he basically just says
>MUH POOR PEOPLE ARE THE GOOD GUYS AND THE ELITES ARE ALL EVILE... because... because... because GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

Literally every country that tried Marx bullshit went into an unsustainable hellhole. Marx is just assuming good sounding bullshit and the moment his bullshit is done, nothing works.

If you think Marx is so amazing, literally just read his shit and show me how a "sustainable Marxist economy" should work. Keep in mind that every person is egoistical and everyone wants to be in power and supress others who challenge their power. Marx just made the retarded assumption that somehow the "working class" is some kind of loving group. In reality all those "working people" would love to enslave others and to the same garbage the elites do, if they could.

Marx unreadable book is like a fairy tale. In economics you would say that Marx created a model, but his assumptions are simple false and already proven wrong.

>>23518261
bumping this since I have the same query

>>23522641
So many buzzwords, so little value.

>>23522650
>>23518261
>a crash course in Post Keynesian economics without getting balls deep
Chang Ha-Joon - Economics. The User's Guide (2014) (it has a chapter on different schools, Keynes included)
Caporaso J.A., Levine D.P. - Theories of Political Economy (1992) (it has a chapter on Keynes)
Steve Keen - Debunking Economics. The Naked Emperor Dethroned (2011) (the author considers himself to be post-Keynesian)

>>23518192
>>23522307
The production function in macroeconomics bears no relation to microfoundations of supply and demand. The function : F(L,K) suggests that productivity is a relation between input of labor and capital, similar to what one marx-tard described as value being equal to some function of labor time and capital composition. It has been critisized by the Austrians as being too objective overly reductionistic. Yes, it's true that much of macroeconomics in the early to mid 20th century was bullshit but it served as a model, albeit flawed, because the real world cannot be replicated without some reduction. Since mas-colell (1987) and the Lucas Critique (1976) and as other anons have suggested, general equilibrium models have been increasingly used as its consistent with micro and does not do careless aggregations. It also is consistent with the empirics that there could exist equillibria with multiple different interest rates. The production function is not derived from supply and demand but an interjection from Classical theory.

Hey man, you need projecting. Marxism is at its core, a religion as it thrives on the belief that humanity is both exceptional and divine; that man shapes reality. It's narcissism and delusion.

>>23522698
>The production function in macroeconomics bears no relation to microfoundations of supply and demand.
Glad that we already agree that microeconomics is completely unworkable trash.

Now, if only macroeconomic thingamabobs like "output" were... oh wait...

>>23518059
Have you ever worked a job where you felt that the products that you sold people were inferior to what they could make themselves if only they learned how to do it?

>>23518059
Modern Marxists are dogmatists. Virtually all of them are either orthodox Marxists or Western Marxists whose forte is cultural theory not economics. There is no such thing as "Marxism." Even Marx denied being a Marxist. "Marxism" was a later invention by his fanboys who built a cult around him, literally comparing Capital to the Bible, they turned it into a religion. They believe Marx was like Darwin and that his "dialectical materialism" (note: no such phrase appears in any of Marx's actual work) is a tool that can help them objectively understand society. So Marxoids defacto think everyone else but Marxists are wrong and they don't need to study modern economics or anything else. Whenever a new discussion comes up, say gender transition or whatever, all they do is refer to something written by Engels or Lenin or Marx over a century ago. If you point out they are wrong or out of touch with modern scholarship, they go full "in defense of Marxism" mode as if their entire worldview is being attacked. Usually, this just means shitflinging like calling you an idealist or something. Marxoids are brain dead.

>Marx himself was racist as fuck, borderline white supremacist really, and didn't include racism as part of his program for revolution or whatever
Just go read his later writings on India, his analysis of the Crimean War, the Ethnological Notebooks or his correspondance from Algeria. Marx might have been somewhat racist in his personal life and his Darwinian views but he wasn't an ideological racist or a borderline white supremacist at all and he moved away from seeing colonialism as a beneficial thing to harshly criticizing it as brutal and immoral. Marx believed that the anti-colonial movements in Asia could be a valuable alliance for the European working class. I wouldn't say he was more or less racist than the average European intellectual at the time, maybe less so in his later years.

>>23523191
The CIA funded post modernist theorists to counteract Marxism. When you point out that they are “out of touch” it’s literally because glowies made it so.

>>23523191
I think your viewpoint regarding "modern Marxists" (assuming you mean recent/contemporary Marxists) is quite out of date. There has been a great renewal of properly Marxist thought in the last decades. It's still the case that those are less popular than post-modernists though.

>>23520169
Please anon, don’t post pictures like that.

>>23518059
6 billion euro you welcome jsut laod it on my credit card and go for ever awyy.

capitalism has been thoroughly studied and debunked

>>23523191
When you talk about postmodern Marxists, who do you talk about? Even so, even when we talk about Baudrilard, I still sense some kind of revolutionary desires in him.
Either way, there are plenty of modern Marxist scholars, such as Michael Heinrich, Andrew Kliman. I pay no attention to Leninists and anything that comes after them, because it's usually just ideology.

>>23522307
>Projections are inaccurate and prices change
>Therefore capital cannot be quantified
This argument is fundamentally flawed, because it ignores the fact that the raw outputs of the capital can be quantified. If I produce 10 apples from a tree, that tree produces 10 apples.

That entire pic's argument only critiques the idea that money is a universal and consistent quantifier, when in every known universe it isn't. The reason it's used in macroeconomics is because there aren't better universal quantifiers for economic activity.

>>23524806
>The reason it's used in macroeconomics is because there aren't better universal quantifiers for economic activity.
>the raw outputs of the capital can be quantified. If I produce 10 apples from a tree, that tree produces 10 apples.
Well, sucks for the economy then, to have to quantify raw apples in Astral Gnome Fart units. What could possibly go wrong?

>>23524832
This is a Ricardian position when it comes to inputs, so it's not exactly new.

>>23524837
>This is a Ricardian position when it comes to inputs
>>23524837
>>If I produce 10 apples from a tree, that tree produces 10 apples.

Join production >>23518223
"quantitatively, production is forever a black box. Even if we could identify its inputs and outputs (itself a questionable proposition), we could never examine the inner process by which the former quantitatively ‘generate’ the latter. The only way to attribute outputs to inputs is indirectly – first by finding a unique mathematical relationship between them, and then by assuming that this relationship represents the productive transformation occurring inside the black box. This superficial solution works well when there is only one output and therefore a single mathematical equation. But it tends to fail with joint production. The latter requires simultaneous equations, and there is nothing inherent in joint production to guarantee that these equations could be solved with unique and positive labour values."

>so it's not exactly new
Well, economics as a science isn't exactly in any respectable shape.

>>23524850
>quantitatively, production is forever a black box. Even if we could identify its inputs and outputs (itself a questionable proposition), we could never examine the inner process by which the former quantitatively ‘generate’ the latter
For classical production of commodities, you have the entire discipline of engineering. These kinds of statements can only be made by the terminally ignorant.

>>23524850
So what is the solution? Also, what is this book?

>>23524875
>For classical production of commodities, you have the entire discipline of engineering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
incalculable. So much for your economics.


>>23524879
>So what is the solution?
To accept that we are dealing with an arbitrary anthropological ritual, and not a science.

>what is this book?
Capital as Power (2009)

>>23524898
>Linking to an astronomy problem
I accept your concession

>>23524904
>>Linking to an astronomy problem
Linking to a math problem, moron.

This is the key problem: mainstream economists are not proficient with math.

>>23524879
>So what is the solution?
2 solutions

1. differential accumulation, measured against top 500 firms, as a proxy for power quantification.
2. electricity (biophysical inputs, the only actually measurable units)

>>23524910
>Linking to a math problem, moron.
The core idea of the three body problem is three celestial bodies moving and affecting each other with their gravitational fields. It's as pure an astronomical problem you can get (which happens to use math because physicists do math).
>This is the key problem: mainstream economists are not proficient with math.
Pretty much everyone but mathematicians and physicists are not proficient with math. Chemistry, biology, and engineering disciplines are still fairly rigorous.
Also, economists are by far the most mathematically literate social scientists because they at least use mathematics.

>>23524923
>The core idea of the three body problem is
The core idea is that it is a dynamical chaotic system with sensitive initial conditions

>Also, economists are by far the most mathematically literate social scientists
Who are still stuck with linear algebra and static equilibriums, whereas any knowledge of dynamic far-from-equilibrium systems would have shown that their project is a dead-end.

>>23524938
>Who are still stuck with linear algebra and static equilibriums,
Not even true. Economists increasingly use DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium) models these days. Probabilistic modeling is probably the biggest research trend of this decade. That's neither linear nor static.

>>23518059
>Modern marxists
Most know nothing about Marx. Probably read the first page of the manifesto online and wouldn’t be caught dead reading even a chapter of Capital, or any book for that matter.

>>23518157
>at varying points wrote about exterminating lesser races he didn't think deserved to exist, most notably, the slavs.
Marx liked the Poles though. I read some of his writings and he depicted Russia as this reactionary, counter-revolutionary, medieval empire that was sending in armies to crush national movements in Europe (including the Poles), and there were Slavic groups scattered around who were acting as a fifth column (the exception being the Poles), that they weren't capable due to their position stemming from historical reasons from forming independent states. But in one of the same articles, he says the Russians do have the potential to do that (although evidently not quite yet). He described Russia as the "gendarme of reaction" but that's also why he wanted to encourage a revolution in Russia and a necessary precondition of that was a Russian defeat in a war. It's an interesting way to look at 19th century European politics.

>>23523191
>Marx believed that the anti-colonial movements in Asia could be a valuable alliance for the European working class.
Yeah he wrote that. He had a complex way of thinking about it. Like, it's true that European imperialism was a disaster for the traditional backwards ways of these societies (and that's a good thing!), it also created the conditions for these societies to adopt modernizing ideas and flip things around, and secondly, it was a good thing for the British to blow resources and eat shit trying to put down these rebellions as it would spur workers' parties at home.