/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5682459]

Are there actually people who unironically believe in marxism on this board?

[Anonymous No.5682464]

yes

[Anonymous No.5682467]

marxism definitely exists m8

[Anonymous No.5682471]

Are there actually people who unironically believe in bourgeois ideology on this board?

[Anonymous No.5682472]

Yes, but it's like /pol/. Most marxists are rusing, except for a few idiots who take the b8

[Anonymous No.5682567]

>>5682459
It's a method, not a faith.

[Anonymous No.5682573]

>>5682459
/lit/ has dogmatic people fighting in every corner
I've seen people arguing Tumblr and /pol/ tier stuff within the same thread

[Anonymous No.5682574]

>>5682567
A method which has proven disastrous every time it has been tried so far

[Anonymous No.5682578]

>>5682573
>Tumblr
Most of the SJW's on /lit/ are trolls, same with the /pol/cunts (hopefully)

[Anonymous No.5682589]

>>5682459
all the other claims by marx aside
is it not okay to actually believe that managers take advantage of consumers by raising prices to what other rich assholes are willing to pay so they can fill their own and lower managers' pockets rather than selling something for the actual material and labour price of a product?

[Anonymous No.5682590]

I always felt Engels was too nice to not be fiction, a bit like Jesus.

[Anonymous No.5682592]

>>5682574
China seems to be doing well.

[Anonymous No.5682597]

"believe in"

>believe in

The ideology is strong with this one.

[Anonymous No.5682601]

>>5682592
That's because it embraced capitalism under the leadership of deng xiaoping.

[Anonymous No.5682603]

>>5682601
Temporary state capitalism is a valid marxist transition phase.

[Anonymous No.5682606]

>>5682603
Do you really believe that China will revert back to a planned economy? Lol.

[Anonymous No.5682610]

>>5682601

not your interlocutor but I think it's worth mentioning that China was able to institute more effective monetary policy because it seems that government controls business more so than business controls government.

But I'm also regurgitating things I've heard on Youtube and I don't know fuck all about China so nevermind brb gonna go be plebe more.

[Anonymous No.5682612]

>>5682606
>Marxism
>revert
Do you think Darwinism will turn us back into dinosaurs?

[Anonymous No.5682630]

>>5682610
Perhaps, I'm not a China expert either.

But it would be dishonest to deny the fact that the liberalization of the chinese economy is responsible for China's incredible economic growth.

Heck, just compare it to its neighbour which didn't liberalize its economy : North Korea.

>>5682612
Considering that China adopted a planned economy during Mao's rule, I think that using the term "revert" was perfectly justified.

[Anonymous No.5682636]

>>5682606
Conventional capitalism isn't compatible with the developments in technology and structural changes in society. Some form of socialism is inevitable.

[Anonymous No.5682640]

>>5682574

You clearly do not know anything at all about what you're talking about.

Marxism is a theory of "capitalism," not a revolutionary program.

[Anonymous No.5682645]

Yes, I am.

I'd be happy to discuss the topic with you after I get back from my shift at Target.

[Anonymous No.5682650]

>>5682630
>But it would be dishonest to deny the fact that the liberalization of the chinese economy is responsible for China's incredible economic growth.
Marx considered a developed capitalist economy a prerequisite for socialism and communism. Liberalising China's economy first is more Marxist than trying to jump right in with a peasant population.

[Anonymous No.5682652]

>>5682574
Except in all the social democracies around the world.

> inb4 not Marxism

Marx was certainly vastly influential to the more moderate leftist thinkers, and to the entire field of political and social philosophy.

[Anonymous No.5682653]

>>5682574
>hurrrrrr durrrrrr
thats you

[Anonymous No.5682657]

>>5682459
I agree - not believe - with about 75% of what he's saying. That means all excluding historic materialism and communism.

[Anonymous No.5682668]

>>5682630
>Considering that China adopted a planned economy during Mao's rule, I think that using the term "revert" was perfectly justified.
Ideologically, it wouldn't be seen as a reversion because the society adopting the policy has advanced. It's the kind of bourgeois perfectibility view of progress that a lot of Marixst thought uses to justify planned economies, such as the five year plans to bring Russia through the various stages of progress up to industrialisation to then implement postindustrial conditions necessary for the actual Marxism to take place. The idea we're evolving in similar terms to Darwinism is because the theory developed around the same point as that idea of modern progress and developed societies. So, even if they did adopt a policy which had formerly been adopted and failed, it could be blamed on the society not being evolved enough.
>tl;dr- I was making a hundred year old joke about the then new notion of progress

[Anonymous No.5682673]

>>5682459
>believe

[Anonymous No.5682675]

>>5682668
>such as the five year plans
Didn't Hitler and his economy friend do something like this with the Autobahn and all those worker houses? Would Nazi Germany before the war be considered further along the Marxist progression or no?

[Anonymous No.5682684]

>>5682589

I'm a market anarchist and I agree people can and will do that. However, regulation and violence aren't the way to solve the problem, as the modern Western world has proven.

[Anonymous No.5682708]

>>5682675
Not really, Russia had been pretty much medieval and nothing on the scale or insanity levels of those plans happened in Germany. To a smaller extent, yes, the national socialism of Germany did in many ways reflect the socialist thought which led to Marx's theory also, but Marxism itself had less of an impact than other social theories because Marx obviously preached communism not just socialism, and didn't really work out nationstates at all. Social programmes of the sort would have had a longer history under the Prussians or even Napoleon, so it wouldn't be surprising these things happened even if Marx hadn't happened at all.

[Anonymous No.5682712]

>>5682459
I bet you believe in libertarianism or conservatism too.

[Anonymous No.5682739]

>>5682684

Jesus Christ man, how have you not noticed how destructive and violent capitalism is?

Go read about all the revolutions squashed by CIA death squads in Latin America (El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala etc.)

Coups in Iran, Guatemala, assassination of Lumumba, possibly as many as 6 million dead in CIA instigated wars.

Ask Commodore Perry, Trade routes don't open themselves!

Vietnam... East Timor... Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan...

30,000 nukes, 7-8 trillion dollars since 1945 on building weapons to leave humanity hanging by a thread, 60+% of the budget on defense!

All of this is done in the name of protecting business interests and assets. There are no limitations on profit-pursuit. Corporations don't suddenly stop short of manipulating policy/interfering in foreign politics because it would undermine their democratic ideals or something.

Sorry for rambling but there's too much to cram in one post.

[Anonymous No.5682753]

>>5682739
Chile was better off. I'll fight you.

[Anonymous No.5682763]

>>5682753

Just shut the fuck up you don't know what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.5682770]

>>5682739

No, I haven't noticed.

Everything has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with the state.

[Anonymous No.5682777]

>>5682770

*everything you mentioned

[Anonymous No.5682782]

>>5682763
Faggot. Allende was to become Pinochet, but without the economic good times.

[Anonymous No.5682789]

>>5682684
a market anarchist?
you mean a monopolist bourgeois pig

[Anonymous No.5682801]

>>5682653
lol

[Anonymous No.5682828]

>>5682770

Quit living in a fantasy world. The state and the capitalist elite are two sides of the same coin.

>Campaign finance from private donors
>Centralized banking
>trade policy (to protect corporate interests)
>foreign policy (to protect corporate interests)
>revolving door lobbying/government positions


I hate libertarians who do this "that's government, not capitalism" bullshit. Isn't one of your biggest selling points that you are not utopic or idealistic but rational and realistic?

When you just go around saying "Yeah but in a libertarian paradise there wouldn't be any corporate influence on government" you lose all claim to that characterization.

So long as disparate wealth exists, corruption will exist and will undermine democracy. And this won't be some incidental symptom. It will be the heart and soul of the entire structure.

[Anonymous No.5682829]

>China
>Marxist

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

[Anonymous No.5682830]

Capitalism this marxism that. The best solution is obviously a mixed economy with regulations or taxes to prevent negative externalities and a citizen's income + central bank to provide an easy means of counter cyclical fiscal and monetary policy.

[Anonymous No.5682836]

>>5682739
>Marxists don't care about profits
>Marxists wouldn't violently squash any uprisings

This thread is a fucking gold mine.

[Anonymous No.5682839]

>>5682782

>Allende was to become Pinochet

What are you even saying? How is a socialist president who was the first self-described "Marxist" elected as head of state have any semblance whatever to a military dictator who overthrew him in the name of preserving the interests of a global and local elite?

[Anonymous No.5682845]

>>5682836
Are you saying the CIA's lack of Marxism is making them worse at their job?

[Anonymous No.5682851]

>>5682836

>Marxists wouldn't violently squash uprisings

In Latin America, the uprisings WERE MARXIST you idiot.

[Anonymous No.5682856]

>>5682830

gtfo you cookie-cutter liberal. everybody hates you and your stupid bourgeoisie ideology sprinkled with gay rights and masquerading as progressive humanism

[Anonymous No.5682874]

>>5682828

>>5682828

No, they're not. The state is the state, capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. The USA is not the personification of capitalism, its far from it. All of the countries with the least amount of statism are capitalist. Centralized banking is not capitalism, foreign policy is not capitalism, nothing you're mentioning is an example of capitalism. Centralized banking is in fact the opposite of capitalism. All arguments are just conjecture.

[Anonymous No.5682885]

>>5682856
How is any of what I said related to bourgeoisie ideology or gay rights horse shit?

[Anonymous No.5682890]

>>5682874
>Centralized banking is in fact the opposite of capitalism

Wow.

It's not like the first country to develop a central banking system (Britain during the Napoleonic Wars) did so concurrently with the first ever industrial revolution. It's almost like the two were linked somehow!

[Anonymous No.5682928]

>>5682890

Correlation does not equal causation. Virtually every economist at the time condemned centralized banking as detrimental to the economy. The state introduced it so they could exert more influence over the economy, and of course private bankers were for it because it absolved them of responsibility and essentially made them part of the state.

[Anonymous No.5682931]

>>5682874

Look, I know how you libertarians define capitalism ( I used to be a Libertarian ).

But you have to be aware of other definitions, you have to understand why you disagree with them. For Marx (and others), "capitalism" is not an abstract formulation of supply-demand curves mediated by a system of explicit protection of property and individual rights.

It's a profit-producing structure that relies on exploitation of the majority of human beings for the gain of a very small minority. It's much more than that but it resist summarizing since it introduces a lot of new terms/definitions/ideas.

Just be aware of it. Suffice to say I find the libertarian formulation completely out of touch with reality, and I really only think it's pervasive because it provides cover for exploitation in the name of an abstract structure of legal rights (which by the way rely on a state to exist).

It would have no credibility if people didn't have personal stake in it. For someone (wealthy) to become a radical leftist disrupts life intensely. One has hypocrisy to deal with, feels the need for change in occupation/lifestyle, and seeks a reformulation of identity.

For a libertarian, this doesn't take place. One can carry on as they always have, chat at dinner, and invent explanations for beggars that ameliorate the conscience and permit gluttonous self-interest and consumption.

[Anonymous No.5682938]

>>5682928
Do people seriously want the market to regulate banking/money supply?

Enjoy your fucking bank runs, money supply contractions and ensuing depression.

[Anonymous No.5682952]

How can people be this uninformed?

It literally takes one glance at the wiki page for Marxism to realize what a dumb question that is.

[Anonymous No.5682960]

>>5682928

If the state introduced central banking to exert more influence over the economy, why did JP Morgan, the Rothschilds and Rockefeller all support Aldrich's bill?

[Anonymous No.5682965]

>>5682952

not subtle enough/10

[Anonymous No.5682971]

>>5682965
go read the wiki page bro

[Anonymous No.5682974]

>>5682739
Do you really believe in what you are saying?

[Anonymous No.5682979]

>>5682974
look like facts to me

[Anonymous No.5682992]

>>5682974

>Do you really believe in what you are saying?

Yeah, with all the confidence in the world. But I know how it's received. I grew up on military bases, I said the pledge of allegiance in school and so forth. Most people grow out of that kind of explicit patriotism but it persists in at least subconscious form.

We grow up hearing a consistent narrative about WWII liberation, wars for freedom and necessary evils like the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It's difficult to break out of it, but the US has committed more atrocities since 1945 than the Nazis (although the density across time is different).

[Anonymous No.5683011]

>>5682739
Setting aside the hyperbolic tone, all this is pretty much fact.

Since 1945, ownership of oil has dictated American foreign policy in every way

[Anonymous No.5683014]

>>5682931

I don't disagree with Marx that it is a profit producing structure. I disagree with Marx that it is exploitative, or a tool of wealthy elite. Hardly any of wealthy are where they are without state intervention. Look at celebrities, they're only as wealthy as they are because copyright law exists, enforced by the government. Moreover, I find it ludicrous that Communists, Socialists and Marxists call anyone exploitative, when all three of these "theories" rely solely on the ability for one group to force everyone else to do what they want them to through violence. Its simply barbaric.

>>5682938

Yep. I disagree that any of that would happen.

>>5682960

Because it granted them monopolies. Regulation is big businesses' best friend, it destroys competition and absolves them of responsibility, as long they loosely follow the regulations.

[Anonymous No.5683024]

>>5683014>>5683014
> Yep. I disagree that any of that would happen.

But it already did... in the United States. I guess it's not fair to expect people to read history books on a literature board.

[Anonymous No.5683043]

>>5683011

>setting aside the hyperbolic tone

Yeah fuck you, the aggregate of human suffering caused by all of this is more than you could hope to comprehend after 1,000 lives.

[Anonymous No.5683045]

>>5683024

That didn't happen BECAUSE of de-centralized banking, it happened because of war and the presence of a state.

[Anonymous No.5683063]

>>5683045
No you fucking idiot. It happen because banks weren't regulated and therefore prone to bank runs and then a decrease in money supply. Decrease in money supply => deflation => depression.

[Anonymous No.5683067]

>>5683014

You don't think we can tell when you're talking out of your ass and regurgitating cliches you've accumulated over the years from reading bumper stickers?

You have no idea what you're talking about. If you would just read a 100 page SUMMARY of Marx you would sound like 1/10th the idiot you do right now.

Or you can carry on having these baby's-first-non-two-party politics.

I gotta give you some credit for getting past the simple party lines of Democrats and Republicans. But if your ability to question, to analyze, to probe deeper stops here, then you're boring at best.

[Anonymous No.5683083]

>>5683067

None of that addressed what I said.

[Anonymous No.5683111]

>>5682974
Ebin troll, guy

[Anonymous No.5683128]

>>5683014

And just to do something beyond admonishing you, here's a brief explanation of Marxian exploitation.

Assumptions: We have a factory owned by a capitalist, and he employs 100 people. We take the net profit of his industry (say for 1 year):

(Sales)-(Raw Materials+Wages*100)= Profit

Now who owns the profit? Well let's say the factory owner keeps it all. Marx posits the "Labor theory of value"-- that all value originates in the labor of production (this is not an unusual theory, Adam Smith and Ricardo both advocated it). So it follows that, while the profit was generated by the labor, the laborers keep none of it.

Before you bring up entrepreneurship and risk, just think about this:

What's more reasonable, that a single man produces thousands of widgets in a year by himself, or that a thousand workers get together and organize without a CEO and produce thousands of widgets in a year?

So who is more responsible for generating the wealth? Is it not exploitation to keep thousands of times more of the profit than you personal work is responsible for generating?

If, on the other hand, the capitalist gives his workers a raise, he will quickly go about of business. Profit is used to purchase new resources for production, to expand business. The less you put back into this cycle, the quicker you fall off.

[Anonymous No.5683139]

Obviously technocracy is where it's at

Everything else is feudalism disguised as muh economy

[Anonymous No.5683140]

>>5683083

Because you didn't say anything interested. I've heard all these ridiculous arguments many times.

Take inventory of your beliefs. Ask where you got them, how. Was it media? Books? Who wrote the books, who funded the media? You'll find a money trail if you're perceptive enough. People have been paying to have those ideas put there since long before you were born.

[Anonymous No.5683150]

>>5683014
>the free market would prevent monopolies from existing
>the free market would prevent celebrities from earning millions
>the free market would un-kill my dog
>the free market would make my ex love me again

[Anonymous No.5683169]

>>5683128
What about the 'falling rate of profit' criticism of the labour theory of value?

Don't most economists think the LTV is basically mathematically inconsistent?

[Anonymous No.5683182]

>>5683150
>strawman: the post

[Anonymous No.5683187]

>subscribing to marxism
*tips fedora*

[Anonymous No.5683196]

>>5683182
Why do lolbertarians always scream 'strawman' when confronted with reality? Actual power dynamics won't have the courtesy to adapt to your wishes.

[Anonymous No.5683205]

>>5683169

Look, if you have problems with LTV then that's fine. But if you're going to argue that any theory that uses LTV is incorrect on that basis, then Smith is as bunk as Marx.

And "mathematical consistency" does not characterize any economic theory.

This is why economics is economics and mathematics is mathematics.

[Anonymous No.5683221]

>>5683169
It's not inconsistent and nobody who's really studied it thinks it is. The debate is over whether or not it's useful for describing capitalism's problems. My opinion is "yes, to an extent" but I don't think that means you're allowed you to ignore marginalism and Keynesianism and the other economic schemas that have become more popular since Marx.

Debate over whether the "tendency of the rate of profit to fall" has been validated or falsified is more heated. I'll bow out and defer to somebody who knows the issue better than me.

[Anonymous No.5683225]

>>5683014
Literal autism
read first couple lines of your post
kid, of it wasnt for modern state intervention we would be living in mad max level of exploitation. Could you imagine what companies would sneak into their products, how the absence pf copyright laws would make making movies and other such businesses basically non existant or retardedly patched up some way by the corporations.

[Anonymous No.5683251]

How can anyone accept the dogma that is historical materialism?

[Anonymous No.5683261]

>>5683205
>Smith is as bunk as Marx

Don't economists generally think that Marx took the LTV to it's logical conclusion, but ultimately it is flawed because of the 'transformation problem'.

I'm not a expert by any means, and I don't know how that relates to Marxism as a whole. But I find it difficult to make an argument against capitalism using Marx's theory of exploitation which is based on a potentially flawed theory of value.

[Anonymous No.5683279]

>>5683261
Although I like this quote from wiki

"as Piero Sraffa showed clearly, the theory of the production and distribution of a surplus, however it might be devised, is logically independent of any particular theory of the exploitation of labour. Labour exploitation may occur and be conceptualised in various ways, regardless of which theory of value is held to be true. Consequently, if Marx's theory of labour exploitation is false, this is a separate issue."

[Anonymous No.5683280]

>>5683205
Smith is pretty well irrelevant nowadays, too. It's just Marx was never relevant to economics.

[Anonymous No.5683281]

>>5682739
>30,000 nukes, 7-8 trillion dollars since 1945 on building weapons to leave humanity hanging by a thread, 60+% of the budget on defense!

I like how this part implies that the Soviet Union never invested in defense.

This is the problem with Chomskyites. They are fed a history of the Cold War where only the United States acted, the rest of the world are mere passive victims. And in the end this is racist as fuck, it completely denies agency to non-American people, such as saying that a coup in Chile with mass support of the Chilean people is "CIA death squads sqhashing a revolution".

Of course, these guys probably never heard of all the dictators supported by the Soviet Union and the KGB in the Third World. They never heard of Francisco Macias Nguema, Juan Velasco Alvarado, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Sekou Touré, Mengistu... because that doesn't fit their narrative of "U.S. always wrong, USSR peace-loving" and their gurus like Chomsky and William Blum never mention it.

[Anonymous No.5683286]

>>5682974
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

Just to name a few.

[Anonymous No.5683293]

>>5683280
>Marx was never relevant to economics

Factually incorrect regardless of his relevance today.

[Anonymous No.5683304]

>>5682992
The greatest atrocity that the U.S. committed after 1945 was giving half of the world to communists, thanks to Soviet spies like Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins, Harry Dexter White, Owen Lattimore etc.

You won't see anyone complaining about that, because the guys who do the complaining are communists themselves and they are ok with it.

[Anonymous No.5683315]

>>5683293
No, not at all. He never really contributed anything. All he did was attempt to apply materialist analysis to economics. He is more known for hjs contributions to sociology.

[Anonymous No.5683327]

>>5683281

>This is the problem with Chomskyites.

It's funny because the man himself always says that the Soviets acted exactly the same way as the Americans during the cold war. He's explicitly noted that there's no difference in how a state conducts itself in international affairs based on internal political dynamics. It's just a matter of who has more power. More power means more weight being thrown around, more bullying, more interventions and interference.

The reason Chomsky focuses on the United States is that he is an American, and there is some amount of democratic possibility in the US.

What kind of argument is "Oh Hiter's worse. Stalin's worse. Kruschev is worse. Mao is worse."

There are atrocities and then there are atrocities we could prevent by massive political participation in our own country.

There's bad things others do and then there's bad things we ourselves do.

>mass support of the Chilean people

Citation please. Also "death squads" is not a proper term for Chile but it definitely is for El Salvador and Guatemala.

[Anonymous No.5683341]

>>5683304

An insurrection requires substantial popular support. In fact, the only asset such a movement has is popular support, and the only way they can possibly succeed is having so much popular support that they overpower the military and money power of the government and its supporters.

You're being conspiratorial. Don't ignore the plane fact that over half the worlds PEOPLE supported communism at one point in time.

[Anonymous No.5683361]

>>5683315
Are you trolling?

Even if his theories are discredited now, he was one of the most important economists of all time. Probably in the top 3.

[Anonymous No.5683381]

>>5683327
>He's explicitly noted that there's no difference in how a state conducts itself in international affairs based on internal political dynamics.

So the point is not capitalism, but international power politics between competing empires.

[Anonymous No.5683411]

>>5683381

There is not a simple linear chain of cause and effect. International politics is intimately interwoven with the power of elites in various countries, mostly because elites run the show in most countries and thus utilize statecraft to further their interests.

[Anonymous No.5683414]

>>5683196
>implying libertarian
>implying namecalling helps your case
>implying you didn't make up strawmen

ayy lmao

[Anonymous No.5683420]

>>5683341
Of course, and what's the better way of giving popular support to a inssurectionary army than sabotaging the ruling government?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerasia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Mission

[Anonymous No.5683438]

>>5683304
Gr8 b8 m8 inv8 me to ur 8 bird8 party
8

[Anonymous No.5683449]

>>5683411
Elites run the show under capitalism, they ran the show before capitalism and they will run the show after capitalism.

Again, i don't see why you're so quick to blame a mere economical system for the crimes of politicians. It makes you look insincere, as if you don't care about "suffering" at all, you just want to overthrow capitalism because you think you have a better shot at power under a socialist society that rewards the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy with absolute power.

[Anonymous No.5683452]

>>5683361
Not really, not at all. His economics was secondary, and ocasdionaly abandoned, in the states which adopted his dogma. Modern economics is about Austrian, Keynesian and Chicago.

[Anonymous No.5683466]

[Anonymous No.5683485]

>>5683466
>“Who will save us from Western civilization?"

Gyorgy Lukacs

[Anonymous No.5683487]

>>5683466

this is now an teddy thread

[Anonymous No.5683493]

>>5683466
but that is exactly what cultural marxists want to do. they believe that western civilization was built upon lies and deceit and the exploitation of others and want to bring it down.

[Anonymous No.5683494]

>>5683261
it's not really flawed so much as it is basically tautological WHEN COMPARED TO marginalist theories of value. Marx's line of thinking had to do with society as a whole, and the work necessary to keep society's standard of living at the level it was at. so all work to reproduce the things in society divided by all the time we spend to make them, that's how much work a man does in an hour, according to Marx's version of the LTV. this also lets us quantify exploitation by examining how some capture profit from others despite not doing work, simply because they are in control of the capital in society.

the 'transformation problem' always seemed to me like a goofy boondoggle by (some) Marxists to show how Marxian economic schema can explain prices. I don't think it can.

[Anonymous No.5683498]

>>5683449

>Elites run the show under capitalism, they ran the show before capitalism and they will run the show after capitalism.

Novel events have occurred in history before. There's no reason for us to be fatalistic and expect a particular pattern/template to continue indefinitely just because it's existed for a long time.

>Again, i don't see why you're so quick to blame a mere economical system for the crimes of politicians. It makes you look insincere, as if you don't care about "suffering" at all, you just want to overthrow capitalism because you think you have a better shot at power under a socialist society that rewards the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy with absolute power.

I don't care about power. I just want a little patch of land to work, a nice library to go to and a community to belong to. Maybe a family. And less atrocities, less starvation, less war. I think that's what most people want.

[Anonymous No.5683501]

>>5683452
>Modern economics is about Austrian

No.

And modern physics is about relativity and QM, but that doesn't mean Newton wasn't brilliant.

[Anonymous No.5683502]

>>5682459
How does one Ironically believe in something?

[Anonymous No.5683507]

>>5683452
> Austrian

O I am laffin

[Anonymous No.5683511]

>>5683485

you spelt adorno wrong

also lol at that party-line towing hack

>>5683493

actually, they don't. find me a single quote which supports yr claim m8

[Anonymous No.5683522]

>>5683501
>>5683507
Friedrich Hayek was massively influential, how could you possibly claim he was not?

[Anonymous No.5683525]

>>5683511
"fuck western civ" - lenin

[Anonymous No.5683532]

>>5683525

ur jazz a shit - teddy

[Anonymous No.5683536]

>>5683522
> modern economics

If I said modern physics is about Galilean Relativity you'd laugh, right?

[Anonymous No.5683538]

>>5683525
>mfw Lenin was a German tool used to destabilise Russia and nothing more

[Anonymous No.5683543]

>>5683538
tfw it was too little too late

;_;

[Anonymous No.5683549]

>>5683498
>Novel events have occurred in history before

"There is nothing new under the sun"

It was true at the time of writing, it is true now.

>I don't care about power. I just want a little patch of land to work, a nice library to go to and a community to belong to. Maybe a family. And less atrocities, less starvation, less war. I think that's what most people want.

I doubt you can actually grow and harvest plants, so you don't actually want a "patch of land to work", you want someone else to do it for you and live by tribute.

Oh, and unfortunately the only way ever found of reducing economical inequality is by increasing political power, which in turns lead to the formation of a new elite. It happens again and again.

[Anonymous No.5683552]

>>5683536
How can you compare Hayek, who was producing notable work well into the late 20th century, to Galilean relativity?

[Anonymous No.5683558]

>>5683511
I kind of like Adorno. Of all the Jews of the Frankfurt School he comes out as the more sympathetic.

Marcuse was crazy, and Horkheimer a psychopath. Meanwhile Adorno just wanted to hate Jazz and live peacefully without naked female students disturbing his class. Hardly the personality you would expect for someone who is thought to have promoted degeneracy.

[Anonymous No.5683576]

>>5683558
Second generation, but Habermas is the most down to earth and least paranoid

[Anonymous No.5683579]

>>5683549

You're not introducing new problems or ideas. Anyone who is seriously interested in leftist politics is aware of the "new elite" danger (as this is exactly how the communist movements of the 20th century played out, and with dire consequences).

There's plenty on this. Small communities, councils, democratic legislation, humanist education, various religious movements- all of these things can help minimize it.

Paolo Freire's work focuses on how education can be implemented to diminish new elites. I think he's on to something.

>I doubt you can actually grow and harvest plants, so you don't actually want a "patch of land to work", you want someone else to do it for you and live by tribute.

Lol so you know what I want more than me now, eh? There's honor and joy in simple labor. It's a necessary part of existence, and all must do some- for spiritual reasons as much as anything else.

[Anonymous No.5683590]

>>5683261
You clearly don't understand Marxs value theorem, read this:
http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine/notes/Law-of-Value.html

>The "labor theory of value" (the most common phrase) is easy to confuse with David Ricardo's "labor theory of price" (especially since Marx was heavily influenced by Ricardo's economics in his early studies). In Ricardo's theory, each price was proportional to the amounts of labor needed to produce a commodity. Since he recognized exceptions, this "theory" worked at least 93 percent of the time. In my experience, the confusion of Marx with Ricardo in turn gets us into writing complex mathematical equations for the determination of prices and endless debates about how to mathematically "transform" values into prices, all of the while assuming that values and prices are totally independent of each other, so that one (values) can be used to mathematically derive the other (prices). (Of course, the question automatically comes up: why not derive values from prices?) On top of that, we get into emphasizing market equilibrium conditions, such as the equalization of profit rates between industries, even though markets are seldom, if ever, in equilibrium. That is, if we see monopolies, profit rates that aren't equalized between industries, working conditions and wages that aren't equalized, etc., as usual, the "labor theory of value" seems irrelevant. So why not rely on good ol' supply and demand to understand prices, or some version of supply and demand such as the neo-Ricardian price theory developed by Piero Sraffa.
>That road is a dead end, so we need to start from scratch. Since Marx himself never used the phrase "labor theory of value" except to describe others' theories, I'll use his phrase, "the law of value" (LoV) instead. And it's important to remember his purposes. He didn't aim at developing a theory of price determination as much as to understand the "laws of motion of modern society." To the extent that he had a price theory, it was supply and demand in a somewhat Ricardian mode. As we shall see, this doesn't contradict his LoV. That is, there is nothing in the LoV that conflicts with the everyday "common sense" appearances of how markets work, as seen in the workings of supply and demand.

[Anonymous No.5683598]

>>5683579
I'm Brazilian and you don't tell me about Paulo Freire. He also talked about how "for the revolution to create new life it must destroy those who are anti-life (he meant the eternal kulaks)".

[Anonymous No.5683607]

i learned a lot in this thread, thank you guys, like cia death squads and people who arent cultural marxist are trying to destroy the west and that having lots of money makes u rich and stuff

[Anonymous No.5683612]

>>5683552
I'm just trying to demonstrate why I disagreed with the original statement. Modern economics took some useful things from Hayek but the discipline has matured and grown significantly since. To the point where it's comical.

[Anonymous No.5683614]

>>5683549
>Cringe

[Anonymous No.5683616]

>>5683590
I don't understand it.

I'm going to have to learn about this stuff in more detail to make up my own mind. I read this and it makes sense, yet most economists completely disregard Marx.

>appeals to popularity

[Anonymous No.5683627]

>>5683558

he wasn't a Jew. his grandfather was Jewish but converted to Protestantism. he considered himself closer to his Italian mother.

he didn't want to hate anything. i get the deep sense that his work was motivated by love, and that the role of his critiques was to harshly challenge that which would encroach on the truly good things in life. he thought the hippies didn't think so he didn't support them, so they fucked his lectures up.

[Anonymous No.5683630]

>>5682839
Do you really have to ask? I have to assume you are not familiar with the subject. He was usurping both the legislative and judicial branches and creating armed militias outside the official army.

[Anonymous No.5683633]

>>5683612
Only due to the Chicago school growing in more prominence to now constitute most of liberal economics.

[Anonymous No.5683641]

The problem with the marxist theory of labor is that it tries to attach an objective value to the commodity of labor. The profit margin does not define what a worker should be making, the wage of the worker does. Just like with gold, corn, and oil, labor is ruled by the consumer value of it. If I do not buy gold, but I buy iron, than iron is more valuable to me than gold. Subjective value makes marx fall apart, because labor is only worth what someone will pay for it.

[Anonymous No.5683652]

>>5683616
It's because most economists accept the subjective theory of value, when examining capital intensive industries this becomes more obvious.

[Anonymous No.5683656]

>>5683641
>le mud pie

[Anonymous No.5683661]

>>5683598

Hmmm, being Brazilian doesn't give you as much credibility as reading his books .

[Anonymous No.5683673]

>>5683641
>the labour theory of value is wrong because the subjective theory of value exists

[Anonymous No.5683677]

>>5683661
I had to read one of his books at university because teachers love him, "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed". I never did because frankly i have better things to do.

[Anonymous No.5683678]

>>5683641
>I don't understand the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics

[Anonymous No.5683680]

>>5683641

use values and exchange values bro. Use values don't originate in labor.

[Anonymous No.5683683]

>>5683633
The fresh water salt water dichotomy has kind of disappeared for the most part. Pretty much all modern economists are neo-classical.

[Anonymous No.5683690]

>>5683656
Nope. If I valued mud pies enough, would buy them. The market does not define value, the individual does. After all, the market is just a collection of individuals, all with different tastes, wants, needs, professions, and other subjectivities. If I like pizza more than caviar, than pizza is more valuable to me.

[Anonymous No.5683702]

>>5683677

HA You're a giant Brazilian faggot and a shit-tier scholar. You didn't do an assigned reading because you don't need to because you have better things to do with your time like shitpost on /lit/ but you're an expert on Freire because you're Brazilian.

Enjoy 4 more years of Rousseff.

[Anonymous No.5683703]

>>5683680
>>5683678
All value stems from the individual. If I buy shit, and not gold, than shit is worth more. Sorry if this confuses you.

[Anonymous No.5683712]

>>5683652
read this

http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/
>Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an 'economic' entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or 'abstract labour', respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital.

>This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society.

>Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of 'capital as power' and a new history of the 'capitalist mode of power'.

[Anonymous No.5683723]

>>5683703
If someone doesn't have any money to buy things, does that mean they don't value anything?

[Anonymous No.5683750]

>>5683690
>>5683703
Utility might explain why a commodity is valued the way it is on robinson crusoe's island but it is useless at explaining the price of commodities in any advanced capitalist economy. The price of gasoline cannot be explained with utility, neither can the price of a can of coca-cola at walmart.

[Anonymous No.5683751]

>>5683703
When Marx says that labor, in a capitalist society, creates value we should take him literally. Only human labor can create commodities. No matter how much we may desire a commodity this desire cannot create the commodity. But this doesn't mean that any product of labor has value. In order for labor to become social it has to exchange its product on the market. This implies that the labor has produced something socially useful.

[Anonymous No.5683762]

>>5683723
'Money' can be anything. It could be labor, it could be bread, a house, playing music, etc. Money is a commodity anon. If someone owns all the 'money' in the world, why the hell would you still value it? You wouldn't; it would be like someone who owns a beach selling you sand.

[Anonymous No.5683768]

>>5683712
hey, were you the one who posted that book on this board a few months ago? Because I downloaded it and read it and liked it a lot. (I'm not the guy you're responding to btw). anyway thanks

[Anonymous No.5683777]

>>5683723
If you can't sell something because no one wants it, how can you claim it has value?

[Anonymous No.5683778]

>>5683762
You didn't answer my question.

What if I'm a quadruplegic and I can't perform any labor? Am I allowed to value anything or is that only for people with jobs?

[Anonymous No.5683785]

>>5683712
Capital is a collective term for property used in, or in aid of, the production process.

[Anonymous No.5683792]

>>5683778
Fucking lol at this question. If you can't trade for it you don't have any way to tangibly measure the value. You just wave your hands

> but it's important to meeeee

[Anonymous No.5683798]

>>5683751
That labour does not create value in of itself, though. The value of anything is determined by supply and demand.

[Anonymous No.5683799]

>>5683750
Yes it can, if the state and central banks didn't shit up the economy with infinite money. The price of a commodity is where supply and demand meet. Demand is how consumers value something. A thing is only worth so much as the individual values it.

[Anonymous No.5683801]

>>5683777
If you ignore my question and ask another question, how will we ever get anywhere?

[Anonymous No.5683803]

>>5683777
>If you can't sell something because no one wants it, how can you claim it has value?
Someone clearly subjectively valued it for it to have been manufactured in the first place. Why would a capitalist pay a labourer to create something which was valueless?

[Anonymous No.5683807]

>>5683792
> wave your hands

[Anonymous No.5683821]

>>5683801
Ya you can subjectively value it. It's value is your yearning heart. Good luck actually doing any trade though.

[Anonymous No.5683824]

>>5683798
Marx was very clear that changes in demand had effects on price. When demand increases prices rise temporarily. This price rise signals a reapportioning of social labor- more labor (living labor and dead labor) is moved into the production of this commodity.

But underlying these fluctuations of demand and supply lies a more basic observation about human society. We only have so much time as a society to devote to the production of our needs. If we are to have food, houses, clothes, DVD’s, and beer we are going to have to devote work to these things. Some things take a lot more labor to produce than others. They cost society more in terms of its expenditure of the total social labor. In a market society this cost isn’t decided by a committee, it’s decided by prices in the market. And this is what value is. Labor becomes social when its products obtain a price in the market. And these prices coordinate the social labor process.

[Anonymous No.5683827]

>>5683803
What if the labourer and the capitalist were the same person? Meaning that it was the one person producing, say, a shell necklace that nobody wanted to buy.

[Anonymous No.5683831]

>>5683803
Because capitalists make bad investments all the time. I took a shit this morning, so that's an excellent way to measure it's value, right?

[Anonymous No.5683832]

>>5683792
So you're not willing to say that I don't value anything, but you are willing to admit that your economic schema states quite explicitly that I don't?

And that a quadruplegic person with $5 million can value things in a way that I cannot?

[Anonymous No.5683851]

>>5683824
That first part depends on labour being the primary method of production, which it no longer is. Capital intensive industries are now the norm, machines can create more efficiently than a person.

I can't see how that second claim is true, when labour can only affect the price of a given product.

[Anonymous No.5683852]

>>5683832
I'm saying things have value in an economic sense only to the point that they are tradeable for other things. Because then you can actually measure the flow of goods as well as how much resources society is willing to out towards something in aggregate (its price).

If things were valuable bcuz of labor then digging ditches and filling them up would be "valuable."

[Anonymous No.5683859]

>>5683798
In Marxism value is separated into use-value and exchange-value. You are exclusively describing exchange-value.
>>5683799
Commodities aren't bartered in any advance capitalist economy; there price are predominantly set by distributors. Competition amongst producers drives down price. The production side of things is much more important to understanding the price of a commodity then the circulation side; capitalists who gamble and produce products without any demand or market are taking a big risk and are a general exception.

[Anonymous No.5683862]

>>5683832
Begging the question, of course you can value things. You obviously must consume, since you are still alive. And you probably have something to offer, too. Ever consider letting men have their way with you?

[Anonymous No.5683872]

>>5683827
No exploitation would be occurring and the individual producer would be reaping the full value of their product. No one would be extracting a portion of the value created in the production process.

[Anonymous No.5683877]

>>5683799
> with infinite money

Shit man I wish! Well maybe not infinite, but certainly more than now.

[Anonymous No.5683895]

>>5683852
>If things were valuable bcuz of labor then digging ditches and filling them up would be "valuable."
If you want a ditch dug no one is going to do it for free. Digging a ditch is most definitely "valuable". The exchange-value is going to reflect the amount of socially necessary labour time required to dig the ditch.

[Anonymous No.5683900]

>>5683859
>In Marxism value is separated into use-value and exchange-value. You are exclusively describing exchange-value.
So, what the recipient is willing to pay and what the supplier is willing to sell for.

[Anonymous No.5683906]

>>5683872
Who cares about exploitation? This is about economics, not ethics.

[Anonymous No.5683908]

>>5683852
OK, well, Marx's definition of "value" is "value to society," which is different from yours. (And different from the strawman version of Marx you've constructed--digging ditches and filling them up is not valuable to society.)

[Anonymous No.5683916]

>>5683908
The only kind of measurable value is price value. Value to society is entirely abstract.

[Anonymous No.5683924]

>>5683799
This would require reading that you're not going to do, but money is not really a commodity in any meaningful sense, in the way the Austrians would have you believe. This was one of the main insights of Keynes, not Marx, but if you're not willing to read the relatively easy to understand Marx you're sure as fuck not going to slog through Keynes.

[Anonymous No.5683927]

>>5683908
Society is a group of individuals, so how can we say what is valuable to society? I think cars are valuable but other people ride their bike and think dumping waste into rivers to make cars isn't valuable.

[Anonymous No.5683935]

>>5683924
Not since we left the gold standard, no.

[Anonymous No.5683939]

It's hard not to though

[Anonymous No.5683940]

>>5683900
Use-value is a macro-level social abstraction; no commodity ever produced doesn't contain some level of use-value. Exchange-value is "price" in neoclassical terms. Marxism doesn't deal with individuals, it deals with classes: workers, capitalists, and renters.

[Anonymous No.5683943]

>>5683895
It will reflect supply and demand. If something takes one minute but only one person can do it it will be crazy expensive.

[Anonymous No.5683946]

>>5683940
I am a member of all three D:

[Anonymous No.5683947]

>>5683927
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

[Anonymous No.5683954]

>>5683946
No you're not. Labourers receive more than 50% of their income out of wages; capitalists receive more than 50% out of profits deriving off of capital ownership. You can't be both a capitalist and a labourer.

[Anonymous No.5683955]

>>5683940
use value does not exist. no inherent value is exists in the universe. value is only generated by the individual.

[Anonymous No.5683962]

>>5683954
Damn, being a capitalist sounded fun. Guess i'll have to keep investing.

[Anonymous No.5683968]

>>5683940
That's a failing of Marxian economics, then. Use-value is about demand, then, I guess. If this heterodox jargon is meaningful at all it would have a mainstream equivalent.

[Anonymous No.5683976]

>>5683968
>a mainstream equivalent.
>Different theories have to be the same thing with different words or they don't work

[Anonymous No.5683978]

>>5683954
Yes you can, I own my own business while working in another. Anyone self-employed is both a labour and a capitalist, as they work capital and own it.

[Anonymous No.5683982]

>>5683954
>arbitrary axioms: the post
ISHYGDDT

[Anonymous No.5683987]

>>5683976
If it were meaningful it would be a part of mainstream economics, unless you think Marxism is secret knowledge.

[Anonymous No.5683988]

>>5682459
>183 posts and 14 image replies omitted. Click here to view.

[Anonymous No.5683993]

>>5683916
You're admitting your definition of value is incomplete, but you're defaulting to the only one you know how to measure. The way Marx spoke of "use value" (and SNALT, etc.) was supposed to be the first step in getting to a society that knew how to talk about what it valued on a macro level, instead of just as a bunch of self-interested utility-maximizing machines.

>>5683927
There are lots of ways to decide that, and capitalism is only one of them! We could all as a society vote on what should be produced (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/).). We could institute a basic income, so the poorest people would have the ability to value without having to sell their labor (as those who inherit money already have it!). We could focus more closely on small self-determining democratic societies (something like syndicalism).

Ultimately I'm more of a Keynesian than a Marxist, and I think subjective value theory and markets in general are an acceptable solution to a lot of problems. But treating them as the only solution to problems and dismissing Marx on those grounds is what annoys me and makes me jump into threads like this defending Marx.

[Anonymous No.5684006]

>>5682657
How is it even possible to not accept historical materialism?

[Anonymous No.5684026]

>>5683993
It is only incomplete to you because you assume that this use value is real.
>>5684006
Because it is unfalsifiable dogma.

[Anonymous No.5684030]

>>5682630
>But it would be dishonest to deny the fact that the liberalization of the chinese economy is responsible for China's incredible economic growth.
What do you think Marxism is? I'm 100% anti-dengist and don't think for a second the CCP is actually going to willingly pursue socialism in the next few years (though one would hope that the Leftist/Maoist contingent of the party will overtake the capitalists at that time), but it's technically still in line with Marxist thought.

[Anonymous No.5684034]

>>5684026
>Because it is unfalsifiable dogma.
Do you think the earth was created in a week?

[Anonymous No.5684062]

>>5683993
How is a basic income not capitalism?

How can things be valued other than subjectively? It seems to me that when any determination of value pops up that isn't subjective, people continue to use subjective value (hence black markets).

[Anonymous No.5684084]

>>5683987
because mainstream economics works so well

[Anonymous No.5684100]

>>5684084
It works exactly as it's supposed to, which is why we're all fucked.

[Anonymous No.5684109]

>>5684084
It kind of does though...

[Anonymous No.5684137]

>>5684109
It works for 3% of the population, while the remain percentage works for it.

[Anonymous No.5684154]

>>5684062
One common definition of capitalism you'll get (mostly from Marxists) is that it "depends on a class selling their labor to survive." Well, with a basic income, it doesn't anymore. You can survive without working if you choose to. I would probably still call this capitalism but not everyone would.

The question of how things can be valued other than via market-value is more complicated. All the classical economists (Marx included) were clearly trying to come up with a way to do this; I think the "solution" of focusing on labor was successful in some ways but unsuccessful in others. But I also think the marginalist solution is successful in some ways but not in others, and nowadays is most likely to be used as a justification for unearned rentier profits. Either you generalize about market equilibriums (so your subjective theory of value becomes a measure of "value to society"--but this runs into a lot of problems, how can you tell when a market is in equilibrium and therefore correct?), or you dismiss the entire idea of macroeconomics as a discipline, which is nice when you're arguing on a Laotian light novel chatroom but harder when you're dealing with the Great Depression by telling poor people they need to create more jobs.

[Anonymous No.5684162]

>>5684137
Economics =\= the economy. Politicians don't listen to economists.

[Anonymous No.5684239]

I BELIEVE IN MARX DADDYYYY

[Anonymous No.5684246]

>>5684162
>Politicians don't listen to economists.
I kekkled hard m8

[Anonymous No.5684265]

>>5684246
Ya dude. That's why we have a carbon tax, basic income and expansionary fiscal policy hehehe

[Anonymous No.5684734]

>>5684034
Why would I think that?

[Anonymous No.5684787]

>>5683630
actually, he disarmed the militias and workers councils, which is what has him not be a hero on the left, as it prevented any democratic working class resistance to the CIA and Pinochet's fascism