/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9230687

Marx argues that the superstructure of society (media, religion, people's opinions) are always an outgrowth of the current means of production. For instance, during feudalism the church worked as a mouth-piece of the aristocracy, and under capitalism he claims that the opinions of intellectuals are ultimately drive by the fact that society is driven by the 'surplus labour' of workers being diverted to capitalists.

He further posits that workers have been alienated from feeling joy in their work due to the division of labour making their work menial, and through corporations removing their autonomy. This is contrasted against feudalism, under which the lord had certain obligations and the peasants could use communal land, and to 'primitive communism' (hunter gatherers), which Marx claimed were far more socialistic than modern societies.

Marx and Engels both supported 'dialectical materialism', in contrast to idealist doctrines of history (which claimed e.g. that society was moving toward perfection and Godliness). Dialectical materialism was the claim that everything from the smallest physical processes of the universe upward was driven a process (thesis) gaining energy and thereby creating its own counter-process (anti-thesis), which produces a phase-transition (synthesis). They claimed on the societal level this would produce a communist revolution due to the profit motive of capitalism making people miserably exploited and poor, and the reduced rate of profit due to an increase in fixed capital costs (and hence less relative profit from exploiting workers) creating financial instability.

Not defending any of this btw.

>>9230687
>'scientific'
The fuck are you talking about. Marx can be described as a philosopher, an ethicist, or possibly a "politician", all of which are too general to be placed under the scope of scientific.

Maybe you could say his analysis of human nature is scientific, MAYBE. But you'd have to ignore the fact that he conducted no studies, cites no research, and ignores the scientific formula.

>>9230720

I'm not the OP but I think he's referring to the scientific socialism of Engels and Marx.

I think we can all agree that it's not scientific whatsoever, but I'm also interested in how they possibly considered it "scientific".

>>9230687
because science loves demagouges and conspiracy theories

>>9230687
Marx is 'scientific' as in 'social sciences'. You can only do so much with a scientific approach similar to natural sciences on social sciences, so you need frameworks that are helpful to understand society.

>>9230701
I love you man. How did you learn about Marx's work? I hear Das Kapital is dense as fuck. I've read the communist manifesto and it was just shit bunch of rethoric.
Also Ben Shapiro is always saying Marx's work is more descriptive than prescriptive. After reading the Communist Manifesto which Marx did sign, it certainly feels like Marx's work is somewhat prescriptive.

>>9230853
>>9230701
*Do you think it's just descriptive, and not prescriptive?

>>9230687
>science is popperianism
source? popper was debunked and doesnt count as one

anyway dialectical materialism is a science in the old hegelian sense -- the sistematic rational study of a particular subject using the method of abstraction. there is no laboratory in its scientific practice, because real world phenomena are overdetermined by a structure of many components. thus, the scientific knowledge is not "accumulated" in the retarded popperian sense.

>>9230853
also the manifesto is literally a pamphlet. if you want to know what marx really thought, read critique of the gotha programme

>>9230687
its just a bunch of bologna

From Bayesian statistics r
perspective, I've observed enough to change my neutral prior to "Marxism is shit".

I guess he followed the scientific method.
>observation
people are poor
>Hypothesis
Capitalism is at fault
>test
create a nation of poor people
>hypothesis rejected
repeat… with the exact same hypothesis for some reason.

>>9230687
>Pinochet loving libertarian
Please be saying this ironically
Read Marx and Marxist literature and critiques for yourself
Don't ask some Internet form that is constitute of mostly autistic undergrads who like Chinese cartoon porn more than science to inform you about Marxism
Lit will tell you what to read. If you are going to start reading about socialism you should start with Proudhon: what is property? By no means Marxist but it's a good way to set the table
>>9230853
It's not just prescriptive, it's doctrinal bullshit on the same terms with liberal democracy. That's not saying Marx does not make some important points, especially in capital.
The people who took Marx as a doctrine and called themselves Marxist ruined what could have been an actual socialist revolution(not the arbitrary political kind)

>>9230937
Pinochet proved that freedom can be gotten through dictatorship (so long as you're not a communist).

>>9230940
Brain dead

>>9230687
According to Popper falsifiability is the standard of what constitutes something as a scientific statement/subject. If you really want to adhere strictly by that standard obviously all of economics is unscientific since noting is formulated in a falsifiable manner, try "falsifying" a supply and demand curve, it's formulated in such a way you can't falsify it... it's a tautological truism and if you point out we might not be approaching an equilibrium, or that economic development might not be about equilibration but chaos dynamics, the response you'll always get is the free market is being interfered with.

Not everything worthwhile can necessarily be formulated in a falsifiable manner like Popper thought. Darwinism isn't presented in a falsifiable manner since that's not the way you would approach the notion of evolution. In the 19th century scientists weren't concerned about falsifiability and that lead to grand theorisations. Marxism is "scientific" in the same sense as say palaeontological theories are "scientific".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VExVaR8S_wQ&t=198s

>>9230959
>try "falsifying" a supply and demand curve, it's formulated in such a way you can't falsify it... it's a tautological truism and if you point out we might not be approaching an equilibrium, or that economic development might not be about equilibration but chaos dynamics, the response you'll always get is the free market is being interfered with.
t. someone who never studied economics

>>9230971
Economic theories are intentionally formulated in a way intended to make them unfalsifiable. Mainstream economics rests on a non-falsifiable preconceived notion of human agency where everyone is rationally maximizing their utility by carefully calculating their opportunity costs for everything simultaneously so we are guaranteed to arrive at the best of all possible worlds. It's not that the theories aren't inconsistent it's just not empirically true.

>>9230853

I had a teen socialist phase where I read pretty much all socialist literature (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Mendel, Stalin, Mao, Luxembourg, etc). The first few chapters of the first book of Kapital are worthwhile, after that he repeats himself ad nauseum. Grundrisse and most other works are quite boring. His theses on Feuerbach or w/e its called is interesting for his atheistic philosophy. His economic texts are pretty descriptive. The manifesto is indeed prescriptive. Lenin's essay on materialism and Engel's book on dialectical materialism are quite interesting; mainly in a historical
and thought-experiment kind of sense because most of the science is plain wrong. This stuff is all on the Marxist online internet archive. I personally reject 90% of it, and think Marx failed to grasp supply and demand, the contribution of entrepreneurship toward wealthy in society, genetic differences in aptitude and drive, the possibility of mixed economies, the importance of price signals and decentralization, the connection between economics and sexual competition, the clash of self-interest and utilitarianism, etc. He was still a smart guy and an original thinker.

>>9230687
I've noticed that "back then" things that were just Studies or general inquiries were called science, I think it had a more general meaning in ye olden days

>>9231030
>genetic differences in aptitude and drive,

>>9230853
If you are just curious start with Terry Eagleton's Why Marx was Right. It's basically the easiest book on Marxism there is, and while it softpedels a lot of the hard political stuff, it will at least make the arguement that even if Marx isn't right, the points and critiques he makes are worth taking seriously. Alex Callincos' The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx will give it to you from the perspective of an activist, rather than an academic.

If you want a basic take on his view of economics Mandel's Introduction to Marxist Economics is very short and good.

Other than that, if you want to read Marx, orderwise I'd say;
Pt. I of the German Ideology, he lays out the basics of his theory of history, something which will be foundational for everything afterwords.

Wage Labour and Capital, is an easy first pass at his economics.

I personally think there is nothing in the communist manifesto that isn't better said else where, but i guess for its historical value read that.

The Preface of Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy reiterates his materialist view of history.

Then Capital. Make sure you get the penguin editions. While for most Philosophy Penguin is the last place you want to go, their Marx collection is made of new translations which are regarded as by far the best in English.
Capital is not nearly as difficult as people make it out to be, it's just long. The first few chapters aren't the easiest but after that it's really not a bad read.

If you need help along:

Ben Fine's Marx's Capital

Michel Heinrich's An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Capital

The YouTube Lectures from David Harvey on Capital.

Rubin's Essays on the Labour Theory of Value and Brunhoff's Marx on Money are great for those particularly difficult bits in Marx's Theory.

>>9231054
and as a further note, the first three chapters of capital are so hard going some would suggest you skip them until you've finished reading the rest of it!

kapitalism101 has a good video series on Value, which is what those chapters try and explain

>>9231051

The heritability of IQ is negligible in early childhood and rises to up to 80% in adulthood. There was a paper examining thousands of SNPs in human DNA, and it found that if you extrapolated the pattern to the full human genome, it would account for something like 55% of variability in IQ. People with schizophrenia have been found in studies to have family members who are extremely successful in business etc. Dopamine and other neurotransmitter/hormone levels are determined by both environmental and genetic factors, and implicated in whether you are a selfish status-hungry go-getter, or a laid back altruistic person who prefers to have a work-life balance. Tendency toward criminality has been found to have a genetic component (or at least early developmental component) through examining life-histories of twins adopted by different families. Of course there is an environmental component, but any genetic component to these kinds of traits will produce differences in outcomes, which has implications for economic behaviour.

>>9230729
>>9230720

"Science" has changed meanings in the last few hundred years. The "science" that Marx and Engels speak of is the same science that is portrayed in pic related, which is a page in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, in which he tries to categorize the various fields of knowledge, i.e. the sciences.

"Scientific" socialism is in contrast to some of the other veins of socialism that were popular in the mid 19th century. There was luddite socialism, romantic socialism, and other socialist movements that did not try to prove their beliefs rigorously through philosophy. Just like any well-reasoned argument will eventually take over a backless assertion, the so-called "scientific" socialism of Marx and Engels became the most popular form of socialism.

>>9230940
>You can be free unless you can't

>>9230996
>Mainstream economics rests on a non-falsifiable preconceived notion of human agency where everyone is rationally maximizing their utility by carefully calculating their opportunity costs for everything simultaneously so we are guaranteed to arrive at the best of all possible worlds.
yes 110 years ago. please don't talk about things you clearly have little knowledge of.

>thread about Marxism on 4chan
>contains actual levelheaded discussion of the subject matter
I never thought I'd live to see the day

>>9230853
The communist manifesto was a pamphlet designed for barely literate peasants and factory workers, it by no means gives you a proper insight into Marxist thought. Das kapital is pretty thorough but imo trotskys work is more concise.
I'm not a Marxist, but there's a hell of a lot more depth to it than 'dae le stupid socialists??'

>>9231063
Not necessarily doubting you explicitly but I would like to read those studies.

>>9230879

The problem with dialectical materialism:

You can take any two "status'" of groups in society and posit a dialectical exchange between both of them. The problem is that there is no "scope" to prevent over determination, and self-validation, of DM.

I think Marx thought he had a magic bullet for the analysis of systems (DM) rather than taking each analysis on the terms of its subjects.

>>9231460

Well I should've said "one, out of many, problem with DM (dialectical materialism)"

Another problem is the disdain for any sort of empiricism. Hegel thought, on the basis of his logomania, that there could not be such a thing as a Kuiper belt between Mars and Jupiter. Because DM can turn up any result if you interpret the procedure in the favor of predetermined notions.

>>9231469
Sorry, Kuiper is for objects outside our main solar system (but which are still pulled by solar gravity).

He didn't think anything could be between Mars and Jupiter because literal numberphilia meme magic. Another victory for DM!

:^)

>>9230701
very informative and easy to digest. Thank you very much.

>>9231447

Heritability of IQ increased with age:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23919982

Swedish adoption study of criminality:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009388/

SNP analysis of IQ:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182557/

Two other more recent studies, the first of which looked at genetics of extremely high IQ individuals (170IQ+):
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2017121a.html?foxtrotcallback=true
https://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v49/n7/full/ng.3869.html

Some schizophrenia discussion:
https://psychneuro.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/evolutionary-advantage-to-schizophrenia/

Acetylcholine receptor gene mutation tied to leadership ability:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0113/15012013-leadership-genetics
(acetylcholine is what e.g. nicotine affects)

>>9231437
Das Kapital was also meant for factory workers though :^)

>>9230687
I really don't think Marx, or any sociologist really, is scientific, unless they use actually science, particularly biology, to explain a human behavior. Sociology is cool and all, but it is not at all scientific.

>>9230932
Do you take pride in not even trying to understand things?

>>9230940
>FREEDOM AINT FREE

>>9230687
There are some great responses here, thank you all for that. Not OP, but was once interested in political philosophy. Lost interest but found this thread serving as a sufficient refresher to what was once common knowledge to me. Considering taking up some reading in the subject given the current state of politics in america. Any economic textbook suggestions? I already have all of what you'd consider political ~classics~ from when I was interested as a teen; I'd like some modern economic supplementary reading to further my conception of field and find a conclusion regarding marx. thanks

>>9230940
until the definition of communist is adapted to include anyone the state doesn't like

face it, you're not a libertarian if you support a state that censors any area of its peoples beliefs

>>9230701
so dialectical materialism is a religion?

>>9231863
No. From Marx, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".

I'm not him and I don't understand dialectical materialism though so I can't really explain it any better than he did

>>9231347
/sci/ is center or leans to the right. Extremism doesn't belong here.

>>9231030
>t. read the communist manifesto and marx's article on wikipedia

fedora edgelord

>>9231839
read das kapital. if you're german, russian or greek read vaziulin.

also, the people in this thread haven't actually read marx. this >>9230701
is the only thing posted that provides a semi-accurate simplistic analysis of marx's methodology. if you want to learn about marxism, you're gonna have to study it the same way you study any other science

>>9231883
>anything that threatens the status quo is "extremism"

you're not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you anon?

>>9231935
>you're gonna have to study it the same way you study any other science
The reason I initially left philosophy was because it lacked the rigor and completeness that the harder sciences contained. From what I did read, marxism wasn't a "science", rather it was a theoretical framework in a field that really has no room for theory.

>>9230687
>Popper stated his shit can’t be falsified and hence is comparable to astrology (along with psychoanalysis)
did this retard prove his statement?

>>9230687
>I am a Pinochet loving lolbertarian
Stop embarrassing the rest of us libertarians for fucks sakes man

>>9231817
BROTHER!

>>9230687
It's not scientific. It is a pseudoscience (when considered in that lens) but it has more nuance and credibility than pretty much any other political/philosophical/economic thought. Which often amount to someone taking a desire of theirs and building a weak system of justification for it, then treating it all as obvious truth. With resulting ideologues throwing inane shit at each other for centuries after.

>>9230687
>Marxism
Kill yourself
>Popper
Seriously kill yourself

>>9231460
>>9231469
>>9231477
Yes, Hegelian Dialectic and Dialectical Materialism are useless cancer. They pretty much amount to methods of dressing up a random, near-baseless opinion as an insightful and reasonable conclusion.

>>9231940
No.
Extremism = idealism that ignores reality, especially all facets of reality (easy to take a couple random facts and ignore the whole).

>>9232126
because bourgeoisie academia doesn't actually teach marxism. i've been studying marx for 3 years now, and i know people who have been studying him for 30. you should really read his work if you want to study him, not some bullet points in a power point presentation your postmodernist professor shows you.

>>9232376
but marxism is the only dialectical materialist methodology for the study of history and political economy. neoliberalism is idealist, because it makes a priori assumptions to justify the current status quo

>>9232585
bourgeois*

i really wish knowledge of marx in scientific circels came from actually reading marx instead of lolbertarian "counterarguments". someone pointed out that the method of abstraction is not easily shown to be true and this is a valid criticism and the only valid criticism out there. saying marx is "out of touch with reality" (while his entire method is examining the reality of social relations and the relations to the menas of production) is really fucking stupid and no one would take seriously any 19yo chem/cs undergrad spouting that shit. like the unfortunate brainlet over here: >>9232376 . marxism is first of all a historicism and this is a really important property. it's actually liberalism that's the weltanshauung making strange assumptions about the "civilized west" and the "normalcy" of private property and so on.

please educate yourself

>>9232678
I don't think it constitutes a valid criticism, but rather the restrictions in the definition of "science" used by bourgeois academia. the notion that you have to validate your scientific findings by applying them anew is irrational when it comes to the study of history and political science. Marx's scientific studies were all based on the study of the material conditions that lead to capitalism, the study of how material conditions shaped society. Like any scientist, he used facts in order to discover laws governing the subject he was studying.

Probably preaching to the choir anyway, you sound like the only other person here who has actually read Marx. Frankly it's sad to see how uneducated people in STEM are when it comes to anything outside their field. Even my supervising professor, who's a renounced scientist in our field, doesn't have the slightest clue when it comes to political economy or the study of history.

>>9232700
>rather the restrictions in the definition of "science" used by bourgeois academia

well yeah, but i mean in the epistemological sense. as in where our knowledge originates. when you're using the method of historical materialism, you need to understand it doesn't provide the entire truth and this sometimes has repercussions as to the broadness of validit y of the claims you're making.

for example: franz fannon stresses many times how being a person is tyed to a certain sense of belonging, not just in terms of class, but in terms of race. and again how race is not just race itself but also a class. in this way, even post-modernism, intersectionalism and so on are not disjunct with HM.

but yeah i agree completely with what you're saying. what's your field? i'm in solid state physics and there's a professor with gramsci quotes in his office which i thought was pretty rad.

>>9232713
>when you're using the method of historical materialism, you need to understand it doesn't provide the entire truth and this sometimes has repercussions as to the broadness of validit y of the claims you're making

as with any scientific discovery. historical materialism is simply a framework in which you study society with scientific methodology and attempt to discover laws governing it's progress, just like you would in any other field. It doesn't mean your discoveries are absolute, nor holy scripture, because that's not what science does. But until further scientific study evolves your theories and models, it is the forefront of the scientific study of the subject.

>franz fannon stresses many times how being a person is tyed to a certain sense of belonging, not just in terms of class, but in terms of race. and again how race is not just race itself but also a class. in this way, even post-modernism, intersectionalism and so on are not disjunct with HM

But that's not done using scientific methodology. Making an a priori assumption and then trying to align history with your own assumption to prove your assumption correct isn't scientific methodology, nor did Marx ever do this. Marx started out as an idealist, and worked painstakingly his way up to dialectical materialism through countless hours of research of the particular subject. That is the difference between Marxism and a priori garbage postmodernists (and between marxism and his contemporary enlightenment philosophers). You cannot compare something as factual as classes with idealist concepts like race. A person's relationship with the means of production and his alienation towards his own relationship with the fruits of his labor are observable facts. Race on the other hand is an unscientific concept, that can however be explained when put into historical context.

>what's your field?
neurobiology

The human body is full of dark energy, when you blink, you waste enough energy that could fully recharge an iPhone - Aristotle (phd in quantum mechanics, winner of 9 nobel prizes)


The great mystery of humanity is gravity, I always wondered why only the earth pulls objects, why does everything just floats on mar's or moon's surface? Are we the center of the universe? - Isac Neutron


Atomic bombs are smaller than an atom, even so the energy inside it is so big it could explode the entire universe. J. Roberto Hamster

The sun is so far away it would take 8 yeara to reach it at the speed of power. - Alfredo Estime


I know everything, from dark matter to quantum skeletons, but I'm not allowed to reveal it. - mystery scientist.

>>9232742
>idealist concepts like race

race might be an idealist concept, but only an idealist concept while it's an ideological concept. science is (at least according to althusser) the precces of replacing ideological concepts by scientific ones. idk if "race" can be completely reimagined as a scientific concept, but fannon at least points in the direction of looking at the liberal conception of race -- by this is mean the conception inherited by colonialism. this is the same process marx underwent as he reconsidered his hegelian background in "the german ideology".

>nonscientific concept, that can however be explained

i wrote the things above before re-reading this part. i think that race can be understood as a historical concept, ie. a scientific concept and that fannon has important developments towards that, but i haven't read that much of him to be able to sufficiently explain how and why, other than considering the joint history of capitalism and colonialism.

>Marxism
>scientific

It's almost like it resulted in mass genocide, starvation, and outright failure every single time its been applied. It's almost like the same Marxist intellectuals realized themselves that Marxism failed when applied to the rich/poor because of the stupid levels of wealth in the western world in the 20th century.

>>9232763
this
> Holodomor (muh Stalin was a good man)
> Gulag (muh Facism is evil and communism is good)
> Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba, nork and Russia (muh socialism works it just hasn’t been implemented correctly)

>>9230701
>They claimed on the societal level this would produce a communist revolution due to the profit motive of capitalism making people miserably exploited and poor, and the reduced rate of profit due to an increase in fixed capital costs (and hence less relative profit from exploiting workers) creating financial instability.
This is accurate, but it seems like the Marxist appropriation of the Hegelian dialectic fails to acknowledge the new phase of thesis and antithesis promulgated by such a state. Sure, unsatisfied workers will revolt en masse, but once a communist government is established and all of its inadequacies are apparent (as is with any form of governance), what then is the new counter-process? What synthesis will that lead to?

Or did they literally assume that a Marxist utopia was societal perfection?

>>9232758
althusser was a post-modernist fraud that never actually read marx. your dichotomy of ideology and science being separate isn't scientific at all, ideology can be scientific.

>>9232770
>holodomor
complete falsehood, never happened, no proof it did

>gulag

gulags were work camps where people served time instead of going to prison. By working instead of being closed in a cell, they were reintroduced in society through the comradery they experienced during labour that benefited society as a whole. this system actually aimed at reintroducing social outcasts back into society, and most people simply served terms of a few years and were released when their time was served. Now contrast this to modern US slave prisons, where prisoners labour so that the owner of the privately owned prison can make profit while the prisoner gets nothing.

>venezuela

you're completely misinformed about venezuela, due to the widespread propaganda effort in order to justify the coming invasion. the truth about venezuela is that it's not a socialist state, but what they did do was kick US oil companies out of their country and nationalize the oil industry. This is why the US is funding fascist groups to organize protests and wages such a misinformation campaign on US citizens. You mongs will eat up anything you see on tv. This is the exact same psy-ops tactics the CIA used in guatemala, you can even find the manual they trained the contras with that clearly advises them to organize fake protests with as many casualties as possible etc.

>Vietnam
Vietnam hasn't been socialist since they introduced capitalist reforms in the 80s

>Cuba
Cuba's living standards are astronomically higher compared to it's shithole neighboring capitalist countries and compared to how it was before the revolution

>DPRK
most of what you hear about the DPRK is propaganda, simply because the country is too closed off for western sources to actually be able to know what's going on. cont

>>9232840
>althusser was a post-modernist

goddam bro he was a structuralist

your reply is really sad, but you seem to be a ML so i guess that figures

>>9232779
the study of the contradictions in early socialism is the current forefront in marxist analysis anon, you have no idea how spot on your question is. for the dialectic of the internal contradictions of early socialism and the dialectic that will lead to late socialism, i suggest studying vaziulin. problem is his books have only been translated from russian to greek and german.

>>9232770

cont.

Most sources on the DPRK are either complete made up bullshit, propaganda from south korean puppet state agencies or oral testimonies from paid defectors who make a career out of it. What you can research however is the current state of south korea, and how their citizens have one of the highest suicide rates on the planet, are heavily protesting us occupation and have been ruled by us imposed dictators since the korean war.

>russia

the ussr was a medieval shithole filled with illiterate peasants before ww1, with famines and pogroms being commonplace, and became the first country to explore space in 40 years time while shouldering a 20 million death toll and billions of infrastructural damage during ww2. while the production ran on marxist principles, it was the fastest developing economy in the world. you can also do a bit of research and see how the victory of counter-revolution and the following capitalist restoration resulted in a tremendous drop in the quality of life and even in food shortages that hadn't been an issue since ww2. in 1993 people went to the streets to protest yeltsin and his corrupt government, but the revolts were crushed with 10.000 victims as a result (something the western media applauded).

>>9232846
>he was a structuralist

he literally admitted he never read capital anon. he is taught in neoliberal faculties along with foucault.

>you seem to be a ML so i guess that figures

i don't like branding myself as such because i find MLs highly dogmatic when it comes to studying the ussr and its internal contradictions

>>9232846
cont

but in no way does that make hacks like althusser or trotsky valid scientists.

>>9230687
Imagine an island with two nuclear families. One family fishes, the other farms mangoes. Each day they meet at a trading point. In the natural world, they meet and haggle until they agree on a trade that seems fair to both parties. Adam Smith's hidden hand encourages them to innovate and make things like ladders and nets so they have more surplus to trade. Marx plants a demon at the trading point, who forces the families to trade each day against their will. The value of their produce is dictated solely by how much labor was spent collecting it. Unlike with haggling, there's actually an incentive for cheating. The family that farms mangoes can burn their ladders, so that their mangoes are worth more, so that they receive more fish in return for one mango, while they have an abundance of mangoes left on the trees. Likewise, the fishermen can burn their nets, so that they don't over-fish, assuming the lower yield can be traded for lots of mangoes.

Marx = anti-human = green.

>>9230687
Science is verisimilitude by its very nature.

>>9230687
Read Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism if you want a complete overview of the roots of socialism from philosophy, passing through utopian socialism, scientific socialism and then its actual implementation.

>>9232882
Or, like in the real world the family with the fish is sick to death of mangoes and don't want many of them, vice versa with the mango family. Only fools trade outside of what the market will bear.

>>9232855
>he literally admitted he never read capital
can i have a source for thsi? i googled this and i found only a bunch of argumentless hatepieces but nothing about althusser, the author of "reading capital" and always loud about having to "return to marx", not reading marx

>>9232909
it's all in his memoir, The Future Lasts Forever.

here are some funny snippets i found in a post

>"In fact, my philosophical knowledge of texts was rather limited. I [...] knew a little Spinoza, nothing about Aristotle, the Sophists and the Stoics, quite a lot about Plato and Pascal, nothing about Kant, a bit about Hegel, and finally a few passages of Marx."

>"I had another particular ability. Starting form a simple turn of phrase, I thought I could work out (what an illusion!), if not the specific ideas of an author or a book I had not read, at least their general drift or direction. I obviously had certain intuitive powers as well as a definite ability for seeing connections, or a capacity for establishing theoretical oppositions, which enabled me to reconstruct what I took to be an author's ideas on the basis of the authors to whom he was opposes. I proceed spontaneously drawing contrasts and distinctions, subsequently elaborating a theory to support this."

>>9232923
he was hospitalized and suffered heavy simptoms of mental illness.... i doubt what he thought at that point can be taken seriously. he also claimed he read "a little" of spinoza despite having shown to be an expert on the subject previously. same with hegel. idk what you're on about.....

>>9232895
Well this becomes more and more irrelevant with more families. Left unchecked, the market continues growing. The labor theory of value actually checks the growth artificially. It's almost as if everything he wrote was designed to cull as many humans as possible.

>>9230687
It's a fact that Marx called for the genocide of all blacks and every culture that wasn't yet Capitalist. When you use the term Marxism, it could mean this, or it could mean what liberals think it means, or what economic theorists think it means.

>>9232949
he had been in and out of the nuthouse since 47. you're nitpicking his writings when the man himself admitted he was a hack.

>>9232952
>Marx called for the genocide
citation needed

>>9232952
>Well this becomes more and more irrelevant with more families.

I was trying to stay in the confines of the original thought experiment. Yes, with enough people there's always enough people wanting a product to make it worth selling. However, the statement of, "Only fools trade outside of what the market will bear," still holds true. The "market" unto itself can't grow beyond the people.

>>9232855
the DPRK is shit.

>>9232840

>complete falsehood, never happened, no proof it did

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Cover-up_of_the_famine

>By working instead of being closed in a cell, they were reintroduced in society through the comradery they experienced during labour that benefited society as a whole.

hahahahahaha... My mates grandfather went to a gulag for several years after returning from WWII due to accusations of him being a German spy. You don't know what you're talking about

> This is why the US is funding fascist groups to organize protests and wages such a misinformation campaign on US citizens.

Is that why there's a shortage of toilet paper and food in the 21st century in an oil rich nation? Is that why Maduro dissolved parliament? I guess all those hundreds of thousands of people protesting are all US agents. I'll trust you on this one, my leftist friend from Venezuela must be an agent as well.

>Cuba's living standards are astronomically higher compared to it's shithole neighboring capitalist countries and compared to how it was before the revolution

Have you been to Cuba? I have. Even the tourist hotels are in a disgusting state. I've spoken with ordinary people there, and while they dislike the US embargo, they certainty aren't very happy with their government.

>most of what you hear about the DPRK is propaganda, simply because the country is too closed off for western sources to actually be able to know what's going on.

Ok so the starving farmers who flee into China who tell of labour camps are also agents? You can look at videos of people on sanctioned visits to North Korea, and even the privileged people in Pyongyang are emaciated.

cont.

>>9232855
>>9232979
cont


>you can also do a bit of research and see how the victory of counter-revolution and the following capitalist restoration resulted in a tremendous drop in the quality of life and even in food shortages that hadn't been an issue since ww2. in 1993 people went to the streets to protest yeltsin and his corrupt government, but the revolts were crushed with 10.000 victims as a result (something the western media applauded).

The transition was done very poorly and did result in oligarchs gaining power. However the current living standard is way higher than before. I have numerous Russian friends who tell me this, I've been to numerous Russian cities, and my family has been to the Soviet union. My grandmother used to travel to St Petersburg to barter blue jeans, lipstick, and rubber boots for caviar, vodka, etc, making a killing in the process because of the massive lack of consumer goods in the USSR. She told me that once a Russian friend invited her over and showed off his radio. He asked, how many months wages does a radio cost in your country, and how many months do you wait to pick it up? When he heard that you could walk into a store and buy a radio for a weeks wage in a capitalist country, he was depressed for the rest of the evening.

What I'm trying to convey is that you have all the theoretical knowledge in the world, but it seems like you have little exposure to how socialism has ACTUALLY played out in practice.

>>9232979
>providing wikipedia as a source

opinion disregarded

>>9232979

>my mates father's great grand aunt once saw a gulag

your empirical anecdotes don't constitute historical fact

>>9232979
>Is that why there's a shortage of toilet paper and food in the 21st century in an oil rich nation? Is that why Maduro dissolved parliament? I guess all those hundreds of thousands of people protesting are all US agents. I'll trust you on this one, my leftist friend from Venezuela must be an agent as well.

again anon, venezuela isn't socialist. get it through your thick head, their problems stem exactly from capitalism. they simply nationalized the oil industry. and yes, the "hundreds of thousands" aka hundreds of protesters are organized by groups funded by the US, exactly like they did in fucking guatemala.

>Ok so the starving farmers who flee into China who tell of labour camps are also agents? You can look at videos of people on sanctioned visits to North Korea, and even the privileged people in Pyongyang are emaciated.

the defectors are paid to create dramatic stories by south korean agencies. their stories are never consistent.

and yes there are food shortages in the country, due to the sanctions imposed by the imperialist aggressors.

>However the current living standard is way higher than before

see once again, your gramma's anecdotes don't constitute historical facts. it's akin to arguing that global warming is a myth because today was a cold day. if you look at factual statistics, you will see that during the years of the ussr there was 0 unemployment and everyone was guaranteed a home, a job, education, healthcare and paid vacations. Today, russians live miserably. You should look into the actual statistics, not your grandmas stories

>>9232970
Yes, I agree, but unchecked the people grows.

>>9232963
>racial trash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmI7_SWBUK4

>>9232855
Watch "Under the Sun" on Netflix.

>>9232840
>you're completely misinformed about venezuela
Actually you are. 80% of the population is poor, and thousands are escaping to Brazil.

I'm Brazilian and talked to several refugees, they surely hate Maduro, and they say many people are starving, low food supplies and one of the highest murder rate of America.

Do you really think all the refugees CIA plants?

>>9233583
>educate yourself from shows on netflix

>>9233589
again, anecdotal stories and mouth-to-mouth opinions mean nothing. half the population in the us thinks the 2008 economic crisis was due to mexicans, that doesn't really mean anything

>>9233590
It's a documentary where no word is said, so you can make your own conclusions.

You can confirm the facts on

>>9233595
>anecdotal stories and mouth-to-mouth opinions mean nothing
sure thing bro! All that matters is Maduro's provided documents and commie news sources

>>9233595
> half the population in the us thinks the 2008 economic crisis was due to mexicans
Source?

>>9233596
from what i read on wikipedia (correct me if im wrong), they show that the DPRK authorities want them to create a propaganda film. is that it or is there more to it than that?

>>9233597
all that matters is facts. in my country the neonazis have 5% in the parliament, which means 5% of the population literally believes the jews are at fault for everything. would you take their word for it?

>>9233600
>source
us elections

>>9233604
>all that matters is facts
So you're saying thousands of Venezuelans running out of their country isn't a fact?

Do a simple research and you'll see it's a well known fact.

>>9233611
i'm not saying that at all. i'm saying that their economy is crashing due to the drop in oil prices, on which their country heavily depended and i'm also saying that the us companies along with the local bourgeoisie are making an organized propaganda effort in order to blame the social programs the government provided to the villager productions as responsible, by funding unrest and protests. if you honestly believe that the oil getting privatized would actually help venezuela's workers, you're extremely delusional

>>9233623
>propaganda effort in order to blame the social programs
So the oil depended social programs failed due to the drop in price, and you're saying it's just capitalist propaganda?

>>9233626
but the price drop did occur due to sanctions anon. it is a gross mismanagement on their part, basing their economy on oil at that level, but it's not the "socialist" aspect of it that's at fault. this argument is ridiculous since venezuela isn't socialist to begin with, they simply kicked us companies out. no matter what happens, the oil being privatized only helps the us bourgeoisie and their local affiliates and not the people.

>>9232763
>>9232770

Not even a Marxist but you are a fucking moron. What some one does with information says nothing about it's truth value. As well, there is a big difference between Marxism as a method for looking at history and political economy and how it develops and the myriad social movements who have used such analysis to justify themselves and their quest for power. Please hang yourself form the neck until dead you unfathomably retarded person.

>>9232585
>>9232678
I never mentioned Marxism when speaking of extremism, you pathetic ideologues.

>>9233589
>>9233597
>>9233611
>>9233626
>>9232979
you dumb motherfuckers, how many times does the other guy have to say it? venezuela is a shithole in an even shittier position, due to being reliant on oil and sanctions placed on them by removing the USA from benefiting from their resources and economy.

it is in no way socialist or communist, in fact it is is one of the most capitalistic countries in the world. if you believe it is socialist/communist then please indicate why. those words are quite broad, with wide application, and predate marx too. yet venezuela does not fit any of the definitions.

>>9233623
there's plenty of oil dependent free markets that didn't suffer massively to the point of catastrophic failure due to the saudi oil dumps.
you're the only one falling for bourgeoisie propaganda and wanting to hand them more power over the common man.

Before this thread further degrades into a /pol/ shit flinging festival, does anyone actually follow contemporary marxian economists?

Pic related, just started getting into this one.

>>9232882
Ltv says value is given by the socially necessary labor time, not just labour time you fucking imbecile

Also your argument pressuposes capitalism, so not only is it wrong because its a really fucking basic misunderstanding of marx, but is inconsistent because it doesnt explain why the basic assumptions are not justified

>>9234292
Ive heard good things about shaikh.

Have you read anything about wolfgang streeck?

>>9230687
There is no science behind marxism. It's all just idiotic idealism.

>>9234307
No, but i'll check him out. I've read a few papers by Nils Frolich, who's done some interesting work applying the LTV to predict market outcomes with some success.

I'm pretty much looking for anyone doing marxian economics around empirical studies.

Other wise Vivek Chibber is also good at approaching this from the sociological side. Unfortunately he lectures more than he writes and very little of it is recorded.

>>9234078
>Venezuela is capitalist
Define capitalist. The meaning of that term varies greatly depending on who uses it. For example, my definition of capitalism is: a market free from violently imposed regulations. That isn't the case with Venezuela. Please explain what you believe capitalism to be and how Venezuela is capitalist.

>>9232133
Probably if you read it. You aren't seriously suggesting psychoanalysis is fine?

>>9234060
>i didn't say it, just implied it!

it's so funny how dumb liberals think they're "without ideology".

>>9234090
not as dependent as venezuela is.

>you're the only one falling for bourgeoisie propaganda and wanting to hand them more power over the common man

the bourgeoisie are the people that owned the oil wells before they got nationalized, not the "common man". the worker doesn't benefit in any way from a nation's resources being privatized by us corporations

>>9234335
capitalism = private property exists

socialism = central planning, all industry communalized, no private ownership of the means of production

examples of capitalist countries: most countries in the world today

examples of socialist countries: the ussr, china before the xiaoping reforms, etc etc

>>9234303

Labour theory of value is like 80% true. It misses major components of the equation, though. If an alien species sent you a cure for cancer, you could make billions of dollars without expending any labour. People often spend money just as a status symbol, so the value of the product isn't even connected to its price of manufacture. If you discover an oil field under your ranch, you might become an instant millionaire with no labour expended. Labour theory of value is true in the sense that a major determinant of equilibrium suppy vs. demand is the amount of labour needed. Marx didn't even invent LTV, he copied it from people like Ricardo. He is known for the reductionist surplus labour idea, which downplays the significance of inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, managers, etc in making a workplace feasible in the first place.

>>9234078

Its a populist government. There's no denying that it has implemented a lot of wide-ranging social welfare programs, curtailed business rights. The fact that they made life difficult for businesses through micro-management, nepotism, currency manipulations, nationalizations, and price controls is a major reason why their economy has gone to shit. Obviously the fall in oil prices factors in as well, but they could have used the money more wisely to diversify the economy. Like most other Latin American governments, there's a lot of corruption involved as well.

>>9234385
With such a loose definition of capitalism, it's needlessly reductive to claim Venezuela is a capitalist nation in order to save yourself from having to consider that economic authoritarianism is the worst system when it comes to increasing living standards for as many people as possible.

The false dichotomy of capitalism vs socialism is so dishonest and reductive, instead one should look at economic liberalism vs economic authoritarianism. Here, there is no dispute that economically liberal systems create the most well being for the most people. What would be the reason for preferring economic authoritarianism over liberalism?

>>9234303
>socially necessary labor time
What is necessary is either subjective or 'objective', i.e., calculated by the state. So how does the state
1. determine what is necessary
2. calculate how much time is necessary to produce it
3. who does the labor, so that labor is divided fairly

The third question is the most difficult. It requires a lot of convincing, i.e., propaganda.

>presupposes capitalism
No, they're just bartering in the most primitive way.

You can create more rules for the primitives on the island to follow, and the threat of violence is always necessary to enforce the rules. The demon also needs mind reading powers to make sure none of the primitives are lying about adhering to the rules. The example just gets worse and worse as it becomes more Marxist.

>>9234415
>loose definition of capitalist

it's the only definition of capitalism

>it's needlessly reductive to claim Venezuela is a capitalist nation in order to save yourself from having to consider that economic authoritarianism is the worst system when it comes to increasing living standards for as many people as possible

there is no such thing is "eoconomic authoritarianism". capitalist countries can fluctuate in the amount and quality of the social safety net they provide, but the bottom line is that if private property exists and if ruling class are the capital holders, it's capitalism. the us is capitalist, norway is also capitalist.

>The false dichotomy of capitalism vs socialism is so dishonest and reductive

you have no idea what you're talking about. open a political economy book for once in your life instead of spouting libertarian nonsense you heard on youtube. capitalism isn't some everlasting mode of production that has been around since time immemorial, it's an economic system that came to be through violent bourgeoisie revolutions. it has a historical start, and will have a historical end. socialism represents the next mode of production, when private property will no longer exist and the means of production will become communalized.

Your faux dichotomy is within the sphere of the pseudoscientific bourgeois political economy that acts as neoliberal apologia, assuming that not only neoliberalism is sustainable (which it isn't ask any economist about this) but also making the a priori assumption that private property is tied to human nature and isn't simply the current system we live in that came to be due to material circumstances.

>there is no dispute that economically liberal systems create the most well being for the most people

your mental dissonance baffles me i swear

>>9230687
Read some Popper. If a theory cannot be falsified, it is not a scientific theory.

One cannot falsify an ideology

>>9234453
>but the bottom line is that if private property exists and if ruling class are the capital holders, it's capitalism
By that metric, feudalism is also capitalism. Isn't capitalism based on the ownership of the means of production?
> it's an economic system that came to be through violent bourgeoisie revolutions
The bourgeois revolutions weren't such a violent break with the old, the ultimate result of the French revolution was the bourbon restoration. The aristocracy and the kings of Europe weren't overthrown overnight, it was just the feudal system that slowly decayed (though it started to fall apart much faster after Napoleon made his way through Europe).

>>9234385

>examples of socialist countries: the ussr, china before the xiaoping reforms

both were huge economic failures

>>9234563
>By that metric, feudalism is also capitalism

no it's not, in feudalism the bourgeoisie and the proletariat both were oppressed by the aristocrats. legislation was always in favor of the aristocrats, and the bourgeoisie had little to no political power even when they managed the gather significant wealth. some key aspects of capitalism were present in late-stage feudalism (like passing property down to the firstborn male heir), but neither did the production means exist for generation of surplus value nor did wealth guarantee you political power.

>The bourgeois revolutions weren't such a violent break with the old, the ultimate result of the French revolution was the bourbon restoration

of course it was, the same way the ultimate result of the ussr was the restoration of capitalism. modes of production never change from the first try, but follow a palindromic restoration pattern. the first bourgeoisie government only lasted 10 years after a violent revolution in the uk. and by violent i mean through the use of force, not through blood and gore. the october revolution wasn't violent either, but military might was a key factor

>
The bourgeois revolutions weren't such a violent break with the old, the ultimate result of the French revolution was the bourbon restoration. The aristocracy and the kings of Europe weren't overthrown overnight, it was just the feudal system that slowly decayed

there are still many feudal remnants in europe anon, no one is denying that. my point is that the bourgeoisie didn't displace feudalism through elections, nor will the capitalist be displaced through elections.

>>9234570
>both were huge economic failures

this is historically wrong. both those countries were primitive feudalist hellholes without any infrastructure, where famines happened on a bi-yearly basis. through central planning, the living standards were raised tremendously, as did the education level. famines disappeared within a few years (excluding ww2 ones)

>>9234570
cont.

the economy of the ussr, while following marxist principles, was the fastest growing one in the world. there was 0% unemployment, and every single worker had things like housing, education, work in his chosen field of expertise, the right to paid vacation etc as a guaranteed right. not to mention that the ussr had actual culture, unlike the us. you can also look up how things went after the capitalist restoration, where the drop in living standards was one of the biggest in recorded history.

>>9234578

> this is historically wrong. both those countries were primitive feudalist hellholes without any infrastructure, where famines happened on a bi-yearly basis. through central planning, the living standards were raised tremendously, as did the education level. famines disappeared within a few years (excluding ww2 ones)


You dont have any idea what you are talking about. Both of those countries did experience an improvement in living standards (hard not to considering huge technical advancements over the course of 20th century) but they were completely unable to reach similar levels of prosperity as capitalist West, especially in second half of 20th century after the low hanging fruit of early industrialization was plucked. Economic rise of China over last three decades is pretty spectacular and only happened after they ditched their failed socialist experiment.

Certain small minority of economists still view socialism favorably (vast majority are what you call "liberals") but basically nobody thinks that jumping straight from agrarian feudalism to socialism is a good idea.

>>9234582

>there was 0% unemployment

Wrong. Only true on paper at best.

>not to mention that the ussr had actual culture, unlike the us

US quite strongly dominates the rest of the world culturally. So this could not be further from the truth.

>ou can also look up how things went after the capitalist restoration, where the drop in living standards was one of the biggest in recorded history.

It was not, the drop was mostly virtual because of broken window fallacy. Under centrally planned economies a lot of work is wasted but it still counts towards GDP. Under capitalism this work ceased so GDP decreased but actual useful production did not change that much. There was still a period of painful adjustment to the new system but it was certainly not anything close to "biggest in recorded history", that is a complete fabrication.

>>9234604

cont.

>where the drop in living standards was one of the biggest in recorded history.

This drop, in addition to being mostly virtual, was also temporary and former socialist countries have recovered and then surpassed GDP estimates under socialism. Same holds true for more holistic measures such as HDI. Not something that should have happened if capitalism was as bad as you believe it is.

>>9234595
the capitalist west reached prosperity during the second half of the 20th century because it was left untouched by ww2, while the ussr lost vast amounts of infrastructure and 20 millions of its citizens. you should read some history

>>9234604
>Wrong. Only true on paper at best.
you can call historical facts wrong all day, it won't make it so

>US quite strongly dominates the rest of the world culturally. So this could not be further from the trut

us popular culture is a cheap entertainment product, not to be compared to actual culture.

>here was still a period of painful adjustment to the new system but it was certainly not anything close to "biggest in recorded history", that is a complete fabrication

you have no idea what you're talking about. there were famines, everything got privatized, people couldn't afford healthcare or an education anymore, and the only reason they weren't left homeless was due to the fact that at least in urban centers they were allowed to buy their own apartments. measuring a country's capital as its quality of life is moronic, it doesn't reflect the average citizen's buying power.

you have no fucking clue how far down the crapper everything went after socialism fell, I can tell you're american by your ignorance on these matters. the average life expectancy in russia plummeted, in the balkans countries are essentially ruled by the mafia, in albania capitalist restoration resulted in the country being ran like a pyramid scheme.

gdp means nothing when wealth is accumulated in the hands of the few. shows how indoctrinated you are to believe it does

>>9234453
>open a political economy book
"Go read a b-book!", is this the ultimate brainlet response for when they can't argue their point?

>>9234639

>the capitalist west reached prosperity during the second half of the 20th century because it was left untouched by ww2

Ever heard of western Europe?

>you can call historical facts wrong all day, it won't make it so


It is a historical fact that unemployment rate in USSR was artificial. This is elementary stuff. Not being employed was illegal. So everyone went to work on paper but many people did not actually do useful work.

>us popular culture is a cheap entertainment product, not to be compared to actual culture.

US dominates in both.

>measuring a country's capital as its quality of life is moronic, it doesn't reflect the average citizen's buying power.

It does when you adjust for inflation and PPP. Anyway, measures such as human development index show LOWER drop than GDP, for reasons I explained above. So actual quality of life dropped modestly and then rebounded above socialist levels.

>I can tell you're american by your ignorance on these matters

Eastern European from a post socialist country actually. I repeat, you have no idea what you are talking.

>>9234644
you can argue with someone on a subject they have a basic knowledge on. you seem to lack basic knowledge of political economy, so arguing with you would be essentially writing paragraphs about things that have been better said by much bigger scholars than myself. if you're truly interested, you'll follow my advice and actually read up on political economy. if you're not that interested, chances are I don't have much chance of convincing you of anything either. in any case, arguing with you about something that you're clearly clueless about is akin to arguing mandarin grammar with someone that doesn't speak chinese. it wasn't a jab at you, more like advice.

>>9234639

>the capitalist west reached prosperity during the second half of the 20th century because it was left untouched by ww2

East-West prosperity gap increased the further from WW2 we go and was highest in the 80s before the fall of communism. So your hypothesis makes no sense.

>>9234657
>Ever heard of western Europe?

western europe was essentially a us puppet state after the war, and still serves us interests under the guise of NATO today. you still cannot compare the bombings of the uk to the losses the ussr suffered

>It is a historical fact that unemployment rate in USSR was artificial

citation needed. everyone worked, as to if that work was "useful" or not and if this phenomenon (if you can actually provide factual sources and not some oral gossip ones) was widespread enough to matter, i'll also need some sources

>US dominates in both
the us has no culture

>It does when you adjust for inflation and PPP

no, it doesn't. a country can have capital, that doesn't mean that capital is used towards communal good nor does it mean it benefits the average worker.

>Eastern European from a post socialist country actually. I repeat, you have no idea what you are talking

ye i call bullshit. tell me what country you're from

>>9234663
>East-West prosperity gap increased the further from WW2 we go and was highest in the 80s before the fall of communism. So your hypothesis makes no sense

you think the "prosperity gap", which i'd call infrastructure gap, didn't have to do with ww2 in 1980? so if i kick you while you're running a 20km run in the first km, it won't have an effect when i finish first while you're still in the 15th km?

>>9234639

>the capitalist west reached prosperity during the second half of the 20th century because it was left untouched by ww2

the west it is the most prosperous region of the world and achieved this without socialism

similar applies to modern China

so we may argue about whether socialism is good or bad ad infinitum but clearly socialism is not needed for prosperity

and that is a historical fact

>>9234680
>prosperity

whose prosperity? the western monopoly economies rely on cheap 3rd world labour for the production of commercial goods. with production jobs leaving 1st world countries, unemployment is bound to rise. couple that with the guaranteed recurring economic crises that are inevitable in a neoliberal system due to the accumulation of wealth, you're gonna see a sharp drop in the quality of life in the next years. you seem to think that capitalism in africa and asia doesn't count because it's not "prosperous" capitalism, completely ignorant of the fact that cheap raw materials and working hands from 3rd world countries are essential for western economies, along with imperialist interventions.

>>9234671

>you still cannot compare the bombings of the uk to the losses the ussr suffered

I can certainly compare continental western Europe to USSR losses

>citation needed. everyone worked, as to if that work was "useful" or not and if this phenomenon (if you can actually provide factual sources and not some oral gossip ones) was widespread enough to matter, i'll also need some sources

You are asking me to post a source that Earth is a globe. Unemployment was illegal and those who did not work were considered parasites and punished. Therefore official unemployment figures are always zero and not a reliable indicator of anything.

>ye i call bullshit. tell me what country you're from

Slovakia.

>you think the "prosperity gap", which i'd call infrastructure gap, didn't have to do with ww2 in 1980? so if i kick you while you're running a 20km run in the first km, it won't have an effect when i finish first while you're still in the 15th km?

The gap INCREASED. Come one, this is not a hard concept to understand.

>>9234690

>you seem to think that capitalism in africa and asia doesn't count

Asia with China and Asian tigers is a great example showing that capitalism works. How did that happen without socialism? You cannot explain that.

As for Africa, I would say that there are larger problems than capitalism/socialism on that continent. It is to a large degree still stuck in feudalism-like stage.

>>9234690

>the western monopoly economies rely on cheap 3rd world labour for the production of commercial goods

False, majority of commercial goods are produced in eastern Asia, which is second world, capitalist, and having a pretty high economic growth themselves. Third world provides mostly raw materials.

>>9234699
>I can certainly compare continental western Europe to USSR losses

not even close. and again like i said, europe did become a us puppet state in all but name

>You are asking me to post a source that Earth is a globe. Unemployment was illegal and those who did not work were considered parasites and punished

no the fact is that unemployment was 0% and it's also fact that it was illegal to be unemployed, that's why everyone was employed. your personal opinion that this occurred "only on paper" needs some backing up with sources, otherwise it's just that

>The gap INCREASED. Come one, this is not a hard concept to understand

of course it fucking increased. the us had industrial infrastructure even before the 20s, while the ussr was literally a medieval shithole. after shouldering ww2 it's fairly obvious that the increase in production wouldn't be the same.

>>9234706
again, your concept of "prosperity" is measured by a country's pooled capital, ignoring completely the fact that said capital in concentrated in the hands on capitalist and doesn't mirror how the average worker lives. South Korea is a literal US puppet state with US imposed dictators on the rule, SK has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, with people massively protesting US occupation. In china, most infrastructure was built before the xiaoping reforms. You also are conveniently going to ignore all the capitalist shitholes in asia like india, which vastly outnumber your autonomous city "success story" examples.

>False, majority of commercial goods are produced in eastern Asia, which is second world, capitalist, and having a pretty high economic growth themselves

what are you on mate? you think sweatshop workers benefit from capitalism because their bosses get richer? you think china, vietnam, indonesia and india don't have sweatshops? those are all necessary for capitalism to exist, not just a random coincidence.

>>9234706
>As for Africa, I would say that there are larger problems than capitalism/socialism on that continen

what the actual fuck are you talking about? capitalist colonialism has ravaged the continent, and western capitalist economies rely in the instability in the region (and fund it) for cheap raw materials. those things are NECESSARY for western capitalism to work, they aren't some accident that just happened to occur.

Marxism is not a science, it's a mental illness.

>>9234796
well said sir, i tip my trilby

>>9234727

>and again like i said, europe did become a us puppet state in all but name

conspiracy theory tier nonsense

also Europe being the most developed part of the world seems to be doing pretty good for a puppet state

>of course it fucking increased. the us had industrial infrastructure even before the 20s, while the ussr was literally a medieval shithole. after shouldering ww2 it's fairly obvious that the increase in production wouldn't be the same.

Are you stupid? The gap between capitalist west (all of it, not just US) INCREASED singificantly as time went on. You cannot blame that on WW2 or 1920s since in that case the gap would be merely due to starting conditions and at worst remain constant.

>South Korea is a literal US puppet state with US imposed dictators on the rule

conspiracy theory tier nonsense

>SK has one of the highest suicide rates in the world

Conveniently ignoring that lowest suicide rate countries are capitalist too..

>>9234866
>In china, most infrastructure was built before the xiaoping reforms

This is among the dumbest things I have ever read. There is a truly MASSIVE infrastructure buildup in China, with entire cities build up over last two decades, and economic development that is unprecedented in history and often compared with industrial revolution in the West. You must be trolling me.

>You also are conveniently going to ignore all the capitalist shitholes in asia like india

India is experiencing moderate economic growth and is much less of a shithole than it was in the past.

Anyway, I can point to almost any wealthy or fast growing country and show you a capitalist one. You cannot show a single socialist one with the same track record. Capitalism can sometimes fail, socialism has always failed.

>what are you on mate? you think sweatshop workers benefit from capitalism because their bosses get richer?

People benefit from having jobs, yes. Chinese are certainly benefiting from capitalism significantly. There is a several hundred million strong middle class rising in China. That is capitalism accomplishing something that socialism could not.

>>9234730

>what the actual fuck are you talking about? capitalist colonialism has ravaged the continent, and western capitalist economies rely in the instability in the region (and fund it) for cheap raw materials. those things are NECESSARY for western capitalism to work, they aren't some accident that just happened to occur.

Western capitalism would work well with or without third world. Are you one of those idiots who thinks that all the wealth in the West (and nowadays also in Asia) is due to muh colonialism in Africa? If so them you are literally retarded. It is a minor factor at best.

Picture shows a Chinese capitalist shithole with all the infrastructure build over 30 years ago and crumbling ever since (pls ignore the cranes)

this is what commie retards actually believe

Competition is natural and unfair.

Anti-Competition is stable and peaceable but stagnant and maladaptive.

>>9234866
>conspiracy theory tier nonsense
>nato is a conspiracy theory

>in that case the gap would be merely due to starting conditions and at worst remain constant.

>widespread infrastructure damage wouldn't reduce the rate of production change, it would remain constant

you're an idiot

>conspiracy theory tier nonsense

half your points are "that didn't happen despite historical proof that it did", the other half is "this happened, despite lack of historical proof that it did".

>Conveniently ignoring that lowest suicide rate countries are capitalist too

ye, the ones benefiting from imperialism. too bad those constitute the minority.

>India is experiencing moderate economic growth

again, you attempt to magically glue "economic growth" of the nation's capital owners to worker's living quality. next you're gonna tell me india has a space program, doesn't matter that 40% of the country shits on designated shitting streets.

>Anyway, I can point to almost any wealthy or fast growing country and show you a capitalist one. You cannot show a single socialist one with the same track record. Capitalism can sometimes fail, socialism has always failed.

ye ignore the economic and industrial growth of the ussr and other socialist countries prior to and decades following ww2, also ignore the fact that capitalism systematically has a need for 3rd world shitholes to exist while socialism does not and aims at eradicating exploitation. you can also ignore the fact that socialism being toppled doesn't equal socialism failed, since capitalism also got toppled many times in world history before it's final prevalence.

from what I can tell, you've indoctrinated into believing 2 key lies: that capitalism can exist without cheap labour from countries outside the imperialist coalition and that a country's economic growth, which reflects how much capital the capitalist class has accumulated, reflects on the worker's quality of life

>>9234870
>Western capitalism would work well with or without third world

no it wouldn't, you're fucking clueless on how imperialism functions to sustain monopoly capitalism. read lenin, and while you're at it try to look up some sources on all the crap you consider "well known historical facts", you'll be surprised about how misinformed you are

>>9234899
didn't*

>>9234899

>nato is a conspiracy theory

nato is not a conspiracy theory, nato members being puppet states is

>widespread infrastructure damage wouldn't reduce the rate of production change, it would remain constant

It would increase it, if anything. Poor/post war countries tend to grow fast than developed ones because they are starting from a lower base and there is plenty of low hanging fruit to develop.

Anyway, widespread infrastructure damage due to WW2 happened in western continental Europe, too, even more serious than in USSR. Yet it grew much faster than USSR.

>again, you attempt to magically glue "economic growth" of the nation's capital owners to worker's living quality.

Economic growth is definitely linked to workers living quality. Anyway, I know you are a complete economic analphabet which is why I always emphasise measures such as HDI which are estimates of actual quality of life. See pic. Not bad for a capitalist shithole.

>>9234917
actually the USSR had some of the highest growth rates of the post war.

Its in the 60's it tailed off

>>9234917
>Western capitalism would work well with or without third world

ye ignore the fact that the us has committed brutal crimes against humanity over the years, war crimes, funded fascist dictatorship to serve it's capitalist class and toppled democratic governments while the UN and EU systematically either remained silent or had their hand in it as well.

>Poor/post war countries tend to grow fast than developed ones because they are starting from a lower base and there is plenty of low hanging fruit to develop.

citation needed

>Anyway, widespread infrastructure damage due to WW2 happened in western continental Europe, too, even more serious than in USSR

not even close. spain aided the axis, france capitulated in a short span of time, and most germanic countries were willingly annexed. none of them suffered the losses the ussr suffered. your lack of historical knowledge is blatant

>Economic growth is definitely linked to workers living quality

"linked to" doesn't mean it represents workers living quality

>I know you are a complete economic analphabet

because what you say be "economics" is nothing more than politically economy that's formulated in a way that served as neoliberal apologia. it reeks of pseudoscience, and has all the tell-signs of apologia. You present GDP and HDI as indicators of worker prosperity, as if a billionaire living in a house with 10 slaves makes the 11 people average out at a millionaire level income. Apologia pol-econ refuses to ignore that private property isn't necessary, but accepts it as a priori "human nature".

What I don't understand is if you're the kind of person that buys into the neoliberal apologia he's preaching, or just a charlatan demagogue. Because if you honestly believe that a rise in the averaged out capital of india (which means nothing, since it's not actually evenly distributed) means india is doing well, ignoring that 40% of the people shit outdoors, you have to take a serious look in the mirror mate.

This picture shows human development index (quality of life) across world regions over long term. See that easily visible downward kink in the red line? That is socialism.

>>9234950
refuses to acknowledge*

>>9230687
>what is scientific about marxism
considering that every marxist/socialist/etc refuses to recognise every time communsim/socialism has been implemented (and its subsequent failure 100% of the time), it is probably among the LEAST scientific ideas.

>>9234950
>none of them suffered the losses the ussr suffered.

Western Germany certainly did suffer worse than USSR, rest of continental Europe suffered equally. And western Germany experienced what is called a post war economic miracle after the war. No socialism needed for that.

>because what you say be "economics" is nothing more than politically economy that's formulated in a way that served as neoliberal apologia.

Experts dont agree with me? It is a conspiracy! lol

>india is doing well, ignoring that 40% of the people shit outdoors

I think your view of India is a bit outdated. More importantly, that figure was 90% just a few decades ago. Doing well indeed.

>>9234974
>rest of continental Europe suffered equally

this is simply not true. i'm stating the historical fact that most countries got annexed or capitulated with little resistance (except by partisan communist warfare), and you keep repeating the same lie as if repeating it will change history.

>Experts dont agree with me? It is a conspiracy!

you are experts at neoliberal apologia, i wouldn't expect you to agree with me. you aren't denying anything that I said either

>I think your view of India is a bit outdated

if the 22nd of august, 2017 is outdated then ye sure

>>9234622
i live in an exUSSR country.
the thing is: i can't fix my teeth. a lot of people starve. we do not have basic health care. you need ultrasound, but they have no free-tickets. hourly long hospital queues. but sure you can buy a piece of cake in 1 minute, hehe. huge communal bills. in winter, the heating bill + food bills < salary. bad quality food. they reduced the number of schools, hospitals. it is a waste of taxes. we do not have a fucking observatory. we do not have school chem labs. no electronics labs. lakes in private use, you can't even practice fishing for free. young people running to US or EU looking for jobs. we live from the money they send back to their relatives. universities does not get enough students. even some budget places are free. lots of old people with less than minimum pensions. average income is $250 or $400 now, not sure. working the whole month to buy an oscilloscope. hahaha. AND there is NO SCIENCE. NO SCIENCE ANYMORE.

we was making our own machines, tv and other electronics. nothing works now.
electronics and machine manufacturing will never recover. the country is too small, no market.

>>9234950
>>Western capitalism would work well with or without third world
>ye ignore the fact that the us has committed brutal crimes against humanity over the years, war crimes, funded fascist dictatorship to serve it's capitalist class and toppled democratic governments while the UN and EU systematically either remained silent or had their hand in it as well.

No correlation to capitalism??

>>9235075
sorry for mistakes and i exaggerate a little on starving.. but it is rare for someone to have a daily amount of protein (150 grams of meat or so).
anyway, not sure where you got the numbers on growth.

crime rate is made up. a student from my school was beaten and he accepted $100 from bullies because it is a lot. and cops did not include the case in statistics. so on reports it can look ok, but it is not real stats. same with stealing. i myself know about 3 cases and i almost do not go out.
same can be with average income. it can be high inequality.

>>9234453
>capitalism isn't some everlasting mode of production that has been around since time immemorial, it's an economic system that came to be through violent bourgeoisie revolutions
it's genesis doesn't matter.
>it has a historical start, and will have a historical end. socialism represents the next mode of production, when private property will no longer exist and the means of production will become communalized.
dumb. There is no demonstrative proof this is how things will occur.

>>9235097
>imperialist profit wars that keep capitalist economies afloat and serve capitalist interests aren't correlated to capitalism!

ok you're retarded

>>9235117
>it's genesis doesn't matter.

it does, since neoliberal dogma claims capitalism is human nature

>There is no demonstrative proof this is how things will occur

read marx

>>9230687
Economic isn't science. In other case economy will don't suffer from regular bankruptcy of firms and people don't suffer from unemployment and hobos deathes.

>>9230940
dictatorship and liberty are mutually exclusive, mouthbreather

>>9234541
Popper's understanding of Marx was seriously flawed. If you actually believe his work in Kapital is unfalsifiable then you don't understand what Marx's intentions were with the work. You could easily prove him wrong by showing that the motive driving capitalism is *not* an extraction of surplus value, or that the replacement of the proletariat's ability to produce their own food with money has impacted the perceived meaningfulness of labor, and consequently the mental health of the laborers. These are both scientific hypotheses.

I think the more important question Popper raised is whether postulating a teleological necessity (eg. communist revolution) has any place in economics/history. But that's precisely where the marxist ideology comes in.

>>9231030
>supply and demand
dat bait
if you happen to be serious would you please off yourself before you start claiming consumerism is the end all of a productive economy (while public funding produced nearly all meaningful gain to QoL, LE and technology)

>>9234866
this thread is utter garbage

The holodomor happened, the gulags did not kill many people. but many people were turned out to die in Siberia, the Marshall plan helped foster puppet states until massive economic gain was on the table (Suez), USSR tanked after the tankies left and it was due to capitalist exploitation. China under Mao was a shithole, but that's because Mao was literally a 75 IQ brainlet who got mad when he didn't understand the artists currying his favor, so he killed them out of rage and frustration.

How would a sane socialist tell peasants to smelt steel in their bamboo hovel? We aren't really arguing particular ideologies so much as we are going through a list of each others' bugaboos.

Clearly the greatest gains to purchasing power are through a consumer economy, which is naturally the quickest route in capitalism to cost reduction. It is also the most naturally exploitive economy because competition doesn't care about anything other than the price-point (consumers don't give a fuck about the origin of the product, look how hard the EU brought the hammer down on specialty goods).

We have waged economic warfare on the east since before HK was leased, and when they hold their currency we cry like little babies.

We abuse the UN to prevent anything we find remotely undesirable from happening even if its just trite penis measuring with the USSR/Russia. We don't make NATO a world organization so that we can continue to be anti-cooperative; similarly the World Bank ponzi scams shackled Africa into debt because we wanted to force stability on the region through payment plans.

>Socialism doesn't work
>Capitalism doesn't work
NEITHER EXIST
Only state authorized trade and illegal trade exists, and both happen in every country of the world

>>9235717

I never said public funding for science doesn't help society advance, brainlet. I never said the government should have 0% involvement in the economy, either.

>>9235123
>read marx
Can he teach me to build a time machine so I can go to the future and see that capitalism has been universally and permanantly replaced by socialism?

>>9230687
Why is this bullshit on sci.

Please take your marxist pesduo science to /leftypol/