So I'm reading some Marx right now because I figured it might be somewhat interesting to understand what this dude said because he's historically imporant, and oh my god how did anyone take him seriously at all?
I'm reading Value, Price, and Profit and he's just so obviously wrong on basic economics and even fucking logic. He just takes random leaps and invents new terms whenever he needs to somehow justify how the simple act of production is exploitative.
Marx proposes that the “common social substance of all commodities” is labor, and thus their value is derived from the quantity of labor in their production. Then this faggot realizes that his own proposition doesn't really work so he pretends he understood that the whole time says that “to say that the value of a ten hours working day is equal to ten hours' labor… would be a tautological and, moreover, a nonsensical expression”.
Then he's like oh OK I can fix this, I should draw a distinction between labor itself, and some made up shit called "laboring power." Laboring power for this anti-Santa Clause is the commoditization of labor; it is the paid temporary use of the worker’s abilities, or what the laborer sells on the market.
So, the value of laboring power, like any other good, is determined by the “quantity of labor necessary to produce it,”. This is what he uses to justify his whole spiel about 'exploitation' and 'surplus value'.
For him, exploitation occurs by capitalists forcing labor to produce beyond what is socially necessary to sustain themselves. This creates surplus value, which is the value the capitalist is able to extract from the labor-power he buys, above the exchange-value of labor he must pay.
But isn't it obvious there is no necessary and direct connection between the value of a good and whether labor and other goods of a higher order were applied to its production? Instead, the value of a good is determined by an individual’s estimation of the services that the good will render him. This should be fucking clear.
Even if you spend 500 man hours making a song, if I don't like it it's worthless. Conversely, if I find a diamond on the ground or gold in a river, it's worth a lot in exchange even though no man-hours went into producing it. Even uncultivated land has a price and value attached to it.
How can any thinking person take this faggot seriously?
you should probably read a primer or something before doing this
all leftists are hacks
>>7865429
>Even if you spend 500 man hours making a song, if I don't like it it's worthless
What made you think you were labor of a higher order?
>>7865429
A cut diamond is generally valued more than a raw diamond and the diamond got cut by an input of labour.
Marx is criticizing classical bourgeoisie political economy, you should be familiar with Adam Smith and David Ricardos labour theory of value before trying to approach Marx's theory of value
Try reading some young Engels
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm
>Let us try to introduce clarity into this confusion. The value of an object includes both factors, which the contending parties arbitrarily separate – and, as we have seen, unsuccessfully. Value is the relation of production costs to utility. The first application of value is the decision as to whether a thing ought to be produced at all; i.e., as to whether utility counterbalances production costs. Only then can one talk of the application of value to exchange. The production costs of two objects being equal, the deciding factor determining their comparative value will be utility.
>This basis is the only just basis of exchange. But if one proceeds from this basis, who is to decide the utility of the object? The mere opinion of the parties concerned? Then in any event one will be cheated. Or are we to assume a determination grounded in the inherent utility of the object independent of the parties concerned, and not apparent to them? If so, the exchange can only be effected by coercion, and each party considers itself cheated. The contradiction between the real inherent utility of the thing and the determination of that utility, between the determination of utility and the freedom of those who exchange, cannot be superseded without superseding private property; and once this is superseded, there can no longer be any question of exchange as it exists at present. The practical application of the concept of value will then be increasingly confined to the decision about production, and that is its proper sphere.
>>7865462
Yeah, basically, the gist of it (as I understand it) is that you wouldn't put more labor in something if that would not raise its value. In a capitalist society, you want to earn more profits, so it would be pointless to apply labor and resources to a good if it would devalue it, so you wouldn't do it.
>>7865499
>implying that everyone in this thread must be a Marxist to respond to OP critically
Just because OP is getting butthurt about an author and asking basic questions that we are trying to answer/point him in the right direction doesn't mean that we endorse Marx's viewpoints. It just means that OP's reading of Marx is shallow.
Anyway, if you read a well-respected (or at least, historically important) author, and immediately find him to be ridiculous, there's a good chance you're just doing a very shallow reading of the work. Not always, but it's easy as a beginner to raise a bunch of qualms and then dismiss someone entirely, which is generally not a good idea.
>>7865429
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_and_unproductive_labour
read some of this you twat
Why is /lit/ so /pol/ these days?
>>7865429
the way you write, tells me that you are just reading Marx so you can reinforce your own ideas instead of actually being open to learn something new.
>>7865527
/pol/tards are like furfags on steroids; they need everyone to see their shit so they can feel validated.
>mfw /pol/tards ruin /out/ and /lit/
>>7865503
I don't even think you need to make that qualification. It is why I said generally. You can of course apply labour to something and its value can decrease, which we would call unproductive, but generally when we do work we do so to add value, which we would call productive.
To me it seems absurd when people try to argue labour doesn't add value. It would be like trying to argue that we could or even would value a world where no work was done the same as the world we live in. With all the cities, technology, etc that it has which would not exist without work done. In fact we would be dead if we did no work as the simple act of hunting or gathering equals work.
>>7865499
Leftism is opposition to capitalism, which is highly rational.
>>7865598
No - no it isn't opposition to capitalism. Things are slightly more complicated than that, you can't just lump everything you like and dislike into distinct categories like that.
Every economist writing at the time subscribed to some version of the labor theory of value. Note that in Marx it is specifically "socially necessary (abstract) labor time" which makes most of your disagreements fall away - no employer thinks it's a good idea to pay you to spend 5000 hours writing a song, so that labor is not socially necessary (for capitalism, that is). Your example points out what is better about Marx's theory of value than say, Adam Smith's.
Marx was writing before the marginalists. No doubt Capital would be a different book if he was responding to Marshall and Menger instead of Smith and Ricardo (both of whom also held labor theories of value), but he wasn't. The labor theory of value is actually a decent if imperfect theory of prices, and is actually more testable (in a Popperian sense, more "scientific") than marginalist theories of pricing.
Many (though not all) modern Marxists, or people who consider themselves to be working in the broadly Marxian tradition, no longer think objective value is as important to Marx's analysis as Marx thought. Speaking personally, I probably consider myself some sort of Libertarian Marxist but I do not think, for instance, that his consideration of constant capital as depreciating at the same rate it contributes value is particularly strong or useful, and I do not believe that Marx objectively proved that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall.
If someone asked me for an introduction to Marxian economics, I would not point them to Marx. I would tell them to read Doug Henwood or JW Mason, who incorporate Marxist class analysis into a generally Keynesian macroeconomic framework. But this is the part of Marx I find useful, some others disagree.
If you are insistent on reading Marx, and you want to understand him on his terms, this is useful: http://www.dreamscape.com/rvien/Economics/Essays/LTV-FAQ.html
>>7865429
the communist manifesto is a fascinating read, and i like his theory of alienation. i agree that he is a hack, and the materialist conception of history is bullshit, but even if his attempts to solve the problems of capitalism are flawed, the flaws he recognizes are real.
>>7865527
People who believe in massive projects of cultural subversion are more liable to attempt them.
kill yourselves and read some real books
>>7865618
literally kill yourself
fucking wankers, kill yourselves
get a grip on history and the world of tradition before jumping ship on modern anything instantly, you're just asking to be retarded
>>7865618
>libertarian Marxist
Is that even possible? Serious question.
![constructivism_gabo[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qqEjGES.jpg "constructivism_gabo[1].jpg")
>>7865429
>Marx proposes that
No. That's Ricardo and Smith. I propose you read some secondary lit on das Kapital or on the history of economics (for instance Roncaglia.)
>Even if you spend 500 man hours making a song, if I don't like it it's worthless
If produced in the capitalist mode of production, particular song commodity (say: "an up-beat pop song like the ones you hear on MTV") may indeed require 500 man hours in normal circumstances which you are forced to provide to the capitalist, to the owner of the means of production (studio, software, instruments, mass media, money, cocaine).
The reason the capitalist produced that song is that he expects to cash on it's "use value". He doesn't need an artist like Franz Peter Schubert. He needs a craftsman, like Mikkel Storleer Eriksen.And for that reason you will find that songs produced in the capitalist mode of productions tend to be rather formulaic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-two-bar_form
>>7865662
You are this triggered
>>7865662
When people like OP try to read Marx, they react the way he did because modern economists are not at all similar to the economists of Marx's time. Historical perspective is valuable, but if an attempt to gain it leads people to throw down Value Price and Profit thinking they've disproven Marx, we're not really getting anywhere.
>>7865668
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism
>>7865598
>Every single successful country on the planet is capitalist
>lets resist capitalism
JUST cuck me up senpai.
>>7865696
>Every single successful country on the planet is feudalist
>lets resist feudalism
JUST cuck me up sire
>>7865705
>every single communist country has failed
>most have become authoritarian
>most have ended in bloood
>all are inherently authoritarian in precluding free enterprise
JUST fallacy me up.
Communism is literally a meme that people without meaning in their lives believe in to give themselves a fleeting sense of purpose. After all, once you collectivize people and set up a big bad establishment to dismantle life becomes an ideological battle. So exciting!
>>7865716
>communist
>country
Contradiction in terms lad
>>7865685
Are you actually Anti-Capitalist or just "Anti-Capitalist" in the Fascismo / NatSoc sense.
>>7865740
>Communism is a perfect system
>But what about all these flawed countries?
>Well, they're flawed, therefore they're not communist!
Classic. Mfw I live my life in a communist utopia.
>>7865754
>Countries
>communist
wew
>>7865751
>claims to be leftist
>dismisses rightist critiques of capitalism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o3eITHmIek
>>7865429
>being this much of a fedora
>being this retarded
>not reading marx with supplementary material
>>7865685
You sound redpilled. How do we stop our women from choosing blacks over us?
>>7865766
If you can't even define Capitalism correctly; how can you be anti-capitalist?
Fascismo never attempted to actually end Capitalism and Hitler purged Rohm ending any form of anti-capitalism present with in NatSoc.
>>7865779
Try reading something other than History Channel documentaries on Hitler.
Critiques of capitalism as a process and/or as a "system" span the political spectrum from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian, elitist to anti-elitist, etc.
>>7865761
Explain how communism works without states.
>>7865761
>Le TRU communism is indistinguishable from anarchism
No wonder u fags get so triggered by the concept of ancapism
Well potatoed
>>7865768
>Communist
>Calling a capitalist a fedora tipper
>Hrmph, nuthin personel boy. Just need to emancipate the workers from the bourgeoisie swine and collectivize the means of production. God's for christtards LOL.
Literally for edgy teenagers.
>>7865785
Knowledge of necessity
All none state societies consciously plan their production and consumption
>>7865785
the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat dissolves into anarcho-communism as those who once owned the factors of production have adjusted to their new lives. from here on it is utopia where every man is connected to his species being and no worker is exploited.
literally try reading a book before you start spouting shit about political ideology
>>7865798
>the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat dissolves into anarcho-communism
>from here on it is utopia
>no worker is exploited.
OOGA BOOGA GIVE ME ALL YOUR CORN
>>7865794
Ah ok. Fair enough. I could see how that's feasibly compatible.
But no less retarded. I'll take living in a first world democracy watching netflix and drinking beer thanks. Consumption drives innovation, people have predicted overpopulation and starvation since the 1800s and yet it hasn't happened. At the rate we're going we'll overcome any and all conceivable obstacles.
An ancient society entails the inaccessibility of the tools we use to survive. Sure, it'd be naturally sustainable, but if our current situation isn't then people will starve or die from the environment until it is once more. Its no more "immoral" than living in shithole and dying of childbirth or typhus.
Then again, even an agrarian society has types of money and class hierarchies. Even your best example is flawed to my knowledge.
>>7865792
>capitalists
>not fedoras
lmfao *tips trilby twice*
>>7865499
Stop taking the meme pills and read a book
>>7865789
>ancap
>coherent
muh fucking magical society where nothing bad happens because everyone tries to fuck each other over
>>7865782
Did Hitler not kill Rohm specifically to stop the brownshirts from launching a second revolution against the bourgeoisie?
Rohm and the Strasser brothers where the only to faithful anti-capitalists in the NSDAP and they where all killed / exiled in the night of the long knives.
>>7865785
Because it literally means there is no state
>>7865805
>doesnt understand what communists believe
>is spoonfed this information
>goes full retard
leave this board, reading obviously isnt your thing
>>7865810
Not the guy you're arguing with (I'm the Libertarian Marxist) but my personal opinion is that one of the worst mistakes Marxist-Leninists and the like made was the conviction that ideally there would be no money at all. I think money is a good idea, and there are ways to implement it or something like it in ways that would not necessarily make class hierarchies.
nice undergrad essay dude
>>7865789
>anarchism just means no government n shiet
>anarchism is compatible with a hierarchical economic system
well memed
>>7865798
That's hilarious.
>Temporary dictatorship
In which the dictators get tired of ruling and just give up power right? And in which the necessitated motive in their revolt (unrest of social status) is NOT rectified. Nope. They're completely fine with bringing down their "oppressor" to their level and not punishing him in the slightest. They become "comrades"
>The owners adjust to their lives
Sweet. In this perfect world the "oppressors" who are thrown from their previously prestigious position also just take in the ass and have no resentment at all. That's convenient as well.
>every man is magically connected to his "species and being"
Ok man. Sounds a lot less like political ideology and -ironically enough- like a fucking dogma.
By the way you still didn't actually explain how communism works without states, you just explained the process to getting there without elaborating on the mechanisms of the system.
Everyone just gets an equal share of everything and its completely content with having the same status? And what happens if another country invades? Everyone magically agrees to fight? Is there an army? What happens if someone hoards their fruit or has a much higher amount of yield on their farm? What if someone has a terrible season or overeats? Do you just take his food and give it to another for "equality" ? If so, who is designated for this task? Why? Can the other farm defend himself?
>tfw you find out marxists are actual retards
>>7865823
The Sturmabteilung had a lot of unemployed idiots in it that thought the NSDAP was serious about socialism
their early platform had planks like:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm
>13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
They dropped all this when they grabbed power and said that German bankers would be kinder to them than Jewish
Marx caused more deaths than everyone else in history
>>7865844
yeah, I had more favorable views of Marxism until I realized all of them are pot smoking hipsters
>>7865827
>communism works without states because it communism means an absence of state.
That's explaining nothing. I mean how can you feasibly operate a classless, cashless, means-of-production-owned-by-laborers, stateless society.
>>7865814
>pic related.
This pictures mean nothing, they suit whoever they want.
>>7865846
capitalism caused more slavery
>>7865852
pretty much every communist I met looks like that
>>7865857
>natural human economic behaviour "caused" slavery in exact the same way that outright telling people to set up revolutionary dictatorships because of a closed-minded ideology caused suffering
Communists have the brains of children
>>7865844
>tfw you find out capitalists are literal cucks
>>7865857
Would you rather be dead or a slave?
>>7865838
why are you so embittered that you feel the need to shoot the messenger? Why do you and >>7865805 actually think im a marxist? ftr im not, but i hope that both of you will realize that you probably shouldnt try and discuss topics youre too stupid to carry on an intelligible discussion about
>>7865862
>natural
here comes the ideology
>>7865865
GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH
>>7865865
Communism doesn't even give you the option to choice and will kill you on the spot if you disobey. Lot at China, North Korea even today
>>7865859
>>7865847
>>7865844
Used to hang out with a bunch of neo-marxist hipsters. I made one comment about capitalism and you could just see them get triggered. It was just automatically dismissed as if communism was OBVIOUSLY the superior of the two.
They of course all turned out to be massive SJW authoritarian types. Its so strange how nearly 90% of the communists I've met are upper class. They're these disaffected people that outsource their empathy and ambitions to some "greater" cause because they encounter so little struggle ordinarily. I swear to god.
I really fucking doubt that anyone that has done an honest day of work is an actual communist. People want opportunity for better work, not an opportunity to be on equal footing.
>>Even if you spend 500 man hours making a song, if I don't like it it's worthless.
"A thing can be a use-value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labor, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but not commodities.[...] Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value."
Capital, Part I, Chapter I, Section 1.
>>7865866
Nice redherring man. No need to address the problems I brought up at the end of my post. Just say I shot the messenger and then say I'm an idiot.
I don't see how that'd be your take-away from what I've written unless you have a stake in the ideology I'm targeting. So you'll have to forgive me for being less than candid. I hardly think that discussions on communism require anything beyond a High School education.
>>7865880
all the communists and Marxists I know are in their 20s and graduated into the worst job market in 80 years. personally I moved left in large part due to the horrible drudgery of working 50-60 hours a week in a shitty job
but I doubt you know too many Marxists since you conflate them with "SJWs," which while a shitty term is generally used to describe people who are overwhelmingly identity politics focused liberals, not leftists. most Marxists are at least as mad at Suey Park as you are.
>>7865880
It's probably because Commies waste their education on the liberal arts and end up not being able to get a respectable job
>>7865685
>>7865778
Good, las time I was here /lit/ was the antithesis of /pol/, now is /pol/ mini
When will 4chan be finally renamed as 4/pol/
>>7865877
>option to choice
disregarded
>>7865880
>People want opportunity for better work, not an opportunity to be on equal footing.
Welcome to the communist party, my friend
Liberalism promotes the ideological notion of equality before the law
>"We [as communists] reject the metaphysical concept of equality of something outside the material world. Equality means to us the disappearance of social classes. Nothing more shall be concluded from our analysis of capitalism."
- Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring
"Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the laborer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of tone uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units.[...] The labour-time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-half in former value."
Capital, Part I, Chapter I, Section I.
>>7865880
Same experience. All the Marxists at my college are the rich white kids who are basically "commies lol!!" for the same reason /pol/ likes to roleplay as Nazis. They want to feel like they are part of something DANGEROUS and RADICAL!
Even the more benign ones are really closed-minded. The kind of thing where they dismiss thinkers or ideas for not fitting into their Marxist canon, without actually reading them or anything.
>>7865880
>They're these disaffected people that outsource their empathy and ambitions to some "greater" cause because they encounter so little struggle ordinarily.
I don't think so. In my estimation those who have rejected God and thereby rejected the ability to be absolved of sin have developed their own form of penance to make up for their personal moral shortcomings. This penance is embodied by the liberal social policies of the political left and administered through the highest authority, which for them is not God, but the state.
Those who believe in God believe in divine justice; they leave to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. They have no desire to administer God's justice through the state. The Left conflates Caesar with God, and gives to the state the ultimate authority to rectify all perceived injustices. I think this is where the "lol Jesus was a socialist" meme comes from.
This is the end result of Nietzsche's Death of God: a people servile to the State whose slave morality is derived from egalitarianism; in other words, the Last Man.
Christian + Socially Right = Cohesive Worldview
Atheist + Socially Right = Sociopath
Agnostic + Anything = Confused
Christian + Socially Left = Didn't understand the Bible
Atheist + Socially Left = Cohesive Worldview
>>if I find a diamond on the ground or gold in a river, it's worth a lot in exchange even though no man-hours went into producing it.
"Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on average, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass."
Capital, Part I, Chapter I, Section 1.
>> How can any thinking person take this faggot seriously?
>>7865937
The older Marx and Engels were both consistent anti-humanists opposed to morality
Nietzsche wasn't aware of the works of Marx or Engels but Nietzsche and Engels critique of Eugen Dühring's moralistic "socialism" are very similar
There's definitely an overlap between Anti-Dühring and The Antichrist
>>7865880
>I really fucking doubt that anyone that has done an honest day of work is an actual communist
So all the millions of people who have joined labor unions at work around the world or worked for a co-operative don't count? Communism is not a centralised state conducting state capitalism, it's a theorized conclusion of socialism.
>>7866008
>what is syndicalism
>>7865716
>Saying someone commits a fallacy when you just made a strawman.
Being critical of capitalism and arguing we need a better system does not mean you are arguing for a system that we know has failed.
>>7866020
A form of socialism.
So in summation, you think that you've disproven Marx... using the concept of supply and demand?
It was some pretty good bait though, well done.
>>7865598
>Economic system built on the concept of taking risks
>fundamentally unstable without regulation
>rational
top kek
>>7866142
He meant opposition is rational.
>>7865557
>mfw /pol/tards ruin /out/
What? How did they ruin hiking and camping?
>>7865810
>But no less retarded. I'll take living in a first world democracy watching netflix and drinking beer thanks. Consumption drives innovation, people have predicted overpopulation and starvation since the 1800s and yet it hasn't happened. At the rate we're going we'll overcome any and all conceivable obstacles.
How do you suppose capitalism is going to overcome the obsolescence of labour?
>>7866169
Marx's critique doesn't equate to the USSR or any other Authoritarian state. Dictators will use which ever labels they please to mask their actions. The American century is over and criticism isn't going away when the trend has been downwards for the last 35 years since the end of the post world war boom.
>>7866182
They shitpost on /out/ and turn it into /prepping for the race war/
>>7866223
i wasn't talking about Marx, I was talking about how stupid it is saying that capitalism as a concept equals slavery while communism dindu nuffin.
Also its hilarious how blame is always deflected away from Marx when he never actually says he is pro- or anti-dictator. Who are you to say that a dictator like Stalin was not an accurate representative of the proletariat, you scheming reactionary! :^)
P.S. the U.S.S.R. actually passed all 10 tenets of the Communist manifesto. But w/e, keep playing games with words.
>>7865429
ITT: Reds BTFO trying to pick up the pieces trying to legitimize the shit sandwich that is the LTV.
>>7865527
>implying not being a Marxist makes you /pol/
>implying most of this isn't decent discussion
and go to /his/ doesn't make too much sense either because this is still a discussion about literature and the ideas behind literature.
>>7866340
America's leading socialist magazine (TM) doesn't even care for the LTV. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/07/zombie-marx/
The people who think this is a major point of contention to most socialists or even most Marxists are tilting at windmills.
>>7866331
The USSR was (at least under Lenin and possibly Stalin) a DtoP but that is not communism; Lenin's theory in hindsight was wrong and the Mensheviks where correct but that is a failure to attain communism not a failure of communism itself.
>>7866355
jacobin is pomo garbage
any self proclaimed "marxist" that doesn't take value theory seriously is best ignored
>>7866355
So why does OP get insulted by people in this topic? Face it, this is continental philosophy at its worst. A fucking pseudo intellectual trying to keep his illogical reasoning up in the air with wings made of obacurantism while basic common fucking sense is pulling it down to the ground. Millions of students and academics applaud.
>>7866376
Correct Answer.
>Americans discuss Marx
>either NOPE NOT SOCIALIST DOESN'T COUNT NEVER BEEN TRIED or A HUNDRED BILLION DEAD MAO FUCKED CHILDREN ALWAYS BEEN TRIED AND FAILED
By and large you guys really are too fucked in the head to debate Marxism rationally yet. The amusing part is that you're both right - the USSR was a legitimate attempt at a socialist society and so can't be discounted as part of Marx's legacy, but at the same time its failure can be explained via the material conditions it arose in, and so that failure does not actually disprove the validity and necessity of a transition to socialism at some point in the future.
And besides,China is still live and kicking.
>>7866376
Read that piece - do you think David Harvey is correct about treasury securities?
>>7866378
Who's the obscuritanist here? Marx? Marx is not that hard to read, especially compared to a lot of the economists who came after him and focused on investment or finance.
Anyway to say that the LTV is outdated and to say that Marx is a hack and best ignored are not at all the same statement.
>>7866406
Although I agree with all your arguments, the heavy reason for China's success is Deng's capitalistic reforms and economic and cultural opening, although aspects of the communist style command economy did help it a lot
>>7866415
Marx never had a "LTV" he was building on Adam Smith's idea of "LTV" (Someone who is unironically loved by AnCaps).
Marx posited "Socially necessary abstract labour time" as the improvement of Adam Smith's "LTV" furthermore Marx never intend SNALT to be for analytic usage (which he outlines in his elaborations on Commodity Fetishism Chap 1. S 4) because he wasn't an analytic economist.
>>7866406
>>7865894
>Implying that if everyone went into STEM, they would be able to get jobs
Don't be so dense, you faggot. Even if people didn't study worthless degrees it wouldn't account for high levels of unemployment.
>>7865919
>tfw studying engineering turned me into a communist
>>7866331
>never states if he is pro or anti dictator
So let's assume the worst.
>>7866376
It's fucking wrong, though.
>>7866378
Because they are not sincere in their proclaimed interest in the topic, and are approaching it for the sole purpose of reaffirming their own belief in capitalism.
The OP is referencing something discussed in the very first chapter of a book some 8000 pages long and claiming to have debunked the entire theory behind it. Even if we assume OP is just trying to provocative, their objection is so contrived that one would have to be trying to miss the point in order to make it, and as others have said, the objection is answered later on in Capital anyway.
The idea that Marx contributed nothing of value is profoundly ignorant; even if you do not agree with his writing it underpins the central concerns of political and economic philosophy in the 20th century, he influenced several academic disciplines, and was the first person to apply scientific principles to economics re: attempting to predict the future.
In short, only insecure right wingers and simpletons dismiss Marxism out of hand like this.
>>7866421
Deng Xiaoping was a true Marxist. Reform and opening intended only to heighten contradictions. The revolution is coming.
>>7866456
Chapter 3 makes it pretty clear that Marx's version of the LTV (call it SNALT if you want, I don't care) is a long-term theory of prices.
Abstracted units of labor are a huge part of the entire schema in Capital, I don't know how you can sincerely post that Marx didn't have an LTV. It is true that every macroeconomist at the time subscribed to some version of the LTV however.
>>7866481
Because its completely reductive to refer to SNALT as a "Labour Theory of Value" which is a term Marx never used or claimed.
He also literally says that it cant be used to determine price since it can only be discovered "post-festum" -after the feast-.
There are three thinkers/writers/beings that are most important today:
Marx
Jesus
Buddha
Marx is the most important one.
Just look at what Marx added to our understanding of the ability of a consciousness being even able to read ANY text or cultural product.
>>7866519
Chapter 3:
"But suppose his product turn out a real use-value, and thereby attracts money? The question arises, how much will it attract? No doubt the answer is already anticipated in the price of the article, in the exponent of the magnitude of its value. We leave out of consideration here any accidental miscalculation of value by our friend, a mistake that is soon rectified in the market. We suppose him to have spent on his product only that amount of labour-time that is on an average socially necessary. The price then, is merely the money-name of the quantity of social labour realised in his commodity. But without the leave, and behind the back, of our weaver, the old-fashioned mode of weaving undergoes a change. The labour-time that yesterday was without doubt socially necessary to the production of a yard of linen, ceases to be so to-day, a fact which the owner of the money is only too eager to prove from the prices quoted by our friend’s competitors. Unluckily for him, weavers are not few and far between. Lastly, suppose that every piece of linen in the market contains no more labour-time than is socially necessary. In spite of this, all these pieces taken as a whole, may have had superfluous labour-time spent upon them. If the market cannot stomach the whole quantity at the normal price of 2 shillings a yard, this proves that too great a portion of the total labour of the community has been expended in the form of weaving. The effect is the same as if each individual weaver had expended more labour-time upon his particular product than is socially necessary. Here we may say, with the German proverb: caught together, hung together. All the linen in the market counts but as one article of commerce, of which each piece is only an aliquot part. And as a matter of fact, the value also of each single yard is but the materialised form of the same definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour."
>>7866550
i mean, you have to consider Marx in terms of identifying how we now currently in late capitalism have only the autonomy of the reference as a subject while we remain objects for nearly the first time in history. With the tripartite of subject, object and reference, this is very important if you want to know anything about ideology
>>7865779
This image doesn't even know what it wants to do, rhetorically. Even if the author seems possibly to want to illustrate Marx and Engels as "winners/betters", using the negative adjectives "fickle and pugnacious" in the first clause of the image's "ON THE OTHER HAND" section, is not the way to go about doing it. Also, although the current Balinese puppet show culture (and humans generally) has a visceral response to cuckoldry, it must also be said in the interest of intellectual honesty that to repair to the cuck meme to humiliate an enemy is hypocritical for Marxists, since it is a humiliating oppression, while their project, both in its theory and later practice, has always claimed to want to put an end to all humiliating oppressions. Furthermore, what else is cuckoldry but "race-struggles" between slightly different individual humans. In other words, Hess' own quote form the image correctly describes the rightness of his own theory, in the self-contained universe of this confused rhetorical image.
The image seems a bit to want us to like Marx and Engels, but of course the appropriate attitude toward both of these strands is to throw them both under the bus. We have, in the image, a perfect image of retard-fight, of futility. After all, as wrong as Engels was... nobody likes a cuck either.
