Is he worth reading to find out why society and the economy is going to shit as of recent? I read Wage Labour and Capital and it was interesting, the rebuke to conventional supply and demand economics is something I took to heart. If so, should I read Capital vol. 1?
>>25388333Good diagnosis, terrible cure
YeahSome suggestionsRead the Moore-Aveling translationThe first two parts are a slog. Part one and especially part two build on AristotleBy use value, Marx means what is today called utilityMy exchange value, Marx means what is today called market value or intrinsic value. It is NOT the same as price as Marx says, and those concepts today are still not. Value is the same as exchange value. Price reflects value if markets are at equilibrium Money today remains a commodity in Marx's sense, the dollar's value is oil, we only dropped the gold standard when we could go directly to the petrodollar.
>>25388341I'm not really interesting in the cure, I am lead to believe that Marx mostly focused on the diagnosis in his writings. I just want to know if it's still relevant today in a first world service economy where most of the main industry is in tech and the financialization of fictitious capital.
>>25388333>>25388333he is a literal sophist, he learnt the art of obscurantism from the king obscurantist then scribbled about economics. Try and pin him to a single thing except incitement.
>>25388350Marx is relevant for now but the way things are going I think robotics and AI will render the dynamic he based his analysis on obsolete. The proletariat’s ability to be the driver of history and its ability to engage in class conflict hinge on its members being essential to the operation of capitalism. What happens when you simply don’t need people to keep things running? >inb4 “we’ll get UBI”Sure, let’s say we get it. Then what? The relation between the means of production and the proletariat will have been severed. The class won’t have the ability to engage in class conflict as the one resource they had control over, labor, will be automated away. Capitalism would end with a shift not to socialism but something else entirely.
>>25388350Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, by Lenin, deals a lot with applying Marx to finance and post-industrial capitalism, in fact Imperialism is the term Lenin uses to mean post-industrial capitalism, capitalism which is no longer about productivity as it is about simple wealth transfer into increasing concentration, even if that requires wealth destruction
>>25388355Capitalists in 1900 were saying human obsolescence was just around the corner. It's not and the proof of this is how strongly capitalists are demanding more immigration
>>25388348I got the Ben Fowkes translation since it was what was cheap, is that one ok?>>25388357Even in the post-colonial neoliberal free trade era?
>>25388359The current emergence of AI technologies (agents, LLMs, etc.) is qualitatively different from previous tech booms. It is the wholesale automation of office labor, with the role of the human in the loop shrinking into nothing. Add robotics into the picture and we get the automation of ALL labor. I’m not saying it’ll happen next week but in 30 years? I think we’ll be getting there and in 50ish years we’ll be there.And none of this is touching on the concept of singularity or the idea that at some point in the near future an AI, not humanity, will be the primary intelligence on the planet with all that entails. It’s not that Marx was wrong but that the rules of the world will change to the point his work becomes outdated and useless.
>>25388333Why not read Engels instead, get a job, join your union, and shoot your boss?
>>25388333Marx's analysis has 0 predictive power, so no. Remember that he predicted a successful communist revolution that would begin in Britain lol.
>>25388385why not be a Marxist if there are no gods and no afterlife?
I think anyone that is interested in political economy should have a working understanding of Marx (this will put you ahead of 99% of Marxists btw)That being said, if you want to 'make sense' of the modern world you need to read Land
>>25388362The Moore-Aveling translation was edited by Engels and it is the cheapest being public domain. Fowkes is now the most popular but I find him less clear and readable, for example>The commodity is, first of all, an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind. The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference.Fowkes, Penguin>A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.The latter, the Moore-Aveling, seems better here, especially the use of "fancy" rather than "imagination">Even in the post-colonial neoliberal free trade era?The core of imperialism in Lenin's thesis is financial speculation. He didn't even fathom currency speculation
>>25388368It is literally impossible to automate all labor by Marx's definition of labor given in part 3 of capital, in fact it is impossible to automate any. Labor as per Marx is a human activity wherein one mentally conceives of something and then modifies reality to accord with one's mind's eye. Machines do not have minds or imaginations, they are tools. They cannot and will not ever perform labor
>>25388410>Machines do not have minds or imaginations, they are toolsAI Agents are different, much more akin to minds than tools
>>25388333>the economy is going to shit as of recent?Can you point to anything specific that isn't like eggs being expensive because of bird flu? The Dow Jones reached the highest in history literally yesterday.
>>25388368>The current emergence of AI technologies (agents, LLMs, etc.) is qualitatively different from previous tech booms. It is the wholesale automation of office labor, with the role of the human in the loop shrinking into nothing.When people say this, I get the impression they don't understand what white collar work is like. Employees are assigned to manage situations (projects/tasks/subordinates) like some kind of bizarre feudal system. Arguing with a computer instead of delegating to a human misses the point.
>>25388333Better off reading his other essays and papers on economics. Capital is unnecessarily long and includes many ideas (like labor theory of value) which are theoretically interesting but irrelevant to understanding the modern economic landscape. His essays are better edited, clearer, and convey lessons in labor economics that are still very relevant today
>>25388333You don't have an inkling of an understanding of what "conventional supply and demand economics" is since you don't know what a derivative or a matrix is. Communists think they can feel and wordcel themselves out of having to know anything.
>After nearly 150 years and billions of bodies, retarded kids still think Karl Marx had any worthwhile ideas.
>>25388418No they are not. They are calculators
>>25388470>ideas (like labor theory of value) which are theoretically interesting but irrelevant to understanding the modern economic landscapeI am very confused about this statement. On one hand, there are very intelligent and well respect Marxian economists that argue unequivocally and quantitatively that actually the LTV really does explain and predict markets better than marginalism. Yet their work is so obscure and buried in academic journals, it seems completely impotent compared to all other current economic theories. There does not appear to be any solution to how to calculate socially necessary labour time, either, or at least to get it to conform to current markets. Also, as I get older, I wonder if the LTV should be taken as a normative rather than scientific theory. Maybe we *should* base the economy around human labour. Whether that is possible or not is an entirely different story. >>25388499Bit rude to assume anyone interested in Marx cannot do basic mathematics. >>25388503That gives even more reason that he cannot be ignored.
>>25388341He doesn't propose a cure. This is how he filters pseuds. Communism did not have a universal definition in his time, and still doesn't. Only 'anti-communists' think so. >REAL communism has never been tried?>No, MY communism has never been tried
>>25388778Marginalisation has to do with use value, not exchange value. Your confusion stems from conflating utility with market value and and intrinsic value, and conflating those in turn and by extension with price when investors make a strong distinction between market value and price
>>25388333he's worth reading simply because he's one of the most influential intellectuals ever whether you think he was full of shit or notyou can not even begin to parse the modern world without some understanding of his ideas
>>25388786Is it that surprising that I'm confused? You named about six different kinds of value in your short post alone.
>>25388790I am saying Marx's term "use value" which (and you must know if you read capital) is utility which he distinguishes from exchange value, often abbreviated to just value. Marx's LTV is NOT a theory of utility or price, it is a theory of what investors today call intrinsic value or market value which they distinguish from price. The whole point of investment is to capitalize on a perceived discrepancy between value and price. Price only approaches value when markets are at equilibrium
>>25388795Sorry if I gave the impression that I know anything about Marx. I have only read some of his shorter works and secondary literature about his ideas. No I have not read capital. Please don't try too hard to explain anything to me. That being said, I think you did teach me something. So in The Capital does Marx go into a normative analysis or is it strictly descriptive?
>>25388796Marx goes into both but he isn't arguing labor value as a normative since as he says the labor value of labor is only the barr minimum wealth required to maintenance the work in the same terms as if he were a machine, which he doesn't consider a normative and adds even capitalists find the idea distressing but that is how markets in capitalism work
>>25388801I see, thanks.
I didn't find anything of value in Marx because his writing is simultaneously presumptive, contradictory, uneducated and doesn't concretely define very much (probably over 50%) of what he's talking about.
>>25388864Over 50% of the terms Marx uses were already established and defined in economics of the time, it's just the terms have changed since then
>>25388359>how strongly capitalists are demanding more immigrationit's also the politicians who want free votes.>>25388355I'm stupid but I agree with this wholeheartedly. In the latest government shutdown we learned that ~45 million Americans (over 10% of the population) rely on food stamps. What happens to people on UBI during a government shutdown?
>>25388878H1Bs have nothing to do with votes since their holders can't vote
>>25388889correct but when anyone born in the USA is a citizen regardless of the parent's status, they turn into voters in 18 years. This is also ignoring every attempt to fight against voter ID laws and wishes of granting citizenship to non-citzens.
>>25388891Right, that's not what H1bs are about, especially since holders tend to send a lot of their income back home to their families. The biggest supporters of H1b are actually the very same tech class proclaiming humans are obsolete and making their bed with the GOP, certainly not the party benefitting from immigrant support except for Protestant Hispanics
>>25388897you're right. I'm a moron so what's the communist take on H1B's? I'd guess it would be disapproval? Taking labor from the locals of place X and then sending the reward of that labor to place Y seems like it doesn't benefit the people of place X.
>>25388905Communism was the first to actually analyze the immigration phenomenon and its effect on labor, Engels did it with the Irish in England and Marx reading his work is what impressed Marx so much and ended up cementing their relationship when they found they shared views. Capitalism relies on what Marx called a reserve army of labor, it cannot function, it will not function, without a segment of workers wanting being kept deliberately unemployed in order to make the other workers comply to avoid the same fate.Being for or against it is a moot point because capitalism has always required it and can't function otherwise. When a population doesn't reproduce enough to cause it, labor is brought in. Now that white countries no longer supply immigrants, non-white countries are looked to, but it is nothing new.
>>25388905>Taking labor from the locals of place X and then sending the reward of that labor to place Y seems like it doesn't benefit the people of place X.And actually you are right on this. It is promoted by India because they send money back but overall it leads to brain drain. The Berlin Wall was put up because the USSR spent fortunes on providing unlimited free education and their best performers would keep leaving for the west to make bank.
>>25388333"Wage Labor and Capital" is a less developed form of the analysis that Marx was forming about Capital. The three volumes of "Capital" form the most developed version that he came up with. You do kinda have to read it all though, because seeing this development is most of the point.>>25388341The diagnosis and the cure are inseparable. Capital makes it pretty clear what the primary contradictions of capital are. A political program built off of this critique needs to aim to resolve those contradictions or else it's doomed to simply replicate capitalism.>>25388470LTV is not just included, it's central to the analysis. You can't just remove it or else everything else collapses. To reject it you also have to find a way to reject how he constructed it in Chapter 1, and I haven't seen anyone do this without invoking some kind of mysticism. It's relatively easy to reject if you simply ignore the material world.I think most people are just taught to fear LTV and not engage with it, by people who realize who catastrophically inconvenient it is to mainstream economic theories.>>25388790Thats kinda what reading the first chapter of Capital is like. That these things are all mixed up and conflated in other interpretations of economics, and the consequences that leads to, is kind of Marx's point.
>>25388878Presumably government bureaucracy would be automated too so shutdowns would not occur.
>>25388333No, marx's theory was only relevant to Manchester economic theory as you know he lived in England and wasn't really sensible enough to see this non uniformity and couldn't predict the outcomes what we call capitalism now, nobody is an English prole anymore really. Read something written in first half of 20th century
>>25388981A prole is just a propertiless (as in no substantial capital) laborer
>>25388981>couldn't predict the outcomes what we call capitalism nowMarxism is not about predicting the future. He was uniquely poised in history to see the beginnings of industrial capitalism that our current society sits on top of. It's important to build off of Marx instead of trying to reformulate politics from first principles precisely because Marx was able to see things that we are blind to now because of the particular time and place he lived.
>>25388994How is it not about predicting the future? He wrote extensively about how and why capitalism will and should be destroyed. Plus historical materialism is literally about the development of history aka the future.
>>25388999>predicts that wealth will become more abd more concencrated and the wages of workers relative to the wealth being generated will continue to dimish even when their wages themselves rise and that capitalism will become less and less and less productive and have to accumulate more and more of its profit margins by zero-sum measuresSeems to check out
>>25388999It isn't an inevitability in Marx, it requires thought and action. He wouldn't have written anything if he thought capitalism would resolve itself. It's about changing the future, not predicting it. Changing it requires making short and long term predictions, but it isn't the central focus.
>>25388915>, it cannot function, it will not function, without a segment of workers wanting being kept deliberately unemployed in order to make the other workers comply to avoid the same fate.in a "communist" society what is the answer? because this sounds like a not good thing, regardless of economic ideology long term.>>25388919does communism have an answer to this conundrum as well? besides putting up walls.
>>25389006Communism is organized on the basis of communes (soviets). Travel is open but to live among a community requires that community's soviet to approve your application through direct democracy of those you will be living among.
>>25388333>should I read Capital vol. 1?Capital vol. 1 is the introduction. That said, it's obviously necessary for understanding vol. 2 and vol. 3. >Is he worth reading to find out why society and the economy is going to shit as of recent?Absolutely. One of the most important writer to read in order to understand the modern era. >>25388341>Good diagnosis, terrible cureWell that's not even entirely wrong. However, you expect the guy who single handedly explained and theorized the internal contradiction in Capitalism, to propose immediately a turnkey solution immediately after. Thing is, it's you, who are supposed to find out how to get off this situation.
>>25388350Capitalism hasn't changed at all since 1850. Unironically. the core mecanisms are the same. Objective labor value, surplus value, rate of profit, Capital accumulation, rotation of Capital, tendency of the rate of profit to fall... These are all concepts that express themselves exactly the same today as in 1850. I would say it's even more important than before since Anwar Shaikh proved a very strong 0.9 correlation between labor and prices. This basically proved Marx was right.
>>25388355Increase in organic composition of labor do not increase, but decrease, the rate of profit.
>>25388393Lol, lmao even.What has Land offered of value beyond some amphetamine fueled speculative fiction?
>>25389887try reading him man
>>25388333Read this instead.
>>25388470>includes many ideas (like labor theory of value) which are theoretically interesting but irrelevant to understanding the modern economic landscapeI find that the true benefit of labour theory of value does not lie in it's economics but in it's philosophy. Once you truly understand that money is just a unit of quantified measure of combined human activity, you will never look at capital the same again.
>>25388333>Is he worth readingAs a left-hegelian, yes. Marx is the only hegelian thinker that actually grounds Hegel in the real world rather than speculative nonsense. His critique of the latter is that Reason is not something that unfolds through history as individuals come to realize certain things about themselves, but rather is socio-economically linked to the perspective that one holds through his class position. >the economy is going to shit as of recentNo. His immanent critique in the Capital has more or less been disproved. The only thing that is left really are the historic bits, the idea of surplus value, and the commodity fetishism part. The rest (LTV [snlt], TFRP, overproduction crisis, and econ calculation potential) has been disproved through empirical work (TRPF and overproduction crisis), or through issues within the book (the transformation problem).>>25388355>>25388368It's more complicated than that. Marx's initial claim was that at some point, the relations of production (i.e. how we organize labor) impede on the development of the productive forces (accumulated techniques, science, the means of production etc). The issue with this reading however is that it presupposes a teleologic reading that justifies the use of "development" rather than "change". After all, for something to be developed, it must have someone consciously try to change it. This is why, historically, most accounts of historical materialism have tried to smuggling in some teleologic premise back into the structure to justify the usage of development. Lenin did it unconsciously, the humanist tradition made it their entire argument, Althusser avoided it by considering the productive forces to already include a class, Mao was upfront about it etc. Most usually, it was done on the basis that development simply means "potential arrangement useful for one class". As such, through this reading, the capitalist relations of production impeded on the development of the productive forces for the proletariat class. To circle back to what you were saying, the idea that AI will develop in-itself and discharge the proletariat of its political power becomes wrong IF the productive forces come to serve the use of one class. If AI systematically deprives the proletariat of its labor-power, class struggle will come to be on the usage of AI. >>25388999>He wrote extensively about how and why capitalism will [...]Because that's not talking about the future, the point of the immanent critique he exposes is to show how, once properly understood, capitalism implies certain characteristics that render it inherently unstable (overproduction crisis and falling rate of profit). These in turn transform into class conflict.However, that's not making predictions, it's more akin to saying "if a man doesn't eat, he will be hungry". >>25390914This. The LTV has no explanatory power and doesn't describe econ phenomenas well, but it reminds you of what a commodity truly is.
>>25391161LTV is the only explanation of the phenomenon of currency, from shells and wampum to the petrodollar
The thing about communism is that it just keeps not fucking happening. The "real communism has never been tried" is kind of a cope, but more than that, we just keep not fucking getting there.Every single time the socialists meaningfully won power in a state, all that happened was the vanguard/party leader class formed a de facto aristocracy that retained all power for themselves, and then they never relinquished power, and just formed a command economy that they dictated downwards onto the proletariat.It happened in Russia, it happened (is still kind of happening) in China, it happened in North Korea, it happened in Cuba, it happened in Cambodia and then they just fucking started killing everybody, it happened in Vietnam too until they said "fuck it" and became capitalist.My impression is that "real" communism is basically supposed to be a kind of anarcho-democratic state in which both wealth and political power are shared collectively and social hierarchy melts away. But we keep not fucking getting there. It all keeps ending up in dictatorships and de facto aristocracies. And it's fair to ask, at this point, if that's just how it goes. That maybe "real" communism just isn't fucking happening. It's been almost 200 years.
>>25391180Cuba is extremely democratic and decentralized, guns are collectively owned by individual communes who have their own armories
>>25388368>I’m not saying it’ll happen next week but in 30 years? I think we’ll be getting there and in 50ish years we’ll be there.you are mentally challenged if you think it is even remotely feasible on that time frame
>>25391180>The thing about communism is that it just keeps not fucking happeningYeah because communism is not a state to achieve but a movement that attempts at abolishing the present state of things.>My impression is that "real" communism is basically supposed to be a kind of anarcho-democratic state in which both wealth and political power are shared collectively and social hierarchy melts awayCommunism is just whatever system pops up once capitalism is abolished by the proletariat. Leninist countries that you cited all failed at doing so because once the new "vanguard" got into power, they just used the state's power to extract money for themselves.
