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It sounds like he was just trying to play devil's advocate w/r/t the distinction between private and personal property.
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Feb 15, 2016 17:23
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if we can kindly stop posting about derailed marxthreads of yore and rather discuss things pertinent to this one i'll throw my proposal into the ring: the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall anyone want to write about that
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Feb 15, 2016 17:26
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Competing capitalists will produce ever more labor-reducing capital; profit is derived only from labor; therefore capital accumulation will necessarily reduce profit leading to crisis and, eventually, collapse.
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Feb 15, 2016 17:55
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The real controversies regarding the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is the question of how central it was to Marx's theories, whether it is the exclusive cause of economic crisis or just one factor among many, and also how one should measure "profit", since the Marxian definitions (since there is more than one definition offered) tend to be somewhat different than the ones used in marginalist economics. Depending on which contemporary academic Marxist you ask the tendency of the rate of profit to fall might be the single most important thing Marx ever wrote about or it might be a mostly irrelevant curiosity that is barely worth studying.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:27
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i was also considering a certain theorem and its pertinency to calling it a "law"
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Feb 15, 2016 19:32
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It doesn't seem to even exist, or if it does, is happening over such an extensive long-term scale as to be impossible to empirically study. I largely believe Okishio.
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Feb 15, 2016 20:17
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I think there's a confusion where some people interpret it to mean that it's a prediction that rates of profit will fall over time in the long term (which I'm not saying is necessarily untrue, some studies seem to confirm this) rather than what I think is the correct reading in that it's just describing a single "tendency" in a greater system, in the sense that if there was no other factors entering into the process profits would just fall over time, but since there are also many factors that produce the opposite tendency (technological innovation in the short term, imperialist expansion, lengthening of the working day, monopoly rent extraction, etc) then you don't necessarily observe that in practice
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Feb 15, 2016 20:39
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Helsing posted:The real controversies regarding the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is the question of how central it was to Marx's theories, whether it is the exclusive cause of economic crisis or just one factor among many, and also how one should measure "profit", since the Marxian definitions (since there is more than one definition offered) tend to be somewhat different than the ones used in marginalist economics. Wait, lets get this straight. There are two things here. First what Marx thought about TRPF and what his crisis theory was. Second, what do we classify as Marxism. In terms of the first, I think it's safe to say that TRPF was central to Marx's crisis theory.
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Feb 15, 2016 20:53
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V. Illych L. posted:i'll throw my proposal into the ring: the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall I'll do a real quick one I think the most up to date counter-argument to people dismissing the tendency is Kliman's Reclaiming Marx's Capital. Frankly I can't remember it very well and it was fairly over my head but iirc the very short argument is that the theories which 'disprove' the tendency don't actually behave in line with Marx's concepts (e.g. are not temporal, values of input and output must be the same). That is, while maybe mathematically correct, they have little to do with (what Kliman interprets as) Marx's arguments. imo the easiest way to understand some of this is video 7 here https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/marx-and-temporalism-a-tutorial/ where he starts showing the different tables. The blue one is the 'physicalist' interpretation which he is arguing against. Here you have some seed corn and you produce 1.25x your seed corn as output. Amount of labour stays the same no matter how much corn. This mimics labour-saving technology (produce more with same amount of human labour). If you keep the price of input and output corn the same, then - no falling rate of profit. Essentially that blue table shows the AMOUNT of corn you have, hence why it's 'physicalist'; the price doesn't matter since 1 bushel is always worth the same, it just goes up proportional to the amount of corn you have. The red table is the Marxist interpretation using LABOUR VALUE. The surplus value remains constant at 64 throughout as we are assuming the same amount of labour done no matter how much seed corn/output. Value then diverges from amount (therefore, price per bushel would go down - makes sense since you have more output from same amount of labour) - you get a falling rate of profit as surplus is smaller relative to input. Very sorry to keep banging on about the old thread but I spent some time on it  It is still in the gas chamber here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3543938 if people want to refer to it, the super-boringly named "Trends in Value Theory since 1881" linked in the OP is also very good on this topic
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Feb 15, 2016 22:48
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TSSI is so obsessed with fixing Marx that they quite unfortunately rob him of any explanatory power. It renders relevant criticism of Marx meaningless by rendering Marx's value system meaningless in turn. It's also more than a little obscurantist.
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Feb 15, 2016 23:12
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It strains credibility that someone could seriously claim the US prison system, as it exists today, is worse than the Soviet gulag system was. Amongst other things, the Soviets made political prisoners mine uranium without any protective equipment, and worked people literally to death in many other camps. They also used human experimentation (again on political prisoners) to develop better poisons and chemical weapons (and were still doing this right up through the 70s and 80s).
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Feb 15, 2016 23:13
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I don't think anyone but HorseLord is going to defend the worst of the gulags. That said, your complaint about the Soviets allowing uranium radiation to hurt their forced labourers is a bit of an odd choice since at the very same time in your glorious free market of America both the federal government and the free market deliberately allowed the Native Americans come to radiation poisoning harm. Oh look, they only passed a compensation act in 1990, just in time for the death of the Soviet Union.
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Feb 15, 2016 23:35
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Ormi posted:TSSI is so obsessed with fixing Marx that they quite unfortunately rob him of any explanatory power. It renders relevant criticism of Marx meaningless by rendering Marx's value system meaningless in turn. It's also more than a little obscurantist. I'd like more elaboration on this if you can give it, I don't see what in it makes anything meaningless. Also obscurantist is... pretty subjective when you're dealing with esoteric Marxist theory anyway
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Feb 16, 2016 00:02
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Could I interject in here? So I was wondering if I would be considered a Socialist, because I believe an ideal society is where you have competing firms completely owned and operated by their employees, with firms operating through democratic when large enough, committees. Does that make me a socialist? While aslso allowing for healthcare to be covered by the government or through private insurers.
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Feb 16, 2016 00:41
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Crowsbeak posted:Could I interject in here? So I was wondering if I would be considered a Socialist, because I believe an ideal society is where you have competing firms completely owned and operated by their employees, with firms operating through democratic when large enough, committees. Does that make me a socialist? While aslso allowing for healthcare to be covered by the government or through private insurers. Certainly socialist leaning. What you're discussing in terms of firms are co-operatives (which exist in the world right now, just often aren't as big as the megacorps). That can also be referred to as syndicalism, which is part of socialist and anarchist theory. Healthcare provided by the government is socialism, a mixture of public and private is social democracy and is the main form of healthcare provision around the world (the USA being the glaring exception).
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Feb 16, 2016 00:44
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Tesseraction posted:Certainly socialist leaning. What you're discussing in terms of firms are co-operatives (which exist in the world right now, just often aren't as big as the megacorps). That can also be referred to as syndicalism, which is part of socialist and anarchist theory. Healthcare provided by the government is socialism, a mixture of public and private is social democracy and is the main form of healthcare provision around the world (the USA being the glaring exception). I also will have to admit a affinity for Chesterton. I guess I am a Christian Syndicalist Democrat. If that makes any sense.
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Feb 16, 2016 01:04
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:I'd like more elaboration on this if you can give it, I don't see what in it makes anything meaningless. Also obscurantist is... pretty subjective when you're dealing with esoteric Marxist theory anyway I don't really have any interest in engaging the TSSI on its own level of wasted verbosity. However, for an example of what I mean, their fix to Okishio's theorem is to assume constantly matched increases to the real wage rate, which is more than a little against the spirit of Marx, don't you think?
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Feb 16, 2016 01:14
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asdf32 posted:Wait, lets get this straight. There are two things here. First what Marx thought about TRPF and what his crisis theory was. Second, what do we classify as Marxism. You have to remember that Marx was a prolific writer who died before his master work could be completed, leaving people around him to assemble the last volumes of Capital. Among other things that means various scholars since Marx's death have been able to hunt through his various writings and justify all kinds of different interpretations of his ideas. So Marxist scholars, such as Michael Heinrich, have even disputed your claim about the TRPF's centrality to crisis theory.
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Feb 16, 2016 01:53
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Crowsbeak posted:Could I interject in here? So I was wondering if I would be considered a Socialist, because I believe an ideal society is where you have competing firms completely owned and operated by their employees, with firms operating through democratic when large enough, committees. Does that make me a socialist? While aslso allowing for healthcare to be covered by the government or through private insurers. you're to the left of the European center-left, if that helps.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:26
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What are people's recommendations for expositions of Marxian economics? Capital is immensely long and 150 years old, so a little daunting and out of context. I'm familiar with the basics from the Fine/Saad-Filho book, if that helps.
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Feb 16, 2016 04:53
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Are there any good books on market oriented Syndicalism?
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Feb 16, 2016 05:48
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-Troika- posted:It strains credibility that someone could seriously claim the US prison system, as it exists today, is worse than the Soviet gulag system was. Amongst other things, the Soviets made political prisoners mine uranium without any protective equipment, and worked people literally to death in many other camps. They also used human experimentation (again on political prisoners) to develop better poisons and chemical weapons (and were still doing this right up through the 70s and 80s). I am more curious how historians will read mass incarceration in 50 years. Rape, solitary confinement, and the pervasive racism (which is akin to political prisoners) and overpopulation are really horrific making justification for why communism is bad and capitalism is good because of the gulags feel shallow and misleading.
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Feb 16, 2016 07:51
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Ormi posted:TSSI is so obsessed with fixing Marx that they quite unfortunately rob him of any explanatory power. It renders relevant criticism of Marx meaningless by rendering Marx's value system meaningless in turn. It's also more than a little obscurantist. How so, and according to whom?
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Feb 16, 2016 08:00
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Crowsbeak posted:Could I interject in here? So I was wondering if I would be considered a Socialist, because I believe an ideal society is where you have competing firms completely owned and operated by their employees, with firms operating through democratic when large enough, committees. Does that make me a socialist? While aslso allowing for healthcare to be covered by the government or through private insurers. That's very similar to anarcho-syndicalism, but to a certain extent socialism (as it's understood by Marxists) carries utopian implications that you don't seem to have.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:03
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Ormi posted:I don't really have any interest in engaging the TSSI on its own level of wasted verbosity. However, for an example of what I mean, their fix to Okishio's theorem is to assume constantly matched increases to the real wage rate, which is more than a little against the spirit of Marx, don't you think? Not completely sure what you're getting at - do you mean if capitalists cut wages in real terms (below the value of labour power) then you don't see a fall in profit (temporarily, at least)? I'd say the idea that capitalists have to take measures against the tendency of profit to fall, sometimes to the disadvantage of workers, IS Marxist and is exactly what Marx said and what I repeated in my first post. Sorry that you're uninterested, this is the Marxism thread though so I think other posters (including me) are likely to be interested if you can provide any links or anything 
Prism Mirror Lens fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 08:52
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Thug Lessons posted:That's very similar to anarcho-syndicalism, but to a certain extent socialism (as it's understood by Marxists) carries utopian implications that you don't seem to have. Aren't the works of Engels (and later Lenin and to a lesser extent Trotsky) meant to examine a practical application? I've not gotten to Engels after Marx's death but seem to recall he looked at this.
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Feb 16, 2016 13:06
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Tesseraction posted:Aren't the works of Engels (and later Lenin and to a lesser extent Trotsky) meant to examine a practical application? I've not gotten to Engels after Marx's death but seem to recall he looked at this. When I say utopian I mean that Marxism sees its historical goal as to completely reorder society in a way that eliminates class, exploitation and oppression, not as a slur.
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Feb 16, 2016 13:13
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Crowsbeak posted:Could I interject in here? So I was wondering if I would be considered a Socialist, because I believe an ideal society is where you have competing firms completely owned and operated by their employees, with firms operating through democratic when large enough, committees. Does that make me a socialist? While aslso allowing for healthcare to be covered by the government or through private insurers. Part of socialist thought, yes. The problem with an economy consisting purely of co-ops is that it's still going to be a market economy, with all the problems that causes - unemployment and underemployment being two severe ones. Having a co-op sector operating under market rules alongside a planned economy would be fine though, and probably to be encouraged. The co-ops would fill emerging gaps in products and services, and the planned sector would always be there to absorb the jobless and provide those services which you can't reasonably expect to be financially profitable (or being profitable without immoral behaviour). We see this in a prototypical form in the eastern bloc socialist countries, in a rapidly developing form in Modern Cuba, and a similar emphasis on direct worker control in Yugoslavia. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 13:42
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Uh, Yugoslavia?
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Feb 16, 2016 14:19
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Helsing posted:You have to remember that Marx was a prolific writer who died before his master work could be completed, leaving people around him to assemble the last volumes of Capital. Among other things that means various scholars since Marx's death have been able to hunt through his various writings and justify all kinds of different interpretations of his ideas. So Marxist scholars, such as Michael Heinrich, have even disputed your claim about the TRPF's centrality to crisis theory. Ok and are you willing to accept that as a valid interpretation of Marx? My post clearly implied I might not be. Or if Marx wrote a bunch of broadly reinterpretable stuff then it's case closed in regards to whether Marxism could possibly be considered an economic science which demands falsifiable specifics.
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Feb 16, 2016 15:53
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asdf32 posted:Ok and are you willing to accept that as a valid interpretation of Marx? My post clearly implied I might not be. Have you read Volume 3?
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Feb 16, 2016 16:03
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Tesseraction posted:Uh, Yugoslavia? They were big on worker's self management.
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Feb 16, 2016 16:04
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I think the complaint is the tense.
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Feb 16, 2016 16:09
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There's no problem with the tense, because Yugoslavia is still an example you can use. Knowledge of the country didn't vanish with the country itself.
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Feb 16, 2016 16:10
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HorseLord posted:They were big on worker's self management. Oh, you meant historically, I thought you meant on-going and was a little bit.  Thug Lessons posted:Have you read Volume 3? No-one reads Volume 3. 
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Feb 16, 2016 16:12
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asdf32 posted:Ok and are you willing to accept that as a valid interpretation of Marx? My post clearly implied I might not be. Based on my limited knowledge it seems like a plausible interpretation since the particular section of Marx's theory that we're discussing is largely derived from works that were published posthumously. But I'm not sure how much my opinion here is worth since to have a meaningful analysis you would likely need to have a deep familiarity with Marx's life, his private correspondences, his writing methods, and his relationship with Engels. For that matter you'd have to look at Michael Heinrich and the rest of his work and try to get a sense of how you feel about him as a scholar and what his agenda was for trying to reinterpret Marx in that way, and then you'd probably want to make an equally close study of the people disputing his new interpretation. Which is to say that for me to have a meaningfully strong opinion on what you're asking would entail a shitload of work and reading I haven't had a chance to do and am unlikely to do in the near future. To be perfectly blunt, I cannot say I'm terribly surprised to hear you are already prepared to have a strong opinion on a subject I'm reasonably confident you haven't read very much about. I'm still a bit burned out from our last conversation when it became clear you'd never encountered the concept of "Monopoly power" in economics or law, and yet this didn't stop you from having really strong opinions on the subject. quote:Or if Marx wrote a bunch of broadly reinterpretable stuff then it's case closed in regards to whether Marxism could possibly be considered an economic science which demands falsifiable specifics. Marx initiated a research program that has yielded some fruitful and lasting insights into the operations of human society, and his ideas continue to form part of the bedrock of many modern disciplines from sociology and history down to mainstream economics ("creative destruction" is just Marx with a Schumpeterian gloss, for instance). Whether or not it's an "economic science" is hard to say without knowing what exactly you mean by "economic science", since that's a contested term to begin with, and without really knowing what degree of falsifiable specifics you think is the standard in most economic paradigms.
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Feb 16, 2016 17:35
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If Marx's approach to looking at the world is not scientific, it is at least materialistically critical, which is a substantial improvement over most of its direct competitors.
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Feb 16, 2016 18:20
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Not completely sure what you're getting at - do you mean if capitalists cut wages in real terms (below the value of labour power) then you don't see a fall in profit (temporarily, at least)? I'd say the idea that capitalists have to take measures against the tendency of profit to fall, sometimes to the disadvantage of workers, IS Marxist and is exactly what Marx said and what I repeated in my first post. Yes, though not necessarily below the cost of labor power. Oshikio's theorem sets out to prove that, given a constant real wage rate (which means a decreasing wage share), profits for all firms who adopt an innovative technique in a department increase. A decreasing wage rate would of course increase profits as well. TSSI never refuted this, they've only ever made vague motions to the idea that, well, the economy sure is a complex thing, huh? How could we really be sure input and output prices generally remain the same (which, de-obfuscated, means the real wage rate might be increasing)? Fortunately, empirical reality saves the day, because we currently live in a time where profits are soaring high and the real wage rate has been stagnant for decades. You'll have to look up and purchase the spat between Laibman and Kliman yourself, sorry, it doesn't seem to be anywhere online, which isn't surprising, because it's a complete waste of time unless you wish to imagine yourself as a wizened steward of the arcane. Ormi fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 20:57
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I haven't looked at Laibman's response but I was convinced by Kliman's case that the real wage was not stagnant but in fact rising (when you account for both employer and government benefits rather than raw income) prior to the 2008 crisis.
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Feb 16, 2016 21:00
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Thug Lessons posted:I haven't looked at Laibman's response but I was convinced by Kliman's case that the real wage was not stagnant but in fact rising (when you account for both employer and government benefits rather than raw income) prior to the 2008 crisis. Not for men, who actually see a drop using compensation indices. You see, when you gain something you didn't have before, your marginal gain of that thing is 100%. Andrew Kliman is in good company as a Marxist, though, the WSJ loves this idea, especially because more educated people see vastly higher increases.
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Feb 16, 2016 21:28
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