Marx and Automation
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Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended.
Really? The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.(Capital vol 1 ch 1) Has this ended?
When all you have is a single limited theory of socialism, then any “ immense accumulation of commodities,” looks like capitalism to be stamped out. I think the hypothetical general store is an "immense accumulation of commodities". So the theoretical socialist general store is capitalsm becuase inside of it is an immense (indead unlimited) accumulation of commodities, by your own logic. Elephants, monkeys have tails and sharks have tails but jellyfish do not. If you are a jelly fish, all things with tails seem the same thing. You're a fool if you think the existence of innequality or oppression or whatever means capitalism. There's lots of things that aren't capitalism and different kinds of capitalism. And you're a fool if you're a jellyfish afraid of elephants. So don't be a jelly fish and learn to recognize the difference between an elephant and a shark. There's more to the tail than meets the eye. But, as a jelly fish you think, "whatever, they're all bad and all have tails and none of them are true jellyfish (socialist)." And then a monkey kills off all the sharks for you.
That is not the answer that Robbo203 was looking for , since you know more than Karl Marx and has spent more time than him studying and reseraching on Political Economic, at least, should have given the definition of what a commodity is , and why , or how the accumulation of commodities has ended.Your answer shows that you do not know anything. You were laughing because we said that the Socialist Party has turned difficult concept into simple explanation, the article below confirms that idea, because the first chapter of Das Capital only present difficulty for mos reader, and even Marx admitted on the preface, when he said that every beginning present certain type of difficultieshttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1950s/1951/no-566-october-1951/what- is a commodity. This is the answer that Robbo was looking for, he is not looking for the Mumble-Jumble that you wrote. The production of commodity has not ended yet, and that is one of the merit of Marx who discovered that the fundamental basis of this society is the commodity, and in order to understand it you should have read volume one of Das Kapital, and the concept is defined right at the very beginning of chapter one. Robbo has cited it ( Vol 1, Ch 1 ) http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1357-september-2017/world-without-commodities. We have not reached this yethttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1920/no-195-november-1920/commodity-struggle-or-class-struggle. Commodity struggke. The worker continue selling his/her commodity which is his/her labour force
@AlanJohnstone,thanks for the link which I did not notice before. I spent some of my time to follow your link and read the article fully.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I wonder if either of you took the time to follow the links in the posted article that cast much doubt about the validity of it.http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-market-power-story.htmlIt also contains further links of criticism of the original paper for yourselves to follow up.But as i said, i'm no economist, (much less a physicist) but i always go by the axiom there is more to things than meets the eye.Quote:"In 1980, average markups start to rise from 18% above marginal cost to 67% now." That sounds like big news, and probably it is. But I don’t think the authors are doing enough to interpret their results. There are two ways these mark-ups go could up: first there may be more outright monopoly, second there may be more monopolistic competition, with high mark-ups but also high fixed costs, and firms earning close to zero profits. The two scenarios have very different distributional implications, and different policy implications as well.http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/08/rise-market-power.htmlI leave to others more well-read and better versed in the subject to respond.
I appreciate the link you were allowed to include and the quote you were allowed to include in your comment. I went to your page and wrote something on it too share my thoughts. When I returned to the page you were allowed to link to in this forum without any mod complaining I read something I would like to quote for you if the mods would allow it.
Quote:My opinion is there's a third option not being considered. The rise in markups seems to match the rise in wealth innequalty. capitalist market pricing theory predicts if you have a larger difference between rich and poor shoppers then you raise your price. There's a big difference between a capitalist market where all your customers have exactly the same amount of money and supply vs a capitalist market where your customers are made of a few very very rich people and a lot of very poor people. Think about what happens as a retailer when you have a customer base of 1000 people who all earn $10/hr and how you price that product. Then think about what happens as a retailer when you havea customer base of 900 people who all earn $1/hr and 100 people who earn $900/hr. How does that change the most profitable price you want put on your price tag to make the most money as a retailer? A smart retailer would incrase the markup whenever innequality increases. And that's what I think is happening mostly, but the other things are probably happening too and the objections and alternatives presented in your link are worth consideration and probably valid as far as I can tell. I just think the natural profit seeking behavior of the retailer in a highly wealth innequality marketplace explains most of the data. You make a false equivalency between “markup on a single product” and “profit of a business unit” in your reasoning and then conflate that with class transfers of wealth It happens about mid way through the argument that leads you to make a logical fallacy of composition. Epipeen Profit or NiKie quarterly dividents and “Sales markup” on a single Epipeen or NiKie are not connected in many real world examples. You falsely assume what’s true for a single average product sale is true for all business sales. Treating a largely unequal data set as a homogenous average is the main problem I see in your logic. In your reasoning you’re using an average value for increasingly in-equal individual productivity and individual personal demand. In general there’s just a confusion introduced into the logical argument because “yes, you can increase markup and lose profit at the same time. You can also increase markup and go out of business because all things are NOT equal in the economy. And by “NOT equal” I mean that an average value for all things instead of a discrete examination of variation and variable counts would solve your logic flaws.Sorry I think I’m repeating myself and just brainstorming and thinking out loud for you. Good luck with you strategy and argument. Consider my feedback please.Thanks, http://codeforsanfrancisco.org/projects/hOurs-Equals-Price-Project.Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended.Really? The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.(Capital vol 1 ch 1) Has this ended?
When all you have is a single limited theory of socialism, then any “ immense accumulation of commodities,” looks like capitalism to be stamped out. I think the hypothetical general store is an "immense accumulation of commodities". So the theoretical socialist general store is capitalsm becuase inside of it is an immense (indead unlimited) accumulation of commodities, by your own logic.
What on earth are you talking about? I can make no sense of this response whatsoever. How is it the case that "by my own logic", socialism too will exhibit an "immense accumulation of commodities"? You apprently do not understand what a commodity is. It is not an object or good providing use value per se. Rather , it is good that is specifically produced for sale on a market. What characterises capitalism is that most goods are produced for same. i.e. there is generalised commodity production. In socialism there are no commodities whatsoever. There are goods providing use value, certainly, but these goods are not bought and sold. They are not commodities.That is because socialism is not a market exchange economy. Market exchange implies private or sectional ownersjip of the mean of wealth production but in socialism those means are owned in common, by everyone. If you own something you dont need to exchange something else for it in order to gain the right to access to the thing in question, That is why in socialism there will be no commodities and, therefore, "immense accumulation of commodities"
robbo203 wrote:MBellemare wrote:I never said Marx's critique is no longer valid, I said it is marginalized, i.e., that capitalism functions according to a different, post-modern, post-industrial logic, that no longer holds scientific quantification of labor-power as first and foremost, but merely as a secondary minor consideration. What was in Marx's time an exception, i.e., the arbitrary construction of values, prices, and wages, where no labor-power is found, is now primary. That is all I've said. Marx readily admits that value and price can be dreamed-up and applied to thing. I merely state that now this sort of thing is primary to any quantifiable theory/law of value. By doing this, I can rightly explain from a post-industrial, post-modern point of view, why prices are rising as production costs drop, why there is ever-increasing financial inequality, why there is an ever-increasing debt load dropped upon the working population. Mr. San Francisco, supplied some excellent statistics, which prove my thesis, concerning arbitrary, artificial mark-ups, that continually rise, over the last 40 years.Michel Something does not quite add up in this argument you present of steadily rising prices and falling costs of production. Another forum user here, Steve San Francisco, comes to your aid by presenting the following evidence: “According to economists Jan De Loecker of Princteon University and Jan Eeckhout of the University College London, this basically describes the US economy since 1980. In a recently released paper, De Loecker and Eeckhout analyzed the balance sheets of listed companies from 1950 to 2014. (In 2014, these firms accounted for around 40% of all sales.) They found that average markups, defined as the amount above cost at which a product is sold, have shot up since 1980. The average markup was 18% in 1980, but by 2014 it was nearly 70%." However such evidence hardly clinches the argument for the obvious reason provided in the quote itself – that the firms concerned account for only 40% of all sales. We do not know what the situation is regarding firms accounting for the other 60% of all sales. It is quite conceivable that the former have been able to substantially raise their prices because of the changing pattern of supply and demand but at the expense of the latter, perhaps because relatively greater productivity in the latter sector has greatly increased the output of goods there bringing about a fall in their relative prices. In fact, according to this article I came across, there are “seven categories of goods and services that are comparatively cheaper today than they were 10 years ago. All figures are based on a BLS comparison of like products and services from August 1998 and August 2008.” These include phones, electronics, footwear, new vehicles, toys, apparel, watches” (http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/7-falling-price-tags-1.aspx) So the picture you present is somewhat misleading – some businesses or industries may have been able make substantial mark-ups but only because other businesses of industries have not been able to do so. So what you have in fact is a shift in the overall pattern of demand from the latter to the former, relatively speaking.
Can anyone provide some data concerning the average mark up for industry as a whole not just a select number of businesses, as in the above quote, that account for only 40 per cent of total sales?
@Marcos + Robbo203,
Marcos wrote:That is not the answer that Robbo203 was looking for , since you know more than Karl Marx and has spent more time than him studying and reseraching on Political Economic, at least, should have given the definition of what a commodity is , and why , or how the accumulation of commodities has ended.Your answer shows that you do not know anything. You were laughing because we said that the Socialist Party has turned difficult concept into simple explanation, the article below confirms that idea, because the first chapter of Das Capital only present difficulty for mos reader, and even Marx admitted on the preface, when he said that every beginning present certain type of difficultieshttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1950s/1951/no-566-october-1951/what- is a commodity. This is the answer that Robbo was looking for, he is not looking for the Mumble-Jumble that you wrote. The production of commodity has not ended yet, and that is one of the merit of Marx who discovered that the fundamental basis of this society is the commodity, and in order to understand it you should have read volume one of Das Kapital, and the concept is defined right at the very beginning of chapter one. Robbo has cited it ( Vol 1, Ch 1 ) http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1357-september-2017/world-without-commodities. We have not reached this yethttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1920/no-195-november-1920/commodity-struggle-or-class-struggle. Commodity struggke. The worker continue selling his/her commodity which is his/her labour forceI think Robo203 can speak for himself. But I'll wager 1 hour of yout time reading on a topid the other chooses based on Robo203's sole determination of whom he feels owes whom an hour reading. for his service as judge Robo203's can also add an hour of time and any reading comprehension quizes to the wage and he gets to choose the topic the loser has to read. Care to put your means and abilitiy where your mouth is? If you're more than just an angry idiot then put up or shut up and let robo203 decide in his sole discretion and at his sole judgement criteria who he wants to spend an hour of time reading what. That would be the socialist way if you can see past your preconceptioins to recognize it and not get all scardy cat of an hours time lost having to think and answer a few simple reading comprehension questions. You accused me of caliming I know more than Karl Marx? So socialist defer to elites and prestigious figures to settle arguments? what difference does it make if I know more than Karl Marx except for offending your religous veneration of him which I don't think he would have wanted anyway. I want you to consider the phrase "I stand on the shoulders of genious" and consider what that might mean. I read a few marx books and summaries in college long ago and it had a profound effect on me, but clearly wasn't relevant or actionable so I didn't get much value from practicing it or talking about it most of the time. I have spent a lot of time studying human behavior in capitalist markets, usually on the inside doing some horibble job to survive making presentations for the very worst of capitalist because you got to pay the rent. Speaking of which I need a roommate now and I have one of the last rent controlled wharehouse bohemian room shares in SF that I'm renting at an incredibly low price because that's the law, and I completely approve of the law and my rent control and you have me all wrong because of your preconceptioins. Political Economic is just part of what I study and it was just part of what Marx studied. I have come after marx and my genious is added to his not in competition with his genious. Please don't apply the law of competition to me and marx because that's a capitalist way of thinking.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:I think Robo203 can speak for himself. But I'll wager 1 hour of yout time reading on a topid the other chooses based on Robo203's sole determination of whom he feels owes whom an hour reading. for his service as judge Robo203's can also add an hour of time and any reading comprehension quizes to the wage and he gets to choose the topic the loser has to read. Care to put your means and abilitiy where your mouth is? If you're more than just an angry idiot then put up or shut up and let robo203 decide in his sole discretion and at his sole judgement criteria who he wants to spend an hour of time reading what. That would be the socialist way if you can see past your preconceptioins to recognize it and not get all scardy cat of an hours time lost having to think and answer a few simple reading comprehension questions. You accused me of caliming I know more than Karl Marx? So socialist defer to elites and prestigious figures to settle arguments? what difference does it make if I know more than Karl Marx except for offending your religous veneration of him which I don't think he would have wanted anyway. I want you to consider the phrase "I stand on the shoulders of genious" and consider what that might mean. I read a few marx books and summaries in college long ago and it had a profound effect on me, but clearly wasn't relevant or actionable so I didn't get much value from practicing it or talking about it most of the time. I have spent a lot of time studying human behavior in capitalist markets, usually on the inside doing some horibble job to survive making presentations for the very worst of capitalist because you got to pay the rent. Speaking of which I need a roommate now and I have one of the last rent controlled wharehouse bohemian room shares in SF that I'm renting at an incredibly low price because that's the law, and I completely approve of the law and my rent control and you have me all wrong because of your preconceptioins. Political Economic is just part of what I study and it was just part of what Marx studied. I have come after marx and my genious is added to his not in competition with his genious. Please don't apply the law of competition to me and marx because that's a capitalist way of thinking.Could you please stop wandering all over the place and address the argument in a simple straightforward fashion. I find your style f argumentation distracting and frustrating, frankly
robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended.Really? The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.(Capital vol 1 ch 1) Has this ended?
When all you have is a single limited theory of socialism, then any “ immense accumulation of commodities,” looks like capitalism to be stamped out. I think the hypothetical general store is an "immense accumulation of commodities". So the theoretical socialist general store is capitalsm becuase inside of it is an immense (indead unlimited) accumulation of commodities, by your own logic.
What on earth are you talking about? I can make no sense of this response whatsoever. How is it the case that "by my own logic", socialism too will exhibit an "immense accumulation of commodities"? You apprently do not understand what a commodity is. It is not an object or good providing use value per se. Rather , it is good that is specifically produced for sale on a market. What characterises capitalism is that most goods are produced for same. i.e. there is generalised commodity production. In socialism there are no commodities whatsoever. There are goods providing use value, certainly, but these goods are not bought and sold. They are not commodities.That is because socialism is not a market exchange economy. Market exchange implies private or sectional ownersjip of the mean of wealth production but in socialism those means are owned in common, by everyone. If you own something you dont need to exchange something else for it in order to gain the right to access to the thing in question, That is why in socialism there will be no commodities and, therefore, "immense accumulation of commodities"
No. That's not what Marx or I meant in every case that we use the phrase "immense accumulation of commodities". I'm refering to a region of space like a store where an immense collection of things like toasters and blenders (aka commodities) are accumulated. You could define "an immense accumulation of commodities" with geography and a map in the lexicon of discusstion that's relevant and I'm using. Capitalist call that a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Socialist call it a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Or it could be a non-tangible region of information space like a bank account that is an "immense accumulation of commodities". or it couild be an abstract class like "the bourgious" that is an "immense accumulation of commodities". this understanding and apparently weird pre-conception of the phrase "an imese accumuluation of commodities" is needed to understand what I wrote. Try again without your preconceptioins please. I am not exactly focused on discussing macro-ecomic class flows as they relate to the capitalist market in a marxian lexicon. I'm discussing behavioral economics and institutional economics as it relates to and impacts macro-ecomomic value flows between psuedoclasses that are loosely analogous to what marx described. This theory doesn't come from marx, it's just consistent with marx and affects some fine details that lead tp a solution to some problems marx left incomplete. Marx didn't have the advantage of a well developed science of behavioral and institutional economics. Nor did he have the fuzzy logig math required to understand some of the implications for ecomomics.
robbo203 wrote:robbo203 wrote:MBellemare wrote:I never said Marx's critique is no longer valid, I said it is marginalized, i.e., that capitalism functions according to a different, post-modern, post-industrial logic, that no longer holds scientific quantification of labor-power as first and foremost, but merely as a secondary minor consideration. What was in Marx's time an exception, i.e., the arbitrary construction of values, prices, and wages, where no labor-power is found, is now primary. That is all I've said. Marx readily admits that value and price can be dreamed-up and applied to thing. I merely state that now this sort of thing is primary to any quantifiable theory/law of value. By doing this, I can rightly explain from a post-industrial, post-modern point of view, why prices are rising as production costs drop, why there is ever-increasing financial inequality, why there is an ever-increasing debt load dropped upon the working population. Mr. San Francisco, supplied some excellent statistics, which prove my thesis, concerning arbitrary, artificial mark-ups, that continually rise, over the last 40 years.Michel Something does not quite add up in this argument you present of steadily rising prices and falling costs of production. Another forum user here, Steve San Francisco, comes to your aid by presenting the following evidence: “According to economists Jan De Loecker of Princteon University and Jan Eeckhout of the University College London, this basically describes the US economy since 1980. In a recently released paper, De Loecker and Eeckhout analyzed the balance sheets of listed companies from 1950 to 2014. (In 2014, these firms accounted for around 40% of all sales.) They found that average markups, defined as the amount above cost at which a product is sold, have shot up since 1980. The average markup was 18% in 1980, but by 2014 it was nearly 70%." However such evidence hardly clinches the argument for the obvious reason provided in the quote itself – that the firms concerned account for only 40% of all sales. We do not know what the situation is regarding firms accounting for the other 60% of all sales. It is quite conceivable that the former have been able to substantially raise their prices because of the changing pattern of supply and demand but at the expense of the latter, perhaps because relatively greater productivity in the latter sector has greatly increased the output of goods there bringing about a fall in their relative prices. In fact, according to this article I came across, there are “seven categories of goods and services that are comparatively cheaper today than they were 10 years ago. All figures are based on a BLS comparison of like products and services from August 1998 and August 2008.” These include phones, electronics, footwear, new vehicles, toys, apparel, watches” (http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/7-falling-price-tags-1.aspx) So the picture you present is somewhat misleading – some businesses or industries may have been able make substantial mark-ups but only because other businesses of industries have not been able to do so. So what you have in fact is a shift in the overall pattern of demand from the latter to the former, relatively speaking.
Can anyone provide some data concerning the average mark up for industry as a whole not just a select number of businesses, as in the above quote, that account for only 40 per cent of total sales?
Gee, those are some pretty well funded researchers that came up with the 40% figure. I don't think any data that comprehensive and consolidated exists outside of deep capitalist HQ information vaults. I think I did a presentation for an internal document when I was working as a presentation specialist under a CEO as a temp replacement for Kaiser Permenente when they were making internal pitches for their takeover of some otrher large HMO that put the number for their industry at 43% but that was back in 2005 and obvously was never published since it was just an argument between CEO's that I got dragged into for making presentations on. They had the error bars and it seemed pretty inclusive of the HMO market for America, but back tracking exactly what percentage of the whole market and doign the math is just too much effort for me and anyway, I obvously can't prove it. I was working for the evil ALEC back in 2003 before anyone knew how evil they were. I was called in to do database work and creating mail merges when I ran accross something talking about how some law or another would increase average markups for business that was being sent out to business members of alec to fund speaking events to politiicians. But again, they were so paranoid they wouldn't even let me take anythign but the clothing I wore into the room to work on their database so I can't prove any thing. Except maybe if I tried real hard I might be able to find some evidence I worked for them if I had a pay stub and you could get Adecco Temp agency in upstate NY to look through their records. LOL good luck with that. Did you try folllowing the links to the original document and then looking at the original work. If they're decent scientist they should have an estimate and error estimates for how representative that was in a section on "assumptions and assumption testing" or maybe it might be in a section callled "possisble systemic errors and bias in the study".
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:No. That's not what Marx or I meant in every case that we use the phrase "immense accumulation of commodities". I'm refering to a region of space like a store where an immense collection of things like toasters and blenders (aka commodities) are accumulated. You could define "an immense accumulation of commodities" with geography and a map in the lexicon of discusstion that's relevant and I'm using. Capitalist call that a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Socialist call it a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities".I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall here. You clearly dont understand what a "commodity" is if you think a non market socialist system of production is one in which there will be "an immense accumulation of commodities". Everyone, apart from you, seems to understand that socialism in the Marxian senses entails the abolition of commodity production. Your eccentric interpretation is something that is unique to you alone, dont bring Marx into the picture. He would have guffawed heartily at such an example of profound ignorance on the subject Incidentally "toasters and blenders" are emphaticaly NOT "aka" commodities. They only become commoditiies when they are produced for the express purpose of being sold. This is so basic and elementray I have no idea why you can't seem to get your head around it
robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:No. That's not what Marx or I meant in every case that we use the phrase "immense accumulation of commodities". I'm refering to a region of space like a store where an immense collection of things like toasters and blenders (aka commodities) are accumulated. You could define "an immense accumulation of commodities" with geography and a map in the lexicon of discusstion that's relevant and I'm using. Capitalist call that a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Socialist call it a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities".I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall here. You clearly dont understand what a "commodity" is if you think a non market socialist system of production is one in which there will be "an immense accumulation of commodities". Everyone, apart from you, seems to understand that socialism in the Marxian senses entails the abolition of commodity production. Your eccentric interpretation is something that is unique to you alone, dont bring Marx into the picture. He would have guffawed heartily at such an example of profound ignorance on the subject
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service ("products" or "activities"[1]) produced by human labour[2] and offered as a product for general sale on the market.[3] Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_(Marxism)I understand your definition of commodity well enough I think. that definition from wikipedia is more right than wrong isn't it? Do you not understand the definition of the word "accumulate" maybe? I can link to that too you need help. Or is it just when you put them together that your preconceptions prevent you from understanding? you have a prek-conception about what marx meant that somehow makes one region of space called a store "an immense collection of commodities" in capitalism and if you change government to true socialism then that same region of space called a store is no longer "an immense collection of commodities"? can you explain how this works in more detail? the way I interpret Marx, A general store in capitalism or in communism is "an immense collection of commoodities".
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:robbo203 wrote:robbo203 wrote:MBellemare wrote:I never said Marx's critique is no longer valid, I said it is marginalized, i.e., that capitalism functions according to a different, post-modern, post-industrial logic, that no longer holds scientific quantification of labor-power as first and foremost, but merely as a secondary minor consideration. What was in Marx's time an exception, i.e., the arbitrary construction of values, prices, and wages, where no labor-power is found, is now primary. That is all I've said. Marx readily admits that value and price can be dreamed-up and applied to thing. I merely state that now this sort of thing is primary to any quantifiable theory/law of value. By doing this, I can rightly explain from a post-industrial, post-modern point of view, why prices are rising as production costs drop, why there is ever-increasing financial inequality, why there is an ever-increasing debt load dropped upon the working population. Mr. San Francisco, supplied some excellent statistics, which prove my thesis, concerning arbitrary, artificial mark-ups, that continually rise, over the last 40 years.Michel Something does not quite add up in this argument you present of steadily rising prices and falling costs of production. Another forum user here, Steve San Francisco, comes to your aid by presenting the following evidence: “According to economists Jan De Loecker of Princteon University and Jan Eeckhout of the University College London, this basically describes the US economy since 1980. In a recently released paper, De Loecker and Eeckhout analyzed the balance sheets of listed companies from 1950 to 2014. (In 2014, these firms accounted for around 40% of all sales.) They found that average markups, defined as the amount above cost at which a product is sold, have shot up since 1980. The average markup was 18% in 1980, but by 2014 it was nearly 70%." However such evidence hardly clinches the argument for the obvious reason provided in the quote itself – that the firms concerned account for only 40% of all sales. We do not know what the situation is regarding firms accounting for the other 60% of all sales. It is quite conceivable that the former have been able to substantially raise their prices because of the changing pattern of supply and demand but at the expense of the latter, perhaps because relatively greater productivity in the latter sector has greatly increased the output of goods there bringing about a fall in their relative prices. In fact, according to this article I came across, there are “seven categories of goods and services that are comparatively cheaper today than they were 10 years ago. All figures are based on a BLS comparison of like products and services from August 1998 and August 2008.” These include phones, electronics, footwear, new vehicles, toys, apparel, watches” (http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/7-falling-price-tags-1.aspx) So the picture you present is somewhat misleading – some businesses or industries may have been able make substantial mark-ups but only because other businesses of industries have not been able to do so. So what you have in fact is a shift in the overall pattern of demand from the latter to the former, relatively speaking.
Can anyone provide some data concerning the average mark up for industry as a whole not just a select number of businesses, as in the above quote, that account for only 40 per cent of total sales?
Gee, those are some pretty well funded researchers that came up with the 40% figure. I don't think any data that comprehensive and consolidated exists outside of deep capitalist HQ information vaults.
So essentially what this boils down to saying is that there is no hard emprical eviidence to back up the claim that businesses across the board can just arbitrarily mark up their prices in the face of (allegedly) falling production costs and this rather calls into question Michel's whole thesis that Marx's theory has been "marginalised" by the supposed ability of modern day businesses, using their "creative power" to enhance the value of commodities, in general, way above their abstract labour content. Some commodities may well sell above their value in the Marxian sense but the logical corrollary of this is that others sell below their value since the total sum of values must in the end equate with the total sum of prices
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:No. That's not what Marx or I meant in every case that we use the phrase "immense accumulation of commodities". I'm refering to a region of space like a store where an immense collection of things like toasters and blenders (aka commodities) are accumulated. You could define "an immense accumulation of commodities" with geography and a map in the lexicon of discusstion that's relevant and I'm using. Capitalist call that a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Socialist call it a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities".I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall here. You clearly dont understand what a "commodity" is if you think a non market socialist system of production is one in which there will be "an immense accumulation of commodities". Everyone, apart from you, seems to understand that socialism in the Marxian senses entails the abolition of commodity production. Your eccentric interpretation is something that is unique to you alone, dont bring Marx into the picture. He would have guffawed heartily at such an example of profound ignorance on the subject
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service ("products" or "activities"[1]) produced by human labour[2] and offered as a product for general sale on the market.[3] Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_(Marxism)I understand your definition of commodity well enough I think. that definition from wikipedia is more right than wrong isn't it? Do you not understand the definition of the word "accumulate" maybe? I can link to that too you need help. Or is it just when you put them together that your preconceptions prevent you from understanding? you have a prek-conception about what marx meant that somehow makes one region of space called a store "an immense collection of commodities" in capitalism and if you change government to true socialism then that same region of space called a store is no longer "an immense collection of commodities"? can you explain how this works in more detail? the way I interpret Marx, A general store in capitalism or in communism is "an immense collection of commoodities".
I will try to spell this out for you as simply as I can.In a socialist economy there will be no buying or selling of any kind.Therefore, if you look at the part of the quote from wikipedia that I have marked in bold, you will see that by DEFINITION, there can be no commodities in a socialist society because there is no buting or selling!!!!!!
Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:
competing paradigms…[manifest]… different worlds. [Each is] looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But …they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Before they can hope to communicate fully, one…or the other…must experience a paradigm shift. It is a transition between incommensurables [and] the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all…The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Conversion will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, [and then] the whole [society]…will again be…under a single, but now a different, paradigm.
And as I like to say, "some only turn towards verity, grudgingly and with much anguish!"
MBellemare wrote:Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:
competing paradigms…[manifest]… different worlds. [Each is] looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But …they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Before they can hope to communicate fully, one…or the other…must experience a paradigm shift. It is a transition between incommensurables [and] the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all…The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Conversion will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, [and then] the whole [society]…will again be…under a single, but now a different, paradigm.
And as I like to say, "some only turn towards verity, grudgingly and with much anguish!"
The problem is that you see a post industrial society from your very limited perspective of cosy North American academia.Try telling this to the billions of Chinese and Indians (and others) who are now being dragooned into factories, former peasants being starved and displaced into the ranks of the proletariate. Is this a post industrial society for them? Try telling the banks of minimum wage Brits working in call centres, that their industrial scale employment is non exploitative and isn't part of the accumulation of capital by the small minority who own and control!Your ascertion, that you have come up with some kind of novel solution, the concept of a collection of self contained cooperative communities, is a laughable re run of the failed ideas of Prudhon.Merely paraphrasing crude, sentimentalist incantations about "the rabble" doesn't make you a revolutionary, any more than Johnny Rotten wearing bondage trousers and putting safety pins through his nose made him an anarchist. Sadly it shows you up as just another wannabe anarchist poseur, attempting to look wind swept and interesting. Another sheep in wolf's clothing.
MBellemare wrote:Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:Michel I hope this is not an endorsement on your part, as an anarchist, of Steve San Francisco's ludicrous statement:Capitalist call that a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Socialist call it a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". As an anarchist, I take it you would agree that the kind of society we are all looking toward – socialsm – would indeed entail the complete disappearance of all commodity production – of buying and seling – however much we might disagree on how to get there On the question of examining the evidence objectively I am very keen to do precisely that. Ive cited some evidence already that seems to call into question your central thesis that Marx.'s Labour Theory of Value has been effectively marginalied by modern or, should I say, post modern developments. I am not convinced by your argument but I am open to persuasion. I think the argument you have presented thus far is too one sided and fails to see the wood for the trees, In relative tems, though some prices have risen sharply, for reasons such as branding (although I think you overlook the costs of marketing which have also to be factored into the equation), others have fallen as you would expect with rising industrial productivity and declining unit costs (adjusted for inflation) Could you perhaps address some of the concerns that I raised in post 129?
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