Marx and Automation
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Matt wrote:Quote:There is a lot of money swilling around in their hands but they find it increasingly difficult (relatively speaking) to productively reinvest it. Which is why some big corporations are sitting on big piles of the stuff and why you find an increasing tendency for the super rich to splash out on the unproductive consumption of status goods like posh houses and fancy yachts..
Conspicuous consumption has always been a feature of the parasite class and their offspring. The desperation to find new areas ot invest in was what led to the speculative behaviour prior to the crash.
And it does not mean that the rate of profit is not declining either. The decline of the rate of profit is not the cause of the crisis either, it is the super-production the one that produces the crisis, it is the chaotic operation of the capitalist system. Marx was not mistaken, mistaken are his epigones,He has mentioned that the price of a car is increasing instead of being decreased, but he mentioned the BMW, the Mercedes Benz, but those are branded names, and they are luxury cars, and they have limited production, a Nissan would cost 1/3 or maybe less the price of those luxury cars. That luxury car pay high importation taxesOld cars were cheaper, but they did not have the technology invested in the new car, they were unsafe to be driven, they were heavier and consume more gasoline and oil ( the price of gasoline was 0.25 ) the same technology invested in the old cars would have increased the price to triples their actual price. In North America, there are more workers driving a new car than old cars, and some old car now cost more than the new car when they are rebuilt.Leasing is another story, car dealers make more money in leasing than in financing, because they are able to play with the sticker price ( known as MSRP ) and they can add more cost such as theft insurance, Gap insurance, maintenance insurance, double taxation ( fee income for the state ) and peoples buy them because they only look at the monthly payments, and they must give higher down payment, and they are needed in places where workers do not have good public transportation system
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/10/chinas-gac-could-sell-suv-in-u-s-for-small-car-price-by-2019/Chinese cars are going to be sold in the USA in 2019. The selling price of those cars will force others manufacturers to compete with the prices of the cars manufactured in China. It is the same case of the cars that were manufactured in Japan at the very beginning that they started. The logic of operation of capitalism is different to melancholic ideas A "Chinese Rolls Royce" or similar car will be sold for $30,000 in the world market, it is the same price of a Honda EXL, or Touring, and cheaper than a BMW, MB, Audi, and Porsche, which means that in the roads we are going to see many workers driving Rolls Royce and Bentley
https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/11/28/china-soon-to-have-almost-as-many-drivers-as-u-s-has-people/China has more car drivers than the whole population of the USA, and pretty soon is going to have more cars than the USA, and pretty soon will be selling cheaper cars in the USA too. It contradicts the idea that technology has increased the price of the commodities, and that it contradicts Marx argument on automation, or investment on fixed capital That argument does not hold water
Newbie here.I found this site after reading Putin's recent comment on AI & robotics. The concept of automation taking over human jobs and robots trained for war being in the hands of the 1% and dictators – is now a real and existential threat. I'm watching the news and despairing daily over the 'apocalyptic' state of the world, under the oppression of capitalism.Being fairly new to the ideology of marxism, socialism and communism and trying to understand the pro's and cons, but from what i've read it aligns with the majority of my own opinions of societal issues and possible solutions.Q: Is it a marxist idea for working class people to own a small share of the companies they work for, or have a share in the robots and the democracy surrounding their use? Will automation and robot companies be taxed sufficiently and is UBI inevitable?So many questions. A revolution of some description needs to happen, and soon IMO.
Proletarian_Marxist wrote:Q: Is it a marxist idea for working class people to own a small share of the companies they work for, or have a share in the robots and the democracy surrounding their use? Will automation and robot companies be taxed sufficiently and is UBI inevitable?So many questions. A revolution of some description needs to happen, and soon IMO.Welcome to our forum, PM.You are recommended to use the navigation toolbar at the top of the page (initially, the 'About Us' button) to find out about The Socialist Party and Socialism. Here's a link for starters.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/questions-and-answers-about-socialism
Proletarian_Marxist wrote:Newbie here.I found this site after reading Putin's recent comment on AI & robotics. The concept of automation taking over human jobs and robots trained for war being in the hands of the 1% and dictators – is now a real and existential threat. I'm watching the news and despairing daily over the 'apocalyptic' state of the world, under the oppression of capitalism.Being fairly new to the ideology of marxism, socialism and communism and trying to understand the pro's and cons, but from what i've read it aligns with the majority of my own opinions of societal issues and possible solutions.Q: Is it a marxist idea for working class people to own a small share of the companies they work for, or have a share in the robots and the democracy surrounding their use? Will automation and robot companies be taxed sufficiently and is UBI inevitable?So many questions. A revolution of some description needs to happen, and soon IMO.It was Iacoca idea and the Chrysler Corp. it is not a Marxian conception. The consequences were obvious within the Chrysler corporations, the workers got nothing, just defeat, and the capitalist got everything. Now, it is the idea of the supporters of the so called Coop which is just a reformist idea to run capitalism within capitalism. Taxation is an issue which does not concern to the working class, taxes are paid by the capitalist class, it is only a fallacy that has been created in order to make workers believe that they are financing the state, and that idea has created many divisions among the working class. The state is financed with surplus value. Instead of lowing the tax it should be increased. Read our article named as The myth of taxation.Read also an article written by SOYMB which shows that Putin is one of the richest man of Europe, a member of the Russian capitalist class, now he is being proclaimed by the left as the saviour of mankind, he is just the president of another empire looking for world domination like the USA and the European powers
Marcos wrote:It was Iacoca idea and the Chrysler Corp. it is not a Marxian conception. The consequences were obvious within the Chrysler corporations, the workers got nothing, just defeat, and the capitalist got everything. Now, it is the idea of the supporters of the so called Coop which is just a reformist idea to run capitalism within capitalism. Taxation is an issue which does not concern to the working class, taxes are paid by the capitalist class, it is only a fallacy that has been created in order to make workers believe that they are financing the state, and that idea has created many divisions among the working class. The state is financed with surplus value. Instead of lowing the tax it should be increased. Read our article named as The myth of taxation.Read also an article written by SOYMB which shows that Putin is one of the richest man of Europe, a member of the Russian capitalist class, now he is being proclaimed by the left as the saviour of mankind, he is just the president of another empire looking for world domination like the USA and the European powersThanks I will check those articles.I get what you are saying on the company / robotic shares concept. I thought socialism was viewed as a transition between capitalism and communism – that by giving workers more security, profit share and power it would be a marxist view (even though its a reform within capitalism) as it is a progressive step forward.I do understand marxist view is not correllated with capitalism but i'm intrigued by how the transition would happen. I have some reading to do it seems.Putin is undoubtedly the richest man on earth, he will have many havens and friends stashing it away. He now knows AI is the next step for world domination and like the space race, i fear it will be a competition. How anyone could hail him as a saviour is beyond reason.Cheers for the info.
Proletarian_Marxist wrote:Marcos wrote:It was Iacoca idea and the Chrysler Corp. it is not a Marxian conception. The consequences were obvious within the Chrysler corporations, the workers got nothing, just defeat, and the capitalist got everything. Now, it is the idea of the supporters of the so called Coop which is just a reformist idea to run capitalism within capitalism. Taxation is an issue which does not concern to the working class, taxes are paid by the capitalist class, it is only a fallacy that has been created in order to make workers believe that they are financing the state, and that idea has created many divisions among the working class. The state is financed with surplus value. Instead of lowing the tax it should be increased. Read our article named as The myth of taxation.Read also an article written by SOYMB which shows that Putin is one of the richest man of Europe, a member of the Russian capitalist class, now he is being proclaimed by the left as the saviour of mankind, he is just the president of another empire looking for world domination like the USA and the European powersThanks I will check those articles.I get what you are saying on the company / robotic shares concept. I thought socialism was viewed as a transition between capitalism and communism – that by giving workers more security, profit share and power it would be a marxist view (even though its a reform within capitalism) as it is a progressive step forward.I do understand marxist view is not correllated with capitalism but i'm intrigued by how the transition would happen. I have some reading to do it seems.Putin is undoubtedly the richest man on earth, he will have many havens and friends stashing it away. He now knows AI is the next step for world domination and like the space race, i fear it will be a competition. How anyone could hail him as a saviour is beyond reason.Cheers for the info.
Antoher good article would be: The Myth of the Transitional Society. Socialism would be a wageless society
Marcos wrote:Antoher good article would be: The Myth of the Transitional Society. Socialism would be a wageless society@Marcos,If everybody paid at the cash register a price that was wage normalized, than would that not be a wageless society in that everyone effectively has the same buying power regardliess of their wage? P.s. thank you for your adamant insistence than SPGB does not endorse or promote anything ever. I agree with you that the transition from capitalism to socialism must come from a revolutionary rabble rising up from within capitalism in order to be accepted by capitalism. Perhaps there is more wisdom from your words than I at first understood. Please feel free to reply with your standard "this has nothing to do with socialism and is just trolling" response.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:,If everybody paid at the cash register a price that was wage normalized, than would that not be a wageless society in that everyone effectively has the same buying power regardliess of their wage?No. Obviously. Socialism does not mean "everybody gets paid the same". Socialism is a society in which "payment " ( i.e. economic exchange, market transactions, buying and sellinng , money , barter etc etc) ceases to exist. Period. This has been said to you many times. Why do you continue to ask questions that presuppose something else?
Quote:If everybody paid at the cash register a price that was wage normalized, than would that not be a wageless society in that everyone effectively has the same buying power regardliess of their wage?Socialism entails the abolition of the wages and prices system.
Quote:P.s. thank you for your adamant insistence than SPGB does not endorse or promote anything ever. I agree with you that the transition from capitalism to socialism must come from a revolutionary rabble rising up from within capitalism in order to be accepted by capitalism. Perhaps there is more wisdom from your words than I at first understood. Please feel free to reply with your standard "this has nothing to do with socialism and is just trolling" response.It will not be a 'rabble' but the conscious political act of a revolutionary class, who consitute the immense majority who understand more than you, do that capitalism can not be reformed or tinkered with, to bring real social equality, but must be replaced by a global, production for use, free access society, democratically administered by us all..
There is a flurry of posts and its hard to keep up, with all of life's obligations. So I will jump-in somewhat mid-stream. So please bare with me.@Robbo This is a response to Robbo, as usual, who seems to claim that prices are not rising simultaneously as production costs are falling. I state the opposite, that is, prices are rising as production costs are falling. In my estimation, this is the primary reason for the fact that debt across western capitalist societies is outlandish and ever-increasing for the working population. The profit maxim is forcing capitalists to cut production costs simultaneously as they raise prices to meet profit imperatives. As a result of this, new financing schemes such as "leasing" or "Buy Now And Pay Later" come into existence to white-wash, the fact that many products are increasingly out of reach, meaning that fewer and fewer people can pay-cash for large items, i.e., for new cars, for new furniture, for new washers and dryers etc… Marx was wrong to think that capitalists would lower prices when production costs went down. To circumvent this faulty Marxist logic, capitalists simply made deals among themselves within their specific industries to limit competition among themselves so as to keep profits high and ever-increasing. The result is debt, pushed onto the working population. Now Mr. Robbo, claims that some industries have seen falling prices as production costs have went down. I do not deny this, but state that this is only temporary, to hook consumers, in an effort to create and establish a market. An example is the home computer, initially the price was very high, and thru creativity and productive costs cutting, the price of a home computer dropped, thus creating and increasing the market for home computers. My response to this is that this is only temporary, and that on a long-enough timeline, akin to the auto-industry's 100 years, the home-computer will again see prices rise and even sky-rocket, despite production costs dropping. In the future, the majority of the working population may even have to "lease" a computer as strange as this sounds. Computer shops already have "Buy Now Pay Later" schemes for home-computers, which is the initial step to the artificial fabrication/machination of prices. Another excellent example of what I am talking about is the 99-CENTS STORE or Dollarama in Canada. When this chain of stores first came into effect, absolutely everything in the store was one dollar, production costs were low and prices were low, akin to what Marx theorized, which undercut many other competitors. A huge market of consumers was created, singing the praises of the 99Cent Store and Dollarama. Dollarama, in Canada, was making super-profits, akin to what Marx argued in 1867. This was initially the case. A few years went by, and in Canada, Dollarama went public and issued its first IPO and public stocks. The stocks have continued to rise over the years. I think, roughly, a decade. However, despite production costs moderately falling or remaining the same, during this same time-period, prices have slowly been going up, where, today, in 2017, there is very little in the 99-cents store that one can buy for a dollar. In actuality, today, Dollarama should be called the 2 dollar and 50 cents store as most objects in these types of stores range from 1.50 to 5 dollars, give or take. Now, Dollarama states that this is due to inflation and having to pay its workforce more in salaries and wages, but the company continues to make good profits. Its profits have not decreased, but, in fact, increased. So Dollarama, despite making minor price adjustments for inflation and wage/salary increases, has also been simultaneously making minor price adjustments for increased profits, hence, why, profits continue to increase. This is what I am talking about with the theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management, these companies are managing prices, regardless of labor-time expenditures in commodities and regardless of the actual value embodied in commodities. The point is to keep their specific, capitalist, money-making machine running and accumulating ever-increasing profits. So inflation and salary/wage increases, which continue to happen, are simply a means and a good reason/excuse to simultaneously, increase profits via arbitary price-manipulations. In the end, what I am saying is that the profit imperative, trumps all rational logics, the point is to accumulate profit, ad infinitum, and capitalists will do whatever is necessary, including raising prices even as production costs decrease or remain the same. Of course, the working population is seemingly making more money, today, but this is not true, as prices have been increasing at a faster rate then wages/salaries, and compounded with an ever-increasing ability to BORROW, means that an illusion of wealth grounded in debt is enveloping and masking the true nature of living in post-industrial, post-modern capitalist society, opulent poverty. This illusion of wealth is masking a fundamental contradiction, a poverty clothed in opulence, where the majority of the working population are inundated with commodities and luxury goods, goods that they do not really own outright, but make monthly or bi-weekly payments upon, debt peonage/Debt slavery masked in seeming opulence. The reason for this, I claim, is due to the fact that value, price and wage-determinations are arbitrarily and artificially constructed by the powers that be, "whatever one can get away with in the marketplace" is sensible, valid and in conformitivity with the profit imperative. This is not to say that Marx's analysis is invalid, it has only been marginalized. It is still valid when discussing third world economies, but in western capitalist economies, this form of quantitative labor-time analysis is increasingly outdated as GREED continually short-circuits Marx's elegant, scientifically quantifiable labor-time analysis.
Hello Michel I’m not SPGB just a chance passer-by. Have I got this clear? You want it that exchange values are rising? If 1 coat = 1 roll of cloth and exchange values double then still same coat = same roll of cloth. In this case, you want it that exchange values rise as compared to what?
@ Alan Kerr I don't know if I fully understand what you are asking. But, if I understand you correctly, I would argue that exchange-values, in post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, are capable of being manipulated, depending on the network-power an enterprising-entity exercises within a specific sphere of production. This is so, because Marx stated that the relationship between "price and value is an ideal one", meaning created by and established through conceptual-perception. So lets unpack your short example: You state that 1 coat = 1 roll of cloth. Marx says that they equal each other if the socially necessary labor-time embodied in these two items equal each other and they exchange at their value in the marketplace. Notwithstanding, this equality is established in the mind, i.e., in the conceptual-perception of people and/or a community. This does not mean that they will be exchange at their value in the marketplace (Marx has a theory of why items don't always exchange at their value in volume 3, dealing with prices of production etc.). Here is what I am saying using your example. Lets say, the majority of capitalists coat propriators, consolidate their power in their specific sphere of production, i.e., industry, to such a extent as to raise entry costs to such a level as to prevent any new competitors from entering the coat industry. This business move is good business for the current coat propriators. This new found power, manufactured creatively via sound networking among the coat propriators, can translate into higher prices/values, despite the fact that the quantifiable value/labor-time going into the coats has not changed and/or has dropped. This consolidation among the coat propriators is an unquantifiable value, that can have a substantial influence on prices/values. So now, sensing their new found power, these capitalists coat propriators, decide to sell their coats a little more than the roll of cloths offered by the cloth industry, simply because, maximum profits is the name of the game. And they, the coat propriators have a slight advantage. So the initial equation 1 coat = 1 roll of cloth magically transforms into 1 coat = 2 rolls of cloth. The labor going into coats and rolls has not changed. Yet, the network of coat propriators, having consolidated the coat industry to a certain extent, can now command and normalize higher prices/values, pertaining to the coat industry, due to the fact of their organizing power/control, is greater than the cloth industry. This sets-off a series of reactions in the cloth industry, which I am not gonna go into. But you get the picture. What I am saying is that exchange value is conceptual, conceptually based, thus such things as branding, ideology can influence exchange value for better and for worst, regardless of the socially necessary labor-time that goes into a commodity. Marx never realized the significance of this, despite, stating it, in a few instances, casually. When exchange value is conceptual and the connection between price and value is an ideal one, everything is power driven, ideologically driven, "what one can get away in the marketplace is valid and legitimate". The power any entity wields in an industry can raise and/or drop prices, it in effect makes values, prices and wages the subject of good management, rather than something based on outside economic laws such as competition and/or the regulatory mechanism of socially necessary labor-time.I've written about this. I have the papper on the academic.edu site and its been publish, I think, in dissident voice.
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