Marx and Automation

[Anonymous]

Alan Kerr wrote:

@Steve-San FranciscoWho or what is shifting total sunlight around in a way that keeps trees alive?“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"(Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time)At least the little old lady did give an answer.If not the market then who or what is shifting total labour around in a way that keeps us alive?

We are shifting from social sciences into Botany, Agronomy,  and Zoology

[Anonymous]

@Robbo Comment #264  You raise important issues. I see you are mulling over the same issues. I would say that "theoretically" price can be increased, ad infinitum. The theory, I've introduced, stipulates so.  The reason they are not raised immediately is the social antagonism from the working population.The imperative I introduce is: "Whatever an entity can get away with in the marketplace is valid and legitimate". This does not mean that entities get away with their price manipulations everytime. There are times when there is push back. Notwithstanding, I would argue that we are right now in the early stages of a broad tendency to raise prices beyond the reach of the working population, where capitalists are beginning a long protracted war of attrition, since the 1970s, againt the working population, to return the working population into servitude over the next century or so. An economic slavery akin to feudalism! I see the advent of return to the dark ages, a corporate dark age, where knowledge is suppressed, knowledge advancement is suppresed, knowledge sharing is suppressed, technology is suppressed etc. I call this the rise of  micro-fascism, where no-one of any significance advances and only the obedient and obedience is rewards and worthy of merit, and given positions of influence. Universities in north america are increasingly closed spaces filled with the indoctrinated, who produce indoctrination on a mass scale.  As a result, the working population increasingly finds itself in a the predicament of social immobility, stagnation, both intellectually and financially.I would argue that the coercive laws of competition can be short-circuited, via "networking", an unquantifiable force influencing price. If we had true competition, as Marx argued, capitalism would have collapsed decades ago, as profits would have deterioriated to nil. Capitalists do price their goods too high, hence the rising debt-load upon the working population.For example, in North America, cities are designed for the automobile. In Canada, you cannot do anything without traveling long distances. Public transit and the train system, are inferior to Europe, where one can actually live without a car. Here, we have to drive everywhere in order to keep up and save on time. We live under the dictatorship of the automobile.  Which translates in the fact that most working citizens will pay outrageous sums for vehicles, due to the fact that it is a necessary expense in order to survive and thrive.The automobile industry knows this, and they gauge the consumer at ever turn, insurance, dealerships etc. I've witness in the last 5 years the synergization of the canadian court system with corporate automotive interests, to the point where to contest a corporation in court, pertaining to insurance, is futile. The consumer loses the majority of the time, victims lose in court against these corporate goliaths, which is utter madness.  Here you have a network of power, an oligarchical network of power, whose influence transcends its sphere of production, i.e., the automotive industry, into the legal system, where outlandish prices, for cars, for car insurance, are actually backed up by a bias legal system, designed to legalize arbitrary prices and reward corporate thievery.In  sum, I agree with you, Robbo, that when competition is operational and fair, for each and every producer, prices will function, according to Marx, and drop. And they do sometimes. However, there are ways to short-circuit competition across a sphere of production. And companies do engage is arms-length, wink wink, collusionary practices to machinate prices, do, to the fact that it is profitable. And it is legal, that's the kicker, I find.The United-States introduced anti-trust laws, I think, after the 1930s depression, to break-up the power of enterprising-networks in controling price, which, for a time introduced, increased competition in the markets, permitting new entrepreneurs to enter certain industries, lowering prices. (Marx's analysis works in this instance). However, Neoliberals, through Reagan and the 1980s, removed many of these anti-trust laws, resulting in corporate consolidation across many areas of the market, which short-circuited competition and permitted price manipulations, once again.I think, you can create demand when the commodity you are selling is organized as an essential commodity. Like the automobile, in North America, where cities are planned around the dictatorship of automobile, cities stretch vast distances to encourage driving. Once, deemed essential, a commodity, can command outlandish sums in the market-place, because it is essential to human social existence. The perfect commodity….perfectly confined in a closed market….which does not allow alternatives….can command any price (theoretically). Behind, the mirage of economic laws lies enterprising-networks.          

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

@Robbo Comment #264  You raise important issues. I see you are mulling over the same issues. I would say that "theoretically" price can be increased, ad infinitum. The theory, I've introduced, stipulates so.  The reason they are not raised immediately is the social antagonism from the working population.The imperative I introduce is: "Whatever an entity can get away with in the marketplace is valid and legitimate". This does not mean that entities get away with their price manipulations everytime. There are times when there is push back. Notwithstanding, I would argue that we are right now in the early stages of a broad tendency to raise prices beyond the reach of the working population, where capitalists are beginning a long protracted war of attrition, since the 1970s, againt the working population, to return the working population into servitude over the next century or so. An economic slavery akin to feudalism! I see the advent of return to the dark ages, a corporate dark age, where knowledge is suppressed, knowledge advancement is suppresed, knowledge sharing is suppressed, technology is suppressed etc. I call this the rise of  micro-fascism, where no-one of any significance advances and only the obedient and obedience is rewards and worthy of merit, and given positions of influence. Universities in north america are increasingly closed spaces filled with the indoctrinated, who produce indoctrination on a mass scale.  As a result, the working population increasingly finds itself in a the predicament of social immobility, stagnation, both intellectually and financially.I would argue that the coercive laws of competition can be short-circuited, via "networking", an unquantifiable force influencing price. If we had true competition, as Marx argued, capitalism would have collapsed decades ago, as profits would have deterioriated to nil. Capitalists do price their goods too high, hence the rising debt-load upon the working population.For example, in North America, cities are designed for the automobile. In Canada, you cannot do anything without traveling long distances. Public transit and the train system, are inferior to Europe, where one can actually live without a car. Here, we have to drive everywhere in order to keep up and save on time. We live under the dictatorship of the automobile.  Which translates in the fact that most working citizens will pay outrageous sums for vehicles, due to the fact that it is a necessary expense in order to survive and thrive.The automobile industry knows this, and they gauge the consumer at ever turn, insurance, dealerships etc. I've witness in the last 5 years the synergization of the canadian court system with corporate automotive interests, to the point where to contest a corporation in court, pertaining to insurance, is futile. The consumer loses the majority of the time, victims lose in court against these corporate goliaths, which is utter madness.  Here you have a network of power, an oligarchical network of power, whose influence transcends its sphere of production, i.e., the automotive industry, into the legal system, where outlandish prices, for cars, for car insurance, are actually backed up by a bias legal system, designed to legalize arbitrary prices and reward corporate thievery.In  sum, I agree with you, Robbo, that when competition is operational and fair, for each and every producer, prices will function, according to Marx, and drop. And they do sometimes. However, there are ways to short-circuit competition across a sphere of production. And companies do engage is arms-length, wink wink, collusionary practices to machinate prices, do, to the fact that it is profitable. And it is legal, that's the kicker, I find.The United-States introduced anti-trust laws, I think, after the 1930s depression, to break-up the power of enterprising-networks in controling price, which, for a time introduced, increased competition in the markets, permitting new entrepreneurs to enter certain industries, lowering prices. (Marx's analysis works in this instance). However, Neoliberals, through Reagan and the 1980s, removed many of these anti-trust laws, resulting in corporate consolidation across many areas of the market, which short-circuited competition and permitted price manipulations, once again.I think, you can create demand when the commodity you are selling is organized as an essential commodity. Like the automobile, in North America, where cities are planned around the dictatorship of automobile, cities stretch vast distances to encourage driving. Once, deemed essential, a commodity, can command outlandish sums in the market-place, because it is essential to human social existence. The perfect commodity….perfectly confined in a closed market….which does not allow alternatives….can command any price (theoretically). Behind, the mirage of economic laws lies enterprising-networks.          

The problem with most of your analysis is that you view the world from your small island known as North America ( Canada and the USA and excluding Mexico ) which is not the whole world, and you never mention the importance of the class consciouness of the working class, it is invisible in your analysis, it looks like the motor of history is the capitaliss class. Now in this message you are trying to indicate that competition can be eliminated and that capitalist can arbitraryly  increase prices above the competition.The car situation is not the only example that can be used in order to justify your analysis, because within the USA there are places where the car is not needed like in New York, and Chicago, and driving a car in those places would be like adding more daily problems to the daily life of the working class, and also in Europe workers used more train than cars. What you have not mentioned in your analysis about the car industry and the car as a means of transportation is that there is a future crash in car financial and many workers are going to lose thousands or probably millions of cars due to unemployments and financial crisis. There are many places around the world where peoples continue using motorcycles, and public transportation is run by a  network of motorcycles, many places around the world a car is a luxury item.You have not mentioned in your analysis that the Chinese are planing to introduce millions of cars in North America at the price below the price of a motorcycle, and the American, European and Japanese  are trying to stop them, and they are  propagating the same messages that they did when the Japanese start to produce their own cars. Why are they doing that ? according to your analyis competition is in short circuit, what is in short circuit is the competition for market among the capitalistsWe have said it several times in this forum that capitalism will not collapse by itself, and it was not the idea of Marx either, they always believe that it would be working class as a whole who would bring capitalism down, but it looks like the working class is not very important for you , it is the capitalist class the motor of history, That is closer to the analysis of the capitalist economistsit was so importance for them the  class consciouness of the working class that they made the mistakes of over exagerating their class consciouness, and in our time there are millions of workers who are supporting capitalism. The Leninists, the left wingers and the social democrat have  distorted the concept completely. The SPGB and Anton Pannekoek have made the proper analysis of the collapse of capitalism, and we do not think that it will collapse by itself, and we have explained and corrected the mistake made by Marx and EngelsI think this are much better analysis, they do not remove the working class from picture of the capitalist economy, they are not invisibles, you do not see capitalism as a relationship among human beings, only as a relationship among commoditieshttps://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1934/collapse.htmhttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/why-capitalism-will-not-collapsehttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1969/no-776-april-1969/marx-and-engels-and-collapse-capitalismA brilliant thinker like Rosa Luxembourg make similar mistakes in regard to the collapse of capitalism, and instead of resolving the problems she created more confusions and she felt on her own traphttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1969/no-773-january-1969/rosa-luxemburg-and-collapse-capitalism

[Anonymous]

@Alan Kerr, So who or what is moving labor around in order to keep us alive?1. I would say ideational comprehensive frameworks, i.e., ideology. We do things in our society because of the perceptual lens we see, comprehend and live in the world. The logic of capitalism stimulates us to do things, and to do things against are will and against our better judgments. Because it gives us meaning and the chance to increase our power and knowledge across time and space.2. Behind the logic of capitalism, which the logic/ideology of capitalism is only a lens and shell, both conceptual and material, by which we exercise our aspirations through, I would say, as I say in the structural-anarchism manifesto, that it is our inherent insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge, that is the force of socio-economic movement and shifts. That is, a inherent drive to expand our knowledge, our ownership and our influence, which we as a species cannot escape. Laborers move spheres because they think it will increase their owership/knowledge potential and captialists do the same. So there is a lot of propaganda, which attempts to move laborers from one sphere of production to another.  3. So what moves labor around is ultimately the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge inherent in all of us. The drive to augment one's power, ownership and knowledge, across time and space. Capitalism is only the latest stage and/or context by which this insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge, expresses itself through. We cheerish financial quantifiable capital, at this moment in history, because it fulfills our desire for power,i.e., ownership/knowledge, eventhough financial quantifiable capital is an illusory desire manifested by the ideational comprehensive framework of captialism. In the past, other ideational comphehensive frameworks made us chase after other things for prestige, like pleasing her majesty the Queen and her feudal lords, by writing a lovely sonet or painting a flattering portrait of the nobility etc. And/or, the chance to fight in the anarchy of the crusades, brought us rank in the church and in the kingdom, if we should survive etc. All this nonsense, which moved labor around, was driven by ideology, and the notion that we were feeding our insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge.   4. This means that if we entered a new socio-economic formation, other than capitalism, we would still have to find a new way of satisfying the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge inherent in the human species, i.e., a new mode of production and relations of production. Anarcho-socialism has an answer, full-automation, will reduce the work-week and permit the cultivation of knowledge, i.e., the accumulation of knowledge for all citizens, self-enrichment, and greater "ownership" over oneself. I would also state that a bill/charter of socio-economic rights/guarantees would do this as well. That is, the guarantee that certain basic socio-economic rights, such as a basic income, free education, the right to work regardless of labor-fluctuations, a universal salary grid, where everyone's salary is interconnected to everyone's elses salary, a universal services grid, where prices for services are interconnected to all other services, the de-commissioning of corporations etc., all would permit equality and certain satisfaction of the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge in humans.       

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

@Alan Kerr, So who or what is moving labor around in order to keep us alive?1. I would say ideational comprehensive frameworks, i.e., ideology. We do things in our society because of the perceptual lens we see, comprehend and live in the world. The logic of capitalism stimulates us to do things, and to do things against are will and against our better judgments. Because it gives us meaning and the chance to increase our power and knowledge across time and space.2. Behind the logic of capitalism, which the logic/ideology of capitalism is only a lens and shell, both conceptual and material, by which we exercise our aspirations through. I would say, as I say in the structural-anarchism manifesto, is our inherent insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge. A drive to expand our knowledge, our ownership and our influence, which we as a species cannot escape. Laborers move spheres because they think it will increase their owership/knowledge potential and captialists do the same. 3. So what moves labor around is the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge. The drive to augment one's power, ownership and knowledge, across time and space. Capitalism is only the latest stage and/or context by which this insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge, expresses itself through. We cheerish financial quantifiable capital, at this moment in history, because it fulfills our desire for power,i.e., ownership/knowledge.4. This means that if we entered a new socio-economic formation, other than capitalism, we would still have to find a new way of satisfying the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge inherent in the human species, i.e., a new mode of production and relations of production. Anarcho-socialism has an answer, full-automation, will reduce the work-week and permit the cultivation of knowledge, i.e., the accumulation of knowledge for all citizens, self-enrichment, and greater "ownership" over oneself, with an added bill/charter of socio-economic rights/guarantees, which guarantee certain basic socio-economic rights, such as a basic income, right to work regardless of labor-fluctuations, a universal salary grid, where everyone's salary is interconnected to everyone's elses salary, a universal services grid, where prices for services are interconnected to all other services, the de-commissioning of corporations etc.        

So, the possession of private property is part of our nature ? So, we are hard wired to fight to possess private property ? What has hapenned to the analysis of the Anarchists and socialist that private property is an ideological conception created by the class society ? That idea move along with the conception of many capitalist sociologists, politicians, and historians.History has shown that mankind spent thousands of years living in a society of common possesion and the conception of private ownership did not prevail among them. Next time you are to say that we are selfish by nature, and that we love wars by nature, and that we love to possess money and wealth by nature.You look more like a defender of the capialist class instead of a defender of the working class, where are your so called Anarchists conceptions ? . That is another problem of your analysis, you have a wrong conception and definition of what ideology really is. Your definition is a typical  bourgoise definition

[Anonymous]

I disagree, Marcos, the automobile is necessary in all these cities. The suburbs are all predicated on having an automobile.

[Anonymous]

Having some property is predicated to our well-being. Having unlimited property is sickness. Everyone deserves a home, a salary, free health care, free access to education etc., it is a fundamental basis for a healthy human existence. 

[Anonymous]

 Having certain limited possessions, is fundamental to humans having a sense of belonging and a sense of self-worth and satisfaction.  

[Anonymous]

  In an anarchist society, people must have the right to live independently of the communs and autonomist-collectives, if they so desired, that is, they must have the right to their own homes, their own things etc., etc., to live an equitable life according to their own principles, if these principles do not infringe on the principles of others. Forcing them to live in communs can be just as totalitarian and coercive as under anything capitalism dictates.  

[Anonymous]

Now I should mention that Marx identified two types of property in Capital: 1. A type of limited property, I concieved above, which Marx acknowledges and agrees with at the end of Capital Volume One (if I am not mistaken).2. A type of unlimited property, which capitalism ascribes to founded on exploitation and thievery.

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

I disagree, Marcos, the automobile is necessary in all these cities. The suburbs are all predicated on having an automobile.

. Are you talking about upstate New York ? Are you talking about the residential area of New York, Are you indicating that most peoples in New York live in the residential areas ?    Have you ever lived in new york, or have you being in contact with the real live of the workers in New York and others parts of the world ?  Have you heard about the process of Gentification that took place in Manhattan ? What kind of peoples were living in Manhattan, Bromx and Brooklyn ? What is the main means of transportation from long island to Manhattan ? I have been Europe and I have never rent a car, I prefer to use the train, it is more reliable and cheaper to use. Have you seen personally the reality of others countries around the world ? You need a bath on social reality. Most of the peoples in New York and Chicago live in apartements, and they do not use their car, ( if they have a car ) they use the subway system which is more relaible than driving a car . In places like California peoples need a car, and most peoiples are driving new cars, and peoples working in the downtown area are taking the subways or the metro trains.China has more license drivers than the whole population of the USA and a few years they are going to have more cars than the whole population of the US because the prices of the cars is below the prices of the cars sold in the USA and Europe, and taxi drivers in Latin America are buying thousands of cars made in China 

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

Having some property is predicated to our well-being. Having unlimited property is sickness. Everyone deserves a home, a salary, free health care, free access to education etc., it is a fundamental basis for a healthy human existence. 

There isa  great difference between personal property and private possesion of the means of production, the anti-communists they are always saying that the communists are going to take  their personal property including the bikes of their children.Health care, education , and salary they are not property, property is the wage slave.  Posaession of property and wealth by the capitalist is not a sickness, it  is the modus of operation of the capitalist economy, capitalists are forced to possess and accumulate property due to the competition among them, but it is not part of our nature. Human beings spent thousands of years living in a society of mutal cooperation and a long period harmony and peace. In a society based on the common possesion of the means of productions we are going to have  free education, free means of transportation, and free health care, and they would not be considered as property. It is going to be a wageless society. Salary are just the necessary means to keep the slave producing for his/her master. Salary and wage slavery  is a feature of the capitalist society 

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

Now I should mention that Marx identified two types of property in Capital: 1. A type of limited property, I concieved above, which Marx acknowledges and agrees with at the end of Capital Volume One (if I am not mistaken).2. A type of unlimited property, which capitalism ascribes to founded on exploitation and thievery.

Capital is a critique to the capitalist economy, and capitalism is based on the private possession of the means production. You were saying that the possesion of property is part of our nature, and that peoples have always possessed, and will posses property, but what kind of property ? . In this society we only possess our labor force to be sold. We do not even own the cemetery, or a small lot in a cemetery

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

Now I should mention that Marx identified two types of property in Capital: 1. A type of limited property, I concieved above, which Marx acknowledges and agrees with at the end of Capital Volume One (if I am not mistaken).2. A type of unlimited property, which capitalism ascribes to founded on exploitation and thievery.

Exploitation is extraction of surplus value, it is unpaid labor, it is capital. What you are defending is Locke concept of property which Marx rejected. Proudhom said that property was a theft but he was an anti-communist, he was not an Anarchist eitherhttps://godaye.wordpress.com/2016/12/20/marxs-criticism-on-lockes-ideas-of-property-labor-and-capital/

[robbo203]

MBellemare wrote:

@Robbo Comment #264  You raise important issues. I see you are mulling over the same issues. I would say that "theoretically" price can be increased, ad infinitum. The theory, I've introduced, stipulates so.  The reason they are not raised immediately is the social antagonism from the working population.The imperative I introduce is: "Whatever an entity can get away with in the marketplace is valid and legitimate". This does not mean that entities get away with their price manipulations everytime. There are times when there is push back. Notwithstanding, I would argue that we are right now in the early stages of a broad tendency to raise prices beyond the reach of the working population, where capitalists are beginning a long protracted war of attrition, since the 1970s, againt the working population, to return the working population into servitude over the next century or so. An economic slavery akin to feudalism! I see the advent of return to the dark ages, a corporate dark age, where knowledge is suppressed, knowledge advancement is suppresed, knowledge sharing is suppressed, technology is suppressed etc. I call this the rise of  micro-fascism, where no-one of any significance advances and only the obedient and obedience is rewards and worthy of merit, and given positions of influence. Universities in north america are increasingly closed spaces filled with the indoctrinated, who produce indoctrination on a mass scale.  As a result, the working population increasingly finds itself in a the predicament of social immobility, stagnation, both intellectually and financially.     

 Hmmm,  This all sounds  a bit like conspiracy theory to me, Michel – the capitalists colluding to impose some sort of neofeudalistic fascist regime on an increasingly regimented and servile working class.  I am very wary of these kinds of Big Brother dystopian narratives.  You make the capitalists sound  like some kind of uber race endowed with a superior knowlege, foresight and an ability to cooperate that workers singularly lack,  The capitalists are nothing special and they certainly dont control their system,  They cannot just direct it to  behave in whatever  fashion they desire.  A return to the Dark Ages? How are they going to possibly enforce that in this day and age of social networking – not to mention continuous and growing  displays of popular discontent? Nope I cant see things panning out as you suggest.  Instead, I think  capitalist society will just continue to muddle through as it always does unless and until workers collectively and consciously takes steps  to bring it an end – or else some catastrophic event like a nuclear war happens  I suppose its the Jeremiah in you that prompts you to say right we are "right now in the early stages of a broad tendency to raise prices beyond the reach of the working population",  But why would capitalists want to do that? They want to sell  their goods and increase their market share vis-a-vis their market rivals.  They dont want to be lumbered with a whole bunch of unsold commodities which workers cannot afford to buy ,  which  will force them to cut back on production and thereby curtail the flow of profts coming their way.   And as I have said several time now,  it is simply not true that ALL prices are rising in relative terms.   There  many kinds of goods which relatively speaking are cheaper today than the were a decade ago, for example.  I provided you with one or two links making this point.   

MBellemare wrote:

I would argue that the coercive laws of competition can be short-circuited, via "networking", an unquantifiable force influencing price. If we had true competition, as Marx argued, capitalism would have collapsed decades ago, as profits would have deterioriated to nil. Capitalists do price their goods too high, hence the rising debt-load upon the working population.  

 When did Marx say if we had true competition capitalism would have collapsed?  I  would be interested if you could cite a source for this claim .  My understanding is that Marx did not believe capitalism would collapse of its own accord though  his buddy,  Freddy Engels thought it might in the 1880s I fail to see how the  laws of competititon can be shortcircuited via "networking" and  you dont really explain the mechanics of this process anyay.  Marx made the point in Grundrisse that " Capital exists and can only exist as many capitals".  Even in the most collectivised and heavily regulated version  of capitalism – the so called command economy of Soviet state capitalism where prices were (supposedly) set by the central authorities , there was intense competition at  every level of society over funding and materials allocations , most notably between the state enterprises themselves which were obliged to keep profit and loss accounts and could be heavily penalised by going into  the red.and  so effectively functioned as separate capitals in their own right If Soviet state capitalism went nowhere near to shortcuiting the laws of competition, how do you propose to do this via "networking"?

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