Marx and Automation
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Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:@robbo203 & @mbellemerrerobbo203 wrote:Consequently the whole argument about the "concentration and centralisation of capital" which is supposed to aid the development of the productive forces,according to Marxist theory is now completely obsolete and dead as a dodoCapitalism is now the real hindrance to production – NOT the lack of a sufficiently developed resource base. We have long had the material or technogical infrastructure to support a socialist society. The potential is there to meet the reasonable needs of every person on this planet but capitalism is preventing us from realising this potential. Capitalism is not directly concerned with meeting the needs of people but with with realisation of profit. For instance, most of the labour in the formal sector of a modern capitalist ecnomy is socially useless in that it produces nothing of real worth e.g. banks etc and only exists to keep capitalism ticking over on its own terms. All that wasted labour could be used to augment social production in socialism in environmentally sustainable waysCapitalism is grotesquely inefficient by that standard, since you ask; its consignment to the dustbin of history is long overdue
It's really not that complicated if you can get over your pre-conceptions about the medium of exchange being neutral. If you base money on an ounce of gold then in every sale or exchange gold gets concentrated and everything else gets distrubuted relative to how easily it converts into gold. If you base an exchange system (aka market) on trading of trees than every sale or exchange would result in a marginal concentration of trees but every sale or exchange would also then result in some increase to the distrubution of gold. If you want to distrubute capital resources fairly and evenly to the world then you need to base your medium of exchange on a non-capital unit of measure such as personal hope or personal time. So I think waht your descirbiing it true, but it results not from capitalism exactly. More preceisely concentration of wealth is a result of the medium of exchange. Every exchange of human value in a capitalist economy using capital dollars increases concentration of capital value. heres' an example of two exchange systems. One exhange system is based on a unit of capital value (the US dollar). Another exchange system is based on a unit of personal time (one hour of your time is worth how many dollars?). here's a fictional example to put some numbers on what I'm trying to explain.
The price tag says a book cost “2 hOEP.coin” (hOurs Equals Price dot coin), so that means 2 hours of your time equals the price you pay. If you think that’s a fair price, you click the buy button and enter your credit card info. If you’re a first time user, check the box to allow the IRS, bank, or other verifier to calculate and confirm an hour of your time is worth/cost $25/hr. Charges on your credit card read “2hrs@$25/hr” or "2 hOEP".
Jenny, a hair stylist earns $20/hr. and therefore it costs her $20 for one hOEP.coin.Teresa, a nail specialist earns $60/hr. and therefore it costs her $60 for one hOEP.coinJenny and Teresa Both agree to work for each other for an hour.
How many net dollars will Teresa have transferred to Jenny if they both agree to bill each other fairly for 1 hour each using hOEP.coin? Answer: the poorer person is now $40 richer than before. Inequality decreased by $80.How many net dollars will Jenny have transferred to Teresa if they both agree to bill each other fairly for 1 hour each using USA Dollars? Answer, The poorer person is now $40 poorer than before. Inequality increased by $80.
So robbo203, the point I'm making is that the exchange system and currency is not Neutral about whether money gets concentrated or distributed and exchange using a money system based on capital value favors concentration of capital value. in constrast an exchange system usinga base unit of an hour of your personal time instead of an ounce of gold has the opposite effect of decreasing captial wealth concentration and increasing concentration of personal time wealth.this violates the pre-conceptions of capitalism and communism, but the math tests out correct. I have 21 page slideshow that explains this better and more clearly than is possible using only text in this discussion format, but I don't post the link here because it upsets the mods. If you ask me for the link I think the mods would permit me to answer you with the link.1st warning: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).
@robbo203The Socialist Preamble says that all capitalist ownership is a hindrance to production.You did not deny it.But you made a claim, post #338, which must intrigue the reader. You say that the present one and only way to organize total labour is dead as a dodo? And yet something is organizing total labour. What has replaced the dodo? When was this miracle?
Alan Kerr wrote:@robbo203The Socialist Preamble says that all capitalist ownership is a hindrance to production.You did not deny it.But you made a claim, post #338, which must intrigue the reader. You say that the present one and only way to organize total labour is dead as a dodo? And yet something is organizing total labour. What has replaced the dodo? When was this miracle?No Alan I said the argument that we need to encourage the further "concentration and centralisation of capital" on the grounds that this will "hasten the development of the productive forces" is dead as a dodo. The reason is that we dont need to develop these productive forces further to have socialism. Period. The productive forces are already amply developed to have have socialism now if we wanted it.
MBellemare wrote:@Robbo, Post # 285 Your making sense to me! Your position and questions are clear and speaking my language, even if there are some disagreements between our positions.Michel re your post 336 Yes, sure, I am aware of the various tendencies you enumerate that seem to darken the future and beckon a Big Brother society – the growth of surveillance, terrorism and the state’s increasingly invasive attempts to counter it, neoliberal austerity and the decline of the workers’ movement facilitating an increase in authoritarian management in the workplace, the ability of capitalism to coopt opposition and commercialise what was once free and so on and so forth. All this is true enough but what you over look is that while there are tendencies in one direction there are counter tendencies in the other. I touched on some of these – like the growth of social networking and the explosion of protests movements around the world. Ultimately you can’t keep putting the lid on something that is boiling over and the smart thing to do is to open the valves that permit the steam to be let off. It’s a learning process in which reversals are entirely possible but in the long run this is what capitalist states are coming to do. Capitalism in so many ways is creating its own grave digger. Tony Blair’s mantra “education, education, education” points to one of these ways. To boost productivity and ascend the industrial league table you need a relatively educated workforce and such a thing is not really compatible with a totalitarian fascist regime. Another way is the increasing entrapment of states by their own rhetorical commitment to bourgeois democracy. It acts as a constraint on an impulse to totalitarian fascism if only because once the genie is out of bottle it is difficult to put it back in again. Sure, there are still a few autocratic despotic regimes around but their numbers are shrinking and the circle of nominally pluralistic bourgeois democratic states is expanding. A few decades ago a map of South America or Africa would be largely comprised of military dictatorships or one party states but today the situation is quite different. International respectability and with it the prospect of more trade requires at least a minimal commitment to some basic freedoms. Yes, this is a sweeping generalisation that can be challenged but the exceptions to the rule like Saudi Arabia tend to be exceptions only by virtue of their great wealth or strategic importance The trouble with your analysis is that you tend too much to anthropomorphise capitalism. We all do it to some extent but it is important to constantly check ourselves. You say: I don't quite see, your idea, that capitalism is like some innocuous lumbering beast, lurching on and on, through history, like some Frankenstein, that is incapable of truly intelligent, devious, calculated, fascist, maneoeuvres. In fact, capitalism shows beneath its veneer of Trump-idiocy, that it is an insidious, calculating, ruthless machine/logic, with a Janus-Face, which, in the end, will not tolerate any deviant political economic framework other than its own. But capitalism is NOT really a lumbering beast and I didn’t really suggest that. Capitalism is just basically a set of rules about how we go about producing and distributing wealth. Trump is not capitalism/ He is merely a (particularly incompetent) politician trying to administer one little corner of global capitalism called the US. The politicians don’t control capitalism because it’s not actually a lumbering beast that you can harness and ride on like one of those fire breathing dragons in the Game of Thrones. Trump may display all those qualities you attribute to capitalism but he is not capitalism. And finally on that mish mash of incoherent and regressive ideas you call “post modernism”. The irony of your assertion that “The post-modernists have it right, we must not resurrect the meta-narratives of the Enlightenment, as they invariably turn into nightmares” is that this itself turns on a sweeping and highly questionable metanarrative about metanarratives. You fondly imagine that the way forward is retreat into the microcosmic world of our particular or immediate environments as a way of subverting from within the metanarrative that is global capitalism. You say the “goal is revolution towards a multi-varied, multi-dimensional society, with many cultural and socio-economic differences, living in relative equality, not any Mont-Pelrin like totalitarian hegemony of the left. Yikes! this is totalitarian socialism all-over again in disguise.” Now I have a lot of sympathy with the kind of localised particular focus you seem to advocate but to imagine for one moment that you can abandon the idea of collective action on a large scale united by a common vision of an alternative to capitalism is sheer folly on a monumental scale. You will picked off one by one in your little microcosms of cultural uniqueness and coopted into the system you purport to oppose. Post modernism is little more than a marketing strategy to sell a sense of cultural identity to wistful and bewildered consumers hankering after authenticity in a world rendered homogenous, boring and bland by the global forces of capitalist commerce and its ever cost-conscious calculus And as for that “totalitarian socialism” you refer to – that is precisely not what we are talking about here. You are talking about nationalised state-run capitalism. We are talking about a stateless non market global alternative to global capitalism. That is a metanarrative well worth embracing because if you don’t you will be lumbered indefinitely with that other great and insidiously pernicious metanarrative that is global capitalism
Alan Kerr wrote:Workers become aware of ENGELS’ MATERIAL CONDITIONS and establish Socialist Production.The problem now, Alan, if I continue our conversation, is that I'll be warned by the mod.All I should say is that Engels' interpretation of 'material' was not Marx's interpretation of 'material'. Those who follow Engels, like you seemingly, define 'material' as 'matter' (or, something 'tangible', not 'ideal'), whereas Marx, when he used the term 'material', was talking about humans (as opposed to when he used 'ideal', meaning divine). So, for Marx, the terms 'material production' and 'social production' are synonymous.The key difference is that Engelsist 'materialists' regard 'material' as something outside of human consciousness and ideas, whereas Marxists regard 'material' as something to do with social theory and practice, social production, which includes human consciousness and ideas.So, for Engelsists, 'material' can be discussed outside of socio-historical production, which is always production-for a social producer. For a Marxist, we can only discuss 'material-for'.So, to answer your statement, above, it's not 'workers becoming aware of' something which already exists, but 'workers producing their own product, which does not yet exist'. Engels' material conditions won't do anything, and don't make workers aware of those 'material conditions'. Any conscious 'awareness' will always come through social productive activity, by workers themselves. If workers are passive, their 'awareness of material conditions' will always be a bourgeois awareness of those same.I'll leave it at that, and hope the mod will give me the leeway, since you probably aren't aware of these issues.
twc wrote:LBird wrote:Marx was talking about how we collectively control our own natural production, which we are compelled to do by our natural existence. This ‘compulsion’ isn’t a trick by the bourgeoisie… We can’t ‘retire’ from it, as a species.LBird’s natural compulsion operating upon ‘our species’, independent of our will, is the foundation that opens up the (otherwise closed) possibility of a deterministic science of society.A science that comprehends external necessity has no choice but to recognize that thought is not the determiner of the necessity, but is the determined, just as LBird asserts against ajj.LBird acknowledges that social reproduction is subject to external necessity, from which he has abstracted a deterministic social law, and that society (as a whole, despite some members of it) isn’t free to practice just as it desires nor to think just as it pleases.And herein lies the germ of Marx’s materialism and Marx’s deterministic science of society which investigates the social forms that arise under the compulsion for social practice to reproduce society:“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” [Marx, A Contribution…].
There is much I agree with in what twc writes – I've tried to engage with twc, many times, and discuss these issues, but twc, like the rest of the SPGB, seems to prefer personal abuse to answering political questions.For example, as twc point out, Marx wrote "their social existence that determines their consciousness".This is not 'matter determines thought'.It is 'social theory and practice of production determines social theory and practice of political/ideological consciousness'.Because, for Marx, there is 'social' in both 'existence' and 'consciousness', there are clearly 'ideas' in both 'existence' and 'consciousness'.It's Engels who made the mistake of reading 'material' to mean 'matter', and Marx always referred to 'production' (ie., social theory and practice), in which humans were 'the active side'. This is nothing whatsover to do with 'matter' determining 'ideas'.For Marx, we determine. That's why we can change our social product.'Matter' does not 'determine'. But 'materialists' wish to find something which determines, outside of workers' consciousness, but they themselves claim to have a 'special consciousness', which allows them alone to 'know material conditions' which the workers don't and can't.This 'material' must always be something that workers must be unaware of, and that an elite of 'materialists' are aware of.Marx specifically warns against this 'materialism', which he realises will lead to a division in society, between a minority and the mass, over whom the minority rule.
Tim Kilgallon wrote:LBird wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:If it is workers' democracy we want, …workers were discouraged not by lack of consultation but the amount of it…after meeting every day and every week…many compulsory…So, alan, you're arguing that the Soviet Union's version of 'consultation' amounted to "workers' democracy"? Wow!
Previously I have tried (sometimes by your own admission successfully) taking the piss out of you, but I think after reading the above I have to admit that at times I'm beat,L Bird you really are beyond parody, your ability to misconstrue any statement made by another is an absolute marvel of the modern world. I would go as far as to say, and I don't say this lightly, your ability to misrepresent any comment made in a negative and derogatory way goes beyond that of my late mother in law, and that is my friend very great praise.L Bird, a one man mixture of misunderstanding, misrepresentaion and misconstruction, I salute you sir!
Tim, you could try reading the political discussion, and then making some political comment, about both sides, but you regard yourself as a 'Genius Jester', whose 'witty quips' keep us all in tucks of laughter, 'The Joker'.Perhaps 'A Joke' would be more accurate for your knowledge, if only you had Rabbie's power.Anyway, back to the grown-ups' political discussion…
Tim Kilgallon wrote:Previously I have tried (sometimes by your own admission successfully) taking the piss out of you, but I think after reading the above I have to admit that at times I'm beat,L Bird you really are beyond parody, your ability to misconstrue any statement made by another is an absolute marvel of the modern world. I would go as far as to say, and I don't say this lightly, your ability to misrepresent any comment made in a negative and derogatory way goes beyond that of my late mother in law, and that is my friend very great praise.L Bird, a one man mixture of misunderstanding, misrepresentaion and misconstruction, I salute you sir!Es a reet tit man. nebody naws wor-is up te . sept the maggies and marras. Keep aheed marra
Before we get back to the grown-ups, can I just say that I find Timothy simply hilarious. You are dead boring.
@robbo203Oh, you raised something I did not say to attack it.I thought it was enough for me to defend just what I already said.To be fair we should look into the argument that you attack.We failed to replace capitalist society 100 years ago.I mean the fact that we can post here is a help compared to no automated online forum. How would you post 100 years ago?You do agree with The Socialist Preamble I think.
LBird wrote:All I should say is that Engels' interpretation of 'material' was not Marx's interpretation of 'material'. Those who follow Engels, like you seemingly, define 'material' as 'matter' (or, something 'tangible', not 'ideal'), whereas Marx, when he used the term 'material', was talking about humans (as opposed to when he used 'ideal', meaning divine). So, for Marx, the terms 'material production' and 'social production' are synonymous.The key difference is that Engelsist 'materialists' regard 'material' as something outside of human consciousness and ideas, whereas Marxists regard 'material' as something to do with social theory and practice, social production, which includes human consciousness and ideas.So, for Engelsists, 'material' can be discussed outside of socio-historical production, which is always production-for a social producer. For a Marxist, we can only discuss 'material-for'..Proof. Sources please. References? Not mere assertions.
Alan Kerr wrote:@LBirdMaybe the problem is you need to bring a short quotation from Engels.Yeah, this, though, is a 'problem' that I'll be prevented from addressing on this thread, since I've addressed this 'problem' over several years, over probably a hundred other threads, where I've provided in great scholarly detail all the 'proof, sources and references'. So, although, on this thread, my remarks might appear as mere 'assertions', I have copiously quoted Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Kautsky, Labriola, Brzozowski, Bogdanov, Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci, Korsch, Pannekoek, a list which only takes us up to the 1930s. There are even more sources from since the 1930s, but I think that you'll have got the gist of what I'm saying.If you're interested, you could have a look at some of those threads; if not, and you're already satisfied with Engels' 'materialism', that's fine by me, and I'll let you continue to discuss these issues in the way that you see fit.As for me, I'll stop before the mod feels compelled to intervene.
I’ll supply them for LBird.Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific :Engels: “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.Engels: “From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.Engels: “… From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.Engels: “The socialized appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises.Engels: “Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today, and their political representatives.Engels: “The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now, for the first time, here, but it is here.Engels: “With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization.Engels: “The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones.Engels: “The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization.Engels: “The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him.Engels: “Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history, pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him.Engels: “It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
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