Marx and Automation

[Anonymous]

Naomi Klein might the  darling of the left, but she is not a Marxist or a socialist. The only Marxists and socialist group that I know in Canada is the Socialist Party of Canada

[Anonymous]

Not an anarchist…lol! Just pick up "The structural-anarchism manifesto" at Amazon.UK.  I am adding to Marx, not revising him, his analysis works perfectly well, in a modernists world, where we all work in a fordist factory. Unfortunately, most of us don't, anymore. Its office jobs, academic jobs, creative jobs, temp jobs etc., which are the center of production now, in our post-fordist landscape.Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.Now, the working class is the most numerous, and thus its creatice-power is the bulk of creative-power expenditures. Who else could support a football team, with outlandish prices and wages, certainly not the few capitalists who organize a stadium and/or the premier league. Workers, who are the bulk of creative-power, expend their creative-power, in believing in football or hockey and consuming football and hockey. The problem and Marx got it right is that because they don't have the means of mental and physical production in their hands, workers waste their creative-powers in supporting nonsensical enterprises, such as sports, reality TV shows, capitalist politics etc., which only feed capitalists.M.         ( you have a point Robbo, but a zero sum game, is a quantifiable game, it is a game of additions and substractions, definitive losers and winners, where everything equates at the end. When unquantifiable forces enter the picture, things are not so simple and mathematically perfect at the end. Its messy and dirty, kinda like post-modernity, a patchwork of nonsense and sense rolled up into odd formations. Whackiness. JK ROWLING a multi-millionaire, how whacky is that, writing nonsense.) 

[alanjjohnstone]

Michel, i think you underestimate the extent of Marx's far-ranging studies. The 19th C which he studied had many variants of wage-slavery and, for instance, he concentrates on such aspects as piece-work and cottage industries – not very different from today's gig-economy. There is little need to "improve" on Marx. It is a matter of applying his ideas. Our problem, as i see it, is relating Marxian analysis to the manifestations of capitalist exploitation we see around us. The days of the traditional image of the proletarian is well in the past as you say but that is all it is…the image. The substance and essence of wage-slave in one of Foxxcon's assembly-line factories has not changed from the days of the cotton-mills. The more  "progressives" insist upon highlighting and over-emphasising outward appearances, the less workers will learn of the universality of their exploitation. In fact, we witness that it is the so-called "middle-class professionals" (in the UK last year, doctors led the strike statistics) which are in the forefront of the class struggle we recall how Marx predicted how there was a tendency for them to be commodified and fall into the status of waages slaves. Now even lawyers may be replaced by computer algorithms (perhaps an improvement on Shakespeare's exhortation that they should all be killed). Our basic case against capitalism and our fundamental strategies for its replacement has not changed that much. Intellectuals just have an addiction to putting new lyrics to old tune and inventing new words to express existing ideas. (The SPGB is constantly reappraising our terminology and always end up deciding that we will not succumb to changing our language to suit current fashion. Time will tell if we are correct or not)Why should we over-complicate the problem. It is exactly as you say: "The problem and Marx got it right is that because they don't have the means of mental and physical production in their hands, workers waste their creative-powers…"  And as for the importance and relevance of those issues you cite they are of less importance…we have always had gin-shops and baiting-pits for escapism…At one time the Caesars sponsored the bread and circuses, so what is new is that capitalism makes each of us pay for the privilege of being nullified by spectacles. The real waste is that whe millions die needlessly and billions endure deprivation because our collective creative-powers are put to the service of the oligarchs and plutocrats and not used for our own benefit. Let's return to the simplicities of the socialist case and let's not fall for over-intellectualising…when the problem is of convincing fellow-workers of the very obvious.

[robbo203]

MBellemare wrote:

Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.Now, the working class is the most numerous, and thus its creatice-power is the bulk of creative-power expenditures. Who else could support a football team, with outlandish prices and wages, certainly not the few capitalists who organize a stadium and/or the premier league. Workers, who are the bulk of creative-power, expend their creative-power, in believing in football or hockey and consuming football and hockey. 

 Michel, you have me confused now about this concept of yours of "creative power".  I was thinking of the ability to attract huge price increases for  products well above their cost of production  – in contrast to the Marx's "cheapening of commodities" brought about by technological innovation and enhanced productivity.  Branding as a form of advertising is a good example  of this because it invests the commodity in question with layers of signfiicance and emotional associations.  As I suggested earlier, you are lulled into thinking that buying  a pair of Nike shoes is like buying into a way of life Now you are saying creative power is really just an attribute or extension of labour power and as such resides substantially in the working class itself – in its ability to imagine.  I dont quite get this.  You say workers expend their creative power supporting their football or hockey team and paying through the nose for the privilege of doing so.  But does this connect with the idea of raising prices way above the cost of production.? I had thought the expenditure off creative power was something that benefited those who did the expending.- like the football stars you mention.  Now you seem to be saying the opposite – that the workers in whom this creative power substantially resides are the victims of their own ability to exercise creative power even to the extent of leaving themselves without enough money to put food on the table or gas in their cars as I think you mentioned earlier.  They are the ones who have to pay the high price of supporting their football or hockey team Could you possibily clarify this?

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.

Work, whether by hand or by brain does me. Still labour power. Usually a combination of both hand and brain.

[ALB]

MBellemare wrote:

Not an anarchist…lol! Just pick up "The structural-anarchism manifesto" at Amazon.UK. 

Yes, but what sort of anarchist? Are you a "communist anarchist" who wants to see the means of production owned and operated in common, with the abolition of production for sale, money, banks, credit, etc? Or are you one of those anarchists who envisage the abolition of the state but the continuation of a market economy in some form?

[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

Not an anarchist…lol! Just pick up "The structural-anarchism manifesto" at Amazon.UK.  I am adding to Marx, not revising him, his analysis works perfectly well, in a modernists world, where we all work in a fordist factory. Unfortunately, most of us don't, anymore. Its office jobs, academic jobs, creative jobs, temp jobs etc., which are the center of production now, in our post-fordist landscape.Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.Now, the working class is the most numerous, and thus its creatice-power is the bulk of creative-power expenditures. Who else could support a football team, with outlandish prices and wages, certainly not the few capitalists who organize a stadium and/or the premier league. Workers, who are the bulk of creative-power, expend their creative-power, in believing in football or hockey and consuming football and hockey. The problem and Marx got it right is that because they don't have the means of mental and physical production in their hands, workers waste their creative-powers in supporting nonsensical enterprises, such as sports, reality TV shows, capitalist politics etc., which only feed capitalists.M.         ( you have a point Robbo, but a zero sum game, is a quantifiable game, it is a game of additions and substractions, definitive losers and winners, where everything equates at the end. When unquantifiable forces enter the picture, things are not so simple and mathematically perfect at the end. Its messy and dirty, kinda like post-modernity, a patchwork of nonsense and sense rolled up into odd formations. Whackiness. JK ROWLING a multi-millionaire, how whacky is that, writing nonsense.) 

I  have many books written by leftwingers. You can call it whatever you want, but that is not Anarchism, it is like Noam Chomsky who call himself an Anarchist and he supports state capitalist goverment and its leader, Richard Wolf call himself a Marxist and he support the Coop which is a creation of the Oweian and they have been proen that they are a total failure, James Petra and Naomi Klen call themsevles Marxists, or they are called Marxist, and they are just reformers of capitalism, and darling of the leftwingersAnarchism is what the SPGB and the WSM propose,  which is a world society without state, and without a monetary system, without capital, without wage slavery,without a market system, a real democratic society,  and freedom for all mankind, it is not replacing capitalism with capitalism. I have read many books on Anarchism, written by real Anarchists, and their point of view is total differentThere is nothing to add to Marx's capital, it must be applied to the capitalist society, as a philosopher known as Raya Dunayeskaya said: Marx'capital was written for the XX century, and I can say that it was written for the 21 century, and for any aspect of the daily activity of the working class at all levels, Marx capital is more actual than ever, even more,  during the economical crisis of super-production of 2008 many bourgoise economists run to the library and the bookstore to looks for his work, because whatever they learned at the university did not help them to ubderstand the cause of the crisis. With econometric nobody can explain that phenomenon, it must be explained thru the activities of the human beings, and Marx was a humanistRichard Wolf who holds a doctorate degree in Economics from Harvard and Yale, he said that he never learned anything when he finished his degree, he said that he started to learn economics when he studied Marx's Capital., he just was wasting his time. Personally, I have met many peoples who have the same opinion, and have met factory workers who knew capital by heart, instead of trying to revise it, they have applited it  to their own life, we do not have to be an intelectual in order to understand capital. .What you have described is nothing new, it was alrady described by Marx and it has been  extensive discussed by the socialist party for several decades, which is the concept of unproductive labor, but also umproductive labor prioduce surplus value to the capitalist class, and the unproductive sector feeds itself from the surplus value of the productive sector.. It is another social parasite The projection of Capital goes further than  the factory workers, it has been already applied to the non factories workers, who also must sell their manual and mental labor in they also produce profits and surplus value, and labor time, that include office workers, techncrats, engineers and many others, the concept of proletarian must been extended to others sectors of the capitalist societyOfice workers, technocrats, doctors, etc, etc, they are wages slaves becauuse they must sell their labor force in order to survive, even more, some small business peoples fall in that category too, and some presidents too, and business managers.  Marx capital will be actual until the working class decide to overthrow capital, the only thing that other  peoples have tried to do, including you,  is to revise capital in order to please the capitalist class. Old illusions prsented as new ideasAn investigation of more than 25 years can not be understimated, and it can not  be replaced for a few years of revisionists conceptions, you are not adding anything, you are just repeating what others epigones of Marx have said including Rudolf Rucker, but at least he had a proletarian view.It looks that you have not been in contact with workers from others countries,  ( when Engels wrote his book about the conditions of the working class, he interviewed many workers ) or you have not been able to see the reality of the workers in others places around the globes,( I have seen many  personnally )  but there are many workers who still fulfill  the requierment to be called proletarian, the so called petty bourgoise, or the fantasy created by the capitalist class known as the middle east, is also part of the working class, they are also wage slaves. You can write 100 books but your economical premises are completely wrong. .Many of those high paid sportman including the baseball player ( a game invented by the Tainos ) they come from proletarian families, and many of them spent several years  of suffering and hunger before becoming famous. Arts, sports, entertaiment have been turned into a lucrative business by the capitalist class, there is any poor able to attend an opera house, it is only available for peoples with money.In a socialist society arts is going to have a different approach, it would be  like William Morris said: We are going to be artists, poets and writers. The creative power of the working class, mental or physical is to produce surplus value at the point of production for a groups legalized robbers and thieves known as the capitalist class. Nobody can take capitalism to a beauty parlouur to transform it.Workers at the present time, they are supportiing capitalism, and capitalism has not collapsed yet because the workers are supporting, the exploited is supporting the exploiter, they are supporting their own class enemy, the day that they take political  consciouness capitalism wll last less than a roach in a chicken nest, and all those mockering capitalist theory will thrown in the trash can

[Anonymous]

Matt wrote:

Quote:

Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.

Work, whether by hand or by brain does me. Still labour power. Usually a combination of both hand and brain.

He is very detached from the real world of the working class. He has not been on a sweatshop in the Caribbean islands, or Maquiladoras in Central America, on sugar cane factory, where thousands of womens, men and children invested many hours to enrich a small group of peoples and they receive a very small salary. Children cutting sugar cane using machetes and mochas. The creative power is the production of surplus value for the capitalist class

[Anonymous]

Matt wrote:

Quote:

Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.

Work, whether by hand or by brain does me. Still labour power. Usually a combination of both hand and brain.

 Fancy words to beautify capitalism. A disabled worker using one hand, or one foot is a  worker using his physical and mental labor. One of the merit of the Socialist Party is transforming complicated terms into easy term to be understood by any member of the working class. The creative power of the working class is their ability to produce surplus value for a bunch of thieves.VWe do not need new theory, we already have it, what we need is to uproot capitalism, and send it to the fucking hell along with the capitalists. Without Marx the Socialist Party would have elaborated its own theory of socialism. We have taken from Marx what we need

[Anonymous]

Marcos wrote:

MBellemare wrote:

Not an anarchist…lol! Just pick up "The structural-anarchism manifesto" at Amazon.UK.  I am adding to Marx, not revising him, his analysis works perfectly well, in a modernists world, where we all work in a fordist factory. Unfortunately, most of us don't, anymore. Its office jobs, academic jobs, creative jobs, temp jobs etc., which are the center of production now, in our post-fordist landscape.Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.Now, the working class is the most numerous, and thus its creatice-power is the bulk of creative-power expenditures. Who else could support a football team, with outlandish prices and wages, certainly not the few capitalists who organize a stadium and/or the premier league. Workers, who are the bulk of creative-power, expend their creative-power, in believing in football or hockey and consuming football and hockey. The problem and Marx got it right is that because they don't have the means of mental and physical production in their hands, workers waste their creative-powers in supporting nonsensical enterprises, such as sports, reality TV shows, capitalist politics etc., which only feed capitalists.M.         ( you have a point Robbo, but a zero sum game, is a quantifiable game, it is a game of additions and substractions, definitive losers and winners, where everything equates at the end. When unquantifiable forces enter the picture, things are not so simple and mathematically perfect at the end. Its messy and dirty, kinda like post-modernity, a patchwork of nonsense and sense rolled up into odd formations. Whackiness. JK ROWLING a multi-millionaire, how whacky is that, writing nonsense.) 

I  have many books written by leftwingers. You can call it whatever you want, but that is not Anarchism, it is like Noam Chomsky who call himself an Anarchist and he supports state capitalist goverment and its leader, Richard Wolf call himself a Marxist and he supports the Coop,  which is a creation of the Oweian,  and they have been proven that they are a total failure, James Petra and Naomi Klen call themsevles Marxists, or they are called Marxist, and they are just reformers of capitalism, and darling of the leftwingersAnarchism is what the SPGB and the WSM propose,  which is a world society without state, and without a monetary system, without capital, without wage slavery, without a market system, a real democratic society,  and freedom for all mankind, it is not replacing capitalism with capitalism. I have read many books on Anarchism, written by real Anarchists, and their point of view is total different, even more, many Anarchists do support Marx economical view, they have not found an flaw on Marx's concept on automatatioon or his labor theoryThere is nothing to add to Marx's capital, it must be applied to the capitalist society, as a philosopher known as Raya Dunayeskaya said: Marx'capital was written for the XX century, and I can say that it was written for the 21 century, and for any aspect of the daily activity of the working class at all levels, Marx capital is more actual than ever, even more,  during the economical crisis of super-production of 2008 many bourgoise economists run to the libraries  and the bookstores to look for his work, because whatever they learned at the universities did not help them to ubderstand the cause of the crisis. With econometric nobody can explains that phenomenon, it must be explained thru the activities of the human beings, and Marx was a humanistRichard Wolf who holds a doctorate degree in Economics from Harvard and Yale, he said that he never learned anything when he finished his degree, he said that he started to learn economics ( or Political Economy )  when he studied Marx's Capital., he just was wasting his time. Personally, I have met many peoples who have the same opinion, and have met many  factory workers who knew capital by heart, instead of trying to revise it, they have applited it  to their own life, we do not have to be an intelectual in order to understand capital. .What you have described is nothing new, it was alrady described by Marx and it has been  extensive discussed by the Socialist Party for several decades, which is the concept of unproductive labor, but also umproductive labor prioduces surplus value to the capitalist class, and the unproductive sector feeds itself from the surplus value of the productive sector.. It is  just another social parasite The projection of Capital goes further than  the factory workers, it has been already applied to the non factories workers, who also must sell their manual and mental labor in they also produce profits and surplus value, and labor time, that include office workers, technocrats, engineers and many others, the concept of proletarian, and wage slavery  must be extended to others sectors of the capitalist societyOfice workers, technocrats, doctors, etc, etc, they are wages slaves becauuse they must sell their labor force in order to survive, even more, some small business peoples fall in that category too, and some presidents too, and business managers.  Marx capital will be actual until the working class decide to overthrow capital, the only thing that other  peoples have tried to do, including you,  is to revise Marx Capital in order to please the capitalist class. Old illusions presented as new ideasAn investigation of more than 25 years can not be understimated, and it can not  be replaced for a few years of revisionists conceptions, you are not adding anything, you are just repeating what others epigones of Marx have said including Rudolf Rucker, but at least he had a proletarian view, but he never mention that Marx was also one of the theoritician of real AnarchismIt looks like  you have not been in contact with workers from others countries,  ( when Engels wrote his book about the conditions of the working class, he interviewed many workers ) or you have not been able to see the reality of the workers in others places around the globes,( I have seen many,  personnally )  but there are many workers who still fulfill  the requierments to be called proletarian, the so called petty bourgoise, or the fantasy created by the capitalist class known as the middle east, is also part of the working class, they are also wage slaves. You can write 100 books but your economical premises are completely wrong. .Many of those high paid sportman including the baseball player ( a game invented by the Tainos ) they come from proletarian families, and many of them spent several years  of suffering and hunger before becoming famous. Arts, sports, entertaiment have been turned into a lucrative business by the capitalist class, there is any poor able to attend an opera house, it is only available for peoples with money.In a socialist society arts is going to have a different approach, it would be  like William Morris said: We are going to be artists, poets and writers. The creative power of the working class, mental or physical is to produce surplus value at the point of production for a groups legalized robbers and thieves known as the capitalist class. Nobody can take capitalism to a beauty parlour to transform it.Workers at the present time, they are supportiing capitalism, and capitalism has not collapsed yet because the workers are supporting it, the exploited is supporting the exploiter, they are supporting their own class enemy, the day that they take political  consciouness capitalism wll last less than a roach in a chicken nest, and all those mockering capitalist theory will thrown in the trash can

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

MBellemare wrote:

Not an anarchist…lol! Just pick up "The structural-anarchism manifesto" at Amazon.UK. 

Yes, but what sort of anarchist? Are you a "communist anarchist" who wants to see the means of production owned and operated in common, with the abolition of production for sale, money, banks, credit, etc? Or are you one of those anarchists who envisage the abolition of the state but the continuation of a market economy in some form?

 That is a very good question. Anarchists trends  are like the expression of Mao Tse Tung: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend."  There are many tendencies  The Anarcho capitalists which are a bunch of pro-capitalists call themselves  Anarchists, and they have raised similar critiques against Marx's capital

[Anonymous]

I spent some time reading the book online. There is nothing beneficial for the interest of the world working class. There is nothing related to Anarchism. It is not an extension of Marx economic thoughts, it is the opposite. It would be like saying that Proudhon was the father of Anarchism,  or a communist when he was an anti-communist. We have what we need, and we have taken from Marx what is needed. We already have our theory of socialism-communism and they are based on our declaration of principles. For me, this is a closed case

[alanjjohnstone]

An  interesting aspect of robotisation discussed herehttps://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/25/the-rise-of-the-robots-and-the-end-of-capitalism/I'm led to the conclusion that the author doesn't suggest a socialist revolution to change society but an accommodation with a better "revolutionary" capitalism.

Quote:

everything must be done to enhance the skills and perspectives of future workers to meet the challenges of an advanced capitalist society where the chance for new avenues of production and thus new and more creatively satisfying work will be possible.

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

An  interesting aspect of robotization discussed herehttps://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/25/the-rise-of-the-robots-and-the-end-of-capitalism/I'm led to the conclusion that the author doesn't suggest a socialist revolution to change society but an accommodation with a better "revolutionary" capitalism.

Quote:

everything must be done to enhance the skills and perspectives of future workers to meet the challenges of an advanced capitalist society where the chance for new avenues of production and thus new and more creatively satisfying work will be possible.

Taking capitalism to a beauty parlor. All these writers they labeled themselves as Marxists but when we look and read carefully their ideas we discover that they are just reformers of capitalism. They are just proclaiming the eternity of capitalism

[ALB]

Balanced aericle on automation here:https://www.wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/Productivity just doesn't increase that fast because it's not the effect of automation at the last stage of production that counts but the total labour cost in producing a commodity from start to finish. As the article points out, if automation was that profitable (the criterion by which capitalist firms decide whether or not to invest in it) then capitalist firms would be investing more in it than they currently are.

[Author]

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