Marx and Automation
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alanjjohnstone wrote: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.
A functional socially healthy society, by any other name than socialism, would stink? Seems like you would have agreed wtih this statement. . . "everything must be done to enhance the skills and perspectie of futures workers to meet the challenges of an advanced socialist society where the chance for new avenues of production and thus new and more creatively satisfying work will be possible.". So apparently a good idea is not a good idea unless it uses the word socialism or marx to a close minded socialist. It's kind of like how in america Obama picked up the Obamacare plan which was actually just the republican romney care solution from the previous administration and suddenly because it had the name democrat on it, the republicans hated the same good idea they proposed the previous administration as romney care. That's what I think socialist are trying to do. They're acting like republicans in that respect.So the part you really don't like about the quote is that it didn't use the word "Socialism" and give socialist credit for the idea. The general attitutude of this form in my opinion is that, any idea that doesn't start with the words socialism or marx in the first sentence is an abomination. The forum members seem to reject any idea not couched in old forms that have been discredited and failed more times than any idea they pooh pooh for having been tried and failed. The "it's been tried and failed and isn't real socialism" argument is a sheep dog in the form of a "there are no true scotsman argument". I've discovered that inflexible socialist thinkers can't really recognize socialism when it comes wearing a capitalist costume. If you take quotes from most of marx and tag out the dog wistle appeal to solidarity they read the same as capitalist quotes. Socialist are fond of hating on any socialist idea with the word "socialist" replaced by any other word, because it's the word "socialist" and the name "marx" that socialist really care about and most of them don't understand the concepts flexibly enough to recognize socialism principles outside of a textbook or dusty tome.I urge all socialist to look beyond their love of the word "marx" and "socialism" and "solidarity" to see these concepts when they they are hidden and operating outside a textbook and not wearing the flag of socialism and marx.
Marcos wrote: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 caseI think you closed this case before it was opened. You are a judge that has made his mind up before the jury starts and you will have no back talk from the defendants. Why don't you just a make a signature that says "unless this uses the words Anarchism and Socialism and Marx in the way I personally beleive those terms are limited too, then it's all a waste of time". Then you don't have to even bother reading, which seems silly since you always say the same thing to any idea that doesn't come with the old school establishment socialism colors. Apparently what you've taken from marx and what you feel you need is a dogged determiniation to ignore and look down on any idea that isn't you're pet interpretation. Tha's sad, because I think Marx was a lot more open minded and less pre-judgemental than you would feel comfortable. I am pretty sure if we mixed up marx language and replaced words like "socialism" with "capitalized socialism", that just the name change would make the entire concept repellent to you. So why not just admit you hate the word and don't recognize the concepts.
Marcos wrote:One of the merit of the Socialist Party is transforming complicated terms into easy term to be understood by any member of the working classROFL, LOL.
Quote:A functional socially healthy society, by any other name than socialism, would stink?Anything other than socialism wouldn't be functional, it wouldn't be social, and it wouldn't be healthy.It is not a matter of terminology but of actual processes. Capitalism is much more than simply the relationship to work, more than simply about the technology employed in producing wealth. It is an exchange economy with buying and selling of commodities, including labour-power, which means people are bought and sold as objects. Wage-slavery. Capitalism has always had a utopian aspect where it is hoped that estranged and alienated work disappears and we all have meaningful worthwhile vocational useful employment. It is a forlorn hope and an unachievable aspiration.You cannot have half-way houses as many in the cooperative movement advocate can happen within capitalism nor can half-measures reform away the inherent problems of capitalism. It is indeed an either/or issue. Either capitalism carries on. Or we end it.Socialists have been very much the promoters of technology to be potentially liberatory. Marx son-in-law, after all, wrote "The Right to be Lazy". Marx himself saw that within capitalist production techniques were the seed to free men and women from drudgery and monotony. He wanted them to be able "to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic". I suggest you look beyond your own limited horizon and give due credit to a political idea that deserves recognition as emancipatory. It is not just a matter of words but also of actions to fulfil ideas. In all your posts, this has been glaringly missing.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Anything other than socialism wouldn't be functional, it wouldn't be social, and it wouldn't be healthy.It is not a matter of terminology but of actual processes. Capitalism is much more than simply the relationship to work, more than simply about the technology employed in producing wealth. It is an exchange economy with buying and selling of commodities, including labour-power, which means people are bought and sold as objects. Wage-slavery. Capitalism has always had a utopian aspect where it is hoped that estranged and alienated work disappears and we all have meaningful worthwhile vocational useful employment. It is a forlorn hope and an unachievable aspiration.You cannot have half-way houses as many in the cooperative movement advocate can happen within capitalism nor can half-measures reform away the inherent problems of capitalism. It is indeed an either/or issue. Either capitalism carries on. Or we end it.Socialists have been very much the promoters of technology to be potentially liberatory. Marx son-in-law, after all, wrote "The Right to be Lazy". Marx himself saw that within capitalist production techniques were the seed to free men and women from drudgery and monotony. He wanted them to be able "to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic". I suggest you look beyond your own limited horizon and give due credit to a political idea that deserves recognition as emancipatory. It is not just a matter of words but also of actions to fulfil ideas. In all your posts, this has been glaringly missing.I think your first sentence confirms my suspicion of the "no true scottsman theory" of socialist. they are all Socialist until their pet theory or idea fails and then they become not true socialist. It seems like you've defined socialism as this glittering generality like "utopia". in fact we could easily replace the word "socialism" in your first sentence and replace it with "utopia" and works the same. . . " anything other than utopia wouldn't be funtional, it wouldn't be social, and it wouldn't be healthy". And then if anyone finds a flaw in your idea of utopia or you try it and it doesn't work, then you just say "that's not true utopia". It's an easy childish rhetoric trick that a true socialist would never come up with or argue and therefore you are not a true socialist. There's nothing you can say now that we know your true colors. Long live socialism (in book and theory only. Eternal and unchanging like the dinosaurs). Part of the problem I think is that you've defined "socialism is apposed to capitalism". Which is actually kind of like saying dogmatically "capitalism is apposed to socialism". It's an obviously false dogma. For example capitalism mostly cares about profit and if socialism made more profit then there's be socialist micro-economies that make profit and capitalism wouild welcome them as long as they made a profit. Socialism, though has a problem because it seems to be intollerant of people practicing anything other than socialism even at a distance or only part of the time or even on a few purchases. There doesn't seem to be an option unders socialism as understood here for inclusion of other views and ways of life. That makes socialism an "all or nothing" argument and most of the people here seem to feel it requires that all of the planet is socialist or the majority anyway and the majority somehow has enough power to force the others on the planet not to practice capitalism even in secret. Now I know you're probably thinking. . . "Socialist don't believe in profit" but that's actually wrong. Marx just apposed a system of profiteering by owners of capital. He didn't reject profit seeking or individuals looking to better their lives and "profit" from theiir actions and decisons. And then youi'll say "that's not what socialist mean when we say profit" and that's your "no true scottsman argument again". Capitalism has many socialist aspects and micro-communities that act internally as socialist. Busiess communities that act as authoritarian empires within capitalism and can enforce internally any laws or rules they see fit within reason inside the company. Capitalism even allows socialist communes. Or does it? I think any form of absolutism that says "there is absolutely no capitalism in socialism and absolutely nothing about socialism in capitalism" is just dumb dogmatic stupidity. Socialist and capitalist both have "people" they both have "things" they both have disagreements and a method for resolving disagreements. Would socialist throw out voting and the existence of people because both are part of capitalism? Capitalism says people are individuals and free to make their own choices. So socialism is apposed to that? If it's part of capitalism as you say then obviously it can't be healthy as you say so obviously free choice is not socialism and must be stamped out. lets look at your last sentence "He wanted them to be able "to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic". . . That reads a lot like a capitalist wrote it to promote capitalism, so hopefully you can see how the bias and double standard inherent in this socialist forum is toxic.
Quote:That reads a lot like a capitalist wrote it to promote capitalism, so hopefully you can see how the bias and double standard inherent in this socialist forum is toxic.Perhaps you overlooked this acknowledgement in my post of capitalism's progressive phase and the r/evolution Marx expected to take place.
Quote:Marx himself saw that within capitalist production techniques were the seed to free men and women from drudgery and monotony.A search of this website would demonstrate to your good self that the past benefits of capitalist society has been fully recognised but our emphasis is now on the word "past"…Times have changed and despite superficial appearances that it has, capitalism hasn't really evolved fundamentally. That may actually come as a shock to someone who does not study the essence and substance of a social system. As for Marx "endorsing" profit, from that great British Library in the Sky he must be guffawing at your interpretation of the many many descriptions he gave of what profit was in numerous and diverse writings. – It is part of the surplus value extracted from the employee by his employer. And that, dear friend, was what Marx called robbery. Not the "degree" of the theft as you seem to imply by stating it was only "profiteering" he condemned but the fact that thievery took place.This is not some sort of "true Scotsman" analogy that you seem determined to persist with but simple basic fact of what Marx studied and concluded, just as Einstein had his E=mc2. You may wish to re-define his equation and say he meant to write something else to suit your own view and declare Einstein's acolytes are in error for repeating the original but it will no longer possess any meaning, so please desist from making false claims about what Marx meant when he argued his Labour Theory of Value.
This is certainly something we can agree upon – I am certainly no Einsteinian physicist. and this wiki entry simply blanked my mind rather than illuminate it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalenceI fared a little bit better with this explanation of Marx's economics https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/social-reproduction
alanjjohnstone wrote:Quote:That reads a lot like a capitalist wrote it to promote capitalism, so hopefully you can see how the bias and double standard inherent in this socialist forum is toxic.Perhaps you overlooked this acknowledgement in my post of capitalism's progressive phase and the r/evolution Marx expected to take place.
Quote:Marx himself saw that within capitalist production techniques were the seed to free men and women from drudgery and monotony.A search of this website would demonstrate to your good self that the past benefits of capitalist society has been fully recognised but our emphasis is now on the word "past"…Times have changed and despite superficial appearances that it has, capitalism hasn't really evolved fundamentally. That may actually come as a shock to someone who does not study the essence and substance of a social system. As for Marx "endorsing" profit, from that great British Library in the Sky he must be guffawing at your interpretation of the many many descriptions he gave of what profit was in numerous and diverse writings. – It is part of the surplus value extracted from the employee by his employer. And that, dear friend, was what Marx called robbery. Not the "degree" of the theft as you seem to imply by stating it was only "profiteering" he condemned but the fact that thievery took place.This is not some sort of "true Scotsman" analogy that you seem determined to persist with but simple basic fact of what Marx studied and concluded, just as Einstein had his E=mc2. You may wish to re-define his equation and say he meant to write something else to suit your own view and declare Einstein's acolytes are in error for repeating the original but it will no longer possess any meaning, so please desist from making false claims about what Marx meant when he argued his Labour Theory of Value.
@AlanJohnston,Thanks for replying and considering my thoughts politieliy and with intelligence. I may have misjudged you. I guess I was imagining that if I said "I have discovered a way that within a capitalist production techniqaues I have found a seed to free men and women from drudgery and monotony". Because when I've said anything close to that on this website I get a lot of disaproval in general that I need to read marx and I"m talking like a reformer and capitalism can't be reformed. In fact, I've provided links to this "seed" that marx was talking about it and I'm making a project and business plan to implement it and the moderators of this board have blocked all my attempts to "reform capitalism". I'd give you a simple link to explain how my plan to make a convenient and ubuiquitous sliding scale price tag will completely change how capitalism functions in a marketplace, but everytime I try bring up the possibility the mods censor me with fake charges I'm soliciting and other fraudulent dishonest behavior we normally associate with capitalist. So my experience with socialist and this board is disapointing sometimes, but I don't want to say that's all about you and maybe you aren't like that?Actually, it's funny you bring up E=MC2 because it proves you are completely wrong. That's not the formulae einstein promoted and discovered which was rejected by people for being too long and complicated. the original full equation is here. . .http://gizmodo.com/5955723/do-you-know-the-rest-of-einsteins-most-famous-equation . So I'm thinking this is typical of socialist, that they misrepresnt equations and historical fact to make a rhetorical point in favor of their dogma shortened version of einstein and they seem to shorten and truncate marx into their pet theories and then adhere to the short form of marx slavishly. I say go the original einstein and interpret it originally because you, my friend, are using the short form of einsteins equation and thinking its the only interpretation and in doing so you have done exactly what you accuse others of doing and removed much of the meaning behind einsteins true equation. You are not a true physicis or scientist anymore than you are a true socialist and the whole attempt at seizing authenticity is suspect as much as anyone who proclaims themselves to be the only true holders of wisdom should be regarded with suspicion. My suggestions and solutions are consistent with Marx as well as I can tell in Marx's own longer and often contradictory writing. But, my suggestions absolutely will not help socialist who have already dogmatically concluded that they have everything they need and everything else is bad(that's not you, just others in the forum). Nor will my suggestions help people using the truncated form of marx deprived of it's meaning that regularly say things about "solidarity" or "capitalism can not be reforemed and must be discarded". Marx was pretty clear that capitalism will evolve into socialism and I have a way to do it and the dimwits in this forum using the truncated ideas about marx can't understand it. I'll try framing my idea in another way and see if that gets through to people using the truncated version of marx deprived of it's meaning. . . ."while it's true that there is surplus value extracted from an employer of labor to produce goods, it's also true that there is surplus value extracted by the retailer from selling things produced by the producer. The retaler wants to make as much money as possilbe and will gladly sell to everyone at a cost that is higher for those who can pay more. the people who can pay more and are less price senstive and have surplus value to extract from a purchase are the same people who extracted surplus value from the production of goods. So the retailers can absolutely counter act and even reverse the effects on a society of the producers extraction of surplus value. The retailers of course need a profit motive and charging a sliding scale price for products they resale works as a great profit motive because a sliding scale price makes the retailer more profit than a flat price if there is any wealth innequality in the marketplace of purchasers. "ok, that's it in the paragraph above. A solution to innequality that's consistent with marx and capitalism and leads to the capitalist economies evolving into something closer to socialism. It's simple, it works and it doesn't contradict marx original writing as far as I know. But watch it get ignored and missunderstood and labeled as spam or something by the mods soon who are using a truncated version of marx deprived of much of it's meaning.If you want to speculate on how this would scale and increase just imagine a world where EVERYTHING was sold on a sliding scale price. If everything gets sold on a sliding scale price then there is no such thing as one person being richer than another. rich or poor, if the car price tag says 50% of your yearly income, then you can only buy two cars a year and that's if you skip food and other stuff. in a hypothetical economy selling things on a sliding scale Bill gates would have to pay half his yearly income that year for one car. The sellers obviously like this idea because it's very profitable to them and they are quite willing to go along with it as long as we can produce a technology innovation to let them conveniently price things this way. Also it's legal and done already with things like medicine and doctors visits in the USA which are routinely sold on a sliding scale price tag. Nobody sells coffee on a sliding scale because it's inconvenient even though it would make the cofee sellers more money. I'm goint to make it convenient and I've started a non-profit project to do it.Projections and user reserach to date suggest that it will never achieve complete equality because then there's no profit to be made by charging rich people more than poor because there will be a rapidly diminishing supply of rich people (and also a rapidly diminishing supply of poor people). We are still trying to work out what the equilibrium level of innequality would be if purchasing on a sliding scale price tag were convenient and ubiquitous after full market penetration and how fast innequality would drop. It's a numerical problem not a political economic thoery problem we are working on solving now, and we want to make sure the idea doesn't get perverted by capitalism somehow too, so I'm researching how to prevent corruption in the system. Projections and research suggest more profit to the retaller for most non-capital based value exchange such as labor (buy a massage on a sliding scale) or services (get your car fixed at a price that's a sliding scale) or or suplus value or intangible value (such as a movie download sold with a sliding scale price tag).
alanjjohnstone wrote:This is certainly something we can agree upon – I am certainly no Einsteinian physicist. and this wiki entry simply blanked my mind rather than illuminate it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalenceI fared a little bit better with this explanation of Marx's economics https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/social-reproductionWell, the wikipedia entry isn't completely wrong, it's just limited and being used wrong in some arguments, Just like a lot of the posters in this forum are not wrong about socialism or economics, they're just using a limited understanding that leads them to wrong conclusions in some arguments. For E=MC2 the problem is the false assumption that that all matter is stationary and nothing in the universe moves. The E=MC2 equation failes when objects start moving and but not by much. You have to move things around at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light before the short equations starts to become seriously wrong. for most everyday objects like tossing a ball to put it in motion you can safely ignore the thousands of a decimal place difference between the truncated short equation and the longer more accurate equation. That was in the video at the link I gave and probably a better source for accessibility and simplified better than the wikipedia entry of E-MC2. Likewise the posters in this forum aren't entrirely wrong, it's just they assume that prices have to be in capital based dollars and not income adjusted dollars. If there were no such thing as pricing on a sliding scale, then I wouldn't have much of a disagreement with people who argue for a political revution and abandoning capitalism. The moral here is that being close minded will close your mind to some solutions. I looked at your social-reproduction page. thanks for the helpful link. It's not wrong, but it omits the "surplus value" capturered by the retailer in any sales transaction and it also doens't allow for a variable extraction of surplus value from the equation during the sale process. According to the page you linked there is no such thing as a sliding scale and the existencce of aa sliding scale price tag breaks the theory. So Marx thoery as described in the page you linked only works if you ignore the existence of a sliding scale price tag. for most current purchases around the world, that's a pretty safe assumption and slding scale pricing makes up probably less than 1% of econmic transactions in todays average market so ignoring the sliding scale price tag seems reasonable in todays market for today. It was definitely reasonable to ignore the existence of a sliding scale price tag when Marx was doing his work and writing. But If I can make a sliding scale conveneint and ubiquitous so it makes up a larger percent of economic activity then we'll see a strong divergence between the results of the truncated marx model on the page and a better representation of how surplus value moves in an economy. in general there seems to be some inattention to the sales part of the flow diagrams and it conflates the identity and motives of the retailer with the motives of the communal good of all the rich people together. "The essential capitalist condition is “only if communal wealth can be syphoned off by the capitalist class [in Marxian terms, only if surplus value Ⓢ can be realized by the capitalist class]”." ignores the rather obvious fact that in a capitalist economy people DO NOT make communal purchasing or job decisions and they can't make some communal decisions about price or jobs because of how capitalism forces competition between people first and uses a crowdsource price setting solution. That's a problem for the whole theory because the rich people don't act out of comunal for all rich people as a group in solidarity, they act out of personal profit seeking and will gladly take money from their rich neighbors. so there's no overArching organized and authoritarian "rich people club" with the power to set prices in the marketplace from a top down structure, it's just individual business people individually trying to make the most money that sets the price and indiidual sellers will undercut and do other pricing tricks that don't get explained by traditional capitalist or marxist economics. you'd have to usa a behavioral economics or institutional economics analysis to really point out the faws in the page you liinked to, but since so few people understand behavioral or institutional economics principles I didn't bother with that kind of explanation. What marx is describing in his diagram or whoever created the diagram is a good representation of the state of a nation scale economy at a time many many years ago when it was probably pretty close to accurate. There was no thought back then to how a sliding scale price tag might affect things in a society. We know better now. after reading the first article and commenting above I read further down the page and found this quote that seems relevant. . ."Marx states point blank in Capital Volume 1 that political economists have “never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him”. This is the expression of determinism."So what does an income based sliding scale do exactly in regards to this quote from marx above? It asks the question of what if labour is represented by the something other than the value of it's product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. With a sliding scale price tage the labour is NOT representative of the magnitued of the product time. Instead your buying power (your labor buying power) is adjusted at the cash register so that if you are rich because you captured a lot of surplus value in some way hten your price goes up. This meens the value of your labor is NOT EXACTLY represented by the value of it's product and labor time, but instead the value of your labor is represented by your salary in combined with and modified by the price adjustements at the cash register.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:This is certainly something we can agree upon – I am certainly no Einsteinian physicist. and this wiki entry simply blanked my mind rather than illuminate it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalenceI fared a little bit better with this explanation of Marx's economics https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/social-reproductionWell, the wikipedia entry isn't completely wrong, it's just limited and being used wrong in some arguments, Just like a lot of the posters in this forum are not wrong about socialism or economics, they're just using a limited understanding that leads them to wrong conclusions in some arguments. For E=MC2 the problem is the false assumption that that all matter is stationary and nothing in the universe moves. The E=MC2 equation failes when objects start moving and but not by much. You have to move things around at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light before the short equations starts to become seriously wrong. for most everyday objects like tossing a ball to put it in motion you can safely ignore the thousands of a decimal place difference between the truncated short equation and the longer more accurate equation. That was in the video at the link I gave and probably a better source for accessibility and simplified better than the wikipedia entry of E-MC2. Likewise the posters in this forum aren't entrirely wrong, it's just they assume that prices have to be in capital based dollars and not income adjusted dollars. If there were no such thing as pricing on a sliding scale, then I wouldn't have much of a disagreement with people who argue for a political revution and abandoning capitalism. The moral here is that being close minded will close your mind to some solutions. I looked at your social-reproduction page. thanks for the helpful link. It's not wrong, but it omits the "surplus value" capturered by the retailer in any sales transaction and it also doens't allow for a variable extraction of surplus value from the equation during the sale process. According to the page you linked there is no such thing as a sliding scale and the existencce of aa sliding scale price tag breaks the theory. So Marx thoery as described in the page you linked only works if you ignore the existence of a sliding scale price tag. for most current purchases around the world, that's a pretty safe assumption and slding scale pricing makes up probably less than 1% of econmic transactions in todays average market so ignoring the sliding scale price tag seems reasonable in todays market for today. It was definitely reasonable to ignore the existence of a sliding scale price tag when Marx was doing his work and writing. But If I can make a sliding scale conveneint and ubiquitous so it makes up a larger percent of economic activity then we'll see a strong divergence between the results of the truncated marx model on the page and a better representation of how surplus value moves in an economy. in general there seems to be some inattention to the sales part of the flow diagrams and it conflates the identity and motives of the retailer with the motives of the communal good of all the rich people together. "The essential capitalist condition is “only if communal wealth can be syphoned off by the capitalist class [in Marxian terms, only if surplus value Ⓢ can be realized by the capitalist class]”." ignores the rather obvious fact that in a capitalist economy people DO NOT make communal purchasing or job decisions and they can't make some communal decisions about price or jobs because of how capitalism forces competition between people first and uses a crowdsource price setting solution. That's a problem for the whole theory because the rich people don't act out of comunal for all rich people as a group in solidarity, they act out of personal profit seeking and will gladly take money from their rich neighbors. so there's no overArching organized and authoritarian "rich people club" with the power to set prices in the marketplace from a top down structure, it's just individual business people individually trying to make the most money that sets the price and indiidual sellers will undercut and do other pricing tricks that don't get explained by traditional capitalist or marxist economics. you'd have to usa a behavioral economics or institutional economics analysis to really point out the faws in the page you liinked to, but since so few people understand behavioral or institutional economics principles I didn't bother with that kind of explanation. What marx is describing in his diagram or whoever created the diagram is a good representation of the state of a nation scale economy at a time many many years ago when it was probably pretty close to accurate. There was no thought back then to how a sliding scale price tag might affect things in a society. We know better now. after reading the first article and commenting above I read further down the page and found this quote that seems relevant. . ."Marx states point blank in Capital Volume 1 that political economists have “never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him”. This is the expression of determinism."So what does an income based sliding scale do exactly in regards to this quote from marx above? It asks the question of what if labour is represented by the something other than the value of it's product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. With a sliding scale price tage the labour is NOT representative of the magnitued of the product time. Instead your buying power (your labor buying power) is adjusted at the cash register so that if you are rich because you captured a lot of surplus value in some way hten your price goes up. This meens the value of your labor is NOT EXACTLY represented by the value of it's product and labor time, but instead the value of your labor is represented by your salary in combined with and modified by the price adjustements at the cash register.
Steve I think you make the common mistake of using the term Value and price/wage, to mean the same thing. In common parlance this might seem sensible, however from a Marxist point of view, value and price are very different.You might find the link below uesful:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/
This a quick response to Marcos, scathing judgement on The Structural-Anarchism Manifesto. I think your being a little harsh, may be a little envious, by saying no anarchism in it. Anarchism is in the title, silly, did you even look? You say there is nothing about the working class. Well, let me post the concluding few sentences of the manifesto:
"Real history is the unfolding of the will to power, a convergence of mental and physical forces and/or logics, pitted against one another in a multiplicity of fluctuating, antagonistic and/or mutual-aid relationships, vying for contextual supremacy. Real history is a fiery molten crucible, anarchy, buried deep beneath manufactured pseudo-history and superficiality, ever-ready to blow, unfold, by way of the revolutionary rabble. Purged and purified of capitalist relations, real history will glisten, glisten through a new logical paradigm. And any small impetus may germinate and activate the people’s r(evolution). So, make haste praxiacrat, rabble-rouser, grab history, own it, and bend it to your will, less history slips between your fingers into something false, something other, something that will wield real history against you from above."
In my estimation, only when the working class/proletariat transforms/liquidates itself into a revolutionary rabble, can a new society, a anarcho-socialist society based on anarcho-socialism relations and an anarcho-socialism mode of production, truly germinate from the (creative-power) of the rabble. No vangard party or Stalinist/Maoist dictatorship of the proletariat, can ever replace the honesty and horizontalism of the revolutionary rabble. Boom! Mic drop!Tim Kilgallon wrote:Steve I think you make the common mistake of using the term Value and price/wage, to mean the same thing. In common parlance this might seem sensible, however from a Marxist point of view, value and price are very different.You might find the link below uesful:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/@Tim KilgallonYes, you're right. I agree sort ot. I think you're right that the Marxist point of view and preconceptioins are getting in the way of understanding comon parlance about economics in this case. But I reject that because it's not fair to Marx who stated in advance that people had that problem and that they were conditioned to think only in capitalist terms that would make it hard to understand Marx point of view. Seems to me like a large number of people just can't wrap their head around any other conception of value and price than their own pet interpretation of those words. I wish they'd just use the common language and common parlance like the common man and stop being so elitist and exclusive. I don't think marx would approve of such close minded rigid adherence to conventioinal thinking. In this forum, the conventional thinking of a sllightly distorted, and dogmatically authoritarian regimented limitation of language and words to only certain meanings for discussion the economy has deprived some of the commenters of the ability to even understand a practice that is socialist in nature. They have blinders on and see only what they want to see. Marx had the same problem with dogmatic refusal so I think he's on my side of this. Marx warned that the ignorant public would not understand becaue they didn't even understand the words he was using and the langauge he used wasn't understandable to capitalist. I'm having the same problem as marx did with the people here being incapaple of seeing this as socialism because they have been indoctrinated into thinking words like value and price have only one meaning that they limited a long time ago and they have very limited ability no to understand any new or novel or even different conceptions for the meaning of "value: and "price". A lot of the people here seem to have lost the ability to understand common parlance and couch their reasoning in jargon that prevents others from understanding them and prevents them from understanding common parlance. It's as if marx were trying to explain his theory to a capitalist and all a capitalist couild say was "it's not going to produce profit so it's none of our business to you're spam and get lost". Only here I try to explain a theory of exchange and a sliding scale price tag and people sayi "it's not socialism, and it's not solidarity and we don't need it so get lost". I looked at the book length article on price and value by marx you linked too. It's a bit long. I have a 200 page book about a sliding scale price tag I could add a link to but the mods don't like it when I do that. Wouild you read my 200 page book if I read yours? isnt that a socialist sort of exchange offer with no capital value traded and therefore fair. Someone here once proudly argued that socialist are really good at explaining complex things in simple terms. Can you demonstrate your understanding of what I argue and demonstrate you ability to explain it in simple terms that a maxist from this community could understand. I'd like to benefit from your forums vaunted ability to explain "a sliding scale price tag" in a few words that a marxist can understand. if it's juist a few words, you could copy my comment or a relevant piece of it and just edit a few words and be done. Simplle right. Especially for someone from this erudite forum where people are smart and very talented at explianing complex ideas in simple ways that others can understand. You've already read the book you recommend so can you just edit my comment and past it back in a few minutes with the right words instead of asking me to read a whole book for you? Here's a joke. What's the marxist way to solve a comprehension problem? either 1) they rewrite the explanation in a way that makes it more understandable because they're good at that and it only take them a little bit of time. or 2) marxist like to make people spent hours and hours of their personal time reading their hard to understand ramblings rather than lilft a finger to touch a keyboard and just fix the missunderstanding themselves? So which kind of Marxist are you? are you the kind that asks others to do their communication work and work hard at communicating while not lifting a finger to help a communications or discussion directly? Please I beg of you. Rewrite what I wrote or the best part of it in words a marxist can understand. Just do it for a few paragraphs and Maybe I"ll see what and how you do this and be able to do it independently next time. I eagerly await your one paragraph explanation for how a socialist would explain a sliding scale price tag to another true socialist. P.s. I would gladly link to a very understandable and quick readable slideshow to explain a sliding scale price tag that I created, but the mods get upset when I link to the project description and say I"m making an endorsement for something that is not relevant to the socialist case. Maybe if you ask directly, I'll show you how I explained a sliding scale price tag to everyone using common parlance, but you have to ask for the link or I don't think the mods will accept me posting it. If you ask for it, I can also give you a link to a survey form for the slideshow that crowdsources opinions on the understandability and enjoyment of slideshow and helps iteratvely refine the slideshow explanation in a work process that is completely voluntary and socialist. Again, whenever I add a link to the survey form for you to see my slideshow AND improve the communication in it by completing a survey, I just get flack from the mods. So you have to ask me or I really can't share this communication and idea that has been prohibeted and forbidden knowldge by the mods here.
MBellemare wrote:This a quick response to Marcos, scathing judgement on The Structural-Anarchism Manifesto. I think your being a little harsh, may be a little envious, by saying no anarchism in it. Anarchism is in the title, silly, did you even look? You say there is nothing about the working class. Well, let me post the concluding few sentences of the manifesto:
"Real history is the unfolding of the will to power, a convergence of mental and physical forces and/or logics, pitted against one another in a multiplicity of fluctuating, antagonistic and/or mutual-aid relationships, vying for contextual supremacy. Real history is a fiery molten crucible, anarchy, buried deep beneath manufactured pseudo-history and superficiality, ever-ready to blow, unfold, by way of the revolutionary rabble. Purged and purified of capitalist relations, real history will glisten, glisten through a new logical paradigm. And any small impetus may germinate and activate the people’s r(evolution). So, make haste praxiacrat, rabble-rouser, grab history, own it, and bend it to your will, less history slips between your fingers into something false, something other, something that will wield real history against you from above."
In my estimation, only when the working class/proletariat transforms/liquidates itself into a revolutionary rabble, can a new society, a anarcho-socialist society based on anarcho-socialism relations and an anarcho-socialism mode of production, truly germinate from the (creative-power) of the rabble. No vangard party or Stalinist/Maoist dictatorship of the proletariat, can ever replace the honesty and horizontalism of the revolutionary rabble. Boom! Mic drop!Picks up the mike. Yes! That was great and inspirations,I am that revolutionary rabble and I have germinated a new society based on a sliding scale price tag that evolves over time into Anarcho-socialism as it gets used and developed and extended. I am building and designing and crowdsourcing my design and promotion and testing of the new better sliding scale price tag using anarcho-socialism strategies and principles. This project I'm working on to build a better sliding scale price tag is completely 100% consistent with the principles of leaderlessness, no property, no government, and no censorship. It's more communist in it's internal organization and structure than this discussion forum. There are no mods in my project because everyone is equal. There are no classes of people. there is no property (my terms and conditions require any and all contributions to be completely 100% public so no one owns the work and no one can be prohibeted from joining or leaving via free association. I'm building my sliding scale price tag with pure creative power of the masses and so far the vanguard has not been keeping up with the horizontalism of the our revolutionary rabble. In a truly revolutionary socialist enterprise (aka business), there is no censorship and all property is owned. But in this forum individual posters own the words they write and the mods own the forum system and use that power regularly in an authoritarian fashion. That doesn' happen on my project. You can go to my project page and immediately fix my typos, or rewrite my words or otherwise contribute in any way freely without someone saying "you can't do that" like happens here when others want to contribute by fixing my typose or where I might want to contribute by posting links to a user survey about how well a presentation communicates the concepts and practices necessary for socialism to it's readers. ask yourself the question. . . "how come I can't just edit someone elses post to fix some small part. Why is comment on a post here without making another post and losing the chain thread so inconveneient and costly in human labor? How come I can't upvote or downvote a post to show my agreement or disagrement in this forum conveniently at little cost to my time?" If you want answers to these questions ask the mods. If you want a solution that does away with this concerns and solves these problems, then ask for a link to my project page.
MBellemare wrote:This a quick response to Marcos, scathing judgement on The Structural-Anarchism Manifesto. I think your being a little harsh, may be a little envious, by saying no anarchism in it. Anarchism is in the title, silly, did you even look? You say there is nothing about the working class. Well, let me post the concluding few sentences of the manifesto:
"Real history is the unfolding of the will to power, a convergence of mental and physical forces and/or logics, pitted against one another in a multiplicity of fluctuating, antagonistic and/or mutual-aid relationships, vying for contextual supremacy. Real history is a fiery molten crucible, anarchy, buried deep beneath manufactured pseudo-history and superficiality, ever-ready to blow, unfold, by way of the revolutionary rabble. Purged and purified of capitalist relations, real history will glisten, glisten through a new logical paradigm. And any small impetus may germinate and activate the people’s r(evolution). So, make haste praxiacrat, rabble-rouser, grab history, own it, and bend it to your will, less history slips between your fingers into something false, something other, something that will wield real history against you from above."
In my estimation, only when the working class/proletariat transforms/liquidates itself into a revolutionary rabble, can a new society, a anarcho-socialist society based on anarcho-socialism relations and an anarcho-socialism mode of production, truly germinate from the (creative-power) of the rabble. No vangard party or Stalinist/Maoist dictatorship of the proletariat, can ever replace the honesty and horizontalism of the revolutionary rabble. Boom! Mic drop!This bullshitter is funny, first, he called me sub-comandante Marcos without knowing anything about the Zapatistas, or where that name comes from, or who Dr Rafael Sebastian Guillen is, and then, he invents an expression that I never used, which I call a lie, now he calls me silly and envious. The question is, what do I have to envy from this guy? He sounds like George Bush saying that all peoples are envious of the yankeesI am not going to drop any microphone. I will say here, and in any place, and in front of a shooting squad, that you are not an Anarchist and that your book is not about Anarchism, you do not even get close to the proto-Leninist Bakunin. As Alb asked you, Are you a communist-anarchist who advocate for the common possession of the means of production or are you one of those that we have seen in this forum and in the forum of the WSM who advocate for Anarchism based on a market society.You can choose thousands of fancy words, and you can write thousands of sentences, but you are not an Anarchists, and you are not developing Marx, and you are not proclaiming real Anarchism either.You can talk constantly against the vanguard party, and it does not mean anything, CLR James rejected the vanguard party and he was a proto Leninist, and he was an intellectual of high caliber, and he was one of the proclaimers of the state capitalist theory, and he did not know the real meaning of communism, socialism and anarchism, the only good thing that he did was that he rejected HegelA person who says that the Soviet Union was a communist nation, and talk about the iron curtain, it is a clear indication that he does not know anything about the real meaning of socialism, communism, anarchism, marxism, and state capitalism. My grandfather who did not have any formal education, he knew that the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and Corea were not communist countries and that the so called iron curtain was a wall to divide two capitalists region was better informed, and he only means of information that he had was a Telefunken shortwave radio, he never read any book written by Marx or Engels, it shows that academic title does not mean anything. I am still holding the microphone and dropping the bullshit on the floor
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:Marcos wrote: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 caseI think you closed this case before it was opened. You are a judge that has made his mind up before the jury starts and you will have no back talk from the defendants. Why don't you just a make a signature that says "unless this uses the words Anarchism and Socialism and Marx in the way I personally beleive those terms are limited too, then it's all a waste of time". Then you don't have to even bother reading, which seems silly since you always say the same thing to any idea that doesn't come with the old school establishment socialism colors. Apparently what you've taken from marx and what you feel you need is a dogged determiniation to ignore and look down on any idea that isn't you're pet interpretation. Tha's sad, because I think Marx was a lot more open minded and less pre-judgemental than you would feel comfortable. I am pretty sure if we mixed up marx language and replaced words like "socialism" with "capitalized socialism", that just the name change would make the entire concept repellent to you. So why not just admit you hate the word and don't recognize the concepts.
This is the new Project of the Month Club? In what foot are standing now, or what personality are you adopting now? One day you are against socialism and communism, and another day you are defending what you call socialism or anarchism.If Marx wrote extensively against capital, How would he combine capital with socialism? It is not a matter of wording or vocabulary, it is a matter of understanding socialist-communist conception. Like someone that I knew wrote many years ago:, We must ideologically break away from capitalism in order to understand socialism
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