Marx and Automation
- This topic has 650 replies, 23 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Matt wrote:Nothing new in his propositions or his vacillation." The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois."(1879 Marx and Engels )
Old illusions, or petty bourgeois conceptions took from the French left. There is the revival of another one called the Lacanian left.Marxism-Humanism, French Left, the Italian left, and Carrillism they are just reformist trends. They are not a threat to capitalism
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote: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.You don't get "flack from the mods". What you do get is a gentle reminder that you need my permission before posting a link on here for a personal survey.
moderator1 wrote:You don't get "flack from the mods". What you do get is a gentle reminder that you need my permission before posting a link on here for a personal survey.Yep, that's what I heard the last 3 times I tried getting permission to post a link or public survey. Everytime I ask the mods, I get stonewalled and no answer. You, right now would maybe want to be more helpfull and give me a link or some instruction on what is an acceptable means and format for someone with my ability to ask for a request. It seems to me that the means to ask for permission are being obscured and hidden in a very non-socialist way. Why not just include a link to serve as the "means" for contacting you in your warnings? Meenwhile others who's views you favor post links quite liberally and you have no problem with that because it fits your pet personallized definition of socialism. This is the behavior of a capitalist, and I urge you to act more socialist. Do not accept the preconceptions from capitalism on the conception of spam or the conception of a survey as undesireable. Do not restrict your acceptance of links to only those that the capitalist system has promoted. A personal link to a personally produced product or presentation has as much or more value than one that has been vetted and endoresed and reprinted by media which exists in a capitalist framework for the purpose of generating media profits. Free yourself from your preconceptions and ask what would Marx really have done in your shoes. p.s. I am far far from bourgois.
MBellemare wrote:The reason for this de-proletarianization into a jumble of microscopic groupings, to return to my initial reason for joining the SPGB forum, is that value, price and wage is no longer primarily based on quantifiable value, price and wage, it is now based on "what an entity can get away with in the market-place", namely, unquantifiable creative-power. When a society jettisons Marx's rationalistic and scientific labor-power analysis, i.e., his quantifiable law of value and all its mechanistic functionings, value, price and wage-determinations become a matter of power, how much power a capitalist network can wield in establishing and in normalizing outlandish values, prices and wages. And this process of the unfastening of value, price and wage from any scientifically based set of measurements, has fragmented all class relations to the point where class is non-existent and/or marginalized, in favor of the micro-grouping based on all sorts of affinities. As a result, according to the Structural-Anarchism Manifesto, the rising financial inequality across the globe is because the economy no longer, or hardly ever, follows any economic laws, in the last intance, it is about power, the power to construct mental and physical socio-economic reality, regardless of reason, rationality and/or rational measurements. Now, the working population can be the authors of this mental and physical manufactured socio-economic reality, if they become a real revolutionary rabble, and wrestle the means of mental/physical production and reproduction from capitalists and the logic of capitalism, establishing graduallly, or all at once, a new socio-economic formation founded on a new central logic, (hopefully) the logic of structural-anarchism.@mBellemare,Supporting evidience for you. . ."According to economists Jan De Loecker of Princteon University and Jan Eeckhout of the University College London, this basically describes the US economy since 1980. In a recently released paper, De Loecker and Eeckhout analyzed the balance sheets of listed companies from 1950 to 2014. (In 2014, these firms accounted for around 40% of all sales.) They found that average markups, defined as the amount above cost at which a product is sold, have shot up since 1980. The average markup was 18% in 1980, but by 2014 it was nearly 70%."https://qz.com/1062007/market-power-and-competition-explain-every-problem-in-the-economy-new-research-argues/
@Steve San Fran Much appreciated, Steve San Francisco . (As a trained philosopher, I never got to do numerical analysis, but I knew the numbers were out-there and on my side). I think this arbitrariness and these artificially manufactured values, prices and wages, are the primary reason for ever-increasing financial inequality and ever-increasing debt across the working population. When, stock-holders demand maximium profits, companies will do whatever to maximize the bottom-line, and in the last instance, absolutely anything! This is why Chris Hedges calls American Capitalism, a state-sponsored lawless kleptocracy, a kleptocracy that has come into its own in the last 45 years. How a propos, that Post-modernism and post-industrialism has come into its own as well in the last 45 years. Po.-Mo. philosophy has opened the door to this value, price and wage arbitrariness and outlandish thievery, i.e., kleptomania, unleashed upon the global working population. It has given carte blanc to corporate powers that "anything is possible because everything is arbitrary, ambiguous and without solid moral foundation". As a result, the only imperative capitalists follow, and have followed in the 45 years, with exactitude is the logic of capitalism, i.e., "to maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". While most mainstream economists, and talking heads paraded in the media, are obedient lap-dogs to these corporate interests and corporate powers, appologists for this post-modern, post-industrial economic brutality. BTW, if San Fran is a moniker hinting at your city, I was in San Fran, last week, a really awesome city!
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:moderator1 wrote:You don't get "flack from the mods". What you do get is a gentle reminder that you need my permission before posting a link on here for a personal survey.Yep, that's what I heard the last 3 times I tried getting permission to post a link or public survey. Everytime I ask the mods, I get stonewalled and no answer. You, right now would maybe want to be more helpfull and give me a link or some instruction on what is an acceptable means and format for someone with my ability to ask for a request. It seems to me that the means to ask for permission are being obscured and hidden in a very non-socialist way. Why not just include a link to serve as the "means" for contacting you in your warnings? Meenwhile others who's views you favor post links quite liberally and you have no problem with that because it fits your pet personallized definition of socialism. This is the behavior of a capitalist, and I urge you to act more socialist. Do not accept the preconceptions from capitalism on the conception of spam or the conception of a survey as undesireable. Do not restrict your acceptance of links to only those that the capitalist system has promoted. A personal link to a personally produced product or presentation has as much or more value than one that has been vetted and endoresed and reprinted by media which exists in a capitalist framework for the purpose of generating media profits. Free yourself from your preconceptions and ask what would Marx really have done in your shoes. p.s. I am far far from bourgois.
You have never tried getting permission to post your survey on here. Indeed, you have posted it on here willy nilly despite the reminders and warnings. If you had cared to read the rules they tell you to seek permission you need to PM me. If you do this I suggest you just request permission and provide the link. I don't need a lengthy justification or rationalisation on the neccesity for the survey.
This is an excellent analysis made on Marx's Das Kapital by Comrade Adam Buick. This article and the book named Aternative to capitalism written by Buick is also an excellent companion for the analyis of this barbaric economical system.https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1357-september-2017/analysing-economic-systemMarx's critique and analysis of capitalism would be valid until the end of capitalism. The epigones only have tried to throw muds and dusts over his works, but none has been able to prove that it is outdated. The Proletariat is the only social class able to replace this economical system for a system of social production. It is the only revolutionary class that still exist in this society
I never said Marx's critique is no longer valid, I said it is marginalized, i.e., that capitalism functions according to a different, post-modern, post-industrial logic, that no longer holds scientific quantification of labor-power as first and foremost, but merely as a secondary minor consideration. What was in Marx's time an exception, i.e., the arbitrary construction of values, prices, and wages, where no labor-power is found, is now primary. That is all I've said. Marx readily admits that value and price can be dreamed-up and applied to thing. I merely state that now this sort of thing is primary to any quantifiable theory/law of value. By doing this, I can rightly explain from a post-industrial, post-modern point of view, why prices are rising as production costs drop, why there is ever-increasing financial inequality, why there is an ever-increasing debt load dropped upon the working population. Mr. San Francisco, supplied some excellent statistics, which prove my thesis, concerning arbitrary, artificial mark-ups, that continually rise, over the last 40 years. As for the proletariat being the only revolutionary class; at the moment, I see no old school, modern, class structure, I see microscopic groupings with different affinities holding each other together. That is not to say that the proletariat cannot reconstruct itself into a viable monolithic class, and even possibly a revolutionary class, but "class" does not seem to be the appropriate concept for the advanced, high-tech, post-modern, post-industrial society, we currently live in. Alan, rightly corrected me, that the working population is constantly revolutionizing itself, so I cannot, honestly, say that the proletariat as a class cannot reformulate itself out of its current fragmentation. That is why anarchism, or more specifically, structural-anarchism is a viable lens to view our current contemporary world through. Its worth the read.
MBellemare wrote:I never said Marx's critique is no longer valid, I said it is marginalized, i.e., that capitalism functions according to a different, post-modern, post-industrial logic, that no longer holds scientific quantification of labor-power as first and foremost, but merely as a secondary minor consideration. What was in Marx's time an exception, i.e., the arbitrary construction of values, prices, and wages, where no labor-power is found, is now primary. That is all I've said. Marx readily admits that value and price can be dreamed-up and applied to thing. I merely state that now this sort of thing is primary to any quantifiable theory/law of value. By doing this, I can rightly explain from a post-industrial, post-modern point of view, why prices are rising as production costs drop, why there is ever-increasing financial inequality, why there is an ever-increasing debt load dropped upon the working population. Mr. San Francisco, supplied some excellent statistics, which prove my thesis, concerning arbitrary, artificial mark-ups, that continually rise, over the last 40 years.Michel Something does not quite add up in this argument you present of steadily rising prices and falling costs of production. Another forum user here, Steve San Francisco, comes to your aid by presenting the following evidence: “According to economists Jan De Loecker of Princteon University and Jan Eeckhout of the University College London, this basically describes the US economy since 1980. In a recently released paper, De Loecker and Eeckhout analyzed the balance sheets of listed companies from 1950 to 2014. (In 2014, these firms accounted for around 40% of all sales.) They found that average markups, defined as the amount above cost at which a product is sold, have shot up since 1980. The average markup was 18% in 1980, but by 2014 it was nearly 70%." However such evidence hardly clinches the argument for the obvious reason provided in the quote itself – that the firms concerned account for only 40% of all sales. We do not know what the situation is regarding firms accounting for the other 60% of all sales. It is quite conceivable that the former have been able to substantially raise their prices because of the changing pattern of supply and demand but at the expense of the latter, perhaps because relatively greater productivity in the latter sector has greatly increased the output of goods there bringing about a fall in their relative prices. In fact, according to this article I came across, there are “seven categories of goods and services that are comparatively cheaper today than they were 10 years ago. All figures are based on a BLS comparison of like products and services from August 1998 and August 2008.” These include phones, electronics, footwear, new vehicles, toys, apparel, watches” (http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/7-falling-price-tags-1.aspx) So the picture you present is somewhat misleading – some businesses or industries may have been able make substantial mark-ups but only because other businesses of industries have not been able to do so. So what you have in fact is a shift in the overall pattern of demand from the latter to the former, relatively speaking. You see, this is the problem that I have with your whole argument. You seem to think you can just arbitrarily or “creatively” push up your prices but the purchasing power of the consumer is not infinite and the law of opportunity costs intervenes to balance things out. If our consumer has to buy your product at a higher price then she is left with less money to spend on other things. It’s as simple as that. So if she has less money to spend on other thing the businesses producing those other things will struggle to sell these things at the same price as before. In short, they will be obliged to reduce their price to attract buyers Another thing. You talk about production costs falling in recent years and the prices of goods steadily rising. Let’s look at this more closely. Now production costs (by which I take you to mean UNIT production costs), have indeed fallen across large swathes of industry and this is largely because of rising productivity brought about by technological innovation. Marx refers to this as the cheapening of the prices of commodities. This is part of what makes for the increased standard of living. Because prices are cheaper, workers are more able to afford them or to stretch their money wages further to buy things they could not previously buy. In America for example there has been a significant increase in productivity in recent years. According to Gillian White: “When you look at the relationship between worker wages and worker productivity, there's a significant and, many believe, problematic, gap that has arisen in the past several decades. Though productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at a much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period” (Gillian B White Feb 25, 2015, “Why the Gap Between Worker Pay and Productivity Is So Problematic”, The Atlantic) The point I am making here is that the costs of production which you say has been falling includes, of course, the wages bill that businesses have to cover. But wages have not fallen but grown albeit only slightly. Workers may be relatively poorer vis a vis the capitalists today but, in absolute terms, their living standards have gone up slightly. Why is this? Well, one reason is their increased productivity which translates into increased output which in turn brings about about a relative cheapening in the price of commodities. How else would you explain the slight increase in their real wages over this extended period? However, your whole argument hinges on the claim that prices have risen vis a vis real wages which would mean that the standard of living should have steadily fallen over this whole period. But that has not happened – in fact the reverse is true – which strongly suggests that there is something seriously wrong with your theory. You are not taking into account the increased output and the effect this has on prices What the gap between increased wages and increased productivity does help to explain is the increased level of inequality between the working class on the one hand and the capitalists on the other. But remove from the equation the factor of increased productivity (and hence increased output overall) then any increase in wages received by the workers would simply signify a decline in the share of the social product appropriated by the capitalists – and, of course, vice versa. Marx explains this in Value Price and Profit: “The aggregate demand for commodities would, therefore, not increase, but the constituent parts of that demand would change. The increasing demand on the one side would be counterbalanced by the decreasing demand on the other side”.Meaning that if capitalist increased their share of the social product this would tend to be reflected in an increased in price in the kind of commodities capitalists typically purchased such as luxuries but the flipside of this would be a lowered demand, and therefore a lower price, for “necessaries” – the sort of commodities that workers typically purchased Perhaps, it is the former type of good, or what I would call “status goods”, that your theory of rising prices versus falling production costs is based upon. We talked earlier of Naomi Klein’s book No Logo. But Klein herself makes a clear cut distinction between what she calls, on the one hand, “big box” outlets like Walmarts whose whole approach is selling as cheap as possible, buying in bulk and employing economies of scale and, on other, businesses like Nike who go in for branded products (though Nike itself , I believe, does not own any factories itself and outsources its production to subcontractors in the Third World). It is in the case of branded products such as Nike trainers that your argument is (half) correct. The Third world sweatshops that produce branded products like Nike trainers are notorious for the very low wages they pay their workers and there is a constant downward pressure to reduce wages even lower in a race to bottom with multinational corporations ever ready to switch to whichever supplier can come up with the lowest cost. But you are mistaken if you think that is the end of the matter and that everything over and above the low wholesale price charged by the subcontractors, reflecting its low production costs, is consumed by the businesses concerned as pure profit. What you overlook is that the production costs of the subcontractors supplying this branded goods and passed on to a corporation like Nike are not the only costs born by the latter. There is also the massive and increasing costs of marketing and branding the goods in question which is why these companies are so insistent on looking out for cheaper suppliers. They want to divert as much of their financial resources into marketing and branding their products and that too is a cost that eats away at their profits. The mark-up figures quoted above probably do not take into account these kinds of overheads but only direct production costs Finally you paint a generalised picture of steadily declining production costs and steadily rising commodity process and suggest that this has somehow marginalised Marx’s Labour theory of value. Well, no, it does not because all that that does on the face of it is suggest that the rate of surplus value – s/v – otherwise known as the rate of exploitation, has increased and to understand that you would be obliged to fall back on precisely that theory However, I would point that there is also the rate of profit to take into account (which is not the same thing as the rate of exploitation – namely, s(cc + v) – and there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that, if anything, there has been a long tendency for this rate to decline. See for example this article http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1126/rate-of-profit-continues-to-fall/. I don’t quite know how that would fit in with your suggestion that there is an ever growing volume of profit accruing resulting from the capitalists arbitrarily raising their prices using their “creative power”, notwithstanding the decline in production costs, but it would be interesting to see how you square this particular circle
moderator1 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:moderator1 wrote:You have never tried getting permission to post your survey on here. Indeed, you have posted it on here willy nilly despite the reminders and warnings. If you had cared to read the rules they tell you to seek permission you need to PM me. If you do this I suggest you just request permission and provide the link. I don't need a lengthy justification or rationalisation on the neccesity for the survey.Yes, this is the second or third time a mod has said I haven't tried. I'd upload a screen capture of my attempts to youtube for you or someplace and link to it to prove you wrong, but then you'd block me for adding a link. And you don't provide a "means" for me to upload a picture of my screen shot of my many requests to this borad. So you are limiting my means to argue with you and limiting my ability to show you proof contrary to your false cliam (lie). I guess the best you allow for means is for me to post here and you still haven't provided a link to a better place or means for me to correct your mistake. Here's several requests and attempts from my message box on this board that prove you wrong as best I'm allowed by you to show the evidence here. Sorry the formatting is bad, but that's due to your limitations on the means you will allow me to present evidence. P.s. I've had this conversation already with mods and was told first it didn't happen, then second it would be fixed soon and then try again. and I tried again. And it happened again. and again. thanks for contributing to my surveyDave B, Steve-SanFranci…24/11/2016 – 6:04amAre you warning me or someone else?moderator1, Steve-SanFranci…26/10/2016 – 9:16amPermissionsmoderator1, Steve-SanFranci…, moderator2and others21/10/2016 – 11:20pmthanks, can I do a favor for you?Steve-SanFranci…, moderator319/10/2016 – 1:09pm
Marcos wrote:Marx's critique and analysis of capitalism would be valid until the end of capitalism.yes, Marcos, that's what we've been trying to get you to understand. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended. Capitalism has a new form now that wouldn't fit the ecomomic models of capitalism understood by either marx theory or the capitalist econonomist theories of Marx era. But you will never accept that because of your preconceptions and dogma. Maybe your just old and set in your thinking? there comes a point when a person loses the ability to see things with fresh eyes and can only recognize things they've only seen before. If you show a Cave man a machine gun he doesn't recognize it changes the nature of warfare becasue the caveman cant conceive of warfare using guns so the cave man just uses the machine gun like a club and then authoritatively proclaims "I have tested the new weapon called a machine gun and it is no different from the clubs of my childhood and in fact it's inferior. the spear will always be the supreme weapon". You're sounding like that cave man to me. I picture you as maybe a wise old chieftan cave man who's culitivated the wisdom of best spear throwers and club swingers and only listens to people who understand the primacy of the spear. Go ahead and tell someone "that's just a another club and works like any other club. you need to understand and practice with the spear before you can advise anyone on how to fight a war." When all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail to be pounded down.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended.Really? The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.(Capital vol 1 ch 1) Has this ended?
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:Marcos wrote:Marx's critique and analysis of capitalism would be valid until the end of capitalism.yes, Marcos, that's what we've been trying to get you to understand. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended. Capitalism has a new form now that wouldn't fit the ecomomic models of capitalism understood by either marx theory or the capitalist econonomist theories of Marx era. But you will never accept that because of your preconceptions and dogma. Maybe your just old and set in your thinking? there comes a point when a person loses the ability to see things with fresh eyes and can only recognize things they've only seen before. If you show a Cave man a machine gun he doesn't recognize it changes the nature of warfare becasue the caveman cant conceive of warfare using guns so the cave man just uses the machine gun like a club and then authoritatively proclaims "I have tested the new weapon called a machine gun and it is no different from the clubs of my childhood and in fact it's inferior. the spear will always be the supreme weapon". You're sounding like that cave man to me. I picture you as maybe a wise old chieftan cave man who's culitivated the wisdom of best spear throwers and club swingers and only listens to people who understand the primacy of the spear. Go ahead and tell someone "that's just a another club and works like any other club. you need to understand and practice with the spear before you can advise anyone on how to fight a war." When all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail to be pounded down.
That is what we call the pigeon trying to shoot back to the shotgun, a new historical event. A person who does not know what capitalism really is, or does not know where the word capital comes from, is trying to give lectures to others peoples. Ignorance is bold.Therefore, according to your conclusion, a society based on commodity has ended, a society based on the economical exploitation of the working has ended, dead labour is not living on top of living labor, there is not more wage slavery and wage slaves do not have to sell their own labour force, surplus value obtained from sweat of the working has ended, there is not fetishim of the commodity, there is not more capitalist expansion, no more periodical crisis, etc. etc. etc. I am glad that you are living under a new economical system, How do we call it ? I remember seeing many cavemen with PDH in economic in 2008 going to the bookstores and libraries looking for Marx/s Kapital in order to understand why the crisis was taking place, because the principles that their learned on those famous universities were not able to explain why capitalism was going into bankruptcy. The only one until now who has explained properly the theory of crisis is Karl Marx
I think i have on this thread already confessed my weakness in understanding either Marxian or bourgeois economics…but i try my bestI wonder if either of you took the time to follow the links in the posted article that cast much doubt about the validity of it.http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-market-power-story.htmlIt also contains further links of criticism of the original paper for yourselves to follow up.But as i said, i'm no economist, (much less a physicist) but i always go by the axiom there is more to things than meets the eye.
Quote:"In 1980, average markups start to rise from 18% above marginal cost to 67% now." That sounds like big news, and probably it is. But I don’t think the authors are doing enough to interpret their results. There are two ways these mark-ups go could up: first there may be more outright monopoly, second there may be more monopolistic competition, with high mark-ups but also high fixed costs, and firms earning close to zero profits. The two scenarios have very different distributional implications, and different policy implications as well.http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/08/rise-market-power.htmlI leave to others more well-read and better versed in the subject to respond.
robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:. Capitalism in the form that you and marx understood has already ended.Really? The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.(Capital vol 1 ch 1) Has this ended?
When all you have is a single limited theory of socialism, then any “ immense accumulation of commodities,” looks like capitalism to be stamped out. I think the hypothetical general store is an "immense accumulation of commodities". So the theoretical socialist general store is capitalsm becuase inside of it is an immense (indead unlimited) accumulation of commodities, by your own logic. Elephants, monkeys have tails and sharks have tails but jellyfish do not. If you are a jelly fish, all things with tails seem the same thing. You're a fool if you think the existence of innequality or oppression or whatever means capitalism. There's lots of things that aren't capitalism and different kinds of capitalism. And you're a fool if you're a jellyfish afraid of elephants. So don't be a jelly fish and learn to recognize the difference between an elephant and a shark. There's more to the tail than meets the eye. But, as a jelly fish you think, "whatever, they're all bad and all have tails and none of them are true jellyfish (socialist)." And then a monkey kills off all the sharks for you.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.