Dave B
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I think there has been a shift recently towards the idea of gene expression or phenotype or whatever is more about the composite effects of several or many genes. It sort fits in, in a way, to the revival of Lamarkian epigentics or Darwin’s Pangenesis. With genes being switched on or off and being passed onto the offspring. This recent one has set the house on fire although it follows on from earlier work done by an Australian Bod that got excommunicated for it. http://www.nature.com/news/fearful-memories-haunt-mouse-descendants-1.14272 It was mentioned by Professor Alice Roberts on the radio four infinite monkey cage a couple of weeks ago; where the scientist also said they didn’t believe in scientific truth. Dawkins sort of modified his position in other ways shortly after his selfish gene book with another emerging idea he plagiarised as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype The content of the idea if not perhaps Dawkins precise take on it is that evolution animals change there environment and then start to adapt to that etc. On a macroscopic larger epoch scale that was always understood in the sense that 3 billion years ago or whatever plants changed oxygen of the atmosphere etc. In the co-operative social instinct and language or communication which is a derivative of the greek word for sharing and communism etc. Once it starts or the ‘social’ environment is created then better communicators and co-operators have an advantage of non co-operators and communicators. And language itself provides a platform or environment for the development of intelligence with a kind of evolutionary positive feedback mechanism. I got from Wittgenstein a connection between thinking and language. Language is formed out of and fit for purpose out of direct experience of the material world etc. And as such it can keep us in an intellectual box. We normally deal with it by falling back on allegories and metaphors.
Hershel on the Sun etc Life on other celestial bodies Herschel was sure that he had found ample evidence of life on the Moon and compared it to the English countryside.[29]He did not refrain himself from theorising that the other planets were populated,[30]with a special interest in Mars, which was in line with most of his contemporary scientists.[29]At Herschel's time, scientists tended to believe in a plurality of civilised worlds; in contrast, most religious thinkers referred to unique properties of the earth. [29]Herschel went so far to speculate that the interior of the sun was populated.[29] Sunspots, climate, and wheat yields Herschel started to examine the correlation of solar variationand solar cycleand climate.[31]Over a period of 40 years (1779–1818), Herschel had regularly observed sunspotsand their variations in number, form and size. Most of his observations took place in a period of low solar activity, the Dalton minimum, when sunspots were relatively few in number.[32]This was one of the reasons why Herschel was not able to identify the standard 11-year period in solar activity.[32]Herschel compared his observations with the series of wheat prices published by Adam Smithin The Wealth of Nations.[33] In 1801, Herschel reported his findings to the Royal Society and indicated five prolonged periods of few sunspots correlated with the price of wheat.[31]Herschel's study was ridiculed by some of his contemporaries but did initiate further attempts to find a correlation. Later in the 19th century, William Stanley Jevonsproposed the 11-year cyclewith Herschel's basic idea of a correlation between the low amount of sunspots and lower yields explaining recurring booms and slumps in the economy.[32] Herschel's speculation on a connection between sunspots and regional climate, using the market price of wheat as a proxy, continues to be cited. According to one study, the influence of solar activity can actually be seen on the historical wheat market in England over ten solar cycles between 1600 and 1700.[32]The evaluation is controversial[34]and the significance of the correlation is doubted by some scientists.[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel The stuff about people living on the Sun which was related to sun spots etc again when you read it wasn’t quite as daft as it sounds. One of the world experts on the Sun is extremely entertaining professor Lucie Green; she has done a few lectures in Manchester that I have attended and she mentioned that. There are only just starting to understand how it works. As prof Brian Cox pointed out on the radio recently bad science isn’t science that turns out to completely wrong later.
Ah Iceland! The meteorological impact of Laki continued, contributing significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe. In France, the sequence of extreme weather events included a surplus harvest in 1785 that caused poverty for rural workers, as well as droughts, bad winters and summers. These events contributed significantly to an increase in poverty and famine that may have contributed to the French Revolutionin 1789.[20]Laki was only one factor in a decade of climatic disruption, as Grímsvötnwas erupting from 1783 to 1785, and there may have been an unusually strong El Niño effect from 1789 to 1793 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2011/04/revolutions_and_the_price_of_b.html this google thing and the internet is great. Paul Mason? That name rings a bell.
I think Adam is being a bit sneering on Jevon's sun spot hypothesis. The idea I think was that the activity of the sun could cause changes in weather resulting in changes in the productivity of agricultural production which could precipitate economic disruption etc etc. Based on analysis of data and postulating a causality/correlation etc. http://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/jevons-theory-of-sunspot-empirical.html There is a similar volcanic eruption theory re Indonesia or wherever these things happen and a price of food and ‘revolution’ correlations. I thought his; A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy(1862) Was ok as regards a thesis for a utility theory was concerned compared to more modern expositions; although perhaps the bar isn’t set so high. I having a feeling that there were precursor ideas to that even and there was something in German ideology on it?
Actually marginalism and utility theory etc as adopted by the Misses people etc was invented by a British bod in the 1860’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons a bit before Walras I think
There is a passage somewhere were Karl discusses Adam Smith recognising himself that there appeared to be a paradox as regards machines appearing to produce (surplus) value. It was paradox for Smith himself because he sensibly, albeit empirically rather than logically, realised himself that value could only be the expenditure of human labour. Keen is obviously confusing exchange value with value or probably doesn’t know the difference to start with. There is another passage from Karl warning about making slipshod equivalencies between surplus value and profit. On pristine wealth etc clearly more productive arable land or oil wells for that matter can make greater profits than ones that are less. Eg it costs $15 or something to get oil out of the ground in Iraq and Arabia whilst it allegedly costs about $60 in Venezuela or Russia. Although the capitalist costing that is available is a bit questionable as the cost of the interest on the fixed capital is included apparently. Transport costs and pipelines etc come into it of course ie moving a 40 gallons of oil from one place to another ain’t cheap. Karl did an excellent analysis on that kind of thing with differential ground rent; as did George Elliot. She was really savvy on economics I thought; I only found out later that she was moving in the same circles as Karl and Fred and must have been picking things up. Read Silas Marner first then do chapter one volume one; it worked for me. I know I transcribed it and all that but the Das capital for Dummies by Deville is good. Everybody else at the time thought so; including Lenin. Fred thought it was a bit too dumbed down but he was an intellectual wanker like Karl. Although I am not certain that the person who translated it into English fully understood it as he made a catastrophic mistake in one part. I had thought that Deville had done it until I went back to the French version that was available as image of the original book; and realised that that was OK, and changed it. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deville/1883/peoples-marx/index.htm I actually liked what Karl did. I started reading it thinking it was going to be a load of shit.
Karl started off with; C – M – C But actually it assumes the law of value and that stuff exchanges at its value. So it is; C(200) – M(200) – C(200) So Silas goes off to the market with his linen with 200 hours of labour time in it and sells it for gold with 200 hours of labour time in it and buys a coat and bible 200 hours of labour time in them. And returns home. And so does everyone else and no one gets rich. Actually this is a bit spurious as equally you could have; M(200) – C(200) – M(200). But who would take money and buy something only to sell it at the same money value? Whilst; C(200) – M(200) – C(200) Has a social function as it is an exchange of use values ie linen for a coat etc Not only that in capitalism you actually have; M(200) – C(200) – M(220). What you need to understand is the ‘-‘ means the law of value is supposed to be operating. So you have two choices. Either there is something ‘wrong’ or incomplete with; M(200) – C(200) Or C(200) – M(220). It can be resolved by looking at ; C(200) – M(220) By; M(200) – C(200)….C(220) – M(220). The ‘-‘ predicate is then not broken with a new concept ; C(200)….C(220) ie the commodity labour power C(200) expanding itself into C(220).
A capitalist builder builds a building, sells it to an investor at it value and makes a profit by paying the worker class builders less value than they created; and exits all further interest in the economic future of the building. The investor or owner of the building or whatever has something worth say 200K? He wants a similar return or income stream on that equivalent to what he could get elsewhere from buying an income stream (surplus value) from shares in any other productive manufacturing that extracts surplus value by employing labour. Even a building firm perhaps? Some more fortunate workers do it; hacked of with 1% interest on their savings they buy to let. Then we need to look at the working class renters. One way of looking at it; from the workers perspective. [It just makes things simpler and more transparent at this stage to assume that the workers who are paying rent get paid the full value of their 40 hours a week labour time; they could even be simple commodity producers like Silas Marner I suppose.] Imagine we have a couple both earning 1K a month or producing 1K each of stuff and getting the full value back. And the Rent is 1K a month. Then one of them is doing the necessary labour time for both of them to keep the bodies and souls together etc. And the other is doing 40 hours surplus labour time to just to pay the rent. Which for the rentier is the average rate of ‘profit’ on an investment. From a capitalists perspective. If the renters are manufacturing productive wage slaves then if his workers didn’t have to the pay rent then he could cut their wages in half and only pay them both the necessary labour time, 1K a month, and take the difference as his “extra” surplus value. Although he might argue that that was his surplus value in the first place and the renters were capturing or clawing back the surplus value generated by his manufacturing workers. [Again assuming that the workers who are paying rent get paid the full value of their 40 hours a week labour time.] His workers are producing 2K of stuff a month, can survive on 1K of it and the other 1 K of it should be his as it is him that makes it work. That is probably more like the real situation the capital building investors are ‘capturing’ the source of surplus value from the general commodity producing manufacturing sphere of production. I mean with wanting intellectualise things this is the ‘dialectical’ method of analysis. It doesn’t have to be one ‘absolute’ thing or another it is nearly always a composite or fusion of different things. You make an idealised abstraction or model and then another and then see how they intertwine in reality. In fact I think generally it is a increasing modus operandi of the finance capitalist to capture surplus value from the manufacturing class by getting the workers into debt. Karl did a short passage on it under debt peonage and said the manufacturing Capitalist didn’t like it; anymore that the capitalists is the US didn’t like having to pay their ‘hiring out’ proper slaves working as wage slaves extra so they could pay their owners the rent premium. I read an essay by the Reaganite Paul Craig Roberts recently in which he praised Karl’s take on this in from Volume III das Capital. I thought Paul Craig Roberts interpretation was reasonable and informed; he seemed to understand it.
The point I was trying to make is that is you confound or equate value with exchange value, which is easy to do, it can look as if under certain circumstances, like the introduction of new productive technology or some kind of Microsoft like monopoly can create a ‘surplus exchange value’, which I think Karl calls surplus-profit. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch14.htm That surplus profit or exchange value is the capture of surplus value from other spheres of production. Ordinarily that would tempt other capitalists to enter into that more lucrative sphere of production and even disinvest from less lucrative ones. The exchange value of commodities produced with high amounts of unconsumed fixed capital ie machines are higher than their value.
By Marxist definition of value they can’t; I think the word might be axiomatic. However there was an interesting argument, that Karl fully addressed,that agriculture or growth, of wheat produced in the example, produced “surplus value”. Ie a bushel of seed wheat producing another 100 bushels etc. The argument was that that was ultimate the source of all surplus value; and the manufacturers obtained their surplus value from that by obtaining agricultural products at below its value etc. You could argue I suppose that machines create extra surplus exchange value in the sense that the stuff that they produce exchanges at above its value due to the necessity to maintain the average rate of profit? I think computing software and associated paraphernalia is an interesting example as they are machines after a fashion and once created can be replicated for nothing. Then you have these licensing ‘rentier’ systems were part of the price or exchange value of the product can be surplus exchange value and thus the likes of Microsoft can make surplus profits above the average? That should encourage other capitalist to enter into the game and go into competition.
Reply to robbo’s post 25 Contrary to what people might think science often isn’t that interested or demands to measure anything accurately in order for the measurement to be useful. Providing you have a rough idea of the potential errors of the calculation. We call it Fit For Purpose; I did one this afternoon. Thus nuclear energy was discovered in a classic experiment by leaving a black bucket full of water in the sun and measuring the temperature increase. Which led to the conclusion that the energy the sun was producing couldn’t be being produced by chemical reactions unless it was less than 40 million years old +/- 20 million. Which it clearly wasn’t. Most factories like where I work produce one kind of thing. We add about 5 seconds of labour time to each litre of juice; something that can be calculated in about 10 minutes. I asked a friend who worked milk and it was a very similar figure, for milk and it took him about 10 minutes to work that out, when he got to work and looked at the spread sheets for the production. In moneyless socialism/ communism there should be an interest in reducing the amount of time, and effort, in producing things. Either things that already being produced or in new projects like building a bridge. In capitalism re a bridge often it will get designed, then usually structural engineers will work out what it would take to make it, then it will get costed. Then it might go through the process again until something satisfactory is obtained. In communism we will be costing it according to the amount of labour time. Labour time is a flawed measure of effort and thus value because it doesn’t take into account things like intensity of the labour concerned or for that matter how crap it is or isn’t. Abstract labour is effort. As well as ecological concerns and even being nice to animals etc That kind of stuff can even emerge in capitalism when people choose to consume fair trade material etc I will be concerned or interested in communism how much of other peoples effort I am consuming; I think that is part of the culture of the producing working class. When I was a child I was a bit fuzzy about economics and money but even as a five year old I understood better the ‘moral’ concept appreciating something according to amount of work that had gone into it. so i was first taught the value of everything and the price of nothing,But both my parents worked in factories; my father making tin cans for beans and mushy peas etc and my mother spark plugs.
Capital Vol. III Part VIIRevenues and their SourcesChapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of Production Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm
It is part of the human condition since the invention of the wheel to reduce the amount of effort required to produce an effect or use-value. From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average. Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. Just as little as it would occur to chemical science still to express atomic weight in a roundabout way, relatively, by means of the hydrogen atom, if it were able to express them absolutely, in their adequate measure, namely in actual weights, in billionths or quadrillionths of a gramme. Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm Here he uses value in italics and in inverted comma’s because the content of value in socialism is the same; it is just that the form it takes is different.
I think we may take a too narrow, strict, long term or general perspective on the ‘capitalist class’ ruling the state etc. And popular materialism or individuals influencing historical development etc can have a place. There is a thesis that the Trump phenomena was a kind of accident. Some people say eg Michael Moore that Trump never intended to become president and he ran to raise his profile after the renewal for his TV apprentice contract was rejected because he wanted too much money. And the Clintonesqe mainstream media establishment initially gave him a high profile for his republican nomination so that he would win that race making Hilary’s presidential victory a slam dunk. Like what could possibly go wrong with that plan! [As is quite well known now the idea of Trump being president was first mentioned in the ‘Simpson’s’.] It is quite possible as a pure narcissists he may wish to follow a political line at odds with the establishment and they may have problems bringing him under their control. They might have to have him assassinated or impeached. For sometime the US in international ‘politics’ has been operating a economic system based on the Mafia model of protection and whack em if anyone steps out of line. And I think that has led to the military industrial complex etc with its associated industries and profits along with the paraphernalia of the CIA and NSA which is an enormous part of the US economy. And forms what some people call the ‘deep state’ with its own interests and obvious potential influence. Thus from Hilferding? The faithful believe only in heaven and hell as determining forces; the Marxist sectarian only in capitalism and socialism, in classes – bourgeoisie and proletariat. The Marxist sectarian cannot grasp the idea that present-day state power, having achieved independence, is unfolding its enormous strength according to its own laws, subjecting social forces and compelling them to serve its ends for a short or long period of time. Therefore neither the Russian nor the totalitarian system in general is determined by the character of the economy. On the contrary, it is the economy that is determined by the policy of the ruling power and subjected to the aims and purposes of this power. The totalitarian power lives by the economy, but not for the economy or even for the class ruling the economy – as is the case of the bourgeois state, though the latter (as any student of foreign policy can demonstrate) may occasionally pursue aims of its own. An analogy to the totalitarian state may be found in the era of the late Roman Empire, in the regime of the Praetorians and their emperors. ….for to us socialism is indissolubly linked to democracy. According to our concept, socialization of the means of production implies freeing the economy from the rule of one class and vesting it in society as a whole-a society which is democratically self-governed. We never imagined that the political form of that "managed economy" which was to replace capitalist production for a free market could he unrestricted absolutism. The correlation between the economic basis and the political structure seemed to us a very definite one: namely, that the socialist society would inaugurate the highest realization of democracy. Even those among us who believed that the strictest application of centralized power would be necessary or inevitable for the period of transition, considered this period only temporary and bound to end after the suppression of the propertied classes. Together with the disappearance of classes, class rule was also to vanish – that class rule which we considered the only possible form of political rule in general. "The state is withering away …" But history, this "best of all Marxists," has taught us differently. It has taught us that "administering of things," despite Engels' expectations, may turn into unlimited "administering of people," and thus not only lead to the emancipation of the state from the economy but even to the subjection of the economy to the state.Once subjected to the state, the economy secures the continued existence of this form of government. The fact that such a result flows from a unique situation primarily brought about by war does not exclude a Marxist analysis, but it alters somewhat our rather simplified and schematic conception of the correlation between economy and state and between economy and politics which developed in a completely different period. The emergence of the state as an independent power greatly complicates the economic characterization of a society in which politics (i.e. the state) plays a determining and decisive role. https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1940/statecapitalism.htm That was in fact originally published in 1940 in the Menshevik Journal the socialist Courier – I have let them know.
