Dave B
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While in Manchester between October and November 1843, Engels wrote his first economic work, entitled "Outline of a Critique of Political Economy."[24]Engels sent the article to Paris, where Marx published it in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücherin 1844………. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels it wasn’t too bad really for a 23 year old in 1843 and was on a different planet compared to where Karl was at the time. Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy by Frederick Engels We have seen that capital and labour are initially identical; we see further from the explanations of the economist himself that, in the process of production, capital, the result of labour, is immediately transformed again into the substratum, into the material of labour; and that therefore the momentarily postulated separation of capital from labour is immediately superseded by the unity of both. And yet the economist separates capital from labour, and yet clings to the division without giving any other recognition to their unity than by his definition of capital as “stored-up labour.” The split between capital and labour resulting from private property is nothing but the inner dichotomy of labour corresponding to this divided condition and arising out of it. And after this separation is accomplished, capital is divided once more into the original capital and profit – the increment of capital, which it receives in the process of production; although in practice profit is immediately lumped together with capital and set into motion with it. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm and; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm
post 172 ….Also, the implicit assumption is that Chemistry is a valid discipline….. 15 pages into chapter one volume one, Karl uses chemistry to explain form and content of value! To borrow an illustration from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions – namely, C4H8O2. If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place, propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C4H8O2; and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore, by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their different physical forms would be neglected. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
You have to watch L Bird I believe the actual quote was; "It is the theory that describes what we can observe."Which I think was a sarcastic quip against Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics etc that he didn’t like very much.
You said in post 145; I've constantly provided evidence from Marx's works, which are entirely about social production, not matter. Are you saying then that stuff that is spontaneously provided by Nature and that does not represent any combination of natural substances with human labour. Such as fish the virgin forests, and ores. Is not matter? Or inorganic nature? Or material? And/ or?Material for labour that is provided immediately by Nature is not material?
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter Seven THE LABOUR-PROCESS OR THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES ….in which the material for labour is provided immediately by Nature.. ……….spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins……….. ……..so even now we still employ in the process many means of production, provided directly by Nature, that do not represent any combination of natural substances with human labour……….. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Ah so! Neptune and gravity are bourgeois ideologies. And we will we not have Neptune and gravity in communism. Or will it be; Neptune and gravity but not as we know it now.
You have lost me again L Bird ! Are you saying that Karl would never have said that there are already pre-existent ‘matterial conditions’ that already exist independent of our will and under which we have to live. Or in other words?; an 'objective' world outside of human production. As they would be matter conditions? Can you give us some examples of the two categories of ‘material’ and ‘matter’? Preferably ones that help us understand the way in which they are mutually exclusive according to your criteria. Ie is Neptune, cosmic background radiation and gravity non material matter then? This is very difficult for me; I feel as though I am trapped in a Henrik Ibsen play or Kafka novel.
So what does this mean then, with my inserts? My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the [ …Society created …? ] life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the [ …Society created …? ] Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, [ …ie society created society..?] is the demiurgos of the [ …Society created …? ] real [?] world, and the [ …Society created …? ] real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the[ …Society created …? ] Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm What is the ‘nature of man’ and the ‘problems of nature’?
If society created our world then I suppose then what needs to be asked is what created society. But no matter. I think what L bird is saying, although I am never clear about he his trying to say either, is that society created our world in the sense that it created chemistry and physics etc. Which has a certain, albeit limited, validity. However much the material world persists without human influence or affect. We didn’t invent the planet Neptune or create it upon its first observation. In fact the whole history of science or understanding is a history of humans making bollock brained rationalisations for what they see around them. Which are being continually modified through ‘improved?’ by ‘objective’ methods of observation of the material world; which couldn’t gives a rat’s arse for our understanding of it. Thus with ‘science’ we are driven by the material world, as we observe it, to develop an understanding or theoretical models that fit in with it ie the material world. Now it is true enough that you can have a ‘society created’ understandings and then refashion or create a pseudo-material world to fit in with that. And we still have plenty of pseudo-materialist and ‘scientists’ who do that. It is called confirmation bias; and is an insult in the scientific community.
Well I can’t resist having a go at this one, as a scientist and allegedly a ‘religious materialist’, as we are all supposed to be. Matter exists and the material world is, well material etc. It’s endemic in the scientific thinking you see and there is thus a refusal to contemplate anything else. This is going to sound like tin foil hat and David Icke stuff but it isn’t; I had another dose of it from Jeff Forshaw a couple of weeks ago. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quantum-Universe-Everything-that-happen/dp/0241952700 http://www.physics.manchester.ac.uk/people/staff-spotlights/jeff-forshaw/ It is that we may be living in a computer simulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/ What matters here is the so called scientific religion of ‘materialism’. I had been following it as a kind of intellectual exercise since that guy Bostrum through the gauntlet down in 2003; I read it shortly after going onto the internet probably in 2004. I went to a talk on it around 2010 at a Manchester Café Scientifique. [They managed to get some really important scientific bods happy to turn up at that kind of thing.] This guy, who did the simulation hypthothesis thing, was a proper professor of electronic engineering [computer hardware basically] with a background in quantum mechanics. It was scary. I stood up and had a bit of a rant about old Greek stuff about shadows on cave wall etc. And he said Ah yes Plato; we have been thinking about that as well. What’s doubly alarming is the emergence within it of what is essentially Hegel’s Phenomenology of Logic; or the ‘computer algorithm’. Although I am sure they haven’t got that far yet, I have no intention of helping things along. Hegel was obviously an important character as he was captain of the German philosophers football team; loved the socks. Plato in goal for the Greeks. Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz in goal for the Germans, no doubt for his space, matter and orientation; was a disappointment in leaving an open goal for the Greeks. Bad boy Nietzsche was booked again. Perhaps no surprise that the surprise selection of Archimedes for the Greeks teamed up with the dialectician Socrates to score the only goal. Marx was correct; it was offside. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2gJamguN04 Incidentally ‘materialism’ has crept into the debate from a totally different direction.
And Karl Marx was scribbling in the British Library, warning of a spectre haunting Europe, the spectre of communism. Actually spectre haunting Europe was from the communist manifesto that I thought was ‘written’ at Chetham's Library in Manchester. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chetham's_Library Although I have noticed that his name seems to be popping up with increasing regularity recently in strange places and from unexpected people. Just as an example first google search item on Paul Craig Roberts and Marx, but it is perhaps fortunately interesting one, on content, but not I think atypical Where are Marx and Lenin when we need them? By Paul Craig Roberts Marx and Lenin were ahead of their time. Marx wrote before offshoring of jobs and the financialization of the economy. Lenin presided over a communist revolution that jumped the gun by taking place in a country in which feudal elements still predominated over capitalism. In 21st century America capitalism has been unfettered from the regulations that democratized it and made it serve society. Today capitalism is being financialized with the consequence that its productive power is being drained into the service of debt………. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/08/where-are-marx-and-lenin-when-we-need-them-paul-craig-roberts/ We could analyse that short statement I think? On the plus side he seems to acknowledge with a jumping the gun thing an almost stagiest interpretation; so in that sense alone he is ahead of most vulgar Marxists. We know of course that Lenin never said he was presiding over a communist revolution and they made it quite clear, including Trotsky at the time, that they were presiding over a [state] capitalist revolution. Incidentally on our stuff on the subject that was linked elsewhere I think we should avoid being dupes to Ted Grants response to Cliff, and Cliff, by seeming to take it seriously. And; If Comrade Cliff’s thesis is correct, that state capitalism exists in Russia today, then he cannot avoid the conclusion that state capitalism has been in existence since the Russian Revolution and the function of the revolution itself was to introduce this state capitalist system of society. http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm The magic circle of Trot intellectuals all knew what was in; (Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality, Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335) [source] http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm In which Lenin said quite clearly and unequivocally in 1918 that “function of the revolution itself was to introduce this [a] state capitalist system of society. Ted included a pointless and irrelevant quote from that same article, of all articles from Lenin, in his so called anti state capitalist thesis for several probable reasons. 1] Don’t play the clever dick with me Cliff with your I had a dream and realised Russia became state capitalist in 1928 shit, we all [Trot intellectuals] know it was state capitalism from the start. 2] Blow the story and try and look clever and I will make you look as stupid as you are trying to make us look. In the ted grant memorial speech by Woods he said; "You know, Ted sometimes said to me that he didn't know why Lenin and Trotskywrote so many books. Nobody reads them and if they do they don't understand the ideas!" http://www.marxist.com/revolutionary-ted-grant-memorial-meeting.htm Ted was correct; nobody even bothered to read the rest of (Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality, Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335) [source] When it was cited in and even helpfully linked in the internet age. I must have been one of the few living individuals who read Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality before I read Grants reposte. I almost read past it and then came to a skidding halt and then had a good long laugh when I ‘got it’; as I am sure my magic circle of Trot intellectuals like even Cliff did. It is like what is the worst possible essay of Lenin you could mention in an anti-state capitalist thesis? It is certainly a candidate for number one. Number 2 would probably be from 1922; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm Grant and Woods slotted did it in again another inappropriate quotation from that when they revisited it in 1969 in another seminal anti state capitalist tract in 1969. Going back to Dr Roberts; Today capitalism is being financialized with the consequence that its productive power is being drained into the service of debt………. Actually Karl did talk about that with his tentative profiteers of enterprise and interest bearing capitalist theories or predictions in volume III.
I went there several years ago on holiday, flight only finding our accommodation whilst we were out there, and did travel around a bit. In fact it was in march 2011 as the Fukushimathing happened whilst we were out there we were out there. I think I can agree with much of the comments of that youtube; it didn’t appear to be in anyway a police state and in fact the police seemed to be as rare as hen’s teeth. We actually met a rabid anti Castro guy in a bar who seemed to be in no fear of ranting on against the regime. He said he had a son who was abroad and he ran an anti Castro webb site; that did checkout as we looked at it when we got back. They had internet café’s etc that didn’t seem to have any obvious restrictions then but I believe that kind of thing was opened up quite recently then. I logged onto various sites that I suspected would be a problem if there was any restrictions and there wasn’t. They were very nice people and seem chilled out enough and I felt unusually safe wandering about like you do in downtown Havana. I have travelled around quite a bit and am a bit of a nervous Nelly when it comes to the ‘thieving Johnny foreigners’ prejudices. Not to say there weren’t plenty of street entrepreneurs looking for the opportunity to lighten the load of conspicuously rich tourists, which we weren’t as in an ‘honest’ deal. There was a nice touch I thought which encapsulated the whole thing. They have a dual currency system in operation or a hard currency that circulates called CUC’s for the tourists but it also circulates amongst the Cubans themselves in the cities and towns etc. But the other stuff is used elsewhere etc. We got on the Matanzas to Havana train as below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_Electric_Railway Except that it doesn’t look anything like that; it is was a real bone shaking heap of crap that rattles along at 10 miles an hour. But it is mostly single line and had to pull in and wait for the train going the other way to pass. So one of us gets out to buy some station food from a local vendor peddling his wares form a bicycle with tow truck. It was biscuits with some kind of jam on them; quite OK really as it turned out. And offers up a 20 Cuc note, it wasn’t me, which produced guffaws of laughter from the locals. I suppose it was bit like trying to buy a hotdog with an American Express Platinum card or something. Anyway another local bod on the train bought a big bag of the stuff for us, in sympathy, with his peso money and left us to it. We found a one Cuc note and found him again which he protested was too much ;we are talking about 1$ I think. Anyway we got off the train to pick up the pleb non CUC, peso ticket only, ferry across the bay to Havana. He bailed us out again and paid for our tickets; and probably made $0.50 out of the end transaction and no doubt considered it a happy day. On economic sanctions I got attacked by midges whilst staying in a bit of a cheap flea pit and needed anti histamines, which is a pretty bog standard medication. The pharmacies didn’t have that due to the sanctions and recommended going to one of the swanky hotels that have there own in house pharmacies for dealing with those kind of ‘difficulties’. What I was left with is if everything goes belly-up these guys in a ‘self sustaining’ economy would weather the storm and just carry on. I liked the horse and cart taxis.
“Using these 2014 figures and calculations, the financial services sector comprises about 16.9% of the global economy, as measured in GDP. Further data from the IMFshows that the total service economy makes up about 60-65% of total global revenue. If the OECD's suggestion that financial services are between 20% and 30% of the total service market, then financial services would comprise between 12% and 19.5% of the total global economy.” 17% then?A summary of the key findings include: (1) an estimated $360 billion was spent worldwide on criminal justice in 1997; and (2) of the total, 62 percent was spent on public policing, 3 percent on prosecutions, 18 percent on courts, and 17 percent on prisons. Criminal justice expenditure levels were found to be significantly tied to levels of available public monies About 1% ???????????? Military about 3%? http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm Retail “…..making it responsible for roughly 28.4% of total GDP. Some figures dispute that amount, claiming direct retail companies are only responsible for 9 to 10% of total GDP, while the rest is indirectly generated because of retail activity….” http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071415/what-portion-global-economy-represented-retail-sector.asp We could maybe say half of direct retail economy is taking money etc and make it 5%. So 26% so far? It looks like the non financial service sector is quite large at say 60-17 = 43% But a lot of that looks ‘useful’; Examples of tertiary industries may include the following: • Entertainment • Government • Telecommunication • Hospitality industry/tourism • Mass media • Healthcare/hospitals • Public health • Information technology • Waste disposal But anyway we are down to about 75% nominally useful. I suppose individuals involved in ‘useful labour’ could come up with figures on the percentage of that which is useless. I work in manufacturing and think I would set that quite high at over 20%. I think that is conservative for where I work; we are very top heavy which is probably related to a high degree of automation etc. Not so much on site factory workers but cross multi producing site head office. workers. Actually a lot of what I do is wouldn’t be done in socialism as I check raw materials to make sure they are not deliberately shafting us rather than just goofing up. So another 20% of 75% = 15% Raising it to 40% I also think socially useless labour has to be connected to technologically related socially unnecessary labour power. Ie making stuff in a labour intensive way where other technologies are available but not employed because of the low cost of labour power in the third world in particular. Difficult to calculate? There is inverse reserve army of the unemployed whatever that is etc. I think we could give that a 5% 45% All the fanny for the consumption fund of the ruling class but that is probably not all that great 2%? 47% And there is ancillary stuff buried no doubt in the primary data. I think working class bling and consummerist Prozac is important as well. Making crap stuff that falls apart after they get the hang of it. I have a friend who bought one of the first microwave ovens in the early 1980’s; it is still working and she uses it a lot. I think some of that 47% might be ‘done’ in socialism; I think we will still have bean counters or ‘book-keeping’ in socialism. But it maybe it is a start?
I think when one talks about exchange which is; ‘what is mine is mine and if you want to use it you will have to ‘give’ me something of yours that I want to use in ‘exchange’, is the norm. However it not necessarily the case, thus; “When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking……..We did not call our software “free software”, because that term did not yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program, you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it, change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.” https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism. It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale. But the very fact that this question has been raised, and raised both by the whole of the advanced proletariat (the Communist Party and the trade unions) and by the state authorities, is a step in this direction. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm THE DESCENT OF MANCHARLES DARWIN, 1871. This great question has been discussed by many writers4 of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it is the impossibility of here passing it over, and because, as far as I know, no one has approached it exclusively from the side of natural history. The investigation possesses, also, some independent interest, as an attempt to see how far the study of the lower animals can throw light on one of the highest psychical faculties of man. The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts,5 would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as…. 4 Mr. Bain gives a list ('Mental and Moral Science,' 1868, p. 543-725) of twenty-six British authors who have written on this subject, and whose names are familiar to every reader; to these, Mr. Bain's own name, and those of Mr. Lecky, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, and Sir J. Lubbock, as well as of others, may be added. 5 Sir B. Brodie, after observing that man is a social animal ('Psychological Enquiries,' 1854, p. 192), asks the pregnant question, "ought not this to settle the disputed question as to the existence of a moral sense?" Similar ideas have probably occurred to many persons, as they did long ago to Marcus Aurelius. Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism,' (1864, p. 46), of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality;" but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? Mr. Bain (see, for instance, 'The Emotions and the Will,' 1865, p. 481) and others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at least extremely improbable. [page] 72 ……its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. The services may be of a definite and evidently instinctive nature; or there may be only a wish and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their fellows in certain general ways. But these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association. Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression. It is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are in their nature of short duration; and after being satisfied are not readily or vividly recalled. Thirdly, after the power of language had been acquired and the wishes of the members of the same community could be distinctly expressed, the common opinion how each member ought to act for the public good, would naturally become to a large extent the guide to action. But the social instincts would still give the impulse to act for the good of the community, this impulse being strengthened, directed, and sometimes even deflected by public opinion, the power of which rests, as we shall presently see, on instinctive sympathy. Lastly, habit in the individual would ultimately play a very [page] 73 important part in guiding the conduct of each member; for the social instincts and impulses, like all other instincts, would be greatly strengthened by habit, as would obedience to the wishes and judgment of the community. These several subordinate propositions must now be discussed; and some of them at considerable length. http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1871_Descent_F937/1871_Descent_F937.1.html
I think the nominal reason given was to make things more difficult re exchange and buying and selling in the so called black economy and the tax dodging off the books cash in hand system etc. Which goes on over here as well VAT free and even income tax free builders, central heating installation etc etc. However it might be a bit more ‘insidious’ than that as it has been recently followed up by rumours that they are going to ban gold imports as well. The real reason is that they might want to pull in cash savings back into the banks as many sensible Indian housewives don’t trust the banks and keep their savings out of the system in bundles of paper rupees stuffed under the bed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-37935738 %5BIt is hard to imagine that they are worried people are going to start using gold instead of large denomination paper for off the books exchange- who knows.] It is possible that there is trouble around the corner, with Non Performing Loans etc, and the banks feel as they are going to need other people’s cash deposits to carry them through it- or to ride out a bank run. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/banking/indian-banks-need-90-billion-capital-by-financial-year-2019-fitch/articleshow/53062705.cms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
