Wez
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LBird putting the cart before the horse again – where is the evidence of a mind existing without a brain anywhere in nature?
BD – I’ve looked at the index of my Freud collected works and there’s not one reference to the ‘subconscious’. I’ve always found this term to be a litmus for BS when people start talking about Freud. It matters because the subconscious implies that it is more accessible to the ego but the point is that it is not. Having said that I defer to your knowledge of the German language.
‘For example, does Freud give us example of where HE acts unconsciously? How would he know, if he is unconscious of his act? If he knows, or can get to know, his ‘subconscious mind’, why doesn’t, or can’t, everyone?’
Not content with making a nonsense of Marx’s ideas LBird now shows a complete misunderstanding of Freud. Freud believed that there were several ways that we can become aware of the activity of our unconscious mind – two of which were famously through dreams and through free association. Therapy is about decoding the symbols which are manifested in dreams and free association seeks to bypass the censorship of the ‘super-ego’ and ego. He never referred to something called ‘the subconscious’. Freud sought to understand his own and his patients unconscious activity through these techniques which are relevant to us all but unfortunately the NHS only regards mental health as the province of psychiatrists and drug companies.
‘In order to be exchangeable with each other or with commodities, products of non-wage labour each must have some value, and thus there seems to exist No basic distinction between products of non-wage labour and products of wage labour, as I see it. Evidently, the German Angry Workers’ view that ‘wage labor’ happens to be ‘the precondition for value’, which implies that non-wage labour cannot create value, sounds absurd.’
Prakash – If you produce something exclusively for yourself or as a gift to another then it has use value but no exchange value. If you decide to sell it then its value is determined by the average amount of labour time that other similar objects in the market possess.
‘The meaning of words is set by those that are using them to communicate, is an organic process rather than one set by decree.’
Well you try to define socialism the way we do in the mainstream media without feeling the weight of decree from the owners. Words like ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ etc. are all defined by decree and any deviation will cost you your job as a journalist.
‘I think perpetual misinterpretation is an inescapable feature of human language.’
Perhaps but there is also an Orwellian component here since the powerful get to define words and their meaning and it obviously suits them to define socialism by the Bolshevik interpretation.
‘Not sure what you mean here. Labour taking the form of ‘value’, as meant by Marx in Capital, can only occur in a society of generalised commodity production.’
DJP – I’m talking about use value here. Many cultures have valued gold historically but not so many have valued Nike trainers. I thought that the LTV was restricted to capitalism?
DJP – ‘But the distinction also has to be made between ‘exchange value’ (expressed in quantities of other things – a relationship between things) and ‘value’ (an amount of embodied social labour – a relationship between the thing and the producer).’
I’ve always thought that ‘exchange value’ was based on the amount of socially necessary labour contained within it and that use value was a matter of utility or perceived utility? There have been many incarnations of ‘value’ within different cultures at different times but capitalism has transformed value in to a universal form ultimately expressed in the universal commodity called money. Anyway that’s how I’ve always understood the subject.
DJP – Things made for personal use may have ‘use value’ but not necessarily ‘exchange value’ whereas commodities must contain both use and exchange value.
That’s rather a sweeping statement. Do you have any evidence other than your dodgy book? Are you of the dumbing down cultural school? Personally I believe TV drama is pretty good – ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, ‘Ozark’, ‘Picard’ etc. and I’m also enjoying an immense collection of audiobooks on YouTube. I have noticed, courtesy of the Marvel & DC franchises, a definite dumbing down of the narratives in popular Hollywood cinema. On some of the ‘reactor’ sites on YouTube you sometimes get someone who’s introduced to good music and films, in contrast to their usual Hollywood diet, and it is a delight to see their enthusiasm. So I think the appetite is there but popular media is not supplying quality stuff enough.
Robbo – wasn’t diamond production and sale controlled by a monopoly cartel? Is it still? If so doesn’t this explain the price of diamonds?
Prakash RP – Volume one of Marx’s Capital gives a fascinating history of what societies considered to represent value and how that has changed.
‘Class identity etc. did not prevent English, French or German workers from seeing Britain, France and Germany as in some sense “their country” in World Wars I and II. Tragic it surely was, but it’s an historical fact.’
pgb -But the 2nd International had a chance of stopping the 1st world war ever starting but was betrayed by leftist reformists and you, I fear, would have been one of them.
