I believe at the point they have already become tankies, no good goal exists anymore. They only seem to work to defend what they have already achieved. And that is oppression.
I’m not sure socialism or communism can ever be made to work, but at least Marx and Lenin made it much more difficult to ever get there by demandinfmg we do the opposite of the goals of communism in order to get communism. People who are okay with cleansings and repression will cleanse and repress.
You don’t really go through the chore of reading Capital without really wanting to change the society for better. And because Marx, the death of communism, preferred violence and is convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid), those who read the book until the end, end up forfeiting all good goals and will go for repression.
Tankies are people who used to want good things and fairness. And then they converted from that into tankies.
A strong leader will always lead you into a Russia. Into a quagmire.
Marx… is convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid)
I’m sorry, what? Have you ever actually tried to read Capital? Most of Marx’s works are dense and academic, drawing intellectual traditions that are often unfamiliar to modern readers (classical economics, Hegel, etc). Marx’s way of argumentation isn’t really geared toward the lowest common denominator.
It’s kinda funny how you can’t even keep your criticism straight through a single comment. In one sentence, reading Marx is a “chore” that nobody would want to slog through, in the very next one, Marx is so persuasive, his honeyed words easily sway the minds of any who stumble across them, like the Sirens calling ships to their rocks.
As for “no good goal exists anymore” or “it’s hard to see what good goal tankies ever had” maybe we just like it when this sort of thing happens:
The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.
When you figure out a better way to do that, get back to me.
When you figure out a better way to do that, get back to me.
Here goes:
A similar jump from around 1949 to 1980. In China it seems to have begun around 1930, with WWII causing a dent. In Finland the same had begun around 1880’s. But the development between 1949 and 1980 is very similar, only: without concentration camps! (…since 1918.)
That’s still not as fast of a development, and the conditions aren’t really comparable. China used to be among the poorest countries in the world.
And while their government has not always been ideal, it was undoubtably the best option on the table historically. The corrupt Nationalists didn’t do shit for the people (and pocketed foreign aid). Before that, with no central authority, was the warlord period. Before that was the backwards Qing dynasty. In all the thousands of years of Chinese history, nobody really did anything for the rural people until the communists.
This is nonsense, the only part you got correct is that those who read through Capital generally have an interest in a better world. Neither Marx nor Lenin advocated “doing the opposite” to get to communism, both argued for the establishment of a worker state to gradually collectivize all of the means of production and distribution. Historically, this method has been enormously beneficial for the working classes, while breing quite scary for landlords, capitalists, slavers, and fascists.
I’m also not at all understanding what you mean by Marx being “convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid).” What would an intelligent person, by your estimation, take fault with in Marx?
What would an intelligent person, by your estimation, take fault with in Marx[‘s Capital]?
Capital rests on the argument ~that the fact qualitatively different (in terms of use values) commodities are exchanged for each other in different quantities requires a quality they share in common which only differs in quantity from one commodity to the next, and Marx posits that the only quality this could be is being products of labor. Yet this is very clearly not something that all commodities have in common, and that a thing’s status as a commodity and its ability to be exchanged for other commodities has nothing to do with its being a product of labor. The only way Marx’s argument can be accepted is if you start with the presupposition that commodities are valued by the labor required to produce them.
How this happens that commodities are exchanged at their “value” is a complete mystery by the way, since Marx says it has nothing to do with the conscious considerations of either the buyer or the seller.
Yet this is very clearly not something that all commodities have in common
This is not clear at all. Elaborate, please.
and that a thing’s status as a commodity and its ability to be exchanged for other commodities has nothing to do with its being a product of labor
Why not? Are you saying that the utility of a commodity to someone does not change whether or not it was made with labor? This doesn’t really matter, though, the point of the Law of Value is that commodities are socially produced, and socially distributed, which normalizes their price around their values. Arguments like the “mud pie” don’t apply, because mud pies are neither useful nor difficult to make.
The only way Marx’s argument can be accepted is if you start with the presupposition that commodities are valued by the labor required to produce them.
Incorrect, the exchange-value that price fluctuates around is representative of the value in a commodity. Another way to look at it is that the value of a commodity is the sum of its inputs, which can be reduced to labor and natural resources.
How this happens that commodities are exchanged at their “value” is a complete mystery by the way, since Marx says it has nothing to do with the conscious considerations of either the buyer or the seller.
Marx is correct, though this is no mystery. Commodities are social products, and are socially exchanged. What’s universal to goods bought and sold is that they require natural resources and human labor to create them, thus capitalism in being a social process acts as a price-finder for commodities, all based on inputs and outputs.
All you need for commodity exchange is for people to accept something is yours and be willing to exchange something they own which you desire in return for it. That thing being a product of labor is not necessary. You can own land based on agreement without taking any trouble to cultivate or defend it, and exchange it for other things based on agreement. You can exchange naturally occurring things without rendering them ~crystallizations of social labor.
Marx’s argument is invalid in another way because there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor.
Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.
Arguments like the “mud pie” don’t apply, because mud pies are neither useful nor difficult to make.
The argument only doesn’t apply for the first reason. There’s no necessity even for Marx that commodities be arbitrarily “difficult” to produce.
Incorrect, the exchange-value that price fluctuates around is representative of the value in a commodity.
How is this a response to what I said?
Another way to look at it is that the value of a commodity is the sum of its inputs, which can be reduced to labor and natural resources.
This is both incorrect (for Marx, value is entirely determined by socially necessary labor time) and doesn’t mean anything (this is like multiplying 3 apples by 7 pears, what does it mean that the value of a commodity can be reduced to labor and natural resources?; with value being determined by labor time you can reduce things to a certain quantity, but then you just add on a qualitatively different thing and you return to the original problem of needing a third equivalent, or a value to unite the components of value).
Marx is correct, though this is no mystery.
You forgot to explain how this actually occurs. You just say that capitalism does it.
What’s universal to goods bought and sold is that they require natural resources and human labor to create them.
You should tell Marx this since expressly says that he thinks the only universal is labor. You both happen to be wrong, though.
All you need for commodity exchange is for people to accept something is yours and be willing to exchange something they own which you desire in return for it. That thing being a product of labor is not necessary. You can own land based on agreement without taking any trouble to cultivate or defend it, and exchange it for other things based on agreement. You can exchange naturally occurring things without rendering them ~crystallizations of social labor.
Yes? Marx talks about natural resources. Land is covered more in volume 3, but nevertheless this is fully accounted for. Natural resources take extraction to refine and produce, and the concept of owning land requires a body to uphold that, the state, and the value of land itself is tied to how productive it can make you. All value comes from labor and natural resources, this is straight from Capital.
Marx’s argument is invalid in another way because there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor.
This does not make his argument invalid, though. What’s common is that the makeup of commodities can be reduced entirely to the labor and raw materials that went into them.
Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.
No, you never disproved anything.
The argument only doesn’t apply for the first reason. There’s no necessity even for Marx that commodities be arbitrarily “difficult” to produce.
There is, though. A commodity’s value isn’t dependent on how much labor went into that individual commodity, but that commodity as a social product, ie on average. If someone spends 10 hours on a mud pie that takes 2 seconds to create on average, it’ll be just as close to worthless as the rest. Further, labor that is more skilled (harder to socially reproduce) or more compressed than the social average does produce more value. Value is a social characteristic, not an individual one.
How is this a response to what I said?
Because you’re confusing the fact that prices reflect value with the idea that people independently think of that before purchasing.
This is both incorrect (for Marx, value is entirely determined by socially necessary labor time) and doesn’t mean anything (this is like multiplying 3 apples by 7 pears, what does it mean that the value of a commodity can be reduced to labor and natural resources?; with value being determined by labor time you can reduce things to a certain quantity, but then you just add on a qualitatively different thing and you return to the original problem of needing a third equivalent, or a value to unite the components of value).
You’re mixing up Exchange-Value with Use-Value. All use-value comes from labor and natural resources, but natural resources themselves can be reduced to the labor required to gather them and refine them, etc. All socially necessary labor time means is that it takes society on average a certain amount of labor to create something, and natural resources can be themselves reduced to labor. 3 apples and 7 pears both may take the same amount of labor on average to create them, and thus their prices naturally gravitate near the same value.
You forgot to explain how this actually occurs. You just say that capitalism does it.
Through the market. Buying and selling of goods, competition, all of this from the perspective of the capitalist confronts them as input costs and profits. Competition forces prices towards a floor, lack of competition brings in new competitors which then brings the price back to being roughly as profitable as the rest. Capital essentially functions as a control system.
You should tell Marx this since he expressly says that he thinks the only universal is labor. You both happen to be wrong, though.
You should actually read Capital, because Marx quite literally states this.
Use-values like coats, linen, etc., in short, the physical bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements, the material provided by nature, and labour. If we subtract the total amount of useful labour of different kinds which is contained in the coat, the linen, etc., a material substratum is always left. This substratum is furnished by nature without human intervention. When man engages in production, he can only proceed as nature does herself, i.e. he can only change the form of the materials.[17] Furthermore, even in this work of modification he is constantly helped by natural forces. Labour is therefore not the only source of material wealth, i.e. of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.[18]
Marx isn’t wrong, and neither am I, it seems you genuinely haven’t opened Capital because this is in the first few pages. I’m not sure whose alt you are, given that this is a 2 comment account, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to start an argument on Capital without even reading the first chapter of the first volume.
Natural resources take extraction to refine and produce
No? Not necessarily.
And the concept of owning land requires a body to uphold that, the state, and the value of land itself is tied to how productive it can make you.
Again, not necessarily.
This does not make his argument invalid, though. What’s common is that the makeup of commodities can be reduced entirely to the labor and raw materials that went into them.
It does make his argument invalid. Per Marx: “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.” This is how you get to the LTV in the argument. Yet it’s just trivially wrong.
Wrt labor/raw materials, you can sell ideas. Commodities aren’t even necessarily material things. Now you could say that ideas require humans, and humans require human labor to be created and raised and nature to nourish them etc etc yet it’s an unjustifiable presupposition that ideas can then be reduced to a mechanical combination of these aspects.
No, you never disproved anything.
I never said I disproved anything in the part you’re quoting. I was just preempting the argument I mentioned as a response to the examples I gave.
Because you’re confusing the fact that prices reflect value with the idea that people independently think of that before purchasing.
No I’m not. I don’t know how you got that from what you quoted.
You’re mixing up Exchange-Value with Use-Value.
No. Value itself is neither exchange-value (which is just a relation between two values) nor use-value (the particularities of which dissolve when considering value), when Marx refers to value he is referring only to the labor-time socially necessary to produce a thing. If you were speaking about specific use values then this is just nonsense in context because you were talking about “the value in a commodity” as what price orbits around, and then you have the category error I went over. You corrected yourself here by saying value can be reduced to just labor instead of being “reduced to labor and natural resources.” Just admit you made a mistake and don’t act like the mix-up is on me.
Competition forces prices towards a floor
Sure, and why should this floor be reflective of the amt. of labor required to produce that commodity? Well you can justify this abstractly but in terms of actually making it work, it doesn’t.
You should actually read Capital, because Marx quite literally states this.
This has to do with the prev. “mix-up,” you were talking about [[[prices]]] again; commodities as values are only representative of certain expenditures of abstract labor, that is the universal. Use-values are [[[particularities]]] and the entire point of the book is that insofar as they are considered in relation to each other and to the universal which is money (price!), their particular use does not matter (indeed, the particular form of labor employed and any other considerations do not matter), only that they are expenditures of the total abstract social productive capacity of a society.
I’m not anybody’s alt, not that it would matter if I was. I’d imagine if I had a longer history you would pick something else out to use, but this got me to look at your history and I found this post called “Dialectical Materalism: How to Think Like a Marxist” that I’m going to reply to so thx.
It does make his argument invalid. Per Marx: “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.” This is how you get to the LTV in the argument. Yet it’s just trivially wrong.
Wrt labor/raw materials, you can sell ideas. Commodities aren’t even necessarily material things. Now you could say that ideas require humans, and humans require human labor to be created and raised and nature to nourish them etc etc yet it’s an unjustifiable presupposition that ideas can then be reduced to a mechanical combination of these aspects.
Again, you’re trivially wrong. All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop. Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong. As for “ideas” being sold, mental labor for research and development, etc. is in fact labor, and labor goes into training the skilled labor used for research and development. Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies. Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.
No. Value itself is neither exchange-value (which is just a relation between two values) nor use-value (the particularities of which dissolve when considering value), when Marx refers to value he is referring only to the labor-time socially necessary to produce a thing. If you were speaking about specific use values then this is just nonsense in context because you were talking about “the value in a commodity” as what price orbits around, and then you have the category error I went over. You corrected yourself here by saying value can be reduced to just labor instead of being “reduced to labor and natural resources.” Just admit you made a mistake and don’t act like the mix-up is on me.
You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth. Given that you haven’t yet made an actual critique of the Law of Value, this seems more like deflection than anything else.
Sure, and why should this floor be reflective of the amt. of labor required to produce that commodity? Well you can justify this abstractly but in terms of actually making it work, it doesn’t.
Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.
This has to do with the prev. “mix-up,” you were talking about [[[prices]]] again; commodities as values are only representative of certain expenditures of abstract labor, that is the universal. Use-values are [[[particularities]]] and the entire point of the book is that insofar as they are considered in relation to each other and to the universal which is money (price!), their particular use does not matter (indeed, the particular form of labor employed and any other considerations do not matter), only that they are expenditures of the total abstract social productive capacity of a society.
Again, not a mix-up. Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.
I’m not anybody’s alt, not that it would matter if I was. I’d imagine if I had a longer history you would pick something else out to use, but this got me to look at your history and I found this post called “Dialectical Materalism: How to Think Like a Marxist” that I’m going to reply to so thx.
Correct, your argument would not matter if you’re an alt or not, it’s just highly strange that this would be your first comment, days into a thread, many comments deep into it.
So not necessarily. I don’t know why you’re standing your ground on this absurd position that natural resources necessarily need to be extracted, refined and produced, or even transported to be exchanged.
Yes, again.
Right except that just isn’t true. It’s not necessary, all you need is an agreement. In terms of generalizing this exchange, that’s a different question. But I already explained why that doesn’t matter.
All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop.
Simply claiming that something is true is not in fact enough to make it true.
Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong.
I was under the impression that you acknowledged that “there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor” [-me] but that “this does not make his argument invalid, though” [-you]. It doesn’t make sense for you to say this otherwise. So why would I have to list those qualities? I guess you changed your mind upon seeing the quote, but you should’ve just admitted this. The thing is, even if there weren’t these qualities, you would still be wrong because conceptually this would still make the argument invalid.
Regardless of specific use values, commodities all have the quality of existing in time, being comprised of matter for Marx, have the quality of being use-values in being exchange-values (that is, their use for the seller is always to be exchanged, regardless of their specific use for the buyer), I think this is enough.
Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies.
I already responded to this:
Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.
research and development
Not necessary.
Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.
Right, because I’m not countering an argument; a presupposition isn’t an argument.
You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth.
Right no I got that, it’s just that it makes no sense to reference that here, as I explained. There’s no way this isn’t a mistake, and there’s no way the confusion is on me. “You can call it a mistake if you want” is a funny response though.
Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.
You evidently do not understand what I’m asking.
Again, not a mix-up.
Again, there’s no other explanation. Which is why you just transition to a different point in the next sentence.
Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.
He can address it all he wants, it contradicts his argument I went over in the first place, that exchange of use values necessitates the presence of value. Forget everything else, this is the argument.
What would an intelligent person, by your estimation, take fault with in Marx?
The dictatorship of the proletariat was a horribly bad idea. It’s a dictatorship. And brings the consequences of a dictatorship with it. I would dare to blame Lenin and also Marx for that crap.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a democratic state for the proletariat, and dictatorship against capitalists, fascists, landlords, and slavers. It’s the socialist equivalent to liberal democracy, which de facto is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
All states are class dictatorships, this means democracy for the ruling class and its absolute rule over the rest.
Also, not sure why you brought up Capital if you’re talking about the DotP, that’s not really in Capital.Capital is a critique of bourgeois Political Economy.
I believe at the point they have already become tankies, no good goal exists anymore. They only seem to work to defend what they have already achieved. And that is oppression.
I’m not sure socialism or communism can ever be made to work, but at least Marx and Lenin made it much more difficult to ever get there by demandinfmg we do the opposite of the goals of communism in order to get communism. People who are okay with cleansings and repression will cleanse and repress.
You don’t really go through the chore of reading Capital without really wanting to change the society for better. And because Marx, the death of communism, preferred violence and is convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid), those who read the book until the end, end up forfeiting all good goals and will go for repression.
Tankies are people who used to want good things and fairness. And then they converted from that into tankies.
A strong leader will always lead you into a Russia. Into a quagmire.
I’m sorry, what? Have you ever actually tried to read Capital? Most of Marx’s works are dense and academic, drawing intellectual traditions that are often unfamiliar to modern readers (classical economics, Hegel, etc). Marx’s way of argumentation isn’t really geared toward the lowest common denominator.
It’s kinda funny how you can’t even keep your criticism straight through a single comment. In one sentence, reading Marx is a “chore” that nobody would want to slog through, in the very next one, Marx is so persuasive, his honeyed words easily sway the minds of any who stumble across them, like the Sirens calling ships to their rocks.
As for “no good goal exists anymore” or “it’s hard to see what good goal tankies ever had” maybe we just like it when this sort of thing happens:
The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.
When you figure out a better way to do that, get back to me.
Here goes:
A similar jump from around 1949 to 1980. In China it seems to have begun around 1930, with WWII causing a dent. In Finland the same had begun around 1880’s. But the development between 1949 and 1980 is very similar, only: without concentration camps! (…since 1918.)
Wrong as shit, how are you so ignorant about your own history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Karelian_concentration_camps
That’s still not as fast of a development, and the conditions aren’t really comparable. China used to be among the poorest countries in the world.
And while their government has not always been ideal, it was undoubtably the best option on the table historically. The corrupt Nationalists didn’t do shit for the people (and pocketed foreign aid). Before that, with no central authority, was the warlord period. Before that was the backwards Qing dynasty. In all the thousands of years of Chinese history, nobody really did anything for the rural people until the communists.
This is nonsense, the only part you got correct is that those who read through Capital generally have an interest in a better world. Neither Marx nor Lenin advocated “doing the opposite” to get to communism, both argued for the establishment of a worker state to gradually collectivize all of the means of production and distribution. Historically, this method has been enormously beneficial for the working classes, while breing quite scary for landlords, capitalists, slavers, and fascists.
I’m also not at all understanding what you mean by Marx being “convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid).” What would an intelligent person, by your estimation, take fault with in Marx?
Capital rests on the argument ~that the fact qualitatively different (in terms of use values) commodities are exchanged for each other in different quantities requires a quality they share in common which only differs in quantity from one commodity to the next, and Marx posits that the only quality this could be is being products of labor. Yet this is very clearly not something that all commodities have in common, and that a thing’s status as a commodity and its ability to be exchanged for other commodities has nothing to do with its being a product of labor. The only way Marx’s argument can be accepted is if you start with the presupposition that commodities are valued by the labor required to produce them.
How this happens that commodities are exchanged at their “value” is a complete mystery by the way, since Marx says it has nothing to do with the conscious considerations of either the buyer or the seller.
This is not clear at all. Elaborate, please.
Why not? Are you saying that the utility of a commodity to someone does not change whether or not it was made with labor? This doesn’t really matter, though, the point of the Law of Value is that commodities are socially produced, and socially distributed, which normalizes their price around their values. Arguments like the “mud pie” don’t apply, because mud pies are neither useful nor difficult to make.
Incorrect, the exchange-value that price fluctuates around is representative of the value in a commodity. Another way to look at it is that the value of a commodity is the sum of its inputs, which can be reduced to labor and natural resources.
Marx is correct, though this is no mystery. Commodities are social products, and are socially exchanged. What’s universal to goods bought and sold is that they require natural resources and human labor to create them, thus capitalism in being a social process acts as a price-finder for commodities, all based on inputs and outputs.
All you need for commodity exchange is for people to accept something is yours and be willing to exchange something they own which you desire in return for it. That thing being a product of labor is not necessary. You can own land based on agreement without taking any trouble to cultivate or defend it, and exchange it for other things based on agreement. You can exchange naturally occurring things without rendering them ~crystallizations of social labor.
Marx’s argument is invalid in another way because there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor.
Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.
The argument only doesn’t apply for the first reason. There’s no necessity even for Marx that commodities be arbitrarily “difficult” to produce.
How is this a response to what I said?
This is both incorrect (for Marx, value is entirely determined by socially necessary labor time) and doesn’t mean anything (this is like multiplying 3 apples by 7 pears, what does it mean that the value of a commodity can be reduced to labor and natural resources?; with value being determined by labor time you can reduce things to a certain quantity, but then you just add on a qualitatively different thing and you return to the original problem of needing a third equivalent, or a value to unite the components of value).
You forgot to explain how this actually occurs. You just say that capitalism does it.
You should tell Marx this since expressly says that he thinks the only universal is labor. You both happen to be wrong, though.
Yes? Marx talks about natural resources. Land is covered more in volume 3, but nevertheless this is fully accounted for. Natural resources take extraction to refine and produce, and the concept of owning land requires a body to uphold that, the state, and the value of land itself is tied to how productive it can make you. All value comes from labor and natural resources, this is straight from Capital.
This does not make his argument invalid, though. What’s common is that the makeup of commodities can be reduced entirely to the labor and raw materials that went into them.
No, you never disproved anything.
There is, though. A commodity’s value isn’t dependent on how much labor went into that individual commodity, but that commodity as a social product, ie on average. If someone spends 10 hours on a mud pie that takes 2 seconds to create on average, it’ll be just as close to worthless as the rest. Further, labor that is more skilled (harder to socially reproduce) or more compressed than the social average does produce more value. Value is a social characteristic, not an individual one.
Because you’re confusing the fact that prices reflect value with the idea that people independently think of that before purchasing.
You’re mixing up Exchange-Value with Use-Value. All use-value comes from labor and natural resources, but natural resources themselves can be reduced to the labor required to gather them and refine them, etc. All socially necessary labor time means is that it takes society on average a certain amount of labor to create something, and natural resources can be themselves reduced to labor. 3 apples and 7 pears both may take the same amount of labor on average to create them, and thus their prices naturally gravitate near the same value.
Through the market. Buying and selling of goods, competition, all of this from the perspective of the capitalist confronts them as input costs and profits. Competition forces prices towards a floor, lack of competition brings in new competitors which then brings the price back to being roughly as profitable as the rest. Capital essentially functions as a control system.
You should actually read Capital, because Marx quite literally states this.
Marx isn’t wrong, and neither am I, it seems you genuinely haven’t opened Capital because this is in the first few pages. I’m not sure whose alt you are, given that this is a 2 comment account, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to start an argument on Capital without even reading the first chapter of the first volume.
No? Not necessarily.
Again, not necessarily.
It does make his argument invalid. Per Marx: “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.” This is how you get to the LTV in the argument. Yet it’s just trivially wrong.
Wrt labor/raw materials, you can sell ideas. Commodities aren’t even necessarily material things. Now you could say that ideas require humans, and humans require human labor to be created and raised and nature to nourish them etc etc yet it’s an unjustifiable presupposition that ideas can then be reduced to a mechanical combination of these aspects.
I never said I disproved anything in the part you’re quoting. I was just preempting the argument I mentioned as a response to the examples I gave.
No I’m not. I don’t know how you got that from what you quoted.
No. Value itself is neither exchange-value (which is just a relation between two values) nor use-value (the particularities of which dissolve when considering value), when Marx refers to value he is referring only to the labor-time socially necessary to produce a thing. If you were speaking about specific use values then this is just nonsense in context because you were talking about “the value in a commodity” as what price orbits around, and then you have the category error I went over. You corrected yourself here by saying value can be reduced to just labor instead of being “reduced to labor and natural resources.” Just admit you made a mistake and don’t act like the mix-up is on me.
Sure, and why should this floor be reflective of the amt. of labor required to produce that commodity? Well you can justify this abstractly but in terms of actually making it work, it doesn’t.
This has to do with the prev. “mix-up,” you were talking about [[[prices]]] again; commodities as values are only representative of certain expenditures of abstract labor, that is the universal. Use-values are [[[particularities]]] and the entire point of the book is that insofar as they are considered in relation to each other and to the universal which is money (price!), their particular use does not matter (indeed, the particular form of labor employed and any other considerations do not matter), only that they are expenditures of the total abstract social productive capacity of a society.
I’m not anybody’s alt, not that it would matter if I was. I’d imagine if I had a longer history you would pick something else out to use, but this got me to look at your history and I found this post called “Dialectical Materalism: How to Think Like a Marxist” that I’m going to reply to so thx.
Yes, generally. There’s also transport.
Yes, again.
Again, you’re trivially wrong. All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop. Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong. As for “ideas” being sold, mental labor for research and development, etc. is in fact labor, and labor goes into training the skilled labor used for research and development. Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies. Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.
You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth. Given that you haven’t yet made an actual critique of the Law of Value, this seems more like deflection than anything else.
Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.
Again, not a mix-up. Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.
Correct, your argument would not matter if you’re an alt or not, it’s just highly strange that this would be your first comment, days into a thread, many comments deep into it.
So not necessarily. I don’t know why you’re standing your ground on this absurd position that natural resources necessarily need to be extracted, refined and produced, or even transported to be exchanged.
Right except that just isn’t true. It’s not necessary, all you need is an agreement. In terms of generalizing this exchange, that’s a different question. But I already explained why that doesn’t matter.
Simply claiming that something is true is not in fact enough to make it true.
I was under the impression that you acknowledged that “there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor” [-me] but that “this does not make his argument invalid, though” [-you]. It doesn’t make sense for you to say this otherwise. So why would I have to list those qualities? I guess you changed your mind upon seeing the quote, but you should’ve just admitted this. The thing is, even if there weren’t these qualities, you would still be wrong because conceptually this would still make the argument invalid.
Regardless of specific use values, commodities all have the quality of existing in time, being comprised of matter for Marx, have the quality of being use-values in being exchange-values (that is, their use for the seller is always to be exchanged, regardless of their specific use for the buyer), I think this is enough.
I already responded to this:
Not necessary.
Right, because I’m not countering an argument; a presupposition isn’t an argument.
Right no I got that, it’s just that it makes no sense to reference that here, as I explained. There’s no way this isn’t a mistake, and there’s no way the confusion is on me. “You can call it a mistake if you want” is a funny response though.
You evidently do not understand what I’m asking.
Again, there’s no other explanation. Which is why you just transition to a different point in the next sentence.
He can address it all he wants, it contradicts his argument I went over in the first place, that exchange of use values necessitates the presence of value. Forget everything else, this is the argument.
The dictatorship of the proletariat was a horribly bad idea. It’s a dictatorship. And brings the consequences of a dictatorship with it. I would dare to blame Lenin and also Marx for that crap.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a democratic state for the proletariat, and dictatorship against capitalists, fascists, landlords, and slavers. It’s the socialist equivalent to liberal democracy, which de facto is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
All states are class dictatorships, this means democracy for the ruling class and its absolute rule over the rest.
Also, not sure why you brought up Capital if you’re talking about the DotP, that’s not really in Capital. Capital is a critique of bourgeois Political Economy.