How Learning Economics Makes You Antisocial - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14992667
Victoribus Spolia wrote:
No one ever said that his conclusion didn't follow from his premises; however, it seems we are agreed that his conclusion DOES involve ATLEAST the implicit dehumanization of an entire class of people; which, if the situation is as a dire as he claims, it would be equally logical to justify their genocide.

Its not that his conclusion isn't reasonable, but that its blatant wickedness should make us reconsider his premises. After all, depending on our worldview schema, it is always easy to find some group to blame and simplify the solution to the world's problems to an easy "if we only disenfranchised or eliminated this group everything would get better." This of course, not being qualitatively different than simply saying "well if those damn Jews didn't disproportionately control the media, government, and academia, everything would be better."


I have already pointed out that if the first statement is true, then the conclusion won't be sinister by nature; as it only implies the ‘expropriation’ of such group of people from their positions of power, and the wealth (that should rightfully belong to its actual creators).
I’d like to add to my previous statement that, such act (of expropriation) would only be ‘sinister’, if done with the intention of replacing one small group of individuals by another- to be the new owners of the same wealth and power. And, it would turn out to be a ‘mistake’, if done without a justified and viable plan of action in order to achieve a system of society in which the political – economic relations serve to benefit everyone, as oppose to a handful of super rich (greedy, profit-seeking individuals, as put forward initially by Qatzelok).

Victoribus Spolia wrote:
This is why the only purely subjective element prohibited in the Decalogue was "covetousness," as from it springs the roots of genocidal scapegoating; whether communistic, fascistic, or otherwise.


I have implicitly given my answer to this part already. I don’t believe such act would be ‘covetousness’, it would not be so because the super-rich / the Capitalists are not the rightful owners of the wealth they have acquired.
It is the existing system of society that allows them to accumulate wealth (surplus value) through the exploitation of the labor power. Scapegoating, fascism, genocide, and much more existing issues of today; are all the results and inevitable consequences of the ruling Capitalist system.

Therefore, it is foremost that such system – not the individuals – to be targeted for change, to achieve true humane goals.
Last edited by Stardust on 07 Mar 2019 13:05, edited 1 time in total.
#14992668
Hindsite wrote:I don't agree with the title. To me learning economics did not make me antisocial.
However, learning economics and capitalism did make me an anti-SOCIALIST.
HalleluYah


In that case, you should be opposing to the views of the genius whose name is mentioned in your signature too. Believe it or not, Einstein was a Socialist!

https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

Also, the statement itself, has no validity in the context you're implying:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious ... t_Einstein
#14992701
Stardust wrote:In that case, you should be opposing to the views of the genius whose name is mentioned in your signature too. Believe it or not, Einstein was a Socialist!

Why can't I pick and choose a view I like of a person without making a big deal of all the views of a person I don't like?

I also like this quote from Einstein, "God does not play dice with the universe."

Praise the Lord.
#14992728
Hindsite wrote:Why can't I pick and choose a view I like of a person without making a big deal of all the views of a person I don't like?

I also like this quote from Einstein, "God does not play dice with the universe."

Praise the Lord.


I never said you can't, but what would be the point of quoting a person in your signature whose overall views about life - in society, and the philosophic questions regarding the origins of it; are in opposition to yourself?
It would be something like taking 'one sentence' from an article about a specific subject, and using it in another with totally different context.

Cheating, may I dare say...
#14992734
Hindsite wrote:
That is crazy talk. Capitalism has been working to build wealth from the beginnings of civilization. Without capitalism, socialism and communism can not long survive. Buying and selling is a necessary part of any successful economy.



Sure, I'll readily acknowledge capitalism's productive prowess, but it's been enabled at the cost of much human lifeblood and life-time.

You're being blithely dismissive in saying that socialism and communism would somehow *depend* on a continued capitalism, when in fact the respective modes of production are inherently *antagonistic* (class vs. classless society).

Buying and selling are *exchange*-based and we need such exchange-reliant material economy activity *less and less* as digital technologies have improved and enabled better *planning* and logistics. It's gotten to the point where we now have *digital centralization* (without requiring any heavy-handed local dictatorships as 'sponsors'), as with online aggregated stores like Amazon and eBay.

Communism offers the promise of *exchange-less* material-economic structures, since exchange values would be eliminated altogether (moneyless). The shorthand for this is 'free-access' and 'direct distribution', meaning that nothing would be produced for the sake of increasing *exchange values* (national currency valuations), but rather would be produced as-a-gift by liberated workers, for their / our own benefit, and for the public good (a communistic 'gift economy').

So imagine an Amazon or eBay that's post-capitalism, coordinates sheerly voluntary liberated-labor, provides a point of centralization for the same, and distributes all necessarily-non-commodity products to those who need them the most.

I have a model that explains this approach in more detail:

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... -Questions


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
Image
#14992809
Stardust wrote:I never said you can't, but what would be the point of quoting a person in your signature whose overall views about life - in society, and the philosophic questions regarding the origins of it; are in opposition to yourself?

I don't quote any of his stupid quotes that I don't agree with.
Stardust wrote:It would be something like taking 'one sentence' from an article about a specific subject, and using it in another with totally different context.

Cheating, may I dare say...

Some people do that with the Holy Bible. I try not to do that.
Praise the Lord.

ckaihatsu wrote:Sure, I'll readily acknowledge capitalism's productive prowess, but it's been enabled at the cost of much human lifeblood and life-time.

You're being blithely dismissive in saying that socialism and communism would somehow *depend* on a continued capitalism, when in fact the respective modes of production are inherently *antagonistic* (class vs. classless society).

Yes, I am dismissive of complete socialism and communism, because it is clear that in practice they are much more destructive than capitalism. In theory, they are made to sound good and equal to all, but it has never worked that way in practice.
#14992874
Hindsite wrote:
Yes, I am dismissive of complete socialism and communism, because it is clear that in practice they are much more destructive than capitalism. In theory, they are made to sound good and equal to all, but it has never worked that way in practice.



This is the political *conditioning* that everyone receives, that historical Stalinism in various circumscribed countries is what's desired.

As soon as one *reads* anything in the revolutionary tradition one will understand that Stalinism *does not equal* socialism -- a workers state:

https://www.marxists.org/


There's also the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution wasn't unimpaired -- it was *invaded* and that had ultimate effects on its economy:



The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched during the Russian Civil War in 1918. The stated goals were to help the Czechoslovak Legion, to secure supplies of munitions and armaments in Russian ports, and to re-establish the Eastern Front. Overthrow of the new Bolshevik regime was an additional, covert motivation.[6] [7]

After the Bolshevik government withdrew from World War I, the Allied Powers openly backed the anti-communist White forces in Russia. Allied efforts were hampered by divided objectives, war-weariness from the overall global conflict, and a lack of domestic support. These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion, compelled the Allied Powers to withdraw from North Russia and Siberia in 1920, though Japanese forces occupied parts of Siberia until 1922 and the northern half of Sakhalin until 1925.[8]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War
#14993048
Hindsite wrote:I don't quote any of his stupid quotes that I don't agree with.

Some people do that with the Holy Bible. I try not to do that.
Praise the Lord.


You're trying to obscure my point, by giving irrelevant answers.
I'll pass... I am neither religious; nor believe in them!
#14993110
Stardust wrote:You're trying to obscure my point, by giving irrelevant answers.
I'll pass... I am neither religious; nor believe in them!

My answers simply show that your point is flawed. I could have easily guessed that you were an unbeliever.
#14993134
Stardust wrote:I have already pointed out that if the first statement is true, then the conclusion won't be sinister by nature; as it only implies the ‘expropriation’ of such group of people from their positions of power, and the wealth (that should rightfully belong to its actual creators).

Here, you are still trying to mitigate Vic's barking about the house being threatened by "a strange odor." I wrote "removed from positions of power" and Vic barked out "kill people?!" in order to protect our murderous system.

Along with making its students anti-social, the anti-socialism of Economicists has turned thinking individuals into house dogs who bark pre-conceived memes to defend our extinction-producing system.

Economics, commercial media, and formal education all provide house-dogs with their material, as well as their attachment to the system.

In Cuba, the dogs rarely bark because they are social. They can be social because there are so few dangerous machines on roads. There are few dangerous machines on the road because Economic theory was replaced by social distribution of resources un Cuba a half- century ago.

In suburban America, the barking never stops because the dogs are misérable. So they bark at strange odors instead of replacing their masters.
#14995928
The Poisonous History of Neo-Classical Economics

A recent article by James C. Kennedy explores both the history and the current application of neo-Classical economic theory.

First, he talks about the "why" of our current economic model. The enrichment of the rentier classes:

This reversal of fortunes, from the many to the few, happened under the stewardship of neo-classical economic policies over the last 40 years. Much like the feudal and aristocratic past, this concentration of wealth has led to the accumulation of massive debts, economic stagnation and the subordination of sovereign states under an increasingly rentier-based (here)economy. It is everything that classical economics set out to eradicate.


Of course, it was difficult to sweep away classical ideas about collective well being and morality. So the neo-Classicists used marketing to brand their ideology as "new and improved."

The problem was that the classical system had gained a reverential reputation over the last 200 years. Classical economics was a humanities-based science. Its underlying premise was collective. To openly dismantle the system was problematic.

A solution was found in the voice of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. By using the techniques of Edward Bernays, Friedman and others simply ‘re-branded’ their preferential outcomes within the language of classical economics: a faux-classical economics 2.0.

In truth, neo-classical economics is not ‘new’. It has more in common with feudal economics than classical economics, but is dressed up in modern terminology and its self-referential models.


He also explains the "how" of economic liberalism (the application of neo-Classical economic theory)
Money had to overturn classical economics; all questions regarding national interests, obligations to employees & local community, questions of morality, egalitarian taxation & economic participation must be eliminated from economic policy. Money had to be free of communal and collective mores.


So we were forced to eliminate morality as a goal of our societies, along with general participation in the economy and obligations to community. So that's where those things went! All in order to make rentiers wealthy without working.

And since this system is currently all that is making our rentiers rich, they have ensured that it is mandatory worldwide. This is probably where the obsession with the word "fascism" has come from in my lifetime.

The new system was challenged by various competing economic narratives until the neo-classical model successfully trans-mutated classical economics, with the goal of inverting outcomes, while demonizing all other schools of economic thought.

Today neo classical economics and its bag of economic policy prescriptions are applied in all G-20 nations, to varying degrees. Most other nations are forced to integrate or conform to its more exploitive features if they want to utilize or benefit from institutions like the IMF, World Bank, various international trading facilities or other NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

Non-compliant actors like Cuba, Venezuela and Iran are subject to monetary manipulation (here), sanctions and covert actions that are designed to generate the appearance of internal instability, with the objective of regime change (spoiler alert: this is what your CIA directed tax dollars are used for).


Quotes taken from The Poisonous History of Neo-Classical Economics by James C. Kennedy.
#14996098
QatzelOk wrote:



The Poisonous History of Neo-Classical Economics



Money had to overturn classical economics; all questions regarding national interests, obligations to employees & local community, questions of morality, egalitarian taxation & economic participation must be eliminated from economic policy. Money had to be free of communal and collective mores.



This describes the typical public-relations worldview that's foisted on the world, one which attempts to sever and *de-politicize* the function of economic decision-making, from any and all *socio-political* economic-activity decisions and implications -- especially that of government spending.

The right-wing ideology manages to combine a contrived 'folksy' outlook, to *atomize* all everyday personal economic decision-making, while in practice it continues to rob public funds for *materially destructive*, right-wing purposes such as rentierist tax breaks for the wealthy and increased militarization.

It should be obvious by now that this isn't any sort of objective-minded *science*, but rather more of an elitist 'road map' that defines and activates the reactionary worldview and public-looting governmental policies. It's inherently *duplicitous* because it *preaches* small-scale mom-and-pop-type economic involvement while carrying out *large-scale* extractions of labor efforts, wages, and natural resources -- an implicit 24/7 dogmatic bait-and-switch under the guise of an "impartial" universal 'economics'.


Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



G.U.T.S.U.C., Individualism - Tribalism

Spoiler: show
Image



Chris



--
___

RedMarx - A Forum
tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-redmarx

Politics Forum
tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-pofo

RevLeft.com -- Home of the Revolutionary Left
tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-revleft

Photoillustrations, Political Diagrams by Chris Kaihatsu
postimage.org/ckaihatsu

Meetup.com
meetup.com/members/1278720


-- An imprimatur that's worth its weight in gold --
#14996131
Stardust wrote:
I have already pointed out that if the first statement is true, then the conclusion won't be sinister by nature; as it only implies the ‘expropriation’ of such group of people from their positions of power, and the wealth (that should rightfully belong to its actual creators).


QatzelOk wrote:Here, you are still trying to mitigate Vic's barking about the house being threatened by "a strange odor." I wrote "removed from positions of power" and Vic barked out "kill people?!" in order to protect our murderous system.

Along with making its students anti-social, the anti-socialism of Economicists has turned thinking individuals into house dogs who bark pre-conceived memes to defend our extinction-producing system.

Economics, commercial media, and formal education all provide house-dogs with their material, as well as their attachment to the system.

In Cuba, the dogs rarely bark because they are social. They can be social because there are so few dangerous machines on roads. There are few dangerous machines on the road because Economic theory was replaced by social distribution of resources un Cuba a half- century ago.

In suburban America, the barking never stops because the dogs are misérable. So they bark at strange odors instead of replacing their masters.


Sorry for the delay Qatzelok. I see that you have appreciated my making efforts to clarify your point of view to your opponent. So, thanks for that!

I’m not sure what you mean precisely, by me still mitigating Vic's barking about the house being threatened by a strange odor.

I have used logical reasoning as my method to explain the point that when you said that referred statement, i.e. removing those already in power from their positions; you weren’t necessarily implying their ‘physical elimination’ (or, killing them).

The way you’ve put it, you know; ‘Dogs barking at strange odor’, and so forth… is a kind of metaphor, dramatizing and exaggeration (although indirectly) of the same issue of ‘anti-social behavior’ and its surrounding issues; as I have explained to Victorybus.

So, would you kindly elaborate on the ‘mitigation’ efforts the way you see it in my earlier post; and how my point of view differs from yours...?
Last edited by Stardust on 28 Mar 2019 14:28, edited 1 time in total.
#14996143
QatzelOk wrote:A recent article by James C. Kennedy explores both the history and the current application of neo-Classical economic theory.

Actually, this history was well explained decades ago by Mason Gaffney in "The Corruption of Economics."
First, he talks about the "why" of our current economic model. The enrichment of the rentier classes:

This goes back more than a century to JB Clark's "The Distribution of Wealth," the founding document of neoclassical economics, in which he stated explicitly that his purpose was to show that all legally obtained wealth is obtained by making an equivalent contribution to production. I.e., that a return obtained through legal entitlement to DEPRIVE others of what they would otherwise have is economically the same as a return obtained by PROVIDING them with what they would NOT otherwise have. I.e., that economics cannot make any distinction between production and legalized theft. Gaffney argues that this self-evidently absurd and dishonest nonsense was a stratagem directed specifically at Henry George and the Single Tax movement, which were then threatening to overturn landowner privilege. I suspect it was more broadly intended to justify -- even sanctify -- rent seeking of all stripes: private commercial banks' money issuance and IP monopolies as well as landowning.
Of course, it was difficult to sweep away classical ideas about collective well being and morality. So the neo-Classicists used marketing to brand their ideology as "new and improved."

The neoclassicals did adopt one distinct improvement over classical economics: the Marginal Theory of Value to replace the Labor Theory of Value, which Jevons had disproved in 1871. Classical economics focused on production, and saw that while the worker and factory owner contribute to it, the landowner does not. Neoclassical economics focuses on exchange "at the margin," and the assumption that as both sides gain by consensual exchange, the landowner, banker, IP monopolist, etc. must somehow be making others better off in return for their incomes. It therefore ignores the fact that the landowner, banker, IP monopolist, etc. obtained what they exchange with others through a non-consensual conversion of others' rights to liberty into their private property.
So we were forced to eliminate morality as a goal of our societies, along with general participation in the economy and obligations to community.

More specifically, we had to conceal the non-contributory nature of the privileged's participation in the economy.
All in order to make rentiers wealthy without working.

As Clark all but explicitly stated was his purpose.
And since this system is currently all that is making our rentiers rich, they have ensured that it is mandatory worldwide.

It is certainly mandatory in economics curricula.
#14996326
Truth To Power wrote:
Actually, this history was well explained decades ago by Mason Gaffney in "The Corruption of Economics."

This goes back more than a century to JB Clark's "The Distribution of Wealth," the founding document of neoclassical economics, in which he stated explicitly that his purpose was to show that all legally obtained wealth is obtained by making an equivalent contribution to production. I.e., that a return obtained through legal entitlement to DEPRIVE others of what they would otherwise have is economically the same as a return obtained by PROVIDING them with what they would NOT otherwise have. I.e., that economics cannot make any distinction between production and legalized theft.



This is rich, pun intended -- it's picking up the endless attack on the Marxist Labor Theory of Value, which effectively points-out that all social production is derived from workers' *labor efforts*, whether that be buildings, 'intellectual property', or services (blue-collar, white-collar, pink-collar, respectively).

This bourgeois-economics line is so disingenuous that it quickly gets tangled up in its own 'supply-side' contrivances -- it's simply an attempt to justify capital's role in productive activity while shunting labor's role to the side, to make it invisible in the same process.

Wealth makes *no* 'contribution' to the process of production, because if such invested capital could not realistically realize returns / profits it wouldn't be there in the first place. And it's only through the endless *exploitation* of labor that new goods and services can be created, to *expand*-out the overall economy, increasing it in size.

Instead of truthfully *acknowledging* this economic-growth dynamic, the bourgeois economics line here both touts a fallacy of an autocratic conception of government, somehow *away* from the ruling class' capital-based interests, *and* also projects a zero-sum-game conception of the economy wherein regular economic growth is ignored in favor of a contrived, false, tightly-contained arena of competition in which gains for one necessarily means losses for another, all while smiled-upon from on high by this fictitious looming autocratically-anti-capital governmental apparatus.

TTP's interpretation of Clark posits this Mad-Max competitive arena in which everything material is gained from the *blood* of others, apparently, while blithely ignoring that everything materially meaningful is actually derived from the planet's *natural resources*, requiring *labor* to fashion it all appropriately for human usage.

It's interesting that the passage doesn't specify *who* or *what* is doing the 'providing', thus making an artificial / contrived contrast to the more-apocalyptic dog-eat-dog scenario in which gains can only be made by *depriving* others of the same kind of material access.

Also:


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Gaffney argues that this self-evidently absurd and dishonest nonsense was a stratagem directed specifically at Henry George and the Single Tax movement, which were then threatening to overturn landowner privilege. I suspect it was more broadly intended to justify -- even sanctify -- rent seeking of all stripes: private commercial banks' money issuance and IP monopolies as well as landowning.



This is a bullshit, alarmist exaggerated claim, that a populist-type single-tax on land value would be enough to threaten the institution of private property altogether -- more reactionary propaganda on-display.

We're back to the faux-infighting-schism ruse of good-capital-(equities)-versus-bad-capital-(rentier capital), as if the system of capitalism could somehow favor one form over the other, when in fact both types operate cohesively to exploit wage-labor of its labor-value -- class warfare.


Truth To Power wrote:
The neoclassicals did adopt one distinct improvement over classical economics: the Marginal Theory of Value to replace the Labor Theory of Value, which Jevons had disproved in 1871. Classical economics focused on production, and saw that while the worker and factory owner contribute to it, the landowner does not. Neoclassical economics focuses on exchange "at the margin," and the assumption that as both sides gain by consensual exchange, the landowner, banker, IP monopolist, etc. must somehow be making others better off in return for their incomes. It therefore ignores the fact that the landowner, banker, IP monopolist, etc. obtained what they exchange with others through a non-consensual conversion of others' rights to liberty into their private property.

More specifically, we had to conceal the non-contributory nature of the privileged's participation in the economy.



---


https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Jevons.html


William Stanley Jevons
1835-1882

William Jevons was one of three men to simultaneously advance the so-called marginal revolution. Working in complete independence of one another—Jevons in Manchester, England; leon walras in Lausanne, Switzerland; and carl menger in Vienna—each scholar developed the theory of marginal utility to understand and explain consumer behavior. The theory held that the utility (value) of each additional unit of a commodity—the marginal utility—is less and less to the consumer. When you are thirsty, for example, you get great utility from a glass of water. Once your thirst is quenched, the second and third glasses are less and less appealing. Feeling waterlogged, you will eventually refuse water altogether. “Value,” said Jevons, “depends entirely upon utility.”

This statement marked a significant departure from the classical theory of value, which stated that value derived from the labor used to produce a product or from the cost of production more generally. Thus began the neoclassical school, which is still the dominant one in economics today.


---


The *problem* with this particular yardstick of valuating is that it only looks at commodity-valuation in terms of market-exchange *pricing*, well-after the process of production which necessarily requires both labor and capital.

Neoclassical theory, then, as stated, fundamentally *ignores* the role of labor in the production of the commodity in the first place.
#14996340
Stardust wrote:So, would you kindly elaborate on the ‘mitigation’ efforts the way you see it in my earlier post; and how my point of view differs from yours...?

Actually, your and my opinions seem to be following a similar path. In this thread, I am not contradicting you so much as I am trying to get more and more precise, as I believe you are.

Your "mitigation" of Vic's "barking at a strange odor" that I mentioned earlier, meant that I thought you were giving too much attention to his "cause." I feel as if he often reacts emotionally to any new idea, the way dogs react to strange smells of perfectly harmless people or other animals.

I also don't think the process of transfer of power needs to be reinvented. The central government needs to nationalize vital infrastructure, and the rich need to have their consumption and hoarding reduced to sustainable levels that don't punish other humans or animals.

The rich will not react positively to this change, and any criminality on their part (like the Opposition in Venezuela) need to be constrained by the general society, and not just the authorities. This re-assigning of social roles (to the military, police, neigborhood councils, individuals, communities) is probably the most difficult part of any revolution aimed at a more rational use and distribution of resources (aka. p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s).

Most political theory, especially in the last few centuries, ignores the idea of a "rational" distribution of resources, and instead applies "rational" only to the selfish behavior of anti-socials.

Adding other reasons for the advent of neo-Classical economics, Truth to Power wrote:...we had to conceal the non-contributory nature of the privileged's participation in the economy.

The rich do fuck all, so they have lots of time to conspire and invent crap like neo-Classical economics? Hmmm....
#14996355
ckaihatsu wrote:This is rich, pun intended -- it's picking up the endless attack on the Marxist Labor Theory of Value,

Wrong, as usual. The proved-false Labor Theory of Value antedates Marx by several decades.
which effectively points-out that all social production

Production is typically private, not social.
is derived from workers' *labor efforts*,

Whose product rightly becomes the property of whoever pays them for it. Property rights are conserved in consensual transactions.
whether that be buildings, 'intellectual property', or services (blue-collar, white-collar, pink-collar, respectively).

Intellectual property is a government-issued and -enforced privilege, not a service.
This bourgeois-economics line is so disingenuous that it quickly gets tangled up in its own 'supply-side' contrivances

Do socialists really think such nonsense constitutes an argument?
-- it's simply an attempt to justify capital's role in productive activity while shunting labor's role to the side, to make it invisible in the same process.

No, that is a fabrication on your part. Labor is provided by the worker, producer goods (classically called, "capital") are provided by their owners, natural resources are provided by nature. The relevant fact, which both capitalists AND SOCIALISTS try to deny, obscure, and make invisible, is that producer goods would not be available to the production process if their owners did not contribute them, while natural resources WOULD still be available for production even if their owners had never existed.
Wealth makes *no* 'contribution' to the process of production,

That's just self-evidently false, absurd, and disingenuous. Producer goods are indisputably wealth that aids production, and unlike natural resources, those goods would not be available for production if their owners had not produced and contributed them.
because if such invested capital could not realistically realize returns / profits it wouldn't be there in the first place.

?? What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about? The exact same is true of labor: if it did not contribute more to production than it cost to contribute it, it would not be contributed.
And it's only through the endless *exploitation* of labor that new goods and services can be created, to *expand*-out the overall economy, increasing it in size.

No, that's just absurd Marxist nonsense directly contradicted by indisputable objective fact. Providing labor with access to economic opportunity that would not otherwise be available, as the capital goods' owner does, is not exploitation, sorry. It can ONLY be of BENEFIT to the worker. It is private ownership of LAND that deprives the worker of his liberty, alternatives, and thus bargaining power, not private ownership of capital goods. Socialists simply refuse to know the fact that offering people access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have is different from DEPRIVING them of economic opportunity they WOULD otherwise have. They literally cannot tell the difference between giving people something and stealing something from them.
Instead of truthfully *acknowledging* this economic-growth dynamic,

I just proved it isn't true.
the bourgeois economics line here both touts a fallacy of an autocratic conception of government, somehow *away* from the ruling class' capital-based interests,

The ruling class's interests are based on ownership of privilege, not capital goods, because capital goods don't yield any unearned return.
*and* also projects a zero-sum-game conception of the economy

That is a fabrication on your part.
wherein regular economic growth is ignored in favor of a contrived, false, tightly-contained arena of competition in which gains for one necessarily means losses for another, all while smiled-upon from on high by this fictitious looming autocratically-anti-capital governmental apparatus.

More fabrications.
TTP's interpretation of Clark posits this Mad-Max competitive arena in which everything material is gained from the *blood* of others, apparently,

Another fabrication.
while blithely ignoring that everything materially meaningful is actually derived from the planet's *natural resources*, requiring *labor* to fashion it all appropriately for human usage.

That is self-evidently false. Natural resources must ALREADY be -- and are -- appropriate for human use BEFORE labor can do anything with them. This is self-evident and indisputable. You just have to find some way of not knowing it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
It's interesting that the passage doesn't specify *who* or *what* is doing the 'providing', thus making an artificial / contrived contrast to the more-apocalyptic dog-eat-dog scenario in which gains can only be made by *depriving* others of the same kind of material access.

False. I have made it very clear, many times, that the owner of capital goods provides them to the production process, while the owner of natural resources only DEPRIVES others of access to those resources unless they pay him for permission to do what they would otherwise have been at liberty to do.
This is a bullshit, alarmist exaggerated claim, that a populist-type single-tax on land value would be enough to threaten the institution of private property altogether

That is another fabrication. It would only threaten -- in fact, remove -- wrongful property in natural resources, not rightful property in the fruits of one's labor.
-- more reactionary propaganda on-display.

I.e., facts that you cannot refute.
We're back to the faux-infighting-schism ruse of good-capital-(equities)

Wrong again. Equities are just ownership shares. They can be ownership of capital goods, production systems, rent collection privileges, or any combination thereof.
-versus-bad-capital-(rentier capital),

The term, "rentier capital" indicates a refusal to know the difference between capital goods and rent collection privileges.
as if the system of capitalism could somehow favor one form over the other, when in fact both types operate cohesively to exploit wage-labor of its labor-value -- class warfare.

Wrong again. Ownership of capital goods obtains no return beyond what is contributed to production. Ownership of privilege obtains returns without any commensurate contribution to production.
The *problem* with this particular yardstick of valuating is that it only looks at commodity-valuation in terms of market-exchange *pricing*, well-after the process of production which necessarily requires both labor and capital.

Value IS what a thing would exchange for. That is what it means in economics.
Neoclassical theory, then, as stated, fundamentally *ignores* the role of labor in the production of the commodity in the first place.

Nonsense. What neoclassical economics ignores is the difference between providing a contribution to production that would not otherwise have been available and legally withholding what would otherwise be available to production by dint of privilege.
#14996396
QatzelOk wrote:Actually, your and my opinions seem to be following a similar path. In this thread, I am not contradicting you so much as I am trying to get more and more precise, as I believe you are.

Your "mitigation" of Vic's "barking at a strange odor" that I mentioned earlier, meant that I thought you were giving too much attention to his "cause." I feel as if he often reacts emotionally to any new idea, the way dogs react to strange smells of perfectly harmless people or other animals.

I also don't think the process of transfer of power needs to be reinvented. The central government needs to nationalize vital infrastructure, and the rich need to have their consumption and hoarding reduced to sustainable levels that don't punish other humans or animals.

The rich will not react positively to this change, and any criminality on their part (like the Opposition in Venezuela) need to be constrained by the general society, and not just the authorities. This re-assigning of social roles (to the military, police, neigborhood councils, individuals, communities) is probably the most difficult part of any revolution aimed at a more rational use and distribution of resources (aka. p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s).



That’s good to know Qatzelok, and thanks for explaining.
However, I wasn’t paying attention to his ‘cause’, as you have put it; I rather tried to clear the muddy waters… :lol:

Regarding the rest of your argument (which incidentally sounds familiar…), I believe in the need for a classless society, based on the common ownership of the means of mass production; and the re-distribution of the resources / fruits of labor. Therefore, I find an issue with this part of your proposal:

“The central government needs to nationalize vital infrastructure, and the rich need to have their consumption and hoarding reduced to sustainable levels that don't punish other humans or animals.

I think that we won’t achieve the goal of building a classless society, by relying on the ‘change of the behaviors of the rich’; especially, if that is meant to be on their own accord. Such, to my understanding, is impractical; as well as inadequate. The properties of the rich, i.e. the super rich – Capitalists, large financiers and corporate owners; need to be expropriated and their ownership transferred to the public.

You speak of the need for the revolutionary changes in society, but it seems that you only go thus far; with the element of reform being a little excessive in your proposed model.

I have to apologies here in advance, for the delays in responding to your possible answers; due to being busy with work.
#14996472
Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong, as usual. The proved-false Labor Theory of Value antedates Marx by several decades.



It has *not* been 'proven false' -- let's put it *this* way: Labor needs to sustain itself for decades, generations, centuries, and millenia into the future otherwise it won't exist to do the socially necessary things that society needs from it. This continued sustainability requires a certain material cost, usually known as 'wages'.

But the ownership class does not simply hand-down the full labor value, in wages, of what that labor-power, and its products, are sold for on the market. Instead it keeps the 'surplus labor value', beyond the straightforward costs of what labor requires to reproduce itself, going-forward.

So the labor theory of value has *not* been refuted.


[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Production is typically private, not social.



Yes, and that's the problem. 'Social production' denotes the meaning of 'What the people of a society require for their consumption for their organic and social sustainability.'


Truth To Power wrote:
Whose product rightly becomes the property of whoever pays them for it. Property rights are conserved in consensual transactions.



You're making an empirical description here with no critique -- you seem to politically *support* private-property rights and the private-property bourgeois rights to private control over (mass industrial) production.


Truth To Power wrote:
Intellectual property is a government-issued and -enforced privilege, not a service.



A "privilege" -- ? No, it's better-described as a component of bourgeois ruling-class superstructural *hegemony*, or a service to a certain kind of property owner, that of 'intellectual property'.


Truth To Power wrote:
Do socialists really think such nonsense constitutes an argument?



Well who still believes in 'trickle-down' / supply-side arguments, aside from those elites who actually benefit from it?

The problem of income inequality isn't with 'supply' issues, because capitalist commodity production actually tends towards *overproduction* -- the problem is in how markets *distribute* the products of commodity production, which is to-those-who-can-afford-them, and not to those who may happen to have real organic and social *unmet needs* for such products.


Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is a fabrication on your part. Labor is provided by the worker, producer goods (classically called, "capital") are provided by their owners, natural resources are provided by nature. The relevant fact, which both capitalists AND SOCIALISTS try to deny, obscure, and make invisible, is that producer goods would not be available to the production process if their owners did not contribute them, while natural resources WOULD still be available for production even if their owners had never existed.



This is merely *social convention* -- the world's economy doesn't *have* to work on this concept and practice of 'exchange values', including capital / producer goods.

You're sounding as bad as any capitalist apologist and you're not even holding up your own stated politics of '[speaking] truth to power'.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Wealth makes *no* 'contribution' to the process of production,



Truth To Power wrote:
That's just self-evidently false, absurd, and disingenuous. Producer goods are indisputably wealth that aids production, and unlike natural resources, those goods would not be available for production if their owners had not produced and contributed them.



The term 'contribution' connotes some kind of charity, and that's the meaning of the term that I was critiquing.

Also, due to the labor theory of value, the producers are not even so much providing any *material* means, as much as they're displaying their collections of stolen labor value that they have.


Truth To Power wrote:
?? What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about? The exact same is true of labor: if it did not contribute more to production than it cost to contribute it, it would not be contributed.



Nope -- this is where your conception / politics is *flawed* -- capital and labor cannot be considered as rough *equivalents* just because they're both involved in the de-facto capitalistic productive process, at times to supply to social necessity.

Labor is different because it has *organic* and social requirements for material *consumption* (food, shelter, etc.), whereas capital does not. Capital can just sit around and receive rent and interest payments for its sheer existence, with negligible costs, if any, involved. In this way we can call workers 'wage slaves' because they *must* receive wages, for their life and living, and social reproduction going-forward, whereas capital *has no* such requirements.


Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just absurd Marxist nonsense directly contradicted by indisputable objective fact. Providing labor with access to economic opportunity that would not otherwise be available, as the capital goods' owner does, is not exploitation, sorry.



Economic 'opportunity', as though the capital owner doesn't *depend* on labor-power for the sake of production and profits -- ? You're merely spinning the situation around to make it sound somehow *personal*, when it's *not*.

People are employed by the billions worldwide as a basic component of capitalism's functioning. This isn't so much about 'opportunity' as it is about *necessity*, since workers require wages as a resource to their adequate life and living. Real economic opportunity has to do with who gets to benefit from capital, and why.

Expolitation is the systematic expropriation of surplus labor value, into private hands, for every hour of work performed (sold) to the employers / bosses.


Truth To Power wrote:
It can ONLY be of BENEFIT to the worker.



Tell that to the workers who have lost their lives on-the-job.


Truth To Power wrote:
It is private ownership of LAND that deprives the worker of his liberty, alternatives, and thus bargaining power, not private ownership of capital goods.



You're trying to make it sound as though all land is the same -- but I think the land that has factories on it has better industrial productive capacities. Private ownership of capital goods is the same as 'equities', and can realize profit-making from the process of industrial production, including the systematic exploitation of workers' labor power.


Truth To Power wrote:
Socialists simply refuse to know the fact that offering people access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have is different from DEPRIVING them of economic opportunity they WOULD otherwise have.



'Offering people access to economic opportunity' is still *spinning* the concept in favor of *ownership* interests, because unemployment still continues to exist, exacerbating income inequality, and revealing the class divide.

Again, there's no 'tabula rasa' / blank-slate default situation (of an implied *lack* of 'economic opportunity' for worker employment) since capital *depends* on labor and its exploitation for the functioning of its capitalist system.


Truth To Power wrote:
[Socialists] literally cannot tell the difference between giving people something and stealing something from them.



No socialist has stolen anything from me, unlike my past employers -- you're implying *criminality* here, which is an untrue stereotyping of socialist politics.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Instead of truthfully *acknowledging* this economic-growth dynamic,



Truth To Power wrote:
I just proved it isn't true.



Yes, the economy *does* expand over decades and generations -- you're deluded to think otherwise.


Truth To Power wrote:
The ruling class's interests are based on ownership of privilege, not capital goods, because capital goods don't yield any unearned return.



You're *definitely* an apologist for capitalism -- yes, ownership of capital goods is what the ruling class' interests are, and is what gives them economic privilege over those who *don't* have capital, and who must sell their / our own labor to bosses for a wage, for access to the means of life and living.


Truth To Power wrote:
That is a fabrication on your part.

More fabrications.

Another fabrication.



Here's the *point* -- you're dogmatically and erroneously attached to this idea that the sum total of the world economy's exchange-values (asset valuations) somehow neatly lines-up to the world's sum total of people / population, and that it never *expands*. By being incorrect you're positing a false material situation for the sake of your dog-eat-dog concept, probably for the sake of guilt-tripping those on the bottom who have never *had* access to any useful ownership of capital.

You're not acknowledging that the world economy *expands*, sometimes in line with world population growth, sometimes *lagging behind* world population growth (effectively a *shrinking* of the world economy, per capita), and sometimes *outpacing* world population growth, meaning that more value is put into circulation, per-capita.

I happen to have an illustration that's relevant here, an economic critique of Marx's 'labor vouchers' formulation, for the same reason:


Pies Must Line Up

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Truth To Power wrote:
That is self-evidently false. Natural resources must ALREADY be -- and are -- appropriate for human use BEFORE labor can do anything with them. This is self-evident and indisputable. You just have to find some way of not knowing it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.



I don't have any subjective 'beliefs' about any of this stuff.

How, then, can you explain the existence of a common *table* -- ? Tables don't grow in nature, they have to be designed and fashioned from *wood* from *trees*, which *do* grow from nature, and require human labor-power for their manufacture.

Ditto for any other human-used goods or services. Even taking anything 'finished' from nature, like agricultural goods, requires human labor for the sake of *removing* it from nature and *transporting* it to the end-user / consumer.


Truth To Power wrote:
False. I have made it very clear, many times, that the owner of capital goods provides them to the production process, while the owner of natural resources only DEPRIVES others of access to those resources unless they pay him for permission to do what they would otherwise have been at liberty to do.



Well since you're upholding bourgeois private property rights, this is what happens as a result -- you're unable to distinguish the private ownership of land from the private ownership of production goods (factories).

Your critique of land-only implies that people could still privately own *factories*, but on de-privatized land, which would result in a paradigm that's hardly different from what we have today, *with* private ownership of land. Those who could afford to buy equities / factories would, and would seek to *monopolize* each particular industry that they produce for, using the exploitation of labor.

This is why the *revolutionary* position makes sense, because it calls for the *overthrow* of *all* private property ownership, so that the *workers* control what's produced for societal consumption, and what's not.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is a bullshit, alarmist exaggerated claim, that a populist-type single-tax on land value would be enough to threaten the institution of private property altogether



Truth To Power wrote:
That is another fabrication. It would only threaten -- in fact, remove -- wrongful property in natural resources, not rightful property in the fruits of one's labor.



The problem with your propertarian politics is that you're ignoring the *role of labor* -- natural resources don't *extract themselves* for human usage, it takes human *labor* to do that, thereby *commodifying* whatever natural resources are being extracted from nature, for sale to others.

Labor itself doesn't *require* property, mostly because it doesn't already *own* the means of production that it has to work on, as laborers. Labor is treated as a *commodity*, like any other, even though it's *real people* that have to serve the interests of capital for the sake of their / our own life and living, from a wage (without receiving the full market value of their labor that they've sold to the employer).

You're just making an unserious facile promise here, based on *nothing*.


Truth To Power wrote:
I.e., facts that you cannot refute.



(See the previous point.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
We're back to the faux-infighting-schism ruse of good-capital-(equities)-versus-bad-capital-(rentier capital), as if the system of capitalism could somehow favor one form over the other, when in fact both types operate cohesively to exploit wage-labor of its labor-value -- class warfare.



Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong again. Equities are just ownership shares. They can be ownership of capital goods, production systems, rent collection privileges, or any combination thereof.


Truth To Power wrote:
The term, "rentier capital" indicates a refusal to know the difference between capital goods and rent collection privileges.



Just because you frame the ownership of assets as being 'rent collection privileges' doesn't *change* its nature -- it's still ownership of rentier capital, which means that, economically, it receives interest and/or rent payments just because it exists. 'Equities' more-regularly refers to ownership of a share of capital that's actively used in the production of commodities, for capital gains, by exploiting labor-power.


Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong again. Ownership of capital goods obtains no return beyond what is contributed to production. Ownership of privilege obtains returns without any commensurate contribution to production.



*Of course* capital receives more than it puts-in, otherwise there'd be no economic *incentive* for its involvement -- the gain in value is derived from the economic exploitation of labor ('surplus labor value'), for profits.

You're trying to make it sound like rentier-type profits are the result of aristocratic-type 'privileges', when in this day and age it's sheerly *economic*, with the political superstructure / paradigm existing to *enforce* those bourgeois, capital-based 'rights', with, and up-to *military* force and destruction.


Truth To Power wrote:
Value IS what a thing would exchange for. That is what it means in economics.



But market-based 'pricing' is *ignoring* the regular, systematic input of the material *labor* that created the good or service in the first place.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Neoclassical theory, then, as stated, fundamentally *ignores* the role of labor in the production of the commodity in the first place.



Truth To Power wrote:
Nonsense. What neoclassical economics ignores is the difference between providing a contribution to production that would not otherwise have been available and legally withholding what would otherwise be available to production by dint of privilege.



So you're simply anti-aristocratic, which was from a historical reality *centuries* ago.

The world has since moved to *industrial* production, with the world's commodified workers having a large role in how the machines are run, but without adequate *compensation* for the mass industrial production that they create. Capital goods play a lesser and lesser role in the capitalist production process the more that technology develops and is relied-upon for the material production of commodities (see the 'Business' diagram, above).
#14996499
Stardust wrote:...I find an issue with this part of your proposal:

“The central government needs to nationalize vital infrastructure, and the rich need to have their consumption and hoarding reduced to sustainable levels that don't punish other humans or animals.

I think that we won’t achieve the goal of building a classless society, by relying on the ‘change of the behaviors of the rich’; especially, if that is meant to be on their own accord. Such, to my understanding, is impractical; as well as inadequate. The properties of the rich, i.e. the super rich – Capitalists, large financiers and corporate owners; need to be expropriated and their ownership transferred to the public.

You speak of the need for the revolutionary changes in society, but it seems that you only go thus far; with the element of reform being a little excessive in your proposed model.

How far I go hasn't been numberically qualified but it's probably within a short distance of how far you would see the ideal redistribution plan working out. Not a lot of difference.

When I say "reduce their consumption and hoarding," I don't mean to tax a bit of it away. I mean to allow the top earners in a society to earn maybe double or triple what the lowest earners take in. And to limit the number of these people through social policies.

The reason I mention this is because of the slightly different needs and percieved needs of human beings. Any system that doesn't take into consideration the natural and healthy component of slight individual differences in consumption, is doomed to meet with a backlash that is large because... attacking nature. Human nature (though I think this element of human nature is over-represented in current (selfish) economic narratives).

On the other hand, the means of production, all vital human needs, and the opportunity for health care, housing, education, etc. need to be universal and basically equal. But I do think that some private entrepreneurs (hotel keepers, jewellers, restaurants, other unnecessary services) could help assuage the peculiar needs of humans that aren't rational, or at least that we don't comprehend as rational.

Or perhaps all of these irrational "occupations" can be eliminated through sharing (hotels, restaurants) and/or education (jewellery).
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