Marx

Maybe he comes back to it later?

*rueful laughter slowly morphs into sullen stare into the abyss of time irretrievably lost asking myself this very question*

https://media.giphy.com/media/Ic97mPViHEG5O/giphy.gif

lol

I think also what's missing from that critique is that according to Marx a higher price for the more "desirable" commodity can't be sustained (assuming equal cost of production) because the more profitable one will attract more investment until competition erases the profit differential. So if strawberries are really considered yummier than apples, but they do in fact take the exact same amount of labor to produce and transport to market (which I doubt is true), more capital will be attracted to strawberry growing until competition among strawberry growers forces prices back toward that of apples. Also according to David Harvey this is all happening in an ideal market world and is not intended to capture everything that happens in the real world -- the concept is purportedly to take the perfect "free market" of classical economics and say "Okay, if you actually had your magical free market, here's how it would actually work and why it would ultimately collapse."

Nonetheless, I feel like Marx uses labor/socially necessary labor time/labor power all in really slippery and confusing ways that he does not adequately flesh out, and it does make me wonder if he's eliding something.

in one of those videos David Harvey says something like 'every time i read Capital i have a different interpretation of it' as if it's a good thing, and i'm like... that's, er, NOT a good quality for an economics book to have

ah the lineage between Das Kapital and Frank Ocean's Blonde

xp

However, he “arbitrarily ruled out the relative desirability or utility of commodities,” says Mr Stedman Jones, which would strike most people as the obvious explanation.

This isn't as nonsensical as it might seem at first blush, in that the amount of labor anyone is willing to expend on bringing an article to market will be just as closely linked to the value of that labor as to its 'desirability or utility'. The idea of 'value' can be applied to either side of the equation, because they are equivalent.

I think also what's missing from that critique is that according to Marx a higher price for the more "desirable" commodity can't be sustained (assuming equal cost of production) because the more profitable one will attract more investment until competition erases the profit differential. So if strawberries are really considered yummier than apples, but they do in fact take the exact same amount of labor to produce and transport to market (which I doubt is true), more capital will be attracted to strawberry growing until competition among strawberry growers forces prices back toward that of apples. Also according to David Harvey this is all happening in an ideal market world and is not intended to capture everything that happens in the real world -- the concept is purportedly to take the perfect "free market" of classical economics and say "Okay, if you actually had your magical free market, here's how it would actually work and why it would ultimately collapse."

there was a debate about this in the 60's when General Equilibrium Theory (now the mainstream theory of the joint determination of prices and quantities of all goods and inputs in a market) was being banged out, this dude called Morishima wrote a book called Marx's Economics kind of summarizing it. it's a bit mathematical but was one of the best things I read

In general equilibrium there actually *IS* no profit differential between the apple and the banana (because firms enter/enlarge production driving the price down whenever there's an arbitrage opportunity), but relative prices are not all equalized. the zero profit thing is a good example of The Equilibrium Paradox (a good blog post on it: http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/140130680535/the-equilibrium-paradox-somebody-has-to-do-it)

This isn't as nonsensical as it might seem at first blush, in that the amount of labor anyone is willing to expend on bringing an article to market will be just as closely linked to the value of that labor as to its 'desirability or utility'. The idea of 'value' can be applied to either side of the equation, because they are equivalent.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Friday, August 26, 2016 1:40 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah this is wrong, too. I want to work in a diamond mine because the wage for diamonds is high, not because I want to bring diamonds into the world.

one thing i will say about Marx, at his best he is a great prose stylist. Not as good as Keynes but close. apparently a lot of the het up fiery rhetoric in Communist Manifesto was written by Engels but there are some beautiful passages in Capital.

I think one of the hardest things about reading Marx in the 21st century is just maintaining a clear grasp on his system of terminology, some of which seems counterintuitive today, especially if you're steeped in neoclassical economic ideas (which we p much all are). Like I keep having to remind myself "when he says value he means the amount of socially necessary labor time" and "when he says socially necessary labor time" he means a kind of averaged unit of labor time not the exact number of labor hours it took to produce something, and then I'm like "wait wtf does that actually mean?"

Yup

Nah this is wrong, too. I want to work in a diamond mine because the wage for diamonds is high, not because I want to bring diamonds into the world.

― flopson, Friday, August 26, 2016 1:52 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but marx never suggests otherwise. he's trying to answer the question -- if you have capital to deploy, why do you want to say mine for diamonds instead of coal, and the answer is "you see more opportunity for profit" but the question of why you see more opportunity for profit has to do with _many_ things over time, in part demand, but also in part other relative questions of cost of production.

its also silly to drag general equilibrium into this because marx is not trying to describe a stable system of capital in equilibrium, but rather the a highly dynamic system in constant transformation and disruption, but nonethless with identifiable pressures and tendencies and momentary balances and imbalances.

anyway its totally silly to say marx rules out the relative desirability or utility of commodities -- he begins with that but notes that it well predates capitalism, or even money as a universal medium of exchange. if your complaint is "where are the supply/demand curves" the answer is really "that pertains to distribution but doesn't account for the factors driving and determining choices in production"

if you have capital to deploy, why do you want to say mine for diamonds instead of coal, and the answer is "you see more opportunity for profit" but the question of why you see more opportunity for profit has to do with _many_ things over time, in part demand, but also in part other relative questions of cost of production.

"other relative questions of cost of production" are what determine (wait for it) Supply

its also silly to drag general equilibrium into this because marx is not trying to describe a stable system of capital in equilibrium, but rather the a highly dynamic system in constant transformation and disruption, but nonethless with identifiable pressures and tendencies and momentary balances and imbalances.

you can shock general equilibrium, make firms discover new prices etc, there is a whole literature on it. but it doesn't give you anything like marxism afaik

"where are the supply/demand curves" the answer is really "that pertains to distribution but doesn't account for the factors driving and determining choices in production"

genuinely don't know what this means. pertains to the distribution of what? factors driving and determining choices in production you mean inputs? they're also determined by S&D

> "other relative questions of cost of production" are what determine (wait for it) Supply

but whence the reason for the quantity of that supply.

supply and demand don't explain anything about the general structure of an economy, they just account for how certain prices are set at a certain moment in time.

its like you're looking at a car and you explain everything by saying "this car operates by the conservation of energy". sure the conservation of energy plays a role, but you haven't even begun to look at the broader things one needs to understand to see why the car moves.

a lot of why marx is hard to read is he's not just explaining an approch, but he's very carefully trying to explain why ideas like "the supply of this is determined by the demand for it and also the supply of things to make it" don't get you almost anywhere at all.

you also have to understand that the labor theory of value isn't a unique marxian thing, but already rooted in classical political economy, including smith (though there's a particular and important treatment of it marx gives that's distinct from the predecessors).

> you can shock general equilibrium, make firms discover new prices etc, there is a whole literature on it. but it doesn't give you anything like marxism afaik

right, because there's no premise that there's even such a thing as a general equilibrium to shake -- prices, industries, production, employment are all in continuous and dynamic motion and interaction, constantly moving with regard to political, technological, social, broader economic developments.

this is one of the strangest articles i've encountered in a while. i've read it twice and i have no idea what point is being made:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/i-am-not-a-marxist/

Heads up: Verso is selling all things Marx w/ 50% off, as it's the bicentenary of the big man's birth.

they claim to be left-wing AND YET they’re SELLING marxist books

checkmate, pinkos!

*goes back to being slowly crushed by capitalism, dies*

You should've known better, bg. I'd like to say that I'll be right here waiting for you to get a clue, but I'll hazard a guess that it'll never happen. Sorry to be so harsh, but your words don't mean nothin'.

hey, the Man took 49.5% of my severance pay out in taxes.

Karl was right.

he was only right about 95% of everything, tbf

xp. famous libertarian karl marx

In a rare expression of neediness, I demand that someone acknowledge my astonishingly-clever wordplay a few posts back. Please. It's all I have.

In thread-related news, I've been thinking lately about tackling the immensity of Capital. Would've pulled the trigger had it been included in the sale. WTF.

Although I understand Althusser's companion is highly-regarded so maybe that's a good start.

In a rare expression of neediness, I demand that someone acknowledge my astonishingly-clever wordplay a few posts back. Please. It's all I have.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llhglhW0IF1qekszro1_500.gif

I still haven't even finished Capital Vol 1, but one thing that strikes me a lot now is how bad a lot of the common criticisms of Marx's theories are, like I'll see one tossed off by some purported economist or political scientist and I'll think, "Um, no, he addresses that a few chapters into Vol 1."

there’s lots of great stuff in marx imo, but as far as his “pure” economic theory goes i think Samuelson’s ‘minor post-Ricardian’ quip is accurate

ive only read pamphlets and shorter works (wage labor and capital, value price and profit, manifesto, napoleon) wonder how much im missing out by not reading capital, which at this point i doubt ill ever do

q for man alive: did marx believe technology was ‘labor-saving’?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the question. If you're asking whether he accounts for the fact that machines increase productivity and enable the same person working for the same number of hours to produce more goods, yes, of course he does. But I doubt that he would frame it as "labor-saving."

I imagine you're getting at the argument that Marx fails to account for the ways in which the rising tide lifts all boats, i.e. if productivity greatly increases it should be inevitable that at least some of those gains go toward improving the standard of living of the workers. I'm kind of agnostic about that, but in recent years that certainly has not been true. It was admittedly dramatically true in the United States and Europe during the 20th century, but it's probably an unanswerable open question how much of that was the gains flowing to the workers vs the workers demanding a piece of the gains (e.g. through socialist and communist political action, the labor movement, etc.). You can also certainly point to places in the world where it does not seem to be the case, e.g. where effective slave labor continues in wealthy gulf countries.

On the other hand capitalism begins to really need mass consumerism to flourish, so it kind of needs some of that wealth and purchasing power to flow to the people on the bottom. But I think marx and marxists would say that capitalism is self-destructive in the long run and doesn't know what's best for itself, and therefore eventually capitalism begins to erode that same purchasing power in its dumb search for new avenues of profit.

the moral of das kapital: marx's dad was a judge (imagine that) and engels was an outrageously privileged trustfunder which is why they failed to effectively relate to the proletarian class. (see also 'frankfurt school, the')

I went to the hq of the French communist party today. They were selling goofy tshirts and coffee mugs.

That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Das Kapital has nothing to do with “relating” to the proletarian Class, it’s just a description of how an economy would work if it actually behaved according to classical economics. The manifesto is the work aimed at “relating” to people and it was enormously popular and successful.

last year i struggled through the first several hundred pages of Capital with the help of David Harvey's videos before burning out. i learned enough to know that it is not a book that can be easily summed up in one sentence

I mean that kind of brings me back to my above point - if you can’t be bothered to read Capital, I don’t blame you, because it’s a slog and I haven’t gotten through it either. But don’t make shit up about it just so you feel better dismissing it.

man alive otm.

also marxism as a project isn't about "relating" to people in the focus group/pandering sense but about to appealing to them as human beings with an innate craving for freedom and dignity. the idea is to abolish the working class, not fetishize working class culture.

also speaking of the frankfurt school, there is no contradiction even in adorno's hatred of popular culture and his commitment to marxism as a political project. maybe it's mandarin and condescending, but it was coherent. for him modernism was about breaking the spell of false consciousness; popular art was about naturalizing capitalist social relations, which is why it was the enemy.

I imagine the answer is probably yes x 100, but has anyone ever undertaken to sort of “reimagine” Capital in a contemporary context, using modern examples and language and responding to today’s popular economic arguments? I think part of its problem is that it made a lot more sense in its historical context. David Harvey did help me understand that better but it seems like there ought to be an easier way.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but perhaps the answer is Ernest Mandel and 'Late Capitalism'?

That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Das Kapital has nothing to do with “relating” to the proletarian Class

yeah okay guy

"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm

marx inspired massive working class movements across the globe that shook the foundations of capitalism. the project failed; the experiments in almost every nation were catastrophic; but his problem was never that he was marginal. he did change the world.

you don't say. he still failed in his project, if you haven't noticed. my point is his remarkable privilege and engels even more remarkable privilege played a role in that failure. somehow that keeps getting brushed aside in marxist studies, probably because studying marx at an advanced level is mostly the province of the privileged. see, for example, the frankfurt school

marx lived in poverty for most of his life.

also i'm not sure marxist academics are all that privileged, given that most of them are toiling away in precarious adjust jobs in humanities and social science departments

al gore flies on planes

marx lived in poverty for most of his life.

tell that to his london housekeeper

i've never had a housekeeper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_Demuth

qualmsley proves his point about "the moral of" Das Kapital by quoting a completely different work by Marx? that seems... misguided.

Marx set about to accomplish two major goals. One was to analyze capitalism, especially its inherent faults and internal contradictions, and the other was to replace it with something he conceived would be better. Das Kapital was his most complete attempt to accomplish the first goal. He definitely engaged in other activities and wrote many other treatises pursuant to the second goal. Scrambling everything together into one mess is just sloppy. Das Kapital stands on its own merits or mistakes, but it was never about 'relating to' the proletariat.