Finbol humiliate leftcoms

I just assume all leftcoms (and trots) are using it as a shitposting flag.

Do we have actual unironic leftcoms here?

We used to have them, they would always write two page long posts.

If you buy into american propaganda this is true. Because you guys fall for the propaganda. You are like succdems, just the other way around. Funny as hell the fact that here no one is saying shit against the video, just spouting imperialist propaganda.

How the fuck are Leftcoms "opportunists". They dont do anything. Even when they have had a opportunity to gain power, they still dont do anything (Bordiga).

This

DINDU NUFFIN, WAZ GUD BOIS

First pic really turns on my turnips
Really thonks my donk
Really drains my brain

Lenin basically makes the point that you should campaign where worker consciousness is, and directly advocates working within reactionary trade unions, bourgeois parliaments and with other groups.

You guys, "the real leftist", want to deny revolution to everyplace that is not first world. How the fuck would you expect to industrialize a backwards country like russia fast?

"It is with the utmost contempt—and the utmost levity—that the German “Left” Communists reply to this question in the negative. Their arguments? In the passage quoted above we read:

“. . . All reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle, which have become historically and politically obsolete, must be emphatically rejected. . . .”

This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. “Reversion” to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic in Germany? It does not look like it! How, then, can one speak of “reversion”? Is this not an empty phrase?

Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared—and with full justice—to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism is “historically obsolete” from the standpoint of world history, i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.

Is parliamentarianism “politically obsolete”? That is quite a different matter. If that were true, the position of the “Lefts” would be a strong one. But it has to be proved by a most searching analysis, and the “Lefts” do not even know how to approach the matter. In the “Theses on Parliamentarianism”, published in the Bulletin of the Provisional Bureau in Amsterdam of the Communist International No. 1, February 1920, and obviously expressing the Dutch-Left or Left-Dutch strivings, the analysis, as we shall see, is also hopelessly poor.

In the first place, contrary to the opinion of such outstanding political leaders as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the German “Lefts”, as we know, considered parliamentarianism “politically obsolete” even in January 1919. We know that the “Lefts” were mistaken. This fact alone utterly destroys, at a single stroke, the proposition that parliamentarianism is “politically obsolete”. It is for the “Lefts” to prove why their error, indisputable at that time, is no longer an error. They do not and cannot produce even a shred of proof. A political party’s attitude towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it fulfils in practice its obligations towards its class and the working people. Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions that have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification—that is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and train its class, and then the masses. By failing to fulfil this duty and give the utmost attention and consideration to the study of their patent error, the “Lefts” in Germany (and in Holland) have proved that they are not a party of a class, but a circle, not a party of the masses, but a group of intellectualists and of a few workers who ape the worst features of intellectualism."
(cont.)

"Second, in the same pamphlet of the Frankfurt group of “Lefts”, which we have already cited in detail, we read:

“. . . The millions of workers who still follow the policy of the Centre [the Catholic ‘Centre’ Party] are counter-revolutionary. The rural proletarians provide the legions of counter-revolutionary troops.” (Page 3 of the pamphlet.)

Everything goes to show that this statement is far too sweeping and exaggerated. But the basic fact set forth here is incontrovertible, and its acknowledgment by the “Lefts” is particularly clear evidence of their mistake. How can one say that “parliamentarianism is politically obsolete”, when “millions” and “legions” of proletarians are not only still in favour of parliamentarianism in general, but are downright “counter-revolutionary”!? It is obvious that parliamentarianism in Germany is not yet politically obsolete. It is obvious that the “Lefts” in Germany have mistaken their desire, their politico-ideological attitude, for objective reality. That is a most dangerous mistake for revolutionaries to make. In Russia—where, over a particularly long period and in particularly varied forms, the most brutal and savage yoke of tsarism produced revolutionaries of diverse shades, revolutionaries who displayed amazing devotion, enthusiasm, heroism and will power—in Russia we have observed this mistake of the revolutionaries at very close quarters; we have studied it very attentively and have a first-hand knowledge of it; that is why we can also see it especially clearly in others. Parliamentarianism is of course “politically obsolete” to the Communists in Germany; but—and that is the whole point—we must not regard what is obsolete to us as something obsolete to a class, to the masses. Here again we find that the “Lefts” do not know how to reason, do not know how to act as the party of a class, as the party of the masses. You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them the bitter truth. You are in duty bound to call their bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices. But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state of the class-consciousness and preparedness of the entire class (not only of its communist vanguard), and of all the working people (not only of their advanced elements).

Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags."
t. Lenin

And no argument was found

It was nice how the Soviet government managed to modernise Russia so rapidly and all that, but it still doesn't make it socialism. And even if it was, 20th century socialism was still a failure. Pretty much all 20th century socialist states either collapsed (USSR, Eastern bloc, Yugoslavia) or turned to pure revisionism (China, Vietnam, Cuba, DPKR). And "muh imperialism, muh revisionist" isn't an argument.

Yeah the Bolsheviks were pretty good at being the bourgeoisie, you have to give them that

I wonder what it's like being so out of touch with reality.

What was I supposed to be arguing against
I was just expressing the fact that the first pic confuses me my good man

It was nice how the French Revolution managed to modernise Europe so rapidly and all that, but it still doesn't make it capitalism. And even if it was, 19th century liberalism was still a failure. Pretty much all states conquered by Napoleon either collapsed or turned to pure feudalism. And "muh monarchists, muh battle of Leipzig" isn't an argument.

You keep using that word, but I don't think you know what it means.

The video was pretty much him stretching a Marx quote to the limit of trying to justify profit extraction by the state as a form of socialism, even though the type of "surplus extraction" he refers to cannot be understood as "surplus extraction" at all. Finbol himself mentions this afterwards, by talking about how "surplus value" is a concept that was used only to explain capitalism.
The rest is him talking about how some dude doesn't know the history of maoist china.

Overall, his main argument against leftcoms is that they are "petty-bourgeois" (which is completely not an argument, nor is it factual in any way), and that they haven't inspired any big movements. However, he later on refutes his own point by saying the leftcoms are only a reaction to the rest of the left. This is true, and it implies that they can never inspire any big movements in the left, but can only serve as critics of them. He is, therefore, implying that criticism that comes from the left is negative and should not exist.

Overall, he is completely missing the point of socialism, which would be a classless society where people democraticaly control the economy. Not a highly repressive society where the state controls the economy, and you can get gulaged for going against the party line. If marxism really does legitimise tankyism as a valid form of socialism, then you can shove socialism right up your asses.

There was no profit extraction. Surplus allocation will always exist, even under communism. This is pretty clear when you read Marx.

Overall, your response is pretty telling. You go on lengths that he is missing the point but when you actually present an argument in the end it's LITERALLY muh gulags muh party line.

Would you say that a bus driver under full communism has his surplus allocated? I mean, none of the product of his labour actually goes to him.

I am a guy who is concerned about his personal safety, and who prefers not to get murdered due to criticising the state. One would think this is a reasonable position, but aparently there is something ridiculous about this.

the USSR failed and every satellite state is and was a shithole

now watch as tankies sperg at this fact

Actually, all of the bad things about it were western propaganda. Check out all the achievements it had, and disregard that social-democracy also achieved them.

you guys do realize that youtube comments have always been cancer and always will be

this is why I hate ancoms

You can not consume all the fruits of your labor, to a degree not even in primitive communism where you share meat with your clan or whatever. Marx was arguing against Lassalle who had a similar notion of "recieving the full product of your labor". In a cooperative economy, surplus goes into society. The bus driver doesn't do it for the profit motive of the bus company, but because of social needs.
That's ridicolous propaganda if you think this is what happens. There is a difference between critique and wrecking (for example: striking). Secondly, it ignores the historical conditions socialist states functioned. Reactionaries repeaditly tried and try to overthrow them, murder them, genocide them, sanction them, infiltrate them, etc.

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It was clearly sarcasm, do you have paper of your autism?

The Roman Empire also fell. Does that make the Roman Empire a failure?

Also, you have no position to make such a statement, since other tendencies than Marxism-Leninism didn't even get off the ground. If you were a capitalist, you could at least point to somewhat succesful capitalist states, but you guys have nothing, nada, null. You ideologies are based on unscientific a priori statements that can not be falsified

can't blame him it's difficult to detect sarcasm in text. you can't have a tone of voice in text.
some writers have done it through.

...

yes

good, we are starting with the right foot

AnNihils, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, your ideology which is theoretical void surely predicts the future better than Marx who pointed out again and again that nobody could tell how the future would look like. You are utopians, because you don't concern yourself with what works, this is why you are destined to be disillusioned and become a liberal when you are older

In the case of the bus driver, it could not be called a "surplus", since he doesn't get to keep any part of the "value" he generated.

And in the USSR he does it because he depends on his wage in order to survive.

Freedom of speech had been restricted in the USSR since the bolsheviks took over.

So you think a worker shouldn't have a right to strike?

And the bolsheviks repeatedly tried to murder and imprison other socialists, so I would say there isn't much of a difference there.

tankiddies, ladies, gentlemen and in between

On the following basis we can easily see why it was a failure: what was the objective of the roman empire? is the roman empire still able to achieve this objective? if not, they are a failure.

It's same with the Soviet Union, what was the objective of the S.U.? to abolish the law of value and engage in production for use, to abolish global capital? they couldn't even abolish these condition inside their territories.

the Soviet Union was a hoax, a failure, it forever tainted leftism as a failure.

It's a non-typical example since he provides a service, not a product. But anyway, how does one keep the surplus of driving people from A to B? Do you want him to be self-employed?Sounds like market socialist nonsense to me. You keep talking about value, but value doesn't regulate labor in socialism.
Do you want people to draw from the means of comsumption without contributing anything to society? Are you implying the USSR didn't have a welfare state? That's really funny, because most of the time the accusation we hear is that the USSR was just a social democracy.
Striking for higher wages in socialism is wrecking. What makes you think you deserve higher pay in a socialized, carefully planned economy? All resources and labor power is already fully utilized and geared towards use.

I'm saying you have no right to talk criticize any socialist states in such a tabula rasa. You don't deserve to be heard, you need to silenced. I could literally say I want the Federation in Star Trek or the Tau Empire from WH40k, therefore, everybody else is a failure because nobody delivers it to me.

sperg more

And this is why you are hated, you are incapable of taking critiscm about your failed attempt to abolish capitalism and would rather larp than build a new revolutionary organization.

wow look at those arguments…

come on now

No, I'm not obliged to listen and respect the "criticism" of this teenage idiot. When somebody is intellectually dishonest I don't need to listen to them.

But it did regulate it in the USSR.

If people don't need to contribute to society in order for it to function, then they should not have to. As technology evolves and socially necessary labour time grows smaller, the idea of everyone needing to work makes less and less sense. One should only control unemployment in cases of shortage of certain types of labour. If an unemployed person does not need to work in order for the economy to function properly, then this should not be asked of him.

The fact that it even had a welfare state just proves how dependent people were on their wages to survive. If the welfare state did not exist, then they would be in a very bad position indeed.

This is only said jokingly. A social-democracy is much less repressive than the USSR, but it has a bourgeosie, while the USSR only has a proletariat.

It is the same case in capitalism. Sometimes strikes lead to businesses colapsing and creating unemployment.

Are you sure about that? Pic related looks a lot like it envolves comodity production.
(Taken from Towards a New Socialism, by Paul Cockshott, who is quite sympathetic towards the USSR and thinks it was socialist)

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Well I'm glad I can write off all MLs and their edgy social democracy now.

other parts of his arguments??? what???

are we reading the same posts???

The Roman Empire was a monstrous failure from the very start.

Now I see that only the last part was addressed towards you. Didn't meant to do that.

m8 that was really obvious sarcasm. How did you read the last bit about social democracy and not understand this?

This guy is clearly taking the piss with his authoritative pronouncements, makes me distrust everything else he says.

What guarantee does the worker have that this is actually the case? This is why he must be able to strike: so that he has some leverage against his boss when he suspects he's being shafted.

I confirm: it was indeed sarcasm.

Who's this semen demon? Asking for a friend…

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Where did it do that in the USSR before the Kosgyn Reforms? Note that Stalin said that the law of value operates but doesn't determine production. Marx was mostly talking about the capitalist mode of production. You can not copy-pasty his analysis of capitalism onto socialism, this is simplistic and too much black and white. Have you read Stalin's "Economic Problems"? He is very "leftcommunist" in his honest approach and logically consistent.
Do you think the USSR was ever in a situation where they could have relinquished huge chunks of their working population without problems? You need to regulate certain incentives so your economy actually functions.
So that's just vulgar technological determinism and basically we should just wait until we have replicators. Also, the problem with unemployment is that you get some sort of underlying labor market when you have it.
I'm sorry fam, but that is just insane mental gymnastics now
How do you "measure" oppression? In a Social Democracy you produce for exchange, struggle against the pushing down of wages and face social ostracism when on welfare.
No it isn't. In capitalism you strike because you want more of the surplus value that is extracted and privately accumulated.
There was commodity production in agricultural cooperatives, but they had guaranteed contracts with the state to sell their produce to the same price. All the industry except maybe some consumer cooperatives were collectivzed.

>I'm not stupid for my hyper-literal reading of the post, you are!

I'm looking at the socialist experiments that have existed. A potential klepotcracy wouldn't be socialism.
Stalin is your friend then. During Stalin, you could literally send you manager to a firing squad when you feel that he was fucking you over. That's some pretty damn leverage.

I am calling myself stupid user

The difference in our arguments appears to come from our differing degrees of trust for state claims. I'm not willing to believe that the state will shoot my boss whenever I ask because if that were really the case why wouldn't they just let me shoot him. And at any point any individual nomenklatura could have fucked over a group of workers in some part of the USSR. Not every party member was worthy of trust. Fucking Yeltsin got to be a nomenklatura and the boss of some construction trust.

shit maybe we're both brainlets

Purges of 1918 did not go far enough.

Why traitor?

The most important example of commodity production shown in the picture (fifth point) existed in Catalonia too (let's not mention any other anarchist or just non-ML socialist experiment because all of them did worse than CNT-FAI).

He supports splinter faction of the original communist party, minority who were stalinists instead of being normal eurocommunists.

So he wanted to join a communist party instead of social democrats, because he is a communist and not a social democrat. And this is bad why?

No, he supports the wrong communist party that has stagnated to 1960`s. Vanguardism died in 1948 attempt at revolution and his faction refuses to see reality as it is.

But your alternative is social democracy. That isn't socialism.

Only alternative is build up of unions and general strike, like in 1918 followed by social democratic party`s attempt at revolution.

LeftComs don't even exist IRL. Whether you love or hate them is irrelevant either way.

Communist Worker's Party rejects union work?

Given all the situations present in the previous pic, I find that a bit hard to believe. You can say it was not the main thing that determined production, because the state set the goals and plans with use in mind, but to say that it was the only thing, in an economy where exchange value exists, is naive.

And it would never be capable of being in that situation, because its use of money and comodities effectively makes it so people always have to work even if it is not necessary for the economy (which is a problem capitalism also has).

Only the same kind applied by Marx in the Capital. I am not imprudent enough to think our problems should all be solved through full automation. I don't even think full automation would be desirable, because it would leave a lot of people without occupations, and have a negative effect on their mental health.

I don't know what you mean.

Isn't the point of the welfare state to stop people from losing too much of their quality of life in case they lose their jobs (and therefore wages)?

Repression, was what I was talking about. You measure it by the ammount of stuff you can do that leads you to get imprisoned, tortured, or murdered by the state.

In the USSR you strike because of the highly dictatorial nature of the state.

That doesn't make it less capitalist.

I am aware, my negro. The spanish revolution was extremely flawed in many ways.

What book is that text from? I see it getting posted round a lot.

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In Marxist terminology it means the class who decides the distribution of surplus value within a Capitalist system. If you follow the LeftCom charge that the USSR and other ML states like it were 'State Capitalism' then the poster you're responding to did use it correctly, but worded it poorly because they seemed to indicate that any form of industrialization is bourgeois.

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Er, yeah, the comparisons with the French Revolution are pretty accurate actually, because the French Revolution promised 'Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood' for the serfs and failed to pay up. So great argument against the Russian Revolution, well done!

yes indeed, the only way to abolish the law of value is through anarchy in consumption

Its amazing how differently people can interpret the same exact text.

Good post

Wow, the anarchists in this thread are being incredibly retarded. I'm usually not very sectarian. I'm not a "tankie" or whatever, but you guys really are infantile morons with and unearned sense of superiority.

Finbol keeps saying LEFTCOMS are opportunists.

Explain.

You're not fooling anyone faggot, go back to your 10 man party and cry about revisionist trotskyist anarcho-liberals not wanting your social democracy.

I'm pretty sure unions were crushed under Lenin

any system that puts some sort of price on commodities, this price being determined by money or "labour hours" means that the law of value is still in place.

if the trading values of commodities are related to the labour-hours it took to produce we are still living under the law of value.

an example of some sort of anarchist system could be gift economies. where the value of something is not determined by the time it takes to produce

A "gift economy" tends to imply that there still exists direct exchange of goods. It's capitalism without money.

It's from The Third Revolution Volume 3 by Murray Bookchin

The law of value exists, sure, but planned economy means you can act like it wasn't there, within reason. For example, medicine is vital, vodka is not, if I manufacture medicine and pay the workers more than the civilians pay for medicine I will be running that industry at a loss but I can charge much, much more for another non essential product to balance my total budget.

In both cases the law of value has be flagrantly disregarded but because of the advantages of planned economy it doesn't matter.

Thanks

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

You can't just copy and paste parts of Critique of the Gotha Programme without saying anything else about them!

Let's make this clear: right now we are arguing about the USSR being socialist or not like FinBol did, right? Socialism/lower stage of communism will inevitably contain elements of capitalism, but it's still a separate concept from capitalism, because the working class has taken steps towards abolishing capitalism to such an extent that we can't really call it anything else. You here kind of admitted that production in the USSR wasn't mainly determined by the law of value (I don't think that production can be determined by two separate things at the same time in the same sector of the economy, maybe influenced but not determined), thus meaning that one of the crucial requirements for capitalism didn't exist in the USSR. This means that we need to define it as something else. You can say that that word is something like state capitalism and thus the way of progression for capitalism to communism becomes capitalism -→ state capitalism -→ communism, but with this we would enter the sphere of 100% pure semantics.

no? it can't be capitalism without money because the amount of gifts you'll receive would be proportional to the amount of gifts you give, a gift economy prioritizes the social aspect of the economy

direct exchange of goods isn't capitalism you braindead ancom

that makes literally zero fucking sense, state capitalism is the worst meme ever

yes, and how does that relate to gift economies?

law of value doesn't apply in labor voucher economy.

instagram.com/jessicabeppler/?hl=en

yes it does, which is why the labour voucher fetish is kinda dumb.

watching the video and its is clear that Finnbol is a retard.
Anti ML ≠ Anti communist. Seriously, what the fuck is up with tankies and this cult like devotion to Daddy Stalin and the USSR? To tankies, every socialist who isn't an ML of some sort is a petty-bourgeois opportunist revisionist trotskyist ultra leftist who should be purged. It isn't anarkiddie smashies that are the biggest threat to the left, but the fucking brain-dead MLs who long for outdated forms of state domination who do nothing but alienate not just the average proles, but also literally every other leftists.
I also love how he does the classic tankie move of judging an ideology by how long their form of Socialism lasts. "hurr durr leftcoms, glorious Marxism-Leninism lasted 74 years while you losers never even had a successful revolution".
Bonus for "socialist commodity production"

except it does

No exchange of commoditys though.

except there is exchange of commodities, as labour vouchers themselves are commodities

>The law of value (German: Wertgesetz) is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, first expounded in his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with reference to David Ricardo's economics.[1][note 1] Most generally, it refers to a regulative principle of the economic exchange of the products of human work: the relative exchange-values of those products in trade, usually expressed by money-prices, are proportional to the average amounts of human labor-time which are currently socially necessary to produce them.
How in the fuck would that not still apply even if you replace money with labour vouchers.

Labor vouchers can't be circulated as proposed by marx, therefore it's not a commodity. It's a single use expression of your contribution to society, not a commodity that can be kept and traded for other commodities. Read Critique of Gotha Program.

It is one thing to have leftover elements from capitalism that exist at the margins of the economic system, and another to have these elements incorporated into the economic system.

It had that advantage, indeed, but only because it repressed the law of value from manifesting itself, and not because the law of value did not exist. This is a very big flaw, because a system like this depends on having a strong state.

That's what I say. Clearly it cannot be seen as a normal form of capitalism, but neither can it be seen as socialism as defined by Marx.

That I do not say, because I don't think it is possible to progress from state capitalism to communism without another revolution.

This implies the gifts have an exchange value, and can be replaced by a money equivalent. Profit is still possible under this system, and therefore so is exploitation.

It isn't capitalism per se, but, given our current level of development, it inevitably leads to capitalism. A person can still trade the things he produced for something else, and make a profit, or hire someone to work for him.

It is actually more useful to read Capital, and then Towards a New Socialism, in order to understand voucher economics, imo.

Law of value still applies though? Please explain how the law of value (by this definition ) would cease to exist just because money was replaced by a kind of money that's destroyed on use.

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doesn't matter if the physical labour voucher doesn't circulate, the information regarding consumption data does, and at the end of the day, this means they work in the same way as money

money is used to measure consumption data, the information labour vouchers return to the planning officers serves the same purpose

read literally any basic logic book

forgetting the fact that there is no money in gift economies, nor labour vouchers that serve the same accounting purpose as money

please do explain how profit is possible under a gift economy

which isn't in any way related to gift economies

Think rationally for a moment. A gold bar is does not lose it's exchange value when traded, it continues to maintain this exchange value. A commodity is something which is continually circulated, becoming less valuable but still nonetheless maintaining an exchange value. Labor vouchers behave in no such manner. They are not expressions of exchange values but use values. The labor itself is not a commodity, the product of labor being an object which maintains use value but not exchange value, since socialist systems do not produce objects to be put on a market for exchange. You have to think of these things within a larger context of a socio-economic system, not within a vacuum

except the value a labour voucher has doesn't get destroyed upon use

If you work for the state, and the state takes part of the value of your labour, and gives you another part as a wage, isn't that profit extraction?

Dude, where the fuck do you think money came from?

It goes somewhat like this:

It has use value, not exchange value. You seem to have trouble understanding this distinction.

No added value tho. Value has just been shuffled around.

Wealth is being accumulated through purely trade, not labor.

If you can say that 10 labour vouchers = 1 kg of apples then it has exchange value, you retard. That's the exchange value of 10 labour vouchers expressed in apples.

1kg of apples cannot then be traded for say a pair of jeans etc. Apples themselves are not being produced for exchange either, nor is any other product. Again, you are not thinking of production as it would exist within a socialist system but of production that currently exists within a market based system of distribution.

how is the origin of money related to an economic system where money isn't a necessity?

money came from the necessity of maintaining proper accounting in market exchanges, a system with no market exchanges, like gift economies, need no method of accounting

that's irrelevant, money, as in currency, has value in the form of being used as a method of accounting, labour vouchers serve the same purpose, the data obtained in whatever form of commodity allocation center you decide to use, is data that will be used to determine the next production cycle, meaning that production is still dictated by the laws of supply and demand. if you are not going to use the data given by labour vouchers to decide what to produce on the next productive cycle, then why bother planning the economy in the first place?

it doesn't matter if labour vouchers don't have exchange value if their use value is the same as money, a labour voucher in this case is no different from an amazon gift card, guess amazon implemented socialism

How do you decide how many apples to produce then if not by the amount of labour vouchers that get exchanged by apples?

Uh, why not?

because the party will then send you to the gulag comrade

All exchanges where the value of one item is compared to that one another item are market exchanges, and thus lead to money existing.

This, but unironically.

The labour voucher clearly has exchange value and the apples are produced to be sold for them. From there it's only a few dialectical leaps until you inevitably end up in capitalism again.

There are no exchanges in gift economies.

yes, however I do not have to give you a gift of equal value in gift economies, as a matter of fact, I don't even have to give you a gift if I don't want to

Obviously I've been explaining this poorly. When we talk of exchange value, we talk of a products value when being exchanged, not of it's use. Exchange value is not an equal exchange of products based on their use values, rather exchange value seeks to create a profit, to generate more than what it's use value is. Labor vouchers are the equivalent exchange of products based on their use values, and their is no profit of potential for profit to be made. The reason why someone would not trade 1k of apples for a pair of jeans is because it would simply be irrational to based on the fact that they are not getting the product based on it's use value. They are being cheated, in essence, and in a socialized economy a person would be able to obtain something based on it's use value vs the value they themselves have produced.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm

Even if something exists at the margins of an economic system, it is still a part of it. I think that it's pretty weird to think that by "being stamped with the birthmarks of capitalism", Marx meant "some stuff which practically didn't really exist that much and you don't have to care about them lol".
These things happened because the USSR lost it's progressive element after Stalin (even that is quite questionable). This doesn't mean though that it wasn't socialism, even if it was constantly degenerating towards capitalism.
Why though? Generalized commodity production didn't exist, and we all know that commodity production was a part of slave societies and feudalism too (which aren't really capitalism).
Well, you were clearly implying that even freaking Catalonia didn't meet the requirements lower stage of communism. You also posted that meme book which I didn't read, but I know that it still includes labour vouchers of some kind till post-scarcity is reached and labour vouchers are singled out. Why do still think that in spite of all the examples, we can somehow skip the stage you characterise as state capitalism and why would it be necessary (for me the no. 1 reason why the Soviet Union collapsed is the failure of the post-WW1 revolutions and not that they didn't read enough Marx)? This is why I implied that you just call socialism state capitalism for the lulz.

It's utopian to think that you can abolish the law of value in the very moment when the proletariat seizes political power.
sorry for blogpost

Exchange value does not seek to generate profit. It is an equal exchange based on the socially necessary labour time of the commodities exchanged. Prices can deviate from exchange value which is how profiting from exchanges is possible. You cannot exchange based on use-value because use-value is qualitative, not quantitative. Something either has use value or doesn't, it has no magnitude that could be compared to the use-value of a commodity of a different kind.

Trading thousands of apples for a pair of jeans would not be irrational based only on use-values if you had no use for the apples and needed those jeans. It is irrational based on exchange values because the apples need more SNLT and thus contain more value than the jeans.

we are not discussing the same subject, we aren't discussing if labour vouchers, as in the physical labour vouchers, have exchange value, what we are discussing is that when using labour vouchers, the law of value still applies, if we understand that the the use value of money, it's property as a commodity, is not only as the universal medium of exchange, but as the universal medium of accounting, capitalist firms know where to invest, where to allocate production based on where people spend their money, a labour voucher would act in the same way, allocating production based on the data of previous consumption periods, it's not different from money, what would happen if I decided that I do not need or want apples, given the previous example of labour vouchers being traded by apples. of what use is planning the economy if it doesn't produce based on necessity, but on accounting data?

it still works within the law of value

From the look of this thread It seem that leftypol still has no fucking argument against finbol.

Nobody cares about Marxist infighting. Everyone sane is already an anarchist.

no, it is utopian to believe that there is a necessity for a transitional period, there are only to ways to produce commodities, for use or for exchange, there is no third element here

...

At this point i think being an anarchists is just something extremely Sad. You Basicly have no real good exemples to show how your ideology is good couse CNT-FAI was basicly a state, makhno territory literaly achieved no progress and was basicly a one man dictatorship and kurdistan wants to become a state. If anything i feel pitty for you, But hey do whatever you like.

10/10 post

Hell even bad mouse quited and he was one of the most famous of you guys.

As shown by all the shining examples anarchists rejecting Marxist dogma and thus reaching communism overnight.
True, but nobody said there can't be a mix of the two.

anarchism is not an ideology thats why. It's what atheism is to religion.

uhh yes, did you forget the fact that illegalists and other post-left tendencies do just that?

except you know, Marx

If your producing something for exchange then you are not producing it for it's use value to yourself, you are producing it in order to be exchanged at a profit. Use value can be quantified by the SNLT it take to produce it. Money only exists as a representation of exchange value, not use value. Labor vouchers is a representation of equivalent use values, not exchange values. Neither can exchange values be considered to be equal to use values.

what badmouse does is not my concern.

wher is de proofs :DD

And how much worse is it if it is directly incorporated into the economic system, instead of being something at the margin? It is understandable that the law of value would continue to operate when it comes to scarce goods being traded illegally outside of a socialist system of distribution. These activities would need to be repressed. However, it is a completely different case to have the law of value operate as a part of the economic system, unrepressed.

Because commodity production is not supposed to exist under socialism. This is not a question of whether or not having commodities defines an economy as capitalist or not, but a question of whether a system that incorporates commodity production in its economy can consider itself socialist. It evidently cannot.

It was a good example of communization, and an excelent example of the need for the working class to take political power. It ultimately failed for that precise reason. (and also because its disorganised nature basically guaranteed commodity production would exist somewhere in there)

Take that back!

I don't know if Cockshott even wants to get rid of labour vouchers at any point. I just read it for the math porn.

The point isn't that you should skip it. It's that it should never happen in the first place. All the examples of state capitalism being successfuly implemented don't point to the conclusion of it being a good way to reach communism, but point to the exact opposite: if you ever reach a phase of state-capitalism, your revolution has already failed. I do not think it is a coincidence that all the marxist-leninist states met the same fate, in more or less the same way.

Indeed, but to think that you can simply incorporate it into the economy, and then repress its incentives by using the state, is not only not socialist, but outright counter-revolutionary.

communes

Never heard about them doing anything, not to even mention abolishing commodity production.
Was it maybe communism in one basement where they smoked weed?
Why can't they exist side by side? Feudalism is a good example. Or just me growing shitty vegetables in my garden for myself.

I think there definitions of a state that anarchists and marxists provide tend to be overly simplistic, the former stating it's merely a monopoly of violence while the other states it's a tool of the ruling class. It has elements of both of these things but a state is more than that. CNT failed completely when it joined the government, but Free Ukraine was not a one man dictatorship. Makhno did not participate in the day to day affairs of the communes, he was most certainly a military leader but beyond that he did not have political power that was not given to him by the people.

Nigga you are so fucking confused about all of this.

No. The use value of a toothbrush is that I can brush my teeth with it, the use value of a dildo is that I can achieve orgasms by inserting it into my butthole, etc. You can't quantify the use-value of a commodity.

What communes, and what proof is there that they have a "real" communist mode of production?

I don't think you quite get it.

Just no, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

You produce for exchange because you have needs that cannot be satisfied by the products of your own labour. Someone else is in the same situation but with different commodities, and if you have something that the other person has use-value for and they have something that has use-value for you, you can exchange them. With introducing money you can displace the whole thing. For example, workers produce labour-power, and they exchange it with their bosses for the equivalent money for food and other stuff they have use-values for.

What Marx is talking about in your quote is that use-value is only necessary for exchange to happen (otherwise who the hell would want to buy it?), it doesn't actually govern how the exchange happens. You cannot quantify use value.

indeed, thus if we produce based on whatever plan the party comes up with, using past labour voucher data as the indicative of what to produce, we are not producing according to our current needs, but to our past needs. needs that were determined according to the data given by the amount of labour vouchers exchanged for an specific commodity

after all that's what labour vouchers are used for, to determine demand data in order to allocate labour to create the supply to meet this demand, if you do not use the accounting data the labour vouchers return, then how are you going to plan an economy? planned economies inherently work within the law of value

no, money has use-value by itself, it is used as a medium of accounting. which is the same use-values labour vouchers have, even if money has no exchange value, I can still use it as an unit for accounting, money is a commodity and it's value is also determined by its SNLT, directly quoting Marx here.

labour vouchers can absolutely be used as a medium of accounting, as they work in the same way as amazon gift cards or checks, you use a check to get commodities, just like you would with labour vouchers

yes, just like money, 3 dollars worth of wool has the equivalent use value as 3 dollars of rice, as prices are determined by the SNLT, labour vouchers, just like money, would become the universal method of accounting.

just because you name cheques as "labour vouchers" doesn't mean it stops being a medium of accounting, suppose that tomorrow we all get our commodities from Amazon, and that instead of cash I get paid in amazon gift cards, even I am the only one who can exchange these gift cards I am still living under the law of value

squatters for example, and thats just the tip of the iceberg

that's honeslty not my problem

because basic logic??? How can you produce a commodity, this commodity being an individual, indivisible entity for your own use AND for exchange, how do you exchange an apple after eating it?

fucking retard

Anarchists are not denying that the state is a tool of class domination, they are just paying enough attention to not fall into the trap of thinking that the proletariat has anyone to dominate.

meant to quote

But SNLT would be abolished 1 hour of labor = 1 hour of labor no matter how productive.

Don't you mean exchange value?

SNLT is just an aggregate metric, you can't abolish it unless you abolish human production.

no? perhaps in the aggregate labour times, but it cannot happen in the individual scale, which is where the individual labour vouchers are awarded

if it doesn't matter how productive an hour of labour is, then how do you equate it with another hour of labour?

just Imagine the following, we have that X = Y, however if X is bigger than Y X won't be equal to Y, if X hour of labour is more productive, then it cannot be equal to Y hour of labour

are you going to award the same amount of labour vouchers to X as to Y? even if Y produced less use values? where would such values come from? either the labour voucher awarded to Y accounts for less value, which means it's hour of labour wasn't as productive as X or you award them the same, which means X labour hour was more productive and you appropriate part of his value and give it to Y

I am not completely against the second notion, however it cannot happen in a planned economy with labour vouchers

correct me if I am wrong, but I am talking about use-values, as it took the same time to produce 3 dollars of wool compared to the 3 dollars of rice, we are talking about the aggregates here

if you spend 3 hours crafting 3 dollars of wool, and you spend 3 hours crafting 3 dollars of rice, then their use value must be the same, even if they satisfy different needs

That doesn't make any sense. If you produce 3 dollars of wool that has no use for you (zero use-value) and then buy 3 dollars of rice to eat (some use-value) then their use value won't be the same.

I see, I see

Wow, what a great definition finbol. Truly the might of this man's intellect is staggering

AAAHHHHHHH

It's so easy. The use-value of a commodity is what use you have for it. The fact that you can eat rice in order to not starve to death is the use value of rice. It's not quantifiable, and it's only relevant because a commodity needs to be a use-value (otherwise no one would want it) and an exchange value in order to be a commodity.

The exchange value is the ratio at which you can exchange one commodity for another commodity. For example, maybe you could exchange one chair for 5 hamburgers.

Finbol needs to read Endnotes tbh: endnotes.org.uk/articles/4

Not an argument: the video.

...

yes but I am talking about aggregates here
I understand that exchange value exist because I produce a surplus of commodities that have no use for me, but this surplus have use-value for other people, while I conceive these commodities as mere exchange values, other people might conceive them as use-values

Yeah you guys are right. I'm off my game today and making myself look like a brainlet. Labour vouchers are just a transitional step anyways,not the end product of a communist society

You contributed one hour, I contributed 1 hour.

What if everything you make directly belongs to society as whole?

Marx was wrong about labour vouchers, read Kropotkin.

then there is no reason to have labour vouchers or plan an economy, as someone might find my labour useful anyway

That's communism.

And how much worse is it if it is directly incorporated into the economic system, instead of being something at the margin? It is understandable that the law of value would continue to operate when it comes to scarce goods being traded illegally outside of a socialist system of distribution. These activities would need to be repressed. However, it is a completely different case to have the law of value operate as a part of the economic system, unrepressed.
Even if something is repressed, it still very much exists. I don't see why do we need to make the difference between repressed and unrepressed, because we are looking at the effects which they have on the economy. We can also see with the Soviet Union that just seizing state power isn't enough for success for full communism. I hope that you don't think that the reason for every socialist experiment's failure is that they didn't read enough Marx and totally abolish commodity production and not the brute force which they were crushed with or the inefficient political system created by isolation and the inability for the revolution to advance, which caused the restoration of capitalism.
Here Marx was clearly not talking about some rare exceptions to the rule, but that every aspect of socialism would still be tainted by capitalism and clearly talks about exchange. If they were the exceptions to the rule, I doubt that he would have mentioned it all. Also I would remind you again, that commodity production isn't always generalized, there were societies which were heavily influenced by the LoV, and we still don't call them capitalist
Wait, are you implying that the labour voucher system isn't an example of commodity production and that Catalonia was actually existing socialism? Because that's pretty weird, I mean the whole C - M - C cycle is still being continued…
There haven't been a single socialist experiment which showed that it is possible to skip """state capitalism""". You didn't show me why would be any minimal commodity production so destructive that it would paralyze and remove the proletarian character of the communist movement.
If entirely abolishing commodity production was simply just a question of the right people with the right ideas seizing state power, then why didn't it
ever happen in history?

From the end of Finbol's video
Zizek has an incredible response to this shitty, Stalinist way of thinking in Less Than Nothing:

I think he makes some good points about leftcoms but it's not well served if the only point is to defend the USSR and Cuba.

It is pretty simple to be honest. People who subscribe to left-communism, do not understand economics and how the many variables that are in play when shifting an entire fucking mode of production to one that is completely different will inevitably hold a few characteristics of the old system,e.g. the shift from feudalism to capitalism,specifically the landlord-renter relationship . No one can know all the variables in changing an economic system but that's the point of stages. But there are a few good critiques made by left communist though.

This is the same argument as "Commies don't understand basic economics, and are just living in a fantasy land". You're attacking a group to your left for being ""naive"" without any substantiation or knowledge of leftcom beliefs. Leftcommunism is more diverse than you're giving it credit for, and furthermore there's more to it than you're implying there is. We're not all Bordigists and Council communists, y'know.

Where in that did Zizek say that Capitalism will be instantly transformed into full communism?

Gilles "communists don't need to understand logistics" Dauve isn't much of a step up either.

It's not.
And you haven't really pointed out how that relates to what I said. Plus you are the one making assumptions of what i read/know of left communism. I used to be a left communist. I won't say I read ALL of left communist theory but enough to understand, and I am still open to learning more. I did say there were good critiques made by left communism though. Maybe I should have been more specific.

lenin, stalin and trotsky are garbage that failed socialism matey

Lmao, you're literally making the exact same argument here that Zizek critiques. I'll explain it to you if you don't understand. Just ask me to. Here's the relevant bit:

Still better than Vladimir "Everyone who criticizes my bad theory is infantile" Lenin

Wrong, you would still need to plan the production so that everyon's needs are met. At the very least, the reproduction of the people themselves. This is not a given if everyone just does what they want hoping someone finds it useful. You need mechanisms of coordination and planning.

…What? I asked a question.
Finbol says in the video that changes in society follow the law of quantity and quality, which seems to be what Zizek is saying too. I'm asking where the "shitty Stalinst way of thinking" is.

Leftcoms don't believe that capitalism will be instantly transformed into full communism. Your question clearly presupposes that the premises to the argument Zizek is criticizing in the passage are true.

But they do believe in absurd purity tests that don't follow the law of quantity and quality.

Bordiga was a Leninist, and you don't have to be a Leninist to dislike leftcoms

Zizek's entire argument is that the law of quantity and quality as Stalin defined them are bullshit!

Not really. This would only be true if Stalin's dialectics oppose struggle.

Stalin's dialectics oppose any struggle outside the sphere it's being applied to! From further down the page:

I wasn't talking about individual examples, instead I was talking in the context of the whole of society. Reread my post.

I don't really see how that proves your point. It's just complaints about historical anecdotes and what he perceived as stalinist dogmatism. I'm not in full support of Stalins dialectics regarding the development of productive forces as the quantitative leap that leads to a qualitative leap (I think Mao was more nuanced in his critical review of dialectical materialism) but it isn't completely unfounded either - and the claim that dialectical materialism rejects universal struggle has yet to be proven. I think Georges Politzer makes a very good case for dialectical materialism:
readpolitzer.org/contents.html

Mao's dialectics are better than Stalin's precisely because he took Stalin's rejection of the negation of negation and gave it a negative character by associating the balancing of opposites with motion. Mao's dialectics are flawed in many ways, but they're certainly better than Stalin's.
Zizek is criticizing Stalin's misuse of negation here. If something is a left deviation it cannot be a right deviation, and Stalin can only come to these conclusions because

Thanks for the link btw. I disagree with it's thesis (or at least the thesis as stated in the introduction), but it's well written at least.

I think it's completely pointless to even talk about "left" and "right" as dialectical species in the first place. That's Hegelian idealism and certainly opposed to materialist dialectics. That being said, especially all the fishy shit Trotsky pulled I wouldn't even rule Stalins conclusion out. I'm not saying he was a right-winger, but he certainly wasn't afraid to associate himself with them in contrarianism to the USSR, and I think he was a massive narcissist.

Well yeah, but Zizek's here point was a general one, the categories being examined don't matter as much as their underlying logic.
Trotsky was definitely an opportunist, but then again, so was Stalin in many ways (definitely not to the same degree as Trotsky, but still). I might get some shit for saying this, but Trotsky was definitely a better theoretician than Stalin was though tbh.

a

When finbol make a video BTFOing your arguments

Ugh. That's really sucky. At least have to courage to watch it and attempt to learn and grow.

The video was bad.

next you're gonna start telling me to watch every single 1-hour molyneux video to get a "new perspective"

the vid was trash. finbol understands marxism and socialism and communism yet he doesn't wants to admit why the soviet union failed miserably because otherwise he would have to change his name to "fin socialist" or some shit
it's a grown up dude roleplaying as a soviet soldier tbh but without any of the soldier

there is no such thing as a youtube celeb being anything but a larper

theyre all shit and this boards obsession with them is equatable to tween girls and the next disney girl

His party`s entire propaganda machine and activities used to be controlled form Moscow, why do you think that anyone form such organization would ever admit the faults of Kremlin?

Pic related.

T. Spooked turbo virgin who doesn't know what ideology is

Top argument

If you'd read past that first sentence you'd find that they actually did make an argument.

His party the KTP was founded in 1988 user, please stop spreading lies (they were the sector of the communist party critical with soviet revisionism)

Meant for

How is Finbol a celeb? He does not show any personality around him more that his voice in the videos , no pictures, nothing, he even does not use twitter.
You can critizise Finbol, but he is far from being egocentric or behaving as some kind of leftist youtube celeb
You can crtizise

Actualy he has a Twitter And a Facebook page now.