/econ/ general - We Physiocrats Now Edition

Hello, users of Holla Forums.

Welcome to the econ general. This general is for:
- General questions and debate about economics, whether that be Marxian, Post Keynesianism or whatever heterodox tendency Rebel is into right now.
- Sharing of resources: the includes books, essays or your own materials.
- Keep discourse clean and intelligent, no shit flinging.
- Report all shitposters

I have a central topic I'd like to raise tomorrow about the state of Marxian economics in academia. But until then, let's make this a good thread.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-economics
therealmovement.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/the-critical-role-of-gold-in-labor-theory-analysis/
unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/phillips-curve/
scribd.com/document/326449049/Anwar-Shaikh-Capitalism-Competition-Crisis
notes.io/ur5f
personal.ceu.hu/students/05/Corina_Haita/books/Microeconomic Theory.pdf
math.oregonstate.edu/~show/old/142_Luenberger.pdf
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=DB1EA51C52393C36023F0A1568507D76
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/andrew-kliman-and-the-failure-of-capitalist-production/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Post some good stuff for starters

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Here.

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Who /counter-economics/ here?

Aside from konkin, anyone has some recommended readings?

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What's "counter-economics"?

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I'm currently applying to grad school. I'm trying to get a phd in economics.

So I was debating on the merits of saying explicitly that I was interesting in Marxian economics. For most schools I decided that it was probably a really bad idea to mention it… but for Umass Amherst (a lot of openly Marxist professors, including Richard Wolff) and The New School (Anwar Shaikh and others) I thought it would help.

I'm really nervous about my chances of getting accepted. But it would be really great if I could continue my education under leftist/Marxist professors.

I wish the old right-wing conspiracy was true about academia being mostly marxist. It would make my task of looking for Marxist/ leftist economics departmetsk to apply to that much easier.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-economics

Konkin is a mises cuck but his theory is good

dropping this here again since it seems to be a more relevant thread

is there a socialism reading guide about economics? i want to learn about our present day capitalist system but it seems like all the reading guides i can find about it are being peddled by anarchocrapitalists that want to shove ayn rand down my throat. i dont even care about some criticual evaluation and marxist theory, i just want to understand how it works, where its flaws (flaws from our perspective i guess) are in enabling people to gather capital, the flow of capital, how it is controlled and how to manipulate it. (i.e. how and why do capitalists get rich in the first place/how to become bourgeoise scum 101)

id take an economics class but i once visited one and i swear to christ it was more of a neoliberal jerkoff session than actually educational

I like Agorism and Mutalism but I mainly identify as a demsoc, is it possible to support them all or is it contradictory?

Meant socdem

Woah thats even worse than being a demsoc

Its pretty contradictory

Agorism and mutualism go hand-in-hand tbh.

Being a social democrat is inconsistent, however. But insofar as socdems propose good policies that help people… idk why it's a bad thing to support them sometimes. Although it has to be acknowledged that the inconsistency is there.

I mean I like agorist ideas like counter-economics and Mutalist ideas like co-ops and credit unions but I mainly believe that Socdem is one of the more realistic ideologies

**Sorry for idiotposting

For modern day stuff: Doug Henwood is a Marxist financial reporter. He writes for left-business observer, but he doesn't update as frequently as he used to though.

Jacobinnag is pretty good too for day-to-day stuff.

I would also say "Debunking Economics" by Steve Keen is a pretty good book about the failure of neoclassical economic theory and it's failures in accounting for economic crises – although it might be a little more technical than what you're looking for.

It sounds like you're a socialist who is okay with markets… idk. Socdem sounds pretty accurate.

Just don't be like that "mutualist" poster we sometimes have on here who says that we need the state, but he's still totally a mutualist. Unless you're an anarchist, you're not a mutualist.

Socdems will always be bootlicker to capitalists

There has not been a singlemsocdem movement that helped the exploited class, band aids are justthat, band aids

Reported.

Sorry its just I described what I wanted from a government to a bunch of people and most agreed I was a Socdem, IDK i just feel weird after calling socdems cucks for so long and it turns out I'm the cuck

Sorry if I'm being pathetic, does anyone know any good books on keynesian economics?

Dude wth, you dont need to apologize, I started out as a fucking socdem too

Before starting on keynesianism start with classical economics

Is this the new start with the Greeks meme?


Just read any book by Krugman tbh. I could give you the name of the textbook I used, but it's pretty technical.

This is a bump for #Sraffa

bump

I've heard that it's best to stay away from the American Keynesians, the IS-LM is shit.

Now on for my post:

On August 15th 1971, Nixon "closed the gold window" by ending Bretton woods. Unfortunately, it seems this never registered with the Marxian economist.

Before I can continue I will posture a few questions: What is value? What is money? and What are prices?

The basis of Marx's investigation is rooted in the fact that as a species, we must labour to reproduce ourselves and create wealth. Unlike the Austrians postulate contradictory and incoherent axioms, this is subject to empirical validation. And it is - our material needs are the very basis for our continued existence. The labour that is deemed "socially necessary", is imbued in commodities. Not metaphysically, but actually; a real portion of our finite capacity to labour has been used up. This is what Marx calls value.

Now in Marx's simple commodity exchange C-M-C it is assumed this material basis constitutes what the price of the commodity will tend towards. However, by the very nature of commodity exchange it becomes complicated and needlessly complex without establishing a universal equivalent. This "universal equivalent" is money. Serving as a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. This of course, is what the "price of commodities" is measured in.

Now, it's readily apparent that gold was not money just like value, is a social relationship. How prices behave will be very different when the money is commodity money than when it is a state backed fiat currency.

This has not registered with Marxian academics. As Jehu points out:


Now the Marxian academics have come up with elaborate explanations for why there does not need to be critical revision of Marx's theories to maintain their relevance, such as the MELT (from the TSSI) school. I've also heard explanations like "multiply the price of a commodity by the inflation in the price of gold to reach it's true value (face palm)", because the "market" is mediating gold as commodity money rather than the state.

Marx states in Capital Vol 1 that the State makes use of four mechanisms to increase its natural wealth: The national debt, the modern taxation system, protectionism and embracement of the colonies. Obviously the first and foremost is the most relevant today.

So how has the national wealth faired under the new fiat currency? National debts have skyrocked in Western nations after all. Well, let's look at pic realated. It's commonly asserted by the left that the 70's was a time of crisis. Recourse to the first pic would not indicate that, but as Jehu states:


Indeed, which one?

However, it's unlikely that academics will admit that the theoretical basis for their work has been unsound. All the data on the falling rate of profit - useless.

Things don't look so good in the future for the left - politically, theoretically or economically.

4got to link therealmovement.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/the-critical-role-of-gold-in-labor-theory-analysis/

why not tons?

I didn't make the charts friendo, but I think it's kind of besides the point.

Do not let this thread die.

Mods pls cycle

Why are you even a Socialist if you don't understand the arguments for either side?

Why would there be a tendency for the rate of profit to fall in the first place? Increased automation would lead to greater efficiency hence greater output. It seems that the argument for profit to fall is only on surplus value extracted, but despite lower surplus value being extracted, profit hasn't fallen.

Can someone provide an explanation or rebuttal based on Marxian economics, please? I'm probably misunderstanding too.

To be fair: most people that are liberal or "capitalist" don't understand the arguments for their side either. That goes for a lot of ideologies.

There are several factors, one is that the increase in automation that reduces the SNLT also causes unemploymemt, which lowers demand, the ogher one is that eventually every capitalist will be able to afford automation, and you are back at zero, but endebted because of the money necessary to invest in automation

Also, read chapter 13 vol 3 of capital

The argument for the falling rate of profit is something we find in Smith and Ricardo. You could probably find some defense for it in Kliman. He did a debate with David Harvey over this exact issue not too long ago.

But as far as I'm concerned: the argument did not work with Smith's argument, it didn't work with Ricardo's argument, and it doesn't work with Marx…

The Marxian version was first refuted by the Oikishio thereom in 1961. I only have a few notes on it from a class I took a long time ago. So I couldn't tell you much about it.

Didn't Kliman refute the Okishio theorem?

I just took a macro class that focused heavily on IS-LM. Professor was a Marxist so he was pretty critical.

The IS-LM model is actually really good. It shows a ton of info on just two curves and does a better job at demonstrating the interdependence of aggregate income and the interest rate than the basic "Keynesian cross".

But Idk if that's going to be of interest to anyone except professional/academic economists. Having knowledge of the theory behind it is more interesting than knowing how to graph shit. Math is my least favorite part of economics.

Yes. I'm saying if you're looking for a defense of the theory of the falling rate of profit – you should turn to Kliman.

because it's in their interests you dumb fuck. You don't need to understand marxian economics on a deep level to be one.

So we were just doing damage control until '08? The rate of profit might be much lower than we believe.
Interesting graphs.

unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/phillips-curve/
There are lots of problems with the IS-LM curve, but moreso with economics in general. The entirety of neoclassical economics is more or less useless because it is predicated on Says Law.


The rate of profit has been 0 for years because Marx's rate of profit is measured using commodity money, and we no longer use commodity money. The entire way value is distributed and exchanged and society is different.

To clarify what I mean, Marx's rate of profit is s/(v+c), where S is the surplus value produced (or the profit), V is the variable capital (or the living labour employed) and C is the constant capital (or the dead labour) employed. Wages are now paid out in valueless fiat currency. MOP are now bought using valueless fiat currency, and commodities (and thus profit) are sold for valueless fiat currency. Value can only be expressed through another object with value, and the currency used to pay for commodities has a value of 0. Zip, nada.

How do I get better at this? Although I can refute most of the usual bullshit arguments against Marxian economics and socialism, I can never do it in a concise way.

You practice debate. I'll start - why is Marx's theory of Capitalism relevant if there is so much missing from it and it's foundations are completely divorced from Capitalism today?

This is where I have problems. A statement like "Marx's theory of capitalism is completely divorced from capitalism today" takes me off guard, because it's completely false. I barely know where to begin.

Do it buh.

That's because the other poster didn't even make a point, he just said Marx's theory is irrelevant.


This isn't how you debate.

I guess I could explain the concept of surplus value and its exploitation and relate this to modern enterprises?

Nigga, what the fuck are you talking about? Okishio himself didn't think his theorem refuted the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

I actually have a little essay on Okishio's Theorem here that was a part of an essay on the transformation problem.


Kliman is pretty shit imo. Shaikh has some better stuff on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. For starters, he doesn't blame the 2008 crash on the falling rate of profit, so he's better on that issue already. Here's a link to his book.scribd.com/document/326449049/Anwar-Shaikh-Capitalism-Competition-Crisis I just got a physical copy today!

Is the TTSI a good refutation of the transformation problem? I have a copy of "Reclaiming Capital" that I regret buying (I bought it because I was a newbie and thought Kliman was competent), is it worth reading?


Go on.


Since he said he was good at debating, I was seeing how he would fare with /liberty/tier criticism. .

If you're wondering about the graph, the rate of profit has been pretty stable for the most part since the neoliberal era.

The reason for this is because wages have been decreasing in relation to productivity, leading to an increase in surplus value, thus stabilizing the rate of profit. Anwar Shaikh uses this and other things to show that the falling rate of profit was not directly responsible for the 2008 crash.

I said the opposite.

Theromoeconomics is the future.

That also does explain why poverty increases over the years, but I'm wondering if the '08 crash was due to another contradiction?

"I can refute most of the bullshit arguments against Marxian economics and socialism". Even if you can only do it in many words, you said you could do it.

I'm not a huge fan of it honestly. It sacrifices having a logical or in anyway coherent theory for the sake of internal consistency. I tend to align more with people like Duncan Foley and Anwar Shaikh on the transformation problem. I'm certainly open to other solutions though.

What do you think of my post , and . If we look at value the same way Marx does, the rate of profit has been 0 since 1971 because profit is measured in valueless currency.

There is literally no useful empirical research on the rate of profit, I haven't seen anything that takes this into account (does the book you posted)?

I'm not sure I entirely follow. I'm gonna have to make my position clear first.

I reject the classification of fiat money as a commodity. For something to be a commodity, it has to have both a use value, and an exchange value. Fiat money only has an exchange value. Marx was very clear that money gets its value from the commodity that it is attached to (Gold, silver, etc.) However, fiat money does not have this. So yes, fiat money does not have a value, but it does have a price. Items can have a price without having a value. To quote Marx, "Objects that in themselves are not commodities, such as conscience, honor, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or an indirect real value relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labor has been incorporated in it"

I fail to see how fiat money impacts the falling rate of profit, surplus value, or anything really. It honestly just seems like pure sophistry. Value is defined by the relationships surrounding it, and these relationships have stayed pretty much the same. I'm not entirely sure I get what you're saying though, so maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're saying.

How are you measuring the rate of profit? How can you measure the rate of profit in valueless currency (post 1971) when we are supposed to be measuring an excess of value? Wasn't S in S/(V+C) a commodity with value? It isn't now, so how can we measure it using this same formula?We aren't measuring any value at all, there is no value relationship between the fiat money and the commodity they are exchanged for. This really bothers me, so I'm open to clarification.

Sorry this response took so long. I actually brought out my copy of Capital Volume 3 to refresh my memory on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

The rate of profit here is defined, in OECD terminology, as the aggregate net operating surplus divided by the net capital stock.


Things can have a price without value


No clue.


No, it was surplus value, not a commodity with value, which is very redundant.


It never was.


To quote from Kapitalism 101, "In a society of private producers, coordinated indirectly through the market, the social relations between these people take the form of relations between things, of commodity relations. The relations between people become value relations expressed in commodity prices. Economically, people can only relate to each other through money prices, through value. This world of commodity relations takes an independent form, outside of the control of individuals, that acts back upon and directs the flow of human affairs. Adam Smith called it the “hidden hand of the market.” Marx calls it “the law of value.”" I think this quote will make this clearer. You're not looking at the full picture here. After all, value is a social relation.

got milk?

I have chocolate milk

But in the first chapters of Capital Marx says a commodity can only express its value in another commodity? How can value be expressed by valueless fiat?

Also, you seem like you're more knowledgable about Marxian economics than I am. Could you explain this critique of Sraffa, and the TSSI and NI proponents for me?

Okay Holla Forums, I just read it so correct me if I'm wrong.
- Sraffa starts with a set of physical inputs
- The rate of profit is known in advance
- The physical inputs are the same as the physical outputs
- The labour inputs (like wages) are not represented in the equation but come out of the "surplus" produced, which makes up the "national income"
- All the physical inputs form the "composite commodity"
- There is no fucking time
- This doesn't model anything
- No economy has ever worked like this
- What the fuck
Is this actually Sraffa's theory? How did this supplant Marx's?

What's your issue with the TSSI? It's supported by what Engels omitted from Volume 3 originally.

Man, is Marx an aggravating guy.

fiat money has use value in that it can be exchanged for every other commodity.

Could you expand upon this?

I have a question about the LTV.

How does the LTV accomodate for things like really good marketing of products that cause their market value to be significantly higher than the value they would have if based on their labor time alone?

Does this not mean labor is not the only factor in somethings market value, the only value that really matters?

Don't worry about the LTV, it's mostly shit. It can explain that with the fact with monopoly pricing, but the foundations are mostly incoherent.

Does anyone have a good intro to Post Keynesian economics?

Two possible ways for LTVists to save face:
1. The marketing cost has to be considered part of the production cost.
2. ultra-faddish things are like unique art pieces in that they lack the repetition and regularity necessary for scientific analysis.

Well, there is debate among Marxist whether service jobs like marketer/ Doctor / personal trainer are productive or unproductive work. That being said, markup pricing due to marketing cost would not change the fact that in the aggregate, total value = total price. All Marxian work is done with attention to aggregates. Using something like PK price theory to predict the individual price of a certain commodity is completely compatible with the LTV, which Marx never called the LTV. It was called the "law of value" which is a phrase he took from Proudhon.

Also his original question makes no sense because market price is not in anyway related to its exchange value, the exchange value is the equilibrium price - that is to say, an exchange of equivalent SNLT's.

But does that not mean that the extra money above its exchange value is value that does not come from labour?

Well as I mentioned earlier in the thread, how prices function via Marx's analysis is a little ambiguous to me in post 1971 Capitalism. That being said, yes Marx was not trying to develop a theory of prices he was trying to illustrate how the material basis for production would affect and constrain the allocation of our social labour power through prices, and between Capitalist through profits. His theory is a theory of allocation, not price. That is why it is called the "law of value" and not the "labour theory of value" because it is not a theory of invriant amounts of labour time in every commodity to explain prices ala Ricardo, it is a theory of how averages of production times and the movement of produced commodities reproduce society and create wealth.

But also no, it is not value that came from labour because only labour that creates value. It is value that is allocated from somewhere else. Regarding marketing, I have not read all of Capital an I'm not familiar with the productive vs unproductive debate but the transformation of value into profit is supposed to illustrate how profits allocate labour between different capitalist. The cost-price is Marx's time would always be the starting value because the gold always represented a definitive SNLT. I'm not sure I'm clear what you mean, but prices can be completely unrelated to value, but value can't come from labour.

I'm not letting this thread die btw. I will keep bumping.

notes.io/ur5f

Okay leftypol, we should try and make an econ guide. On this note we can ask questions, and explain concepts. There I explain how crop harvest effects SNLT.

Here's the "standard" bible for rigorous (with math) microeconomic theory:
personal.ceu.hu/students/05/Corina_Haita/books/Microeconomic Theory.pdf
Really more of a "graduate text" since it takes a fair bit of mathematical maturity, but it doesn't have any "real" hard and fast prerequisites.
Marxism kind of renders policy economics moot, since it hinges on the rejection of public policy's basic unquestioned assumptions. But if you're going to make inferences about the post-capitalist economy as a research interest or work as an economic planner post-revolution, chances are you'll read this book. Economic planners would be in many ways "public actuaries."

Classic book on optimization theory:
math.oregonstate.edu/~show/old/142_Luenberger.pdf
Not economics related per se, but you can apply these techniques to a very broad range of problems in economics, industrial and workplace management, etc. Mathematically not for the faint of heart.

Book on "quantitative Marxism":
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=DB1EA51C52393C36023F0A1568507D76
An attempt to make Marxist economics policy-relevant. I haven't read this. I'm skeptical, but "economics without math" is no more useful than sociology and doesn't really enhance the critiques in Capital.

I literally just finished my chocolate milk, otherwise I'd post a picture.

Sounds comfy, user.

the social sciences lean marxist, as do identity politics departments (womens studies, african american studies)
economics is an exception though

If only any of this were half true, user

bump

Economics has more legit marxists than idpol or social scientists.

This is true.

Bump for economic discussion, starve off the Holla Forums!

This is a bump for Kalecki

This is a bump for fuck your face and fuck Kalecki!

Bumping again with Andrew Kliman getting BTFO
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/andrew-kliman-and-the-failure-of-capitalist-production/

Say that to my face and not online and see what happens you stalinist cuck! KALECKI and Rosa not Capital and KRUSCHEV, ok? Praise socialism.

You might as well be a Keynesian you fucking retard.

After looking into Shaikh, I prefer that interpretation too. It's pretty consistent, considering the differing compositions of Capital mean that the rate of profit will never be equal to the rate of accumulation. Don't quite get the math, but I never did.

Best thread on this palce

place*
wew

Bumping for bumps.

Guys lets have a serious discussion about this. For the transformation problem, NI, or any of the SSI's (either TSSI, SSSI)? And why?

Rebel said NI was the best we got, but Rebel's a fag

Also, I think replacement cost when calculating profit makes sense not historic cost. You can have contracting reproduction even if the historic cost lets you break even, which is one of the reasons I'm eh as far as the TSSI goes. Perhaps Fred Mosley's method makes more sense.

Can someone well versed in Marxist economics check that this is accurate for me?

When there is an increase in productive forces and accumulation of capital, real wages, the effective amount that a worker can buy with their wage, increases as the prices of their necessities fall due to increase in supply.

Because wages are based on the amount needed for the worker to buy necessities, their relative wages, the actual money value of their wage, can now be decreased, even if not to perfectly match the rise in real wages.

This now leaves the worker either the same, or somewhat better off, with the Capitalist in possession of more surplus value due to lower wages.

With this higher surplus, more capital can be invested in raw materials and means of production in general, but this means that a higher amount of labour must be produced in order to match this greater investment and generate profits.

The worker is now producing more and being paid less, widening the gap between the worker and the capitalist's wealth.

Does this follow? Honestly I feel if it were to be off at any point, it would be the bit where the Capitalist invests more capital into production. What's from stopping them from just keeping things at the same level of production and keeping the extra surplus for themselves?

Or is this what happens, and in fact THAT'S what causes the increased gap in wealth?

I only wrote it like that because, as far as I can tell, that's what Marx describes happens.

This is what Marx lays out in Capital Volume 1, but it's ceteris paribus. How much the wage its decreased of it its decreased at all (it could be raised!) depends on the state of the class struggle.

Try getting more into classical liberalism. I believe that's the ideology that gives better living conditions to the people under a capitalist society. I don't trust SocDem that much, it usually ends up being sub par in my experience.

BUMP !

Bump for Marx Kalecki!!!!!!1!