/econ general/

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Book on market anarchism

Econ general isn't supposed to be dropping PDF's. I mean sure, you can do that. But it's better to actually engage in discussion. Also "everyone does it" isn't justification. The post quality here recently should make that obvious.

Anyway as someone re-reading Volume 2 of Capital right now, I want to ask how the income/production schemas in Keynesian economics are laid out.

In that same vein, I'm curious if you could respond to my short critique of market anarchism.

Though if we are dropping PDF's, I'd like to drop "A Marx for Post-Keynesian's" by Steve Keen for our socdem friend.

bump

What's the cutting edge of Marxist Econ? Is it still TSSI?

I've seen some critiques of the TSSI. I think the entire conception of the MELT is nonsense, and even if its algebraically identical when used with commodity or fiat money, the fact fiat prices don't behave the same as commodity money prices should be enough to debunk the MELT all on its own. Nevertheless, KIliman and the like still push it. I like what Anwar Shakih has done with the transformation problem. As far as the transformation problem goes, I think single system approaches get rid of the issues.

Here's one of the critiques I mentioned by a Marxist blogger I like named Boffy. boffyblog.blogspot.ca/2012/08/in-time-of-nick-rogers.html

I also agree with Fred Mosley that historic cost should be used when calculating the rate of profit, but fiat currency presents a larger issue for me I don't think has been confronted properly. My view is that: the state has become a psuedo-national capitalist. At the same time, the State has been fully co-opted by mega corporations. So the State facilitates a breakdown of commodity exchange while being controlled and maintaining, the dynamic between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the OP again.

After I finish my economics minor I want to try and do some empirical analysis of fiat currency and the law of value.

Sorry, that should read replacement cost, not historic. You could break even, but the next cycle after the turnover could begin with a contraction in the rate of accumulation.

so marxhead what are your thoughts on soviet economy?

also how about a little thouhght experiment?
suppose we have a market economy where only seller is the state, and only byers are state employess
state also controls financial system

what will be the dynamics of such a system from a Marxist perspective
what will cycle of capital accumulation look like?

No strong opinions on it because most of the work of actual Soviet economist besides maybe, Isaac Rubin hasn't been translated into English. From what I've seen, they misinterpreted Marx sometimes but I'm not sure how often those misinterpretations made it into the economy, or if they were just the subject of debate (like how the reproduction schemas of Volume 2 could be used to model the Soviet economy).

Well, that would be similar to the national Capitalist Marx talks about in Volume 1 of Capital. Do you mean that the State rents out property to sellers and producers of commodities, who hire workers? Or do you mean the State produces commodities on a national scale, where part of it is paid out to the workers and part of it is sold on the world market? That would be similar to Ricardo's corn economy, and I think that's what Marx means by the "national capitalist".

I guess some people make the argument that the Soviet Union was structured like that, but I'm not completely sold on that. I don't know what you mean by the "cycle" of Capital accumulation. "Cycles" are honestly a bourgeoisie construct used in Neoclassical and Keynesian economics for the purpose of constructing models, classical economist (or at least Marx and Smith) didn't really talk about a business "cycle" in the sense it's used today. If you mean how capital turnover would work, you could probably subdivide department I in Marx's reproduction schemas into many smaller departments. In that case, we'd end up with something like the Surplus accumulated in variable capital and Variable capital of department A + the surplus consumed unproductively by the managers of department A must be equal to the constant capital + surplus accumulated in constant of department B, and so on. Proportionally it would work the same way Marx models the reproduction schemas (which is why Soviet economist wanted to use this), with the duel flow of commodities taking into account national trade with other countries.

The formula for the rate of accumulation is always the same - S/(C+V). If this is a Capitalist country, the law of value has not changed (besides maybe in appearance) and the same laws still apply.

Please clarify if this is what you mean:

In Ricardo's corn economy, he constructs a one commodity economy. The worker produces corn, the corn is then distributed to the Capitalist and the workers in the form of wages with the productively consumed corn being reinvested back into production. For this "State Market" economy, instead of using "corn" we will come up with a homogenous good called "the State commodity" which has the power to be transmuted into any other commodity, and is produced by the State. Similarly, the workers produce the State commodity for the bureaucrats, who redistribute the State commodity back to the workers while investing the surplus in production (with the hopes of expanded reproduction).

Is this what you mean?

Bump

Why do libertarians keep insisting with the calculation debate?

It's a worthless debate. Libertarian economic theory has no explanatory value, and theoretically unsound axioms that lead to theoretically unsound conclusions, thus they keep harping on debunked and irrelevant arguments.

You gotta love how Bohm-Bawk called the LTV "tautological" while being a marginalist.

Also, if you ever want to stump an Austrian ask them to defend Says Law. Austrian and Neo-classical economics are postulated on that (so that they can hold more or less, that all crisis is due to muh guberment) and their theories collapse in on themselves when it's proven wrong, no matter how much mathematical wankery they produce.

Marxhead, what do you think of a socialist free-market economy? I'm very naive about economics, but my understanding is this:
- Capital accumulation is a fundamental feature of capitalism.
- According to Marx and others, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall will eventually lead to a state where there is no longer any capital accumulation. This is the end of capitalism.
- Neoliberal economic reforms since the 1970s have kept the ROP steady by retarding the growth in wages relative to productivity.

So supposing you could have a worker-controlled economy (with unrestricted labor unions), workers would ensure their compensation matches productivity, which would cause the ROP to fall over time. Eventually you would reach a state where there is no capital accumulation, and therefore no capitalism.

So is such a thing possible? Is it a contradiction or not? What do you think?

Thanks in advance.

Also forgot to mention that this just means that without government regulating the labor market, you would see the growth of worker-owned and worker-controlled enterprises. I didn't mean to imply that just an economy of labor unions would be sufficient for socialism.

Almost this whole board is /econ/

You're basically thinking of northern Syria/Rojava

Are you trying to say that "market socialism" would be a pragmatic way to transition to socialism?

While I haven't dismissed this conception wholesale, I think it taken to the extent you advocate misses the mark and the ideal of avoiding crisis. For one, the production of surplus value is intrinsic to any market economy. Capital will turnover at different times. Marx shows how this functions by constructing a two department model. Department I, that produces MOP and department II that produces consumer goods. The formula for simple reproduction within this model is the variable capital employed in department + the surplus of department I being = to the constant capital of department II. This can be represented by the equations Iv + Is = IIc.

The reason surplus value must be produced by department I is because the workers in department I must eat regardless if their commodities have been sold or not. Therefore, there must be a reserve money supply. This means that the production of surplus value, or the M-C-M' cycle presupposes itself within the C-M-C cycle.

Now if you are not familiar with Marx's critique of Says Law it basically goes like this: Say posits that money is neutral, serving no other purpose but being the intermediary between the exchange of two commodities. Therefore, money is neutral and crisis's of overproduction are impossible.

Marx rebuts Say by proving that money is not in fact, neutral. The Capitalist has the intention of increasing the value advanced. In other words, the supply of value provided to the Capitalist should be larger than the value the Capitalist demands. Keynes actually borrowed Marx's critique of Say to come up with "liquidity preference". If effective demand is not high enough, commodities will not be purchased, value will not be realized, and crisis of overproduction will ensue.

The fact that the M-C-M' cycle is implicit in the C-M-C model means there is no circuit of Capital free from this contradiction. A model that you suppose could work if it were coupled with Keynesian methods of keeping up effective demand, but it would collapse very quickly without a State and isn't a genuine form of socialism.

Not really. Most of the discussion is related to philosophy or social issues. The other 40% is shitposting. I'd like to have a thread dedicated to serious discussion regarding economics, and I hope others feel the same way.

No, I find such simple models to be useless

In my model there's no need for some imaginary homogenous State commodity
you can take already existing commodities
my model is essentially a monopoly market model
one monopolist firm sells all consumer goods
monopolist firm is fully vertically integrated, i.e. there's no market for investment goods
employees of a monopolist firm represent the whole demand side on the market

for simplicity, lets assume that financial system is self-regulated, i.e. the quantity of money is strictly proportional to the quantity of consumer goods on the market

what will be the dynamics of such a system from a Marxist perspective?

Is market socialism based on Marxian economics or post Keynesian.

Simple question.
If you want a planned economy but don't want the state to plan it then who does?

Workers councils.

It's definitely true that Leftypol need to vary its discussion more and give economics the spotlight. I need to read something other than philosophy shit. Any good introductory texts comrade or should I just stop being a bitch and read Das Kapital?

Can we have a centrally planned economy done by supercomputer?

Maybe. You would have to have some sort of decentralized computer input.

Market socialism was proposed by Proudhon who used a labour theory of value, but market socialist aren't necessarily Marxians. Oskar Lange for example, was a neoclassical market socialist.

Okay, I think I have a better idea of what you're saying. I was using the "state commodity" model to get an example of how productive labour would be allocated. Since this is a "market" I was assuming that the law of value would be operating.

Now, I have a couple more questions (semi-related to the "state commodity model).
1. What is the degree of firm autonomy? This relates to the state commodity model. If the State is forcibly taking value and allocating it to part of the workers "social wages" (like we do now with social security for example), or is just the overseer and proprietor, this will produce different results.
2. Is there a goal of simple reproduction, or expanded reproduction within this model.

He kind of gets it. You decentralize production into different "bodies" that negotiate with each other. The other alternative is a return to a guild system + social welfare.

Why do some communists claim that full automation is impossible under capitalism?

Because it wouldn't be profitable.

Because the production of goods, circulation of goods, and income of the workers are closely related. You can not talk about one of those becoming irrelevant without the other two changing dramatically.

If you reject the labor theory of value can you still support socialism?

Are there branches of marxism that disagree with the LTV?

Yes. I might ask why it is you reject it? Marx's goal was to come up with a scientific approach to socialism, to distinguish his socialism from the humanistic/utopian socialism that was so prevalent at the time.

On the other hand, you have economist like Kalecki who were socialist, but rejected the labour theory of value as "metaphysical". David Ricardo was one of the innovators of the labour theory of value, but was a firm believer in Capitalism.

The labour theory of value is just imo, the most logical way of looking at the long term tendencies of production. Even if we are presented with certain theoretical holes, the way these are railed on by our opponents, and how Marxians are held to a standard completely different from the standard other economic schools are held too have discredited the school. In reality, Marx had many valuable insights into political economy that have made their way into Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian economics.

Not that I'm aware of. There are individual Marxist, but I don't think their views on revolutionary praxis and historical materialism cohere enough with each other to form a unified "branch".

Look at it this way. The Walmart brand of cola takes basically the same amount of labor to make as the name brand coca cola yet they sell at different price. Value should be based on labor but right now its not.

Well there's your problem. The labour theory of value is not a theory of price. It is a theory of how the allocation of labour in a Capitalist society forms the long term tendencies of the economy. This includes the price of certain goods, but it also includes rates of profit, frequency of prices, the fluctuations of wages etc.

For example: the coca cola brand has intellectual property rights that prevent other capitalist from producing the same drink. If these rights were removed, the price of the good would be pushed down towards (but not necessarily stay at) the value of the cola.

*fluctuations of prices
Not frequency. That should say "frequency of crisis".

I see. So that debunks most arguments against the LTV. The one I see most often is "but if I build an apple farm and you pick an apple of a tree both apples are worth the same. This disproves the LTV!!! :—DDD"

Jehu, is that you?

Kek.

I'm bipolar when it comes to fiat. On the one hand, GDP only measures (V+S) and not C so it's hard to get an accurate picture of the ROP. The fact that fiat holds no value to a degree, vindicates what Jehu says.

On the other hand, fiat is very obviously a token of value. It can be exchanged for goods that are the product of value. So I'm not sure if Jehu is completely correct, nor do I think his interpretation of the "transformation of values into prices" is textually, conceptually, or mathematically supported. He spends a lot of time critiquing Marxist but gets basic Marx wrong just as often, if not more.

Tbh, I think my bipolar feelings would be settled if someone sat down and did a thorough empirical analysis of the behavior of prices, productivity, and which labour is unproductive and productive in the modern capitalist economy.

Jehu hasn't done anything close to this, but neither has Kliman, Anwar, Freeman, Mandel or anyone really.

If you haven't guessed it, I've already changed my views from the OP till now. Though, I do see value in Grossmans analysis of the over-accumulation of Capital.

The value of the apple is determined by socially necessary labour time. It is not determined by individual labour time. If the value of the apple farm forms part of the constant capital necessary for production, the apple's SNLT will include that.

Am I the clover friend you're talking about? I was the one shilling for Anwar Shaikh in an econ thread awhile ago.

If I am the cloverfag you are talking about, then I must start this by admitting an error in our last exchange, namely with my rejection of money as a commodity due to it not having any commodity attached to it. I fell into a neoclassical trap in doing so. I ignored the underlying social relations surrounding money, and instead opted to look at only money. I'm sure you can see how I made many errors in doing so.

So what changed? Recently I picked up a copy of The Value of Money by Prabhat Patnaik, and it made me realize that I was dead wrong. However, I still think that Jehu is also wrong.

The error begins with the assumption that we are on a dollar-standard. This is completely wrong. The post Bretton-Wood monetary system is an oil-dollar standard. The noted Orthodox Marxist Alan Greenspan has even come out and admitted that the US invaded Iraq to gain control of their vast oil supply. There is a rebuttal to the modern monetary system having an oil dollar system, and that is that after the Invasion of Iraq, oil prices spiked. However, this is explained pretty easily because the Iraq invasion didn't go according to plan.

Here's where my fundamental error comes in. The reason why currency under the gold standard was relatively stable is because of British Imperialism. The gold standard was abandoned when British Imperialism became undermined, leading to the relationships that defined Imperialism weakening, and thus the gold standard becoming unsustainable.

This is the crux of Patnaik's argument in The Value of Money. His Theory of Money is also a Theory of Imperialism, and this is very important, because Capitalism is not an isolated system. These social relations that define Capitalism are what Marx analyzed in Capital.

I hope this clears things up a bit. I'll expand more in the morning, as I probably left many things unexplained. It's pretty late here.

Oh fuck me. I left my shitposting flag on.

I agree that someone does need to sit down and do a thorough analysis on this, but it won't last here. Is it possible to back up content on this website? Discussion econ is a hard subject, and I think one of the reasons we have so little of it is that we have to start over and over again when the thread dies. (Also, I am very busy this week and shouldn't even be here right now).

Perhaps we could take this to bunkerchan or /marx/?

Well, here are my some of my views on Jehu then.

I agree that his empirical analysis his dodgy as since he uses the inflation of the dollar in respect to gold prices 50 years ago to support his argument that most labor could be safely abolished.

However, I still think that using that approach to determine what productive and unproductive labors are might still be useful. But as you said, we have to refine that idea to include the modern money commodity, even though everyone says we dont have one.

Also, he does tend to cite that one passage from "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." I would be interested to know if you consider it an argument well supported both by Marx and by empirical observation.

Proofs.

Oh shit, I just realized I mentioned Jehu and unproductive labor without mentioning Postone. Since Jehu's argument is mostly Postone's, what do you think about him and his book "Time, Labor and Social Domination?"

That's just a joke lmao. Alan Greenspan would constantly say shit about the declining rate of profit, and other things Marxists talk about all the time. I'm well aware that he's a porky.

I haven't read it. I'm still working my way through orthodox Marxist theory, like Luxemburg, Kautsky, Grossman and the like.

Also I didn't mean we should have analysis in this thread specifically ( though if we start something a thread on Bunkerchan I'd be interested). It was more a general comment that "we need analysis". Showing price correlations with time doesn't vindicate the labour theory of value, the law of value is much more than that.

I'm not sure. Marx does seem to talk about the formation of the national capitalist as being a tendency of centralization in volume 1. I don't think Jehu's "the state expropriates the expropriators" is well supported by Marx, that seems like a misinterpretation of his rhetoric (Marx is very obviously referring to workers there).

So my answer for that one is that I don't think Jehu is wrong, but I'm unconvinced that is what is happening at the moment. Tbh, I think the breakdown on exchange value Marx talks about (as well as the State forcibly taking over production) refers more to a situation when labour "ends as we know it", and not what I originally thought had already occurred in the OP.

Yeah I meant you. I feel you are more well versed in Marxian economics than I am, or economics in general since I study them in my own time.

This is an interesting theory of money. I'd like you to expand on it later, and if you can, provide a summary of the arguments made in that book + a summary of the evidence they provide.

I think Jehu's argument about "abolishing labour" requires a recourse to unproductive vs productive labour which he doesn't do too often. Most of the high paying jobs in the service industry are unproductive labour. But Ernest Mandel makes the point in his introduction to Volume 2 that certain services can become productive industries if they become a necessary aspect of the realization of value (the one he listed was selling food at a restaurant, if by this he meant low paying service jobs that involve selling goods then most of the low paying service jobs are productive, and this paints a very different picture than if they were paid out of revenue). I'm also not completely convinced by his argument that labour that does not produce a commodity (like, the service of a doctor or personal trainer) is unproductive and would like to get someone else's thoughts on that (Cloverfriend?).

Kliman made that same joke in his reply to the "Capital as Power" authors, but I wasn't aware it was a Marxist meme.

I should also mention I prefer the "oil theory of money" to the ones I've heard offered up by Klimanites (the market serves as the intermediary between gold and fiat. This is such nonsense, the market isn't serving as the intermediary between gold and fiat than it is between toilet paper and fiat)

another question to raise tomorrow: are computer programs commodities? Unproductive or productive labour?

If they are produced to be sold on a market, why not?

is economics hard to understand if you're retarded at math?
i wanna read Capital and other books but i'm afraid i wont understand anything. Are those companion books any help?

They are not material. The reproduction of them is productive of no value. Therefore, we must decipher is there is a real contradiction between the value producing part of the labour, and the reproduction of the commodity which cost no value. Or, the whole of the labour performed is unproductive and paid out of revenue (like intellectual property transfers, or land).

But then it's not just software, but everything digital (books, music, film), no?

They only use mathematics to legitimize economics as some kind of natural science instead of admitting that it has more in common with the occult. You can ignore the mathematics part, you won't miss anything.

Most software products also give you support and maintenance, sometimes they will even operate the hardware. Maybe that's something to consider too.

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this and those are some auspicious trips son

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tl;dr: value is NOT simply nor fundamentally socially necessary abstract labor time. Value is EVEN MORE FUNDAMENTAL than SNLT, it is the very thing which enables the relation of SNLT to come about at all as a further determination of value, but SNLT not as the ultimate determination of value.

Yes. All digital software.

This is where I get confused. One, I don't think those services are value producing. If you were to run a world with only those services, everyone would die for lack of food. These are services paid out with revenue, that may shorten the circulation of capital (be incentivizing final consumers) but it does not add value to the social product. For more clarity, I think what goods are luxury goods (and therefore consumed unproductively) needs to be defined.

However, software is often used when running a company, and is almost necessary is most cases. I still don't think the software itself is a product of value, even if you must periodically update the program and this forms part of the cost price, it would be paid out of surplus value and not generate it.

Capital doesn't use a lot of math beyond very basic algebra. Marx was trying to avoid turning his economics into mathematical models that aren't dynamic, and don't really measure anything.

Henryk Grossman who I posted in the OP has done work with maths, and the maths of Marx were expanded a lot after Capital, but not by him. You don't need to know calculus to get Capital.

If you defined value producing this way, then the production of computers, textbooks, televisions, and all sorts of labor intensive products are not value producing because everyone would also starve if we only concerned ourselves only with their production.

If you want to clarify what is productive and unproductive labor, you need to first say from what perspective you are coming from. From the perspective of a single capitalist producing gold plated toilets, gold plated toilets use labor productively if they are profitable.

But from the perspective of the worker, the production of the toilet may or may not have a use value to him ,and therefore may or may not have value.

There is no way to reconcile the subjective utility of all the possible use values for all the things in the world. Therefore, the discussion of productive vs unproductive labor must start with abstract value, value that is somehow purged of all of its useful characteristics.

As for software, this issue is not new by any means. The information revolution posed this old question in a radical form, but at the end of the day we are still trying to separate the design of a machine from the raw materials it is made of.

Like assembly lines, algorithms enable larger quantities of labor, be it in living or commodity forms to be expended in production. For example, it would be impossible to run a modern drug lab without various fancy spectrometers and the fancy mathematics that transform their data.That is, the software's value lies in its ability to allow a greater quantity of labor to be expended in production (and subsequently allow a greater quantity of surplus value to be realized) than otherwise possible. The value of the design of the machine would therefore be proportional to the efficiency gains it contributes to production minus the cost of assembling it. For software it is (almost) pure efficiency so it is almost pure profit.

I should be more clear: I do not believe services like those are productive because they are not necessary to the production of the commodity, and the work of the doctor produces no commodity. Labour time is bought, but nothing is produced. My example was dumb.

These are luxury items, which if we are using Marx's theory are not consumed productively.

Completely agree.

I think this is a different discussion than I was having. We agree with each other except on one point: I do not believe the software is productive of any value because the software is not producing anything. What is being used as constant capital, is the computer which I agree is used productively and forms a part of the value of the commodity. The computer program on the other hand, cost nothing to reproduce. The Capitalist sets up an artificial barrier to obtaining that computer program with intellectual property rights, which are not necessary for using the program and the production of the commodity, but its Capitalist form. Not its social form, (not due to a degree of development in the productive forces or the division of labour), but its strictly Capitalist form.

Since the computer program is immaterial and holds no value, it stands to reason that the cost of the program (and subseqeunt updates) are paid for by surplus value "injected" out of the sphere of circulation for future use (much like that is done for MOP when they become antiquated, only in this case no value is compensated for directly. It could compensate it indirectly by drastically increasing efficiency).

I should also note: when I say "not necessary" I do not mean "is not socially necessary" but there is a qualitative distinction between the labour required to produce the computer (this must involve shipping parts from different ares of the world, assemblage of raw materials) and the distribution of the program (which requires the amount of human labour it takes to press a button and start up a server).

The need of the computer program would exist in a post-Capitalist society. The need of intellectually property rights would not.

Now: whether the work of the programmer runs into a contradiction with the method of reproduction is what I'd like to discuss, and unsure of. Since his product is immaterial, it could be said he provides a service and no commodity. BUT some services are productive insofar as they are necessary to the production of a commodity, so that is where this debate is headed. I am unsure.

So from what I gather, the problem of software is that it is infinitely reproducable. It takes as much labour to make a piece of software to one person as it does to one million people. However, it is commodified as if it was a physical product that requires labour.
I once read an argument somewhere that intellectual property can be considered a form of rentierism. The developer makes an initial investment (of labour or money) to develop the software, and then charges people for its use at no further cost to the developer. In that way, it is not so different from someone building an apartment block and renting out rooms.

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You can make the case that is similar to rent, but we also know from Marx's theory that rent is not generating value. Therefore, this would be unproductive labour.

That's also not to say IP rights can't shift the distribution of profits with physical commodities, but immaterial services (programming, clerical, etc) are non-productive.

I think a distinction has to be made between intellectual property and the actual software. The software can be considered a part of the means of production, in that it enhances or enables the production of certain goods and services (as well as automating parts of the production). I would say that the development of the software could be considered productive labour, in the same way as the production of a conveyor belt, though the software is special in that regard in that it is infinitely reproducable, which means you only have to make the software once.
However, I agree that the commodification of software through IP does not generate value, and in fact restricts it, as it limits its distribution.
BTW, different poster from the one you're replying to in

Where can i have the best collection of Kalecki works and theory?
For free ofc i am a PDFcuck..

Hmm. I agree certain types of software are more or less requisite for production now, and therefore socially necessary. But can we both agree that the actual reproduction of the software (like after it's been put together) is not governed by labour values in the long term? This is essentially what the law of value is claiming, so the fact prices don't behave like this because they can't must mean that:
a. the labour is productive when its employed by a capitalist, but the method of distributing the commodity takes no value whatsoever. This would be an example of the falling rate of profit in those industries which would quickly hit 0 without IP rights.
2. The other user is right and it's more like rent.

Also, if we assume service employees for a software company are productive (I would argue not because no one has to actually pay to use their services, they aren't working against Capital) that still would be a service unrelated to the actual software produced.

Heyo youknow a thing about Freud and Lacan dont you.
What book should i start to get into Freud his 2 forms of Psychic apparatus? Also what should i read from Freud to know Lacan the best?

monopolist firm owner/s have full control enforced by firm's armed forces

I'd like for you to explain both the simple and extended reproduction

So these are one firm per industry? Like one popcorn producer, etc?

While the production of surplus value is required no matter what type of market you're using (as I pointed out earlier in the thread), the reinvestment of that surplus value into production is not. This would be called simple reproduction, the workers and firm simply reproduce themselves. Expanded reproduction, is production on a progressively increasing scale. To put this in perspective:

Simple reproduction formula between two departments: IV +IS = IIC
Expanded reproduction (where a = surplus value accumulated in reserve funds, c in variable capital, and b in constant capital)
IV + IA +Ic = IIC + IIB

In this case, IV + IA is = to IIC, but there is greater production of surplus value so that Ic is = to IIB)

I am by no means a Lacanian, the only books by Lacan i have read are

-The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge
-Introducing Lacan by Darian leader . judy groves

And i have never read anything by Freud, but here this intro is soooo good it will make your lacanian path much easier.

SAGE for not being economics talk.

one firm per all industries

yes, go with simple

So what are the general gaps in Marxist economics? The only one I knew of was the 'Transformation Problem' but that has an answer.

tendency for profit rate to fall, economic calculation problem

both have various "solutions" which are usually word games, utopic visions (like computer allocation of resources) or these solutions have themselves been debunked

No. The transformation problem has been addressed many, many times.

For one: Engels explains the "transformation of labour values into prices of production" as being a historical process that must be explained outside of maths. This is why he repudiated some of those who attempted to answer his invite to solving it with strict maths.

When there is a high rate of profit in an industry, capital moves to that industry. It overfloods the market creating a surplus, and the market price of that commodity falls from X to X-y. This new market price forms the basis for the cost price of the new commodity when its used as an input of production, and the cycle continues on.

As Marx says in Volume 3:

“As for the variable capital, the average daily wage is indeed always equal to the value produced in the number of hours the labourer must work to produce the necessities of life. But this number of hours is in its turn obscured by the deviation of the prices of production of the necessities of life from their values. However, this always resolves itself to one commodity receiving too little of the surplus-value while another receives too much, so that the deviations from the value which are embodied in the prices of production compensate one another. Under capitalist production, the general law acts as the prevailing tendency only in a very complicated and approximate manner, as a never ascertainable average of ceaseless fluctuations.”

The "problem" comes from the fact that gold rate of profit has to be "adjusted" to hold all equalities. This is a misunderstanding of what the average rate of profit it.

Again:
"What competition, first in a single sphere, achieves is a single market-value and market-price derived from the various individual values of commodities. And it is competition of capitals in different spheres, which first brings out the price of production equalizing the rates of profit in the different spheres. The latter process requires a higher development of capitalist production than the previous one.”

In other words, the rate of profit is not something "real" enjoyed by all spheres, it's a function of capital moving around through different spheres in search of a higher rate of profit. Capital overproduces, prices fall and capital moves on to the sphere with the next highest rate of profit. It's a continuous cycle, but does not interfere with the fact commodity producers are expected to produce certain commodities in a certain time (average productivity), and that the resources they consume are subject to these same social laws (this creates SNLT). The SNLT and laws that follow form the axis which the movement of Capital revolves around, obscuring the law of value, but never escaping it.

Not just market prices are modified when capital lowers the price of a good, but the whole structure of the market. Even if Marxist were to provide a mathematical fix (which has been done, many times over using many different interpretations), it would not do justice to Marx's mission which was to outline the most general tendencies of the movement of capital. The booms and the bust. We would be working with a limited number of variables, and modeling nothing.

And as Anwar Shakih has pointed out, there is no uncontroversial way to settle something like "the law of value". Marxian economics are held to a standard that no other school is held too, constantly being asked to justify fundamental axioms. Even Karl Popper would concede this is ridiculous.

Regarding the ECP, we had a thread about it recently. If you would like to attack my "word games" I welcome you to read my arguments and address them here. I also don't think you know what utopian means.

I will get to this later.

This is literally Oskar Lange's model. You should read up on it, because I'm not familiar enough with it to make a critique if need be.

bump for cloverfriend

It could have happened if the Soviet cyberneticians had had their way.

With computing being much more advanced now, I imagine that a "decentralized planned economy" would be a hallmark of a new socialist regime.

bump

Is it as much of a slog as it seems?

At the moment I essentially consider myself a vengeful Keynesian. I started as a Social-Democrat, but I've now come over to the view that restoring Britain's Postwar-Consensus is impossible, while in turn lacking any sort of revolutionary faith for any proper socialist ideology.

Now all I want is to see the system built by those who followed Friedman, Hayek, Rand (wtf Americans really?) and so on destroyed.

Since I'm more politician or historian than economist, all I can say is that while Keynesian analysis may not have fully encompassed the economy, I'm fully drawn to the policy goals of full employment, infrastructure investment and restricted capital flows.

Post-1980s Keynesianism seems too apologist for the present way of doing things instead of fighting for the change necessary, though that's more perception than in-depth reading. (All I know is: We've not turned the clock back yet.)

From what I understand, American Keynesianism is a bastardization of British Keynesianism. Sraffa protested against the IS/LM.

Also I don't think it's fair to compare Friedman to Hayek. Friedman was relevant and said some interesting stuff about monetary policy. Hayek got into a fight with Keynes, was kicked out of Cambridge, and then wrote a book about how bad the welfare state is for neckbeards.

It was less a comparison and more just a list of names. There's almost certainly more than Friedman - I just can't name them because he's the most famous example.

While he may have contributed interesting economic analysis, he also contributed to (or at least is credited with it, by those who view it a dream-world.) the present market-fundamentalist nightmare. For that I'm inclined to discard him on the whole as a bastard, even if he was a bastard with a few good ideas.

Hayek is similar - he may have been useless as an economist, but he was taken seriously. So seriously in-fact that "the most influential think-tank in British history" was founded because someone read his book and asked him what to do - Hayek's advice was to avoid going into politics, but to start a "scholarly institute" masquerading as neutral while actually teaching market-ideology.

I suppose I should tag on that with my surface-level understanding, Michal Kalecki seems quite interesting. His prediction of why Keynesianism would fail seems to have had some prescience. As Wikipedia simplifies:
"Kalecki believed that the full employment delivered by Keynesian policy would eventually lead to a more assertive working class and weakening of the social position of business leaders, causing the elite to react to the erosion of their political power and force a displacement of that policy, in spite of profits being higher than under a laissez-faire system."

I think the problem with abandoning labour theory is that a lot of your arguments for socialism become either moralistic or idealistic, like Kalecki's there.

what cyberneticians?
Glushkov? Kitov?
they both shilled for a centralized plan

decentralization intiative was coming form MESI
and their idea of decentralized planning was essentially to let enterprises decide what to produce based on the profit motive, with Gosplan only spamming recommendations

sounds familiar?

Oh huh, me and my friends used to joke about that crap back in high school economics class because it sounded so silly to us. Good to know we were on to something despite knowing fuck all about anything.

Say's law is not that silly if not for the delayed demand and information asymmetry

"Says Law" is only stupid because Say says (hehe) that it's a law. Money is never neutral because of the inherent character of Capitalist production (the production of more value, more money Capital). It can have a liquidity preference of "0" but it is never, ever neutral.

Someone should tell the Austrians and New-Classical economist, because they've based entire, and complex theories around it.

Kitov's And Glushkov's contribution would be the physical backbone, i.e. the information network itself. The "decentralized plan" itself was mostly a proposal of mathematicians and economists, the most notorious being Kantorovich.

y'all motherfuckers need some MMT

That's the one that says that deficits are fine and that taxes control inflation, right?

If so: I like it.

correct

Can someone explain a workers council planned economy?

he was a marginalist
his objectively determined evaluations were based on the theory of marginal productivity

that's why he and Fedorenko and the MESI in general had constant clashes with economists who advocated LTV
Boyarsky even calculated investment plan on the basis of ODE and proved that it can lead to worse results in natural terms than standard method

Go to the council communist page on wikipedia.

yea, if you issue world's reserve currency

kek, so the answer to stagflation should've been to increase income taxes?

Or if you've got capital controls in place, something we never should have removed…
Stagflation was caused by the oil shock. The solution is to wait for oil prices to go back down or people move to oil-alternatives.

I would hypothesize off-the-cuff that since the quantity of oil didn't change (only the price) people lagged behind in transitioning away from oil on the knowledge that they'd get away with it.

wait, are you suggesting that if the government defaults, capital controls gonna save the day?

I don't know what I expected really

but of course you can wait until everyone dies and economy arrives at the state of perfect equilibrium of nonexistence

Transformation Problem
Leftist's BTFO

Pray tell, how does one default on debt denominated in a currency which they can't run out of?

we were talking about capital controls and not the structure of debt

Capital controls ensure your domestic rich have their wealth denominated in your currency.
You can pay off the debts by creating more money, then liquidate any excess inflation by taxing the wealthy.

(Which is actually a bit of a strawman of MMT if I understand, since strictly speaking your deficits would be financed by printing instead of borrowing - at least until you hit the inflation target. If you want 2% inflation and you're consistently getting less, as the UK does, it's a win-win.)

please elaborate

"Decentralized planning" doesn't make sense. Where did Kantorovich propose decentralized planning? IIRC the difference between how linear optimizing was presented in East and West was that the usual examples in the West were about maximizing profit, whereas in the east the usual examples were about producing the highest amount of a basket of things.

This is simply a short-run concept and not in some fundamental conflict with labor-value long-term planning.

You clearly are much more up to par with the actors than I am. Do you have some suggested reading?

"Decentralized planning" is just our pet name/meme. He proposed iterative calculations in order to optimize production based on the inputs and outputs of the various economic agents. If implemented in real-time, such as in one of Kitov's/Glushkov's networks, it could have had immense potential in allocating resources and setting prices, areas that were the source of many woes of the economic plan.

How do workers councils work?

I'm not a council communist, so I don't know.

boffyblog.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-transformation-problem-once-more.html
boffyblog.blogspot.ca/2013/02/price-of-production.html

Literally is a non-issue

What sort of communist are you? State socialist?

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youtube.com/watch?v=2W79tD1FpyM

youtube.com/watch?v=2W79tD1FpyM

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Sort of. I'm interested in "decentralized planning" and more negotiation between workers councils than issues being sent directly to a central authority, but I think a central authority is necessary to settle negotiations by setting deadlines for when parties must come to an agreement.

I also support a vanguard.

I need to read more literature on the debates among soviet economist.

So you support coops that take orders from the state?

If by cooperative you mean one that competes on the market then no. If you mean a worker council then yeah.

Yeah. No market. But there should still be workplace democracy.

What is post Keynesian economics?
What is Socialism with a human face?

A meme.

Read this pdf.

From what little I have read, it was basically proto-Glasnot/Perestroika.

Do you know how a council communist country would operate?

Nope.