/econ genera/

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Can you marxpill me on the transformation problem and responses to Böhm von Bawerk

Can anyone tell me if MMT is wrong, and if so, where is the error in it? Seems pretty based, if you're not state-phobic.

I never learned math. I can do basic stuff, addition, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, but more advanced stuff is beyond me. It sucks because I feel like I can understand economics and the theory behind it but as far as demonstrating it or explaining it mathematically I'm hopeless.

What are some of the most commen strawmen regarding the LTV, and what are they wrong about?

Economics of Feasible Socialism by Alev Nove

What modern economist are worth following? Obviously we have papa Wolff, but I've also heard some thinges about Steve Keen. Anyone else worth reading ?

'Mud pies' is a common one

The term Marx used iirc was 'socially necessary labor time,' how much time it takes to produce a commodity for trade being a central component in accessing that item's value, and then there are several types of value. Trade value, use value. Commonly it's just interpreted as 'hurr more time equal more expensive,' which is a gross oversimplification.

There's a blog called thenextrecession that gets linked pretty often that seems really good.

See kapitalism101.wordpress.com/what-transformation-problem/>>1351371

You don't need maths for economics.

See kapitalism101.wordpress.com/what-transformation-problem/

Same here. I just can't process this information. It makes me feel like a fucking idiot because leftism has such a heavy economic focus.

How's Wolff worth following? The system he proposes is just a version of capitalism where the workers collectively exploit themselves, no?

Yes you exploit yourself by doing things and working for yourself
This is totally a logical idea and it is no flawed in any way

You should stop breathing because you are exploiting your lungs by doing so

But why you have to be so rude every fucking time?

Its the alienation frommexploiting myself, I am so sorry, the other day with a friendmI picked two apples and he picked two pears, we exchanged one between eachther and omg, it was worse than what slaves had to go through!!

Leftcoms are central planners are right, a voluntary exchange of commodities is so exploitative!!

Marx and Rosa Luxemburg already explained why worker coops don't solve the issue over a century ago. Maintaining the current economic mode of production but changing the leadership of the businesses merely involves shifting servitude from a capitalist who pursues the interest of capital to pursuing the interest of capital yourself. They'd still have you working in a market economy for the purpose of capital accumulation and reproduction. Sure, you might treat yourself better than a capitalist would, but you're still producing for consumption and profit, and competing against other coops to do this best, instead of simply producing for use and need. You haven't transcended the ideology of cancerous growth and destruction of the world which fuels capitalism, merely taken it upon yourself to advance down this road collectively.
Furthermore, even that is pretty much a utopian delusion, as realistically you're forced to compete against private capitalists with your coop, in which case the workers have a choice between exploiting themselves just as hard as the capitalist would to match their prices, or treating themselves decently and getting outcompeted.
Market 'Socialists' basically admit that they wish to reestablish a variation of capitalism right after the revolution. I don't see why this nonsense should be tolerated here any more than outright liberalism.

I am a market anarchist, not a market spcialist actually

Please do explain how central planning accomplishes the total abolition of production for exchange with utopian dreams of full automation or primitive self-prodiction, evey tims I present the argument to planningcucks they just evade the question

Without utopian dreams*

Eat shit porky.

The flag is ironc btw, an-nihilism didnt gave me yous anymore

They really did:

The question of whether market "socialism" could be called socialism or not has since been a non-subject: all it is is a democratic reform of capital. It is then also no wonder that nobody gives a shit about these meme ideas any more.

No. I'm a communist; I don't want to replace a caste of bourgeoisie's ownership of capital with that of a singular bureaucratic elite. I want this just as little as I want to replace it with a democratic entourage.

Ok, how does your version of communism does away with production for exchange without utopian dreams of full automation and primitive self production?

I don't have a version of communism. There are no "versions" of communism; communism is that movement which is for the abolition of value production and commodified labor.

Scientific socialist theory.

Communism but not primitive and with industry and agriculture.

I'm not very good at maths

I get the political, historical and social aspects fine. But the economics, nah.

I'll leave the planning to someone else.

One "person" (society) owns everything. Therefore this "person" cannot exchange what it owns with anybody, nor does it need to.

...

I've watched a few of his videos where he brings up points which are critical of markets. Stuff like mentioning how Plato and Aristotle hated markets and how they haven't been around forever and the like. He doesn't outright say that he dislikes them but part of me thinks that advocating for worker co-ops is meant mostly to demonstrate that horizontal production structure is possible.
I mean, how many times have you been talking to a liberal and they've brought up the point that
There's a lot of people who have never even imagined that something else but capitalism really ever existed. Showing them that something else is possible, even if its a market socialist kind of set up, which would never really work out is at least a start.

Wow, you are fucking retqrded arent you?

Illegalism and counter economics are a different field of action than cooperatives

Please try to learn better theory by reading books that are not marxist circlejerking

I mean most of your kind are stupid but this is just another level, how could you be so stupid to think workers coops and illegalism are the same?

You do understand that makes no sense right?

What don't you understand, tell me.

...

Lel

Just because society as a whole has ownership doesnt mean it has possession of it

Society owns the fields, doesnt mean society is making use of determined piece of land

what's it like being an autistic capitalist cuck?

thats some pure strain autism there famalan

Not sure executing someone counts as saving them.

Yes, instead stablished a totalitarian regime that was just as oppressive

It even collapsed on itself too

Congratulations tho

Fine, if you want, but then here it was obviously what I meant: in communism, society has possession of everything. Therefore, no trade.

Happy now?

Fucking kek, I hope you're trolling. There's literally no way you can be this retarded in reality.

The thing is, while I might posses the tools someone makes use of I might not posses the skills to do the same

I might collectively own the hospital, we could make possession of it aswell, but that doesnt mean we can develop as surgeons

My initial claim was , howmdo you abolish exchange, and what you are talking about clearly does not abolish it

I willm exchange my labour, me being an english teacher, and contribute to the collectibely owned pool of goods and services, but i would need to cotribute certain amount so that the surgeon can also have his needs and wants met, I couldnt contribute less, otherwise I would be leeching off the labour of the collective

This means my labour has an exchange value, and this system does not eliminate exchange form

How could anyone be this retarded??

It "collapsed" years later after a World War and reforms that made it virtually unidenticale to when Lenin came over.

Exploitation is not some loaded moral problem, it's described as the rate of unpaid/paid labor. You can "exploit" yourself in Capitalism if you are engaged in Capitalist commodity production (an example would be a cooperative). Exploitation is a specific social relationship, the polarity of capital and wage labourers is a requisite.

I understand that, however my point is that planned economies do not do away with this exploitation

ditto

ditto

Lolz

Property is theft

They do because exploitation in w capitalist context is qualitatively different from socialism. Capital is a "self expansion of value".

If you argue in favor of capitalism, you're probably a capitalist.

How do you make prices in a centrally planned system?

It's the anarcho-nihilist mutualism fag, I enjoy his shitposting at pol but he fundamentally disagrees with Marx's concept of capital. If he does, none of these arguments will work.

I reccomend he checks out page 184 of the Penguin addition of Volume 2. Some nuggets of wisdom about how circulation is just as much a part of capital as production.

This self expansion of value must come from an economic necessity, to mantain the system afloat, not because of a desire, otherwise you aremadvocating for the philosophy of poverty

If we understand that it comes from the necessity of the reproduction of capital and the reprodiction of the productive forces,mworkers, as Althusser pointed out, then a system that voluntarily seeks growth is notncapitalism, as it does not need this expansion

The opposite is true, if a system needs constant growth, it must be capital, and planned production needs constant growth

I've already reiterated my thoughts that I think market socialism fails to meet all the criteria you listed. I'll respond later and try and be comprehensive, but I'm on my phone right now and don't feel like typing out a long critique.

Well, you advocate for capitalism. Capitalism with a human and more democratic face, but it's capitalism. Not strange to call you a cappie.

"We" being the entire society, it certainly means we can develop as surgeons. Who do you think society as a whole could trade with? Martians?

The indisputable ones. Formulas that always hold true.

You don't. You don't need prices.

That spiral also exist on planned production, SNLT does not disappear under it

Just look at the Soviet Union; money- and commodity-based society with wage labor, except the various capitalists independently allocating labor time to compete on the market are replaced with various state-level planning officers that perform the exact same task as the capitalists, but tendentially more inclined to do what the state line dictates they do. The dichotomy of planning-markets is a false one; the difference between central planning and conventional capitalism is that the former is a state-centralized version of the latter.

We're already told you a billion times that planning-market dichotomy is a false one. The socialist mode of production is not just a variation of which positions are occupied how in the process of production for exchange; we are in capitalism whether we have a traditional capitalist doing it, just like we are in capitalism when we have a democratic cadre doing it, or a state planning officer. What matters is the capital recreating itself as automatic subject in accumulation:

This is like that time you were literally incapable of understanding the difference between use and exchange value. Your stupidity or disingenuous beating around the bush of this doesn't alter reality.

What??????

Also i understood the difference between use and exchange since I first read marx, the problem is none of the alternatives do away with production for exchange

Are you the piratefag who, 4 months ago, saw "exchanges" everywhere already, because he didn't understand the meaning of the word?

There should be gulag for teaching mathematics

...

That's what I thought. Open a dictionary. Then go to bed, you have school tomorrow.

By refusing to identify how production for exchange can manifest itself even in the most perfectly planned economy you are only stopping yoirself from advancing in the field of theory, I simcerly care no more

Yes, and he unironically uses bob-a-jobing in his examples against law of value discertations. The guy is legitimately a little off.

It's evident you don't, or that you've even read much Marx for that matter.

The beauty in seeing you jumping flag to flag because people every time realize you're the same retard is not just that people already know who you are every time just by how iconic and stubborn your autism is, but that you're eventually going to run out of fancy labels to get more (You)s with altogether. It should be a sign that if you're already this far down, you might have some legitimate attention or comprehensive problems. Please have yourself checked.

How could you be this dishonest with yourself? Just because the idea of centrally planning the economy calms your anxiety dosnt mean it really does eliminate production for exchange

I dont care about being "called out" otherwise I would post anonymously

We've told you before; central planning is the exact same as traditional capitalist firms or cooperative firms: capitalism, which is what happens when all you do is alter economic relations without a fundamental change in production.

You're operating exactly like when it comes to you and exchange vs. use: you hit the inconvenient cop-out you can no longer use when you realize you're not talking to a Stalinist who merely wants capitalism centralized. You're fundamentally incapable of going any further at this point with anything honest. Very tragic.

And I don't care about calling you out either; I care about you going after your well-being. You have problems.

Usually when some autist goes "economics is pseudoscience" what he means to say that economics is unfalsifiable (which is true, the idea economist should make predictions is a recent one). Part of the reason a theory is hard to "falsify" is because economic data is ambiguous and at the same time data can support all theories or none. Especially since theories diverge on how to measure data. So in that sense, economics can't operate on the same laws that other sciences can operate on. A theories explanatory power is more relevant than its predictive power.

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Technically, all theory are unfalsifiable, since you can either prove it, or fail to prove it. Failing to prove something doesn't disprove it.

Is there any way to get a proper encompassing view of economics?
I want to get into it, but I don't really know what I want out of it. On the one hand, I want a legitimate understanding of "reality", but on the other hand I'm worried that if I dig too deep I might learn that a lot of people I hate were actually completely right.

But then it seems like a lot of economics basically "isn't" a full analysis anyway, just some structure which is then used to make analysis of specific cases, but since I don't really have an end case and just want background to various political/historical ideas that makes it quite hard to work out what I'm doing.

But I have a little knowledge (a dangerous thing) which is that the 1950-1971 period was nicer than the 1980-now period on a bunch of measurements, which makes Keynesian schools tempting, but at the same time that leads down a more heterodox route the more I justify pandering to ideas I like and since I still don't have an end-use case beyond "as background to my politics" things get very confusing very fast. (Particularly, I suppose, because it may come up that I want - say - a post-Keynesian solution to a problem because it's nice, but have to understand/explain how the government is trying a New-Keynesian one, and what they think will happen.)

Which creates the illusion I have half a clue what I'm talking about, when really as I say, it's mostly history extrapolated from the axiom that Keynes gave us a less ugly version of capitalism that collapsed because we didn't listen to him and create the bancor.

I suppose the natural finishing question (didn't we start with a question?) is "So what do I do to get into this", I've thought about just firing ahead and reading a book but I've a feeling that (like the last time) I'll probably wind up not really taking any of it in. Economics seems to be one of those things that has trouble slowly going up the gears and explaining itself in a paced way.

Apologies if this disjointed post is shitty, I'm very sleepy and not entirely sure what the idea I had when I set out was.

Don't read economic theory then. Theory in a vacuum, the whole lot of it. The only difference is how close to the real world it is.

On their own, every school of economics is right. Even the Austrian one. In reality, not even Keynesianism fully accounts for the real world.

Everybody knows that economics is a half-social science. And they all miss that the social part is realpolitik. Corruption, war, political pressures, hostile forces.

I don't think philosophy of science is that rigid fam.

bump

bump

youtube.com/watch?v=rPMoESXe4x8

Bumping with this great lecture by Anwar Shaikh.

Bumping for cloverposter.

youtube.com/watch?v=9oXEgH4HzYk
youtube.com/watch?v=x7RjbEq_yxU
ok faglors, there is something weird here, I was re-reading Marx on the falling rate of profit and don't understand the following

i will quote our guy on certain aspects of what i understand is the SNLT

ok here we reach the first problem, does this mean the more time it takes to manufacture THE SAME commodity, it has more value? Now before we go into supply and demand, if we understand there is a difference between value and exchange value, then which value term is he talking about?

if he is talking about exchange value, then how come he did mention labour-value at the beginning?

second problem

ok, but if there is no increase in value (I assume he is now about exchange value, as he did mention supply and demand after my first conflict with this video) how come capitalism increase the exchange value? if everytime they create more commodities, there isn't an actualñ increase, since the exchange value of each commodity decreases?

he does this again at
ok, then capitalists are not actually increasing exchange value? doesn't the value composition of each commodity lowers?

now, when he starts talking about widgets

ok, but again, there is no increase in value (exchange value) as an increase in productivity does not increase value, your competition would be forced to sell their widgets at a lower price, (unless there is an increase in demand, lets assume there isn't one) meaning that their rate of profit would lower to a similar level than yours

How could it not, otherwise where did this value in money form came from? It couldn't come from the increase in productivity, as in the beginning of the video he talks that this doesn't crate value

I will adress my second point later on

fuck me m8

Bump

Value. Comparing two commodities, the longer the production process for one, the more concrete labour is expended than in the other.

No, it the commodities value is = to its social average. You can think of this in terms of average productivity (including the average productivity of the value used up in the production of the commodity).

Labour value is exchange value, it's how two commodities relate to each other - how they express themselves in each other. Or with fiat money, in a token of value.

He means surplus value is produced by the worker since labour generates value and there is a qualitative difference between the social wealth that must be consumed by the worker to reproduce itself, and the social wealth he can produce. The latter is much smaller than the former almost always.

An increase in productivity decreases value. The run in an inverse relationship.

The reason the rate of profit falls is because in order to compete with each other, Capitalist try to develop their individual productive forces. This may raise their individual profit temporarily, but when this is adopted to the whole industry the rate of profit will fall due to an increased productivity. This is because dead labour (constant capital) can not generate value - it can only "transfer" the social average amount of value that it depreciates through the production of a commodity. On the other hand, living labour generates value. The relationship between the constant and variable capital employed is called the organic composition of capital. In industries with a high constant capital/ low variable capital composition, the profit will be lower. The inverse is true for the opposite. As the organic composition of capital increases absolutely but relatively becomes disproportionately constant under fewer and fewer firms (due to centralization), the rate of profit will exhibit a tendency to fall.

But lets compare just one type of commodity, cigars, if it takes me less to produce cigars, and this leads to lower value, then we are discussing exchange value, meaning the labourer creates exchange value

However if this is true, then increasing the SNLT would lead to more value

Meaning he is strictly talking about supply and demand

No, he means that the value is determined by the socially average expenditure of labour needed to produce it. Increasing SNLT would lead to more value, but only if this became a social average. This does not apply to individual capitals. If we assume prices = values and you spend more time than necessary to produce your commodity, you're shit out of luck and won't be able to realize that labour.

Wait a second, if value is fixed to its social average, that means its SNLT, then we are talking about its exchange value and this means that decreasing the SNLT lowers the value of an item, but if this is the case then increasing it would increase its value

This is correct right?

youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk&list=PL0A7FFF28B99C1303

Yes and no. SNLT is the value of a commodity, an exchange value only exist through the act of exchange. But yeah, SNLT is exchange value and when analyzing Capitalism it only makes sense to talk about SNLT in terms of exchange value as commodities that are either related to unproductive consumption, or lack a use value for a buyer are (in Marx's eyes) not even worthy of being called a commodity.

Sorry, unproductive labour/consumption can be a commodity but it does not "generate" new value. That last part I typed was really wrong.

Sure, as I was saying, /ourguy/ himself quotes this, the act of exchange is what dictates the exchange value of it, bedore being compared, it didnt have an exchange value

The problem here is the following, he claims that only labour can create vale (exchange value) this would mean that if I increase the SNLT of a commodity, I increase value, but this is wrong, as exchange value is dictated by supply and demand, as you also confirmed, as exchange value ONLY exist after the exchange, not before, during the productive process

No, exchange value is distinct from price. In Volumes 1 and 2, Marx assumed exchange value = price to elucidate the general laws of Capitalism. Price is dictated by supply and demand, and the exchange value of a commodity (it's trajectory) determines the long term behaviour of prices but not the short term necessarily. That means if we see a long term drop in the ROP, it's most likely due to what Marx claims. There are countervailing tendencies that can bring it back up though, Marx list several of them.

What you say has some similarity to the mudpie argument. Starting to act stupid when producing something, so you produce it slower, while there is still plenty of competition in the production of that thing and they continue to produce in the way they have done before you spazzing out, does not change what the labor time is that is socially necessary for producing it.

But price is exchange value represented in money form

Lets go to the basic again, what kind of value is created by the workers, what I understood is that workers create exchange value, as exchange value is labour value beingncompared in a market, am I in the wrong here?

Fug forgot To change my flag

If it does I am sorry, I understand why the mudpie is wrong, as labour value must be of social value

But what if everyone does?

If we assume prices = value then yes. Price is distinct from value, SNLT is exchange value. You can put a price on anything. I could put a price on a piece of land but no labour went into producing it. In this case, it makes no sense to talk about exchange value in terms of labour (which is what the substance of value is). Similarly, there are a number of factors that can distort the value of the commodity in the price form. If we wanted to get down to it, the "exchange value" is the equilibrium price. If it were sold at this price, the whole value would be realized and expanded or simple reproduction can take place.

Well yeah, but Marx said in his critique of Gotha that not only labour creates value, but also the natural resources, the price of land is hight because of its organic composition

But back to my orginial point, if it takes me more time to manufacture a commodity, does this mean it has more value?

...

Natural resources are the basis for value, they create nothing. They exist and without them we can't sustain ourselves, and their scarcity may factor into the price they demand but it makes no sense to talk about them in terms of "value".

If this becomes a social average, then yes. The "value of commodities" is evaluated socially, in real time.

Yes I will watch them, but In total they are 24 hours of film

That's fantastic. You can marathon it and be done in a day.

Ok, but if after it, I still have the same doubt?

Read Capital 1 and 2.

No. It looks like you're confused from the poor explanation in the kapitalism101 videos about the idea of 'value'. It'll be less frustrating if you watch those lectures when you've got the time.

Then SNLT would change and be higher.

But then we would have less commodities right? Which means a lower supply which also means a higher demand meaning higher total value, as we have a higher price right? If this is true, then the assertion that capitalists seek to reproduce value by reducing the SNLT is a false, and I dont take this from kapitalism101 alone, Ive read and heard other marxists say so

If we understand that capitalists seek to increase value, then they couldnt do it by increasing production, the idea that capitalism reproduces value for the sake of reproducing value would b a false one, as value wouldnt not reproduce, because increqsing prodiction by reducing the SNLT doesnt really increase value

Also I am not saying cappies are or are not aware of this, rather that capitalism wouldnt be able to reproduce value

What is your native language user?

Spanish

What is optimal for a single capitalist is not the same as what would be optimal for capitalists as a group. That is, for an individual capitalist it makes sense to reduce the labor needed below what the amount is that producing a thing usually entails. This means more profit for him. This is temporary, and when this new method becomes the new standard method of producing the thing, the profit of the original innovator goes down again.

Absolutely agree with this, this is one of the basis of the falling rate of profit, however, is there an increase in labour-value in this? If there is one, then reducing the SNLT does not reduce indicidual values, if there isn't one, then capitalism as a whole would not be the economic system that seeks value expansion

However I think I ak forgetting the idea that the expansion of capital comes not only from the reproduction of labour itself, but from the reproduction of labourers, this means, a bigger amount of workers, as each worker would demand value

The reproduction of capital exists as the reproduction of life in this case

First of all, you put to work all the unemployed of the world. Then, you put all the unnecessary people to productive work (bureaucracy, banking, marketing workers mostly). You modernise the techniques in rural countries, and put those who are no longer required in agriculture to work. After that, you remove planned obsolescence, and implement near-99% rate of recycling/reusing. You remove the wasted resources in parallel R&D by removing competition. You stop producing 99% of the luxury for the wealthy elites (think yachts, extra large houses, golf clubs in the middle of the desert). You remove everything related to gambling. Then, you fully automate industry, which allows you to remove most small businesses. You fusion existing corporations to further reduce the wasted production.

My guess is 2h/day/adult if we are to maintain our current living standard, and maybe 3-4h/day/adult to get the L in FALC.

Are there any non Marxists far left economic theories?

I guess you could call Kalecki "far left" because he was a socialist. I don't know why you would reject Marx though.

Can robots produce value?

There are heterodox Marxian economic theorists, then the left wing market anarchists, as well as the radical Keynesians

←Pure dialectics of Capital, lads.

If you care, of course.

No.

What do you guys think of this book by David Graeber?

It's great, I'm not sure what else to say. You should read it, never watch dave graeber speak in public though.

Is Marxism/Socialism capable of creating a rich and industrialized society? I don't understand how the SU could be the 2nd largest economy by GDP and at the same time East Germany being poorer than West Germany.

And what about Cuba? I know there's a embargo on them, by is that the sole reason they never industrialized?

Is Marxism against a industrialized society?

I don't know too much about economics, I fear it'll be a though read. I'm planning to read soon.

It's not, it's a history book not an economics book. Any concepts mentioned are easily looked up and understood.

this

the pdf has this weird splitting on the left-hand side, makes it nearly unreadable. is it just me or how do I fix it

No idea. I just opened it and it's fine.

The Soviet Union never reached "socialism". Capital's hegemony was never weakened enough to even begin thinking about socialism. The fact we are talking about in terms of metrics of GDP, or rather "GNP" proves my point.

people want you here apparently

Why this happened? Was because capitalism still existed in other places? Or was an internal problema of the Soviet Union?
And even then, why there are people who disagree that the SU wasn't socialist, even left-wing people?

I'm still curious about how, according to Marxism, will be the economic reality of a socialist society.

Bump for good thread.

Alright nerds, I think where my critique to the SNLT was wrong, while i sort of understand how less labour being embodied in each commodity could reduce total value if we take the position of labojr value as axiomatic, there is still something that doesnt add up

The machines used to reduce the SNLT are, ultimately, dead labour

So while there is less living labour being embodied in a commodity, there is more dead labour in it, Marx does recognize this, but why does he ignore dead labour as a source of value? Why is labour no longer being able to create value, juwt because it was transformed into a machine?

...

Marx defines capital itself as dead labour; labour destined to be exchanged.

The Soviet government itself was counter to Marxism, and as time went on the ossification of the party prevented it from outgrowing what were intended to be temporary capitalist policies. For a time this worked as the party's power rested on an industrial society and providing enough material comforts to the proles to keep them happy and working, but once that was no longer true the government abandoned the pseudo socialist trappings and overtly assumed a neoliberal stance.

Over-accumulation of capital is the cause of a consumption crash, innit.

that's why the basic income and the cashless society agendas are being pushed so hard.

Well, if they balance the budget and relieve the top 1% of their obscene wealth, maybe capitalists will buy themselves another decade or so.

As expected from A.W.

The Soviet government and party did not survive the transition and the economic factor was largely something forced upon their leadership rather than some active conspiracy by a crypto-neoliberal nomenklatura. You make it sound like it was all intentional, which is laughable.

Another decade can be added if they manage to convice that poor people and imigrants are to blame.

No, they didn't survive the transition, but that doesn't mean they wasn't the intention.

Job done as far as that's concerned, tbh. I eagerly anticipate Yugoslav Wars II: Pan-European Boogaloo somewhere in the near future.

Does any one have an English PDF of Robert kurz "The Black Book of Capitalism: A farewell to the market economy"?

I'm getting flashbacks of "Rethinking Marxism" by RDW&Co.

Guillotine.

Labor theory of value?

Yes, but why is dead labour incapable of generating value?

A.W. please stay out of my econ threads.

Because dead labour value is always equal to the SNLT of the commodity it is embodied in. Living labour has no such constraints. It can generate value precisely because there is no value of living labour, whereas dead labour is equal to a specific value. There is a qualitative difference.

I honestly don't understand how many times this has to explained to you. Are you purposely plugging your eats and screaming "lalalala" whenever someone tries to explain Marx's theories to you?

I would also like this.

But thats simply not true, if someone grow watermelons and pays farmers for each watermelon instad of an hourly wage, the prices woul not be determined by the WNLT as the farmers would take as much time as they want harvesting and farming

Dead labour also isnt equal to the SNLT as there is dead labour that doesnt dictate the pace of work. Sure a shovel helps me dig a hole fqster, but thqt is only if I decide to dig faster

Is it fair to say that anyone who does not know enough to post in these threads is essentially a LARPer?

No. You don't understand Marx. There is no "WNLT"( what are you even saying). Marx goes over piece wage systems in Capital volume 1. He shows that regardless, the commodities value is equal to SNLT and that piece wage systems can actually incentivize workers to work harder as they are paid for each commodity they produce rather than by the hour.

I really don't know what to say. You just have absolutely no idea what you are saying. You are trying to critique Marx without reading him. Really, all I can say about your interpreation of his economics and how he built upon Ricardo is "not even wrong". It is just completely divorced from what Marx says and shows a profound misunderstanding of what Marx means by "socially necessary" and the value of "labour power" vs the non-existent value of labour. My advice for you to is to actually read Marx or try and work on your reading comprehension which is shockingly poor for an English teacher.

He doesn't. Whether you find his explanation satisfactory is another question. The Marxist explanation is that the value from the labour going into the production of a machine, a machine that is used in producing consumer goods, is transferred gradually into the gooods it helps producing over the life-time of the machine.

I read that in German. There are no models or anything in it. It was just
Truly a manic street preacher. In parts the writing reached COMPUTER GOD level. There were some particularly deranged words about capitalism being like frozen shit falling from an airplane and comparing something to phantom penis pain that made chuckle. If only I had memorized that word for word. The perfect line for heckling making an inquiry at a conferences of self-styled radical intellectuals, wearing a tie and a serious face. Oh well. Not economics by any stretch.

That's really the thing with that annil flag poster. Reality seems to not fit his conceptions of things, so every time Marxist analysis displays that it conflicts with his worldview of democratic capitalism being socialism he breaks down, plugs his ears and changes goalposts.

Ignore that, meant SNLT

But it doesnt force them to work harder

My question is if the piece wage system still proves the law of value correct or not

Also how is the second part difficult to understand? You have a shovel, which is dead labour, but the shovel doesnt dictate how fast you work, and in a piece wage system, neither does the market, as you get paid not by the time but by the labour itself

For example, lets say you get hired to dig a 1 cubic meter hole, and you get paid by piece, if you decde to dig it with your hands, it will take you X amount or hours, however wince you get paid by hand, you could take the same time with a shovel, wouldnt the values at the end be the same?

If we understand that you are not forced to follow the SNLT in a piece wage system, howmdoes your assertion made here holds true?
The dead labour is not fixed to any SNLT

I have good enough reading comprehension since I read das kapital in english, the problem is Marx has holes in his theories, which is why the law of value is so hard to determine

But if it doesnt, how come automation reduces total value?

That is not an argument my friend, I am still discussing how is it that automation reduces value

Since you get paid by piece*

Not hand ffs

Whatever might follow logically from a model where piece wages are the usual way production is run would not tell you much about the world we live in, since we don't live in such a world. Contracts are extremely vague, especially for non-skilled work. It just means I show up on time and do whatever I am asked. I don't have much of an idea what I am going to do next month, and probably my boss doesn't either. That's what it means. I am hired for my labor power, that is my very general ability as a generic human with arms and legs to do a lot of different simple physical tasks at a level that is absolutely pathetic compared to the pace specific machines for these tasks achieve, but what makes the human worker special is the variety of tasks they can do. If everybody got long-term contracts describing a very small set of specific tasks to do, that would greatly reduce the difference between people and machines.

What automation reduces is aggregate profit.

Sure, I understand that, but what if you are not getting hired? What if you can voluntarily decide to join a workers coop, where you can find stable work?

Marx, when talking about piece wages, only tqlks about the capitalist firm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch21.htm
It is understanable how piece wages become regular wages, but he makes the mistake of considering fixed labour hours, the labourer is both working for someone else and working under a fixed schedule

What if the labourer doesnt have a fixed schedule?

How? Because of supply and demand changing?

Marx means this in the context of Capitalist production.

The Ricardian school was faced with a problem: how is it that labour can have value is labour is the source of value. This combined with the problem of how values relate to prices led to the collapse of the Ricardian school. So what is Marx's solution? He points out: labour HAS no value. Labor power on the other hand does. The worker must be able to reproduce his ability to perform useful labour, but this is a qualitatively different commodity than the source of value which is labour. So that means there is no actual value attached to the performance of labour in of itself, but merely the ability to perform it. Labour has no value, but labour power (which is a separate thing altogether) does.

When I say you don't get what Marx means by socially necessary is your stress on the individual firm. This is really, irrelevant to Marx's analysis insofar as it does not represent a social average apportionment of labor. The reason Marx bothers to include dead labour in the first place (which has opened up his theory of value to being called metaphysical) is because the commodity the labour has been embodied in still plays a part in the production process by performing a useful function such as acting as a means of labour, or raw/ancillary material. The reason we can even talk about the production of a commodity using up dead labour is because it represents a socially necessary amount of labour, the amount of times it can be used up in production represent a portion of labour being used up. For example, a machine that represents 20 hours of labour and gets 20 uses in one production cycle of 2 months depreciates 1 hour of labour per use. Therefore, for every use of this machine 1 hour of labour is used up in the production of the commodity and represents part of its value. This explains how machines that were previously thought to represent the cost price and nothing more play into societies ability to perform useful labour when reproducing itself and in this case, reproduction so that capital circulation is continuous.

Steve Keen is great. He understands the way money is created in the modern economy, the role of private debt and he is very well read in the history of economic thought. He knows his Marx, his Hayek and everything inbetween. His youtube channel has tons of really interesting lectures on things from government deficit spending to analysing the different theories of value, and debunking neo-classical fairy tales.

Also check out the MMT guys. They understand the role of the government in a capitalist economy better than anyone in the mainstream currently. Stephanie Kelton, Warren Mosler and Randall Wray are all great and have tons of stuff on youtube to watch. Check out Warrens stuff first. His book 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds is a great primer to MMT and the macroeconomics that follows.

MMT is not wrong. It is an accurate description of the modern monetary system. It makes a few simplifications for the sake of understanding, such as treating the fed and the treasury as the same entity. And it doesn't take into account the self imposed restrictions that governments place on themselves that are overhangs from the gold standard either, but the fundamental concepts are completely true.

And it is extremely based.

I've read Keens "A Marx for Post-Keynesian" and was not impressed with how he made a point of doing exactly what an-nil is doing in this thread regarding dead labour, but what I've read of Debunking Economics I enjoyed.

Okay. Something simple to troll have a discussion with non-authoritarian Left about:

1) There are two coops on a small market. Both are the same. Both make 5.000 cakes a week (10.000 total).

2) All 10 thousand cakes could be sold if price is $10 (but 10.001th cake cannot - equilibrium price, IIRC). Cake price could be divided in two parts: $5 are supplies/capital deprecation (c - constant Capital), and $5 remain to be paid for labour (v - variable Capital). I.e. workers of each coop earn $5 x 5.000 cakes = $25k weekly.

3) Workers of coop A save their money for some time and eventually buy new machines that increase productivity three times. Now their coop produces 15.000 cakes a week. Since more expensive machinery need to be maintained for more money, this increases non-labour costs of each cake (capital deprecation). Now their c is $6.

4) However, now there is a total of 20.000 cakes being sold per week cake price drops to accommodate increased supply.

To sell all the cakes, one needs to get new customers from somewhere - by lowering price. Let's assume customers appeared out of nowhere and some pancake coop did not lose all customers and go bankrupt and collectively commit suicide with their families.

5) Cake price drops to $8. This means that everyone's labour (v) gets re-evaluated regardless of anyone's intentions. It's the market that decides things.
6) Workers of coop A now get $2 from each cake ($8 new cake price - $6 new expenses), but they produce 15 thousand cakes now, so it's a net profit: their labour now earns $30k per week as opposed to $25k they got before (+20%).
7) Workers of coop B still produce 5.000 cakes. But now they get $3 ($8 - $5) from each cake. That's $15k per week - from $25k. Their income fell by 40%.

8) Not satisfied with this situation, coop B goes to the credit union to get a non-profit loan and buys new machines.

9) Now both coops are the same again, except both produce 15.000 cakes each. Now there is a total of 30.000 cakes being sold each week. And cake price falls even further.

10) To sell all 30 thousand cakes price has to be $6. And $6 is the price of producing cake without labour. Now market says that labour of workers in both coops is worth exactly $0.

I hope, no confusing terminology was used, but this demonstrated that MarkSoc is retarded that there is a necessity of some central authority.

I've not actually read any Marx (I'm new here) so I don't really know what the merits and pitfalls of the LTV are compared to other theories of value, but from what I've seen Keen respects a lot of marx's work, but rejects LTV. I don't really understand the reasons as to why though. I'm kind of ignorant on the subject and I don't know where to start. Any suggestions?

Sure. Here's a 45 page version of Capital 1 to start.

How is this different from the original Capital? I mean, what "edition" of Capital is this?

There's 3 volumes of Capital (4 if you count Theories of Surplus Value). This is an abridged version of the first volume, but the whole Capital is over 3000 pages.

If this were true Capitalism would also produce labor values of 0.

And it ignores that, until the capitalists figured out how to end run around it, productivity actually led to wage increases.

The damned image I can't manage to post correctly

Yeah, but what's this abridged version called? Otherwise, who are the authors of this abridged version?

I think he's doing what an-nil is doing and disregarding the LTV. Either way, it doesn't really make sense because the firms would either stop producing or sell at cost-price for a loss. It's not a bad example.

Also this is completely compatible with Marx because he used an accumulation of Capital theory of wages.

I think the guy who put it together is named Ottlo Ruhle. I actually uploaded the wrong PDF, so my apologies.

Damn, that guy was a top name left communist in his time. Cool.

That is a lot of assumptions you made there. Why assume perfect competition? In the real world the vast majority of firms are price setters, not price takers. Furthermore, they do not usually create identical products, another assumption of perfect competition. So there are other ways firms would be able to compete in markets without driving down their price. This is called oligopolistic competition and is one of the most common types of market.

Why assume that The cost of constant capital goes up in comparison to the price of each cake? If you invest in machines that produce more cakes for the same amount of depreciation and labour, you increase the number of cakes you can sell whilst reducing costs. You also wouldn't expand production unless you knew there was, or you could create, more demand for your good/service.

You are making the same wrong assumptions that neo-classicals make about markets. This is basically a complete strawman of market socialism.

Markets are not inherently evil. They should be kept away from goods and services that people need to survive and live a decent life: basic food, water, housing, clothing, education, healthcare and anything else you can think of that should not be provided based on ability to work. However there is nothing wrong with having markets for unnecessary consumer goods and services. I don't care if a guitar making, sports gear producing, beer brewing or whatever the fuck worker co-op wants to sell their goods on a market. What is so wrong with that? As long as their surplus value is not being skimmed off by someone at the top, and the decisions within the co-ops are made democratically, they should go for it. What's wrong with this?

Yes. It doesn't matter if it's Capitalism or Market "Socialism".

In this case it also leads to wage increases - note that coop A went from $25k to $30k.

And your image is propaganda. It hides the real reason of income growth.

Because there is no reason to distract people by providing unnecessary details. The point is to show a certain market mechanism, rather than autistically simulate realistic scenario and overload brain.

That's the theory. IRL there is no perfect monopoly.

In the "real" world there is also a competition between cakes, pancakes, and pizzas. Or even houses and cars - whatever people will spend their disposable income on competes with everything else.

If one area becomes too profitable - capital will flow there, until profitability gets reduced to the average level. If the other has too low profit - capital will flow out of it, and profit will slowly be raised.

Again, for the sake of simplicity it would make sense to assume that no firm can do what other can't.

Because including possibility that coops are retards and aren't running the most efficient setup already is counterproductive to discussion. Hence, any machine that is more productive has to be more expensive.

Except, you never know. Because that would've meant that you solved calculation problem.

Markets are inefficient within industrial economy. That's worse than evil.

I just pointed out how two perfect coops can be no different from two greedy Capitalists.

That puts you in good company with most economics majors IME.

The 'unecessary details' that show your simplistic model will never ever happen in the real world.

It's like lefty Austrian economics.

Someone explain Krugman to me.

He says he's a Keynesian (without prefix) apparently, but then he seems on the whole to have something of a status quo viewpoint instead of being way out there with the Post-Keynesians (who actually seem "closest to Keynes") compared to present orthodoxy.

Libertarians don't like him (indeed, most attacks on Keynesianism I've found on imageboards tend to focus on Mr. Krugman instead of Mr. Keynes) but then I've vaguely skimread elsewhere that he might not help himself (by overstating his case in opinion pieces that people actually read while retaining any academic vigour for boring economic papers nobody will ever read.)

I really don't like this market-socialist "argument" combo: Saying that 1) markets are super-duper important and you will all go to hell if you don't use them and then also saying that 2) important things should not be left to the market. So… central planning leads to mass starvation because you don't have a free market for dragon dildos and other flimflam?

I read the General Theory and some shorter texts by Keynes and some MMT blawgs and agree that Post-Keynesians are closer to Keynes than Krugman is. Krugman is an asshole who lies all the time about absolutely everything, and you don't need to know any economics to get that. He used to shill for fucking Enron in the 90s (lbo-news.com/2016/03/14/varieties-of-krugmanesque-experience/) and after the last election, he brazenly claimed Jill Stein being pivotal to Hillary Clinton losing. Fuck him with a rake.

3) Workers of coop A save their money for some time and eventually buy new machines that increase productivity three times. Now their coop produces 15.000 cakes a week. Since more expensive machinery need to be maintained for more money, this increases non-labour costs of each cake (capital deprecation). Now their c is $6
If there is a government defending private property, then this is not a non-authoritarian leftbscenario, the second coop could make use of the machine aswell, dividing the cost of purchase and maintenance

How do you figure out a cost of an item in socialism?

bump

In the lower phase of communism you calculate the total labour time required to produce the product, including the labour time required to produce the machines and resources used in production, and then assign the product a "price" measured in labour hours.

In the higher phase there is no cost because everything is free.

I'm assuming, the "cost" is not meant as amount of actual labour/resources necessary to produce something. It does not change regardless of the economy (mode of production) that is being used.

Cost - as evaluation of value for the purpose of exchange that is forced upon people by economy; as a price - does not exist since you do not have an exchange system. Production is for use. While you may assign "effort rating" (or several different) to an item, it is just an abstract idea.

Concept of "free" applies to items only as an answer to "can you get the item in question?" It is "free" in the meaning of "free access", "freely available". It does not imply that the actual cost is negligible.

Of course, society can assign such status to only to some items. But, as the productive forces of society increase, more and more items become more "free", available with looser - or even without - limitations, restrictions, or quotas. Once such quantitative changes accrue, you get qualitative change that transitions Socialist economy to Communist.

...

I note here that there was a minor disruption in the 50s, but that by 1971 there had already been a somewhat more notable disruption starting around 68.

Is it likely this is just a data-quirk, or could it be a forewarning of something more suspicious? My general worldview of the big divergence at the moment is based on two pillars.
1. The collapse of Breton Woods broke the Keynesian consensus model, beginning the divergence (Because capital can move freely, international trade slips towards being less regulated, and so on.)
2. The oil crisis ramped up the problems to the point Keynes was discarded wholesale. (In the background the inflation may have had other influences like Vietnam war spending, but in broad strokes "Keynes was alright")

But if that diverging trend began earlier, that could hole that theory. Now naturally I know capitalism itself is terrible, but my inner socdem would be very disturbed to learn that even the vaguely good time for first worlders was a total illusion that governments couldn't restore with the Bancor and a strange moustache.

Wth does those letters in op mean, what is m-c-m?

Marxist economic theory.

M-C-M = Money-Commodity-Money
Capital. Money are spent with the intention get more money: buy something you don't actually need and then sell it for higher price.

C-M-C = Commodity-Money-Commodity
You sell some commodity (labour) to get money to buy something you need (consumer goods).

And the big difference is that in terms of use-values, trade can be win-win as people have different wants, but counted in terms of money the game has winners and losers by mathematical necessity.

Haven't read any Marx, so forgive me if this is ridiculously ignorant: Couldn't you make the case that even though greater monetary transfer has occurred, the overall value remains the same?

I'm thinking along the lines of how your 1st dollar is worth more than your billionth in certain terms. Obviously they both buy $1 worth of stuff, but the more you have the more you're willing to blow them on more trivial things. (as you can see with say, very expensive watches.)

So you could say that a monetary trade in which I came off worse off was actually overall beneficial, since the use-value( i guess?) of the money wasn't as high.

I suppose conversely you could flip that and use it to emphasise just how much you get fucked in monetary transactions though, since I'm giving up (say) my 10000th dollar to an enterprise obtaining it's trillionth, which will squander it on paper that goes directly into the shredder.

Have you been listening to Wolff again? Trade is always win-win in the context of use-values - both parties desire exchange - otherwise trade wouldn't have happened.

Not entirely correct.

Money - as an abstract economic mechanism, not actual banknotes/coins - do not have use-value per se. Actual commodities do. It is use-value, after all. Money have only exchange-value.

I'm not sure I understand this question.

If you mean use-value under "value" (as opposed to price - exchange-value) - it is not quantifiable in some universally true way (as exchange-value is). It is subjective and it depends on situation. I.e. two different people have their own measurement units. Even one person in different circumstances has different measurement units.

Therefore, value cannot "remain the same" - it's like trying to compare apples and oranges. If apple is counted in oranges, is it equal to an orange counted in apples? The question does not compute.

To answer you question (as I understood it): no. Within Marxist discourse it doesn't make sense to increase use-value of food by starving people before giving food to them. Can't say anything about Wolffist discourse.

I think I conflated exchange and use value in some weird Frankenstein creature. (Essentially "Use-Value stemming from Exchange value because the use is to exchange", presumably from an oversimplified understanding of use-value), and treating money as a general commodity.

I think it relies on a highly idealized scenario where the extent to which one party values money aligns perfectly with their subjective value of products - say apples and oranges, such that they map onto one another 1:1, meaning even though one party might make a monetary profit on a transaction, it fuzzes together into nobody having made a profit. (This may or may not even work on it's own terms, when I put it like that…)

Assuming that helps explain (roughly) where I went off-track in the vague understanding underpinning the question.

I haven't listened to anything by Wolff yet (why is everybody on this board an INTJ cunt autist?).
>Trade is always win-win in the context of use-values
People are not always perfectly informed about what they are getting, so this statement is of course false.
Counter-example being what?

Is price just calculated via labour time? If so how would this be put into a calcualtion? I'm a newfag and I wanna know

Thoughts on Ricardo?

Bump.

Markets aren't inherently "evil", this is a moral statement not a scientific one. But they do nothing to abolish the value relations under Capitalism. The production of surplus value is inseparable from developed commodity exchange. Developed commodity exchange is Capitalism. The problem of Capitalism is the firm not the boss. But I'm glad you admit you are pushing for Capitalism for a human face.

Yes, Marx calls this profit on alienation.

He means that no matter what at the time of the trade, you personally value the commodity you are trading for more than the one you currently have. In the case of the Capitalist, the 10,000 pairs of sunglasses he owns have no use value beyond being an exchange value. Just like the use value of labour power or MOP is to produce a product for exchange.

>>People are not always perfectly informed about what they are getting, so this statement (trade in terms of use-value is always win-win) is of course false.
And given that you do not actually always know everything about the object you receive, the statement that trade in terms of use-values is always win-win is of course false, my sophist friend.

I never said it's always "win-win". But just literally, at the time of the trade you value the object you are trading for more than the object you are trading with. Otherwise you wouldn't do it. I guess Marx is a sophist as well, because this is a pretty central part of his analysis of exchange in Capitalism. You don't have to assume perfect knowledge of anything for this to be true.

Supposing you are different poster than mustache, you then merely interjected your "wisdom" into that dialogue, where had said:
>Trade is always win-win in the context of use-values
and replied that this is of course false.
You:
If this isn't sophistry, there is no sophistry in the world. That people have some belief, that people make a guess - can be a very educated guess, but a guess nonetheless - about the quality of a product or service DOESNOTMEANTHATTHEYALWAYSABSOLUTELYKNOWFORSUREYOUFUCKINGDENSECUNT. If I have a misinformed opinion about the quality of a thing, this wrong belief isn't the thing's use value. Correcting the opinion with detailed and accurate information doesn't change the use value of the thing.

Are you incapable of admitting a banal mistake in your reasoning or do you have the attention span of a gnat? You ruined your own thread by being a stupid cunt. Well done and go kill yourself.

I am not the same poster as Stalintrip, you must be new. He rarely post under anything besides his tripcode.

And? What does this have to do with what I said? What he means is that quite literally, at the time of the trade (assuming the trade is done out of your own volition) you value the item you are trading for more than the item you are trading. Otherwise you wouldn't trade. I was correcting Stalintrips wording because I know what he meant. In Capitalism, most trades are voluntary in the sense even if I have to sell my labour power I do it because selling my labour power is more valuable to me than starving. While the Capitalist pays me because the ability I have to produce exchange values is more valuable to him than the money he pays out in wages. In this sense, it is a win-win situation. It does not mean that I will forever value working at Wendy's (perhaps I learn than they feed people chicken liver and in retrospect I wouldn't of worked there). But at the moment of trade, it was commenced voluntarily because both believe they are getting more out of engaging in trade as opposed to not engaging in trade.

Use value is subjective or in some cases socially determined. I don't know what you are trying to say, I think you're misunderstanding me.

Wow, you are very, very mad. Can I offer you a glass of water?

left-wing anarchist economics come to mind. Tends to uphold a vision of an anti-capitalist free market.

This sounds dumb. Any energy expenditure like that entails the expenditure of labour time, which is established as a social average.

Nice not-dialectics. Read the Science of Logic, which Capital as a theory is modeled on, and come back.

Not reading and not making an argument, as I expect out of every trashcan of ideology here. I may not have read as much Marxist econ theory here as some of you, but what I did read I have learned with solid logic and not ideological feels. I'm driven by my desire to know truth, not hold onto feels.

user, please learn to make a real study of books, and not just eat from the trashcan of self-congratulating/confirming ideology.

If you don't have an honest engagement with theory (and almost none of you do), I don't give two fucks what you think. You're just another relative side of a relative framework without justified foundation.

I am way too happy right now.
You have no idea

At least I've read the Greeks.

Oy vey.

...

Dialectics had no use in science before it was combined with materialism.

Why do standards of living and working exist the way they do in Capitalism? What I mean is why do westerners live and work pretty decently now but really shitty 100-150 years and why do 3rd worlders, specifically Indians, Africans, and Chinese live and work so horribly now? What is the system or case in place that determines the standards of living and working?

The only explanation I can think of is that it has become cheaper to produce luxury goods (especially with 3rd world labor) along with greater infrastructure and technology available to meet a market demand to mass produce decent quality other goods like food and housing. But that doesn't explain why working standards are significantly better; why don't western employers treat and exploit their employees like Chinese or Indians?

The value of labour is the value of labour power. This is the amount of goods that must be consumed by the labourer in order to reproduce his ability to perform labour.

What you say about globalization is true, but you're also forgetting a lot of other variables. The way wages are kept at sustenance levels is by the presence of what Marx calls the "industrial reserve army" or the unemployed. When Capitalism shat itself at the beginning of the 20th century, this was followed by 2 world wars which greatly reduced the industrial reserve and managerial populations while more "sensible" policies were implemented (aka Keynesianism) that saw the State handling more and more aspects of Capitalism. This was also coupled with the expansion of credit. from something typically reserved for businesses to something given out at will to the working class so they can buy an iphone. While Marx did talk about the possibility of a rise in real wages occurring, these conditions gave birth to what we might call the modern "middle class". Obviously, the "third worlders" (gosh this term is so out of date) didn't experience the same circumstances and have more or less ended up footing the bill for the drop in profit.

So, the industrial reserve army was depleted after the World Wars, greatly increasing the influence of labor, thereby increasing the wages and working standards of the labors, while the increased wages and credit allowed a higher standard of living and the continued and greater use of credit has allowed the same standard of living to be kept, but of course with greater and greater debt. But these same circumstances didn't happen in India or China, which has such an enormous population that labor is heavily disadvantaged to capital. Did I understand correctly?
What was the drop, the increased wages in the first world because of the greater power of labor? Why have wages not returned to sustenance level in the 1st world?

Besides cheap goods, does the population of the 1st world benefit any other way from the exploitation of the 3rd world?

I would say so (if by influence you mean bargaining power). Wealth inequality did very much happen in China, in fact 98% of the global reduction of inequality can be attributed to China. I think China and India are kind of exceptions to this rule. They didn't industrialize as early as the West, but generally they are good examples of how the logic of Capital can function without major disturbances for extended periods of time. I thought you meant countries like Honduras, Cambodia, African Nations, etc. These countries are still as poor as ever but investment from China has been slowly increasing HDI in Africa.
I'd say it's due to an increasingly disproportionately constant organic composition of capital, as well as workers in the West demanding a higher standard of living. Marx said the value of labour power had a "moral-historic" element beyond just being the bread and water we could potentially survive on. Ultimately, an increase in living standards (and thus wages) without a proportionate decrease in production cost will drive profits down. You don't have to be a Marxist to notice that when wages and profits are generally inversely related (at least in the short term), it was pointed out by Sraffa, Kalecki etc.

Considering the West is heavily import dependant and a lot of what they import is made in what you would term the "3rd world" (I prefer developing nations seeing as we are no longer in the Cold War), yes.

*Wealth inequality has very much been reduced in China

*To notice that wages

There is no such thing as FALC.

I think I have I better idea now. Thanks for your help comrade.

Thank you! Michael Heinreich has some good lectures on the rise of the welfare state you might want to check out.

We can fully automate evrything involved with basic needs

Prove me wrong

Burden of proof is on you making that claim.
Go ahead

Trade is always win-win in the context of use-values
Which part of this do you disagree with:
I. People do not have perfect knowledge about the quality of things they obtain.
II. Hence, there can be a gap between 1. what people expect of a product and 2. how that product actually functions.
III. The use value of a product, as classical economists and Marx use the term, refers to point 2 above: how that product actually functions.
IV. It can happen that people come to regret voluntary trades. Trade in terms of use-values isn't always a win-win situation.

I'm bumping. I'm not Stalintrip but I don't think that's what he meant, he worded it poorly. I think he meant at the moment of trade. Whereas value relationships (like labour values) can be objectively unequal at the moment of trade regardless of utility.

Obviously so called "voluntary trades" are only voluntary in a vulgar sense. But I think that's what he meant.

How are prices determined in a socialist planned economy?

Pick one.

I think Devine's negotiated coordinating bodies model shows some potential (I think that's what it's called?).

I haven't read it, but from what I understand his section on productive and unproductive labour is pretty central to a lot of Marxist debate around the topic.

I don't like Kilman's method of calculating the ROP. HC is so odd. It's like calculating rise and fall in wages based on the money wage and not real wages. I like Anwar Shaikh's solution (PDF is too large to post).

Wut?

...

Nevermind.

Guys I've been thinking about this for a while. I don't think we can produce for use value immediately after a revolution. I think Cockshotts consumer market model is the only way to get around some difficulties. Convince me otherwise, I'd love someone too.

A revolution is by definition a change of mode of production. And the next mode of production will precisely produce for use-value, that's what differentiates it from the current one.

Which difficulties ?

Cockshott's model is labour voucher based, it is use-value production, just with rationing according to work done, rather than free access.

Don't read economic topics before bed, kids.

I'm pretty sure he uses a consumer goods market for allocation ala Oskar Lange. I know Cockshott uses labour as the unit of account, Lange was a pie in the sky neoclassical (but still pretty cool imo).

ECP.

Hi guys,

I'm trying to understand: if 'dead labour' (i.e machinery and pre-produced goods) is used by the capitalist, could it not be said that the profit of the capitalist comes from (i) the surplus labour (converted into surplus value) (ii) the dead labour?

If this is so, why should the workers be rewarded more than the dead labour should be? If I admit that the machinery itself is made by other labourers, should they not be entitled to some claim?

In the end, wouldn't everyone who has made a machine that is currently in use (and I count this recursively, stepping back through each machine producer) have to be compensated out of the profit collected by the capitalist?

So I am having trouble understanding the problem above. But also, as a total noob, I hope someone can enlighten me on some questions and problems. I want to make it clear that I am very much not against Socialism, and so I hope not to be misinterpreted here; I just want to learn more. If you want, please think of me as a devil's advocate if you find me provocative.

1. Is the worker not compensated in wages? The capitalist pays for other objects of labour and MoP, and so he pays for the worker too. Why is this unfair? How do we know that the worker produces more value than what is given to him in the form of wages?

2. How does exchange-value relate to labour-value and use-value? I know this is a really 'big' topic, but I would really like some simple explanations, with examples, if possible. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this.

3. Is it not possible that the profit does not originate from the work itself, but the perception of the work? For example, cloth may be advertised and it would sell for more, despite not being of such a good actual value.

4. Is there any merit to post-Keynesian economics, or should I keep reading on Marxian economics? Are there any 'proofs' of the LTV, or alternatives to the LTV?

5. How do Marxian economists deal with the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall? If I understand correctly (and I probably don't), it's said that due to increased automation, less surplus is exctracted from living labour, so profit would be less. Is that correct? Has it been demonstrated empirically?

6. Is this a good analysis of exploitation? marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation.htm

This final one is perhaps a little on a tangent, and relates to leftism in general:

7. With the availability of government welfare programs, people in most of Europe are generally no longer as much at risk of death and destitution and poverty thanks to not being employed. As such, they would not have to be exploited.

It is also much easier than ever to learn skills that you can employ by yourself, such as programming a computer or artistry or even vlogging (think Sargon lol). So don't people have the choice to simply not be exploited?

8. Under Socialism, there will be people who do not want to work, or who have no skills, or who do not need to work. Are these people left without a recourse, or would they be provided for? If they are provided for, would this not entail appropriation of labour in order to provide for them? If they are not provided for, what makes it better than Capitalism in which people starve because they cannot (laziness or lack of skill) or do not want to work? If they do not work, this would mean that they are forced to work (similarly to Capitalism) or they starve (also similar to Capitalism).

Thank you very much. (Bonus: this thread news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13697267)

Someone answered Cockshott here (I don't know if it has any merit): bactra.org/weblog/919.html

If this criticism is correct, what then?

I'll address this quickly.
I'm trying to understand: if 'dead labour' (i.e machinery and pre-produced goods) is used by the capitalist, could it not be said that the profit of the capitalist comes from (i) the surplus labour (converted into surplus value) (ii) the dead labour?
No, because surplus labour is only realized by the Capitalist who sells it if you assume an exchange of equivalents. This is an assumption Marx makes in Volumes 1 and 2 of Capital.

There is no moral claim about what labourers are entitled too in Capital. Only an explanation of what does happen. Assuming the labourers who manufacture the MOP get an equivalent, they are not "entitled" to anything further.

Marx never said it was "unfair". The worker receives the full value of his labour power.

2. How does exchange-value relate to labour-value and use-value? I know this is a really 'big' topic, but I would really like some simple explanations, with examples, if possible. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this.
Exchange value = how an SNLT expresses itself in other commodities. Use value = socially determined or subjective utility of a commodity. Labour value = the substance of exchange value.

3. Is it not possible that the profit does not originate from the work itself, but the perception of the work? For example, cloth may be advertised and it would sell for more, despite not being of such a good actual value.
Only labour can create new value in Marxist theory, but unequal exchange can take place. Marx calls this profit on alienation?

Not familiar enough with PK to answer this.

5. How do Marxian economists deal with the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall? If I understand correctly (and I probably don't), it's said that due to increased automation, less surplus is exctracted from living labour, so profit would be less. Is that correct? Has it been demonstrated empirically?
Yes. It depends on how the ROP is measured. Marxist way of measuring the ROP differs from other economist.

7. With the availability of government welfare programs, people in most of Europe are generally no longer as much at risk of death and destitution and poverty thanks to not being employed. As such, they would not have to be exploited.
Exploitation is the rate of unpaid/paid labour.

Will try and respond to the rest later.

Will read this later.

I just finished reading an amazing series of blog posts on the relation between capitalism and fiat money:

therealmovement.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/reply-to-lk-how-labor-theory-of-value-destroys-fiat-money/

therealmovement.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/reply-to-lk-notes-on-the-historical-and-monetary-implications-of-the-transformation-problem/

therealmovement.wordpress.com/2017/02/22/towards-a-hypothesis-of-the-final-collapse-of-capitalism/

therealmovement.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/towards-a-hypothesis-of-the-final-collapse-of-capitalism-2/

So… What does that mean for us? That we've really been living under centrally-directed production for the last 40 years and just didn't know it?

I don't like Jehu. He misinterprets Marx. His view of the "transformation problem" is so divorced from what Marx actually said it's kind of embarrassing.

LK is an idiot, but stay away from Jehu. For a theory of modern inflation with fiat money I recommend his series of lectures on youtube. youtube.com/watch?v=rPMoESXe4x8&index=27&list=PLB1uqxcCESK6B1juh_wnKoxftZCcqA1go

Or you can just download the book. reddit.com/r/AcademicMarxism/comments/4neniq/anwar_shaikhs_new_magnum_opus_capitalism/

Also, looking at GDP measured in gold doesn't make any sense. GDP is the consumption fund, it does not contain constant capital. Jehu could measure GDP in tons of grain and it would be just as meaningful.

bump

"value comes from labour because labour produces more value than it costs, but machines also produce more value than they cost, check mate commies"

where exactly he is wrong?

also, his critique of MELT is based
SNLT calculation in fiat is the greatest hoax of modern Marxism

Thinking that the transformation problem is supposed to be V = V+S. This makes no sense. It's V = cp + avg profit. He then goes on to make the claim that Marx was trying to show that this was a "contradiction in Capitalist production". This is revisionism of the umpteen degree. What Marx actually wrote, was that in search of higher profit Capital moves from sphere to sphere looking for a higher profit, overproduces and drives the price of a commodity down. The "average rate of profit" is where the logical problems arise, but the average rate of profit is not "real". It's the result of Capital moving from high constant to high variable productive sectors. Boffy has some decent pieces on it:
boffyblog.blogspot.ca/2010/09/value-theory-transformation-problem.html

boffyblog.blogspot.ca/2016/09/the-transformation-problem-and.html

Also, his entire point about measuring GDP in commodities is baffling. When GDP is measured in gold, it's measured in terms of golds price. So he's not saying anything about value, simply pointing out that when there's a crisis. He's not actually making a statement about value and crisis, and the goods consumed expressing themselves in a lower quantity of gold doesn't necessarily indicate crisis (which is a contraction of production), only that there has been a decrease in the productivity of the gold sector. I recommend you take a look at the chapters on inflation and value calculation in the book you can download off the reddit link.

I'm not a fan of Kilman but Jehu is a poor Marxist imo.

*when there's a crisis the price of gold is driven up

To build on this, if you really think Marx's theory of money is kill without commodity money (which I disagree with) you should abandon Marx because Jehu just spews bullshit.

this

bampo

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-form#Usefulness
debunk this for me plz
tl;dr: marxist metaphysical ramblings are either useless for economics or incoherent

Yes. I try not to do it (and sign post later, if I do) precisely for this reason: people confusing me and other posters.

Well, probably. Though I maintain that people are deliberately misunderstanding things.

Either way, you are correct.

True.

No. Use-value is the value of product's function to one specific individual at specific time. It is not objective, but subjective thing.

Yes. But it is irrelevant.

Otherwise you'll be introducing omniscience as a default state. But people do not have an ability to predict all consequences of their actions. That's magic. Pure idealism, in other words. Such a thing does not happen IRL.

The only real thing - the one that actually influences trade - is the perception of the exchange by participants that led them to agree to the trade.

No. Marx-poster explained it already: at the time of exchange you are making a voluntary decision.

As long as this doesn't influence trade, it is not relevant.

Moreover, attempts to create some "objective" value would force you not only to account for counterfeit goods, but if the use of goods might prove to be harmful (or beneficial) in some broader perspective of which buyer might not even be aware of. This is pure nonsense.

That's not what you are criticized for. It is obvious that a prosthetic leg has different usefulness to different people. You are criticized for saying that the mere expectation of the quality of a product is part of its use value.
Can you give a citation where Marx uses the term in the way you do?

By decision of society. And - yes. Even if society makes decisions that are later considered "wrong" by some people, economy does not retroactively stop being Planned.

Marxian economics, indeed.

You can describe and explain everything as God's will. However, usefulness of such description and explanation is limited.

To quote Marx:
I.e. the purpose of science is not to give you technobabble, but to allow you to get shit done. Therefore, to make old theory redundant you need to have a new theory that allows you to get shit done better.

However, within Planned Economy any price-based evaluation makes no sense. It is an economy without market that could determine price. However bad Marx's theory is, it cannot be worse than the theory that is absolutely useless.

Therefore, the real question is not "how well Marxist theories can explain market?", but "do we need Planned Economy? do we want to abolish Capitalism?" If the answer is "yes", Marxist theories are automatically superior, however elaborate reasoning of Liberals is.

Personally, I find any attempts to disprove Marxism via economy laughable. I did not read Meek, but I don't think he addresses the real reason why Marx relies on use-value and labour as a cost.

Marxism exists not to explain things. It is not technobabble. It has a purpose.

I support the idea of Labour as an ultimate cost not because it is "true" or "objective", but because I need an economy in which human life matters. Therefore, cost of things should be understood only as the cost of human life that was spent to make them. Similarly, use-value is founded not on some complicated philosophy, but because it is human will that should decide necessity of things.

Money-prices? Where we are going we don't need money-prices. (c)

Just like pundits of the age of slavery calculated wealth in slaves - and by their estimation we are all extremely poor, for we don't own slaves - pundits of the age of Capitalism can evaluate wealth only in prices. Communism - with all the free luxuries - would be an extreme poverty to them, for people will lose the ability to exploit others!

In the context of purpose, of use - to Socialists - Liberal theories cannot be thought as anything, but sophistry.

Usefulness is socially determined. You either accept this or fall into a pure void of self-defeating subjectivity theories of value that also manage to constitute a fully functioning market relation that resupplies itself more and more, or you fall into axioms of Austrian utility graphs that don't reflect history or reality (as their namesake of praxeology methodology implies).

...

That's a bit different from what I said, no?

Let me get it straight. I'd like to absolutely sure about what you are asking me to do.

You want to know if Marx refuted attempts to frame exchange as a conning procedure, and use-value as a total impact on the life of acquirer (including consequences decades later)?

Okay, I'll be going offline, so I'll drop this quote on you preemptively:

marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm

And you'll explain what exactly dissatisfies you.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
I don't see much expectation of usefulness in that description.

Mustache man will not admit to any fault in logic or lack of knowledge, because the law of namefags being cancer has caught up with him.

Put another way: The use value of a product, as classical economists and Marx use the term, refers to how a product actually functions.

For those who have lost orientation, the use-value discussion started here:

Then, !!XijnrwOqQI claimed in
>Trade is always win-win in the context of use-values - both parties desire exchange

In support of a facial-hair-flag comrade, Marxhead chimed in:

and also

But expectation of quality is not part of use value.
That's what Marx said in the first chapter of Capital.
marxists.org/glossary/terms/u/s.htm

I never claimed to be representing Marx's views 100% to the t my dude. Stalintrip is very much working under a "le free market" framework when he said that, and I am as well. Because he said trade I thought he meant "at the time of trade". I was juxtaposing this with the fact that at the time at trade, values can be unequal whereas how you personally value the commodity is subjective.

I apologize for misunderstanding you and Stalintrip.

A freshwater neoclassical real business cycle theorist was teaching a class on Robert Lucas, known market fundamentalist.
“Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship rational expectations and accept that it was the greatest contribution to macroeconomics the world has ever known, even greater than monetarism!”
At this moment, a brave, socialist, post-Keynesian and student of Minsky who had predicted the 2008 recession and understood the importance of the level of private debt and fully supported all government stimulus spending stood up and held up a dollar bill.
“How was this money created?”
The arrogant professor smirked quite optimally and smugly replied “The money multiplier, you stupid Keynesian”
“Wrong. Bank lending created it. If the money multiplier, as you say, is real… then it should be ten dollars now”
The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Mankiw's Macroeconomics. He stormed out of the room crying those neoclassical crocodile tears.
The students applauded and all subscribed to the The Post-Autistic Economic Review that day and accepted Keynes as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Debt Deflation” flew into the room and perched atop a copy of Debunking Economics and shed a tear on the cover. The final sentences of The General Theory were read several times, and the ghost of Sraffa himself showed up and showed that the supply curve was flat.
The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. His academic papers were burned and he died in poverty having lost all his money on the stock market.

10/10

Have an unperched copy of "Debunking Economics"
divulgacionmarxista.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/debunking-economics-steve-keen.pdf (too big to upload directly.)

And because why-not, a copy of "Keynes: The Return of The Master" by Robert Skidelsky, evidentially Keynes second biggest fan. AFTER ME.

Neoclassical economics: The post

What I don't understand is why Marxists are such dupes in the end. You spend all your time talking about the gap of abstraction that emerges in capitalism and which allows all the burst of dynamism, productivity and progress, but then you say that we just need to close it for some reason: it's bad because IT IS NOT DIRECT. If our production is mediated by the market it is BAD and "alienated" and whatever bullshit you come up with. Why can't you grasp the idea of fucking incentives? Economic actors under capitalism have incentive to produce, invest and innovate, but because this is done not directly but for profit this is bad, amoral and probably not Christian enough. What matters is the end result: planned economy is a resource-constrained en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage_economy and capitalism is overproducing demand-constrained economy, see jstor.org/stable/1914132
Now can you give me [i]material[/i] reasons, not ethical or philosophical, for why do you need planned economy? Will it produce more output, more wealth? Experience of the 20th century shows that planned economy goes hand in hand with totalitarianism (but you probably ok with that) and can only solve tasks which include clear targets like gearing up for war or electrification and infrastructure, but cannot do anything else and gets replaced, by all the communist leaders themselves!

Thanks man.

Where does surplus labour/value come from? If the worker is paid the value of what he works, what is surplus?

I thought that surplus arises because the capitalist pays for a certain number of hours, but the worker does the labour he is paid for PLUS some that he isn't paid for. The saving made by not having to pay for that extra labour is profit, no?

If that is correct, could the problem be eliminated by paying the worker based on how much he produces rather than by the hour?

I've not actually read Marx, but I'm going to fire ahead and be a hypocrite anyway: Read Marx. Don't just infer things about Marx, such as a preference for a planned economy under "communism"
Or at least read people who've actually read Marx. (If you're good, maybe one will reply to you.)

Though the pithy answer to
Is arguably within your own post. Let's take China for example? Why did China need central planning?
And then what happened? HOW MANY LAYERS OF REVISIONISM ARE YOU ON DENG
The communist leaders replaced it because it wasn't needed anymore.
But it's not capitalism. It's still "communism", because remember: So long as you wear a St. Andrews cross, it doesn't matter that you were born in Burma to a Chinaman and a Russian, having never visited Scotland in your life. If you declare yourself a Scotsman, that becomes the case.

And THAT'S why Poisoned baby milk is cheaper than gold!

Why can't you grasp that incentives exist to be gamed?

What kind of blithering idiot would it take to think that expectation of use-value is not part of the influence of use-value on the real world?

If use-value does not affect trade, then there is nothing to motivate exchange, since Marx mentions only two values that affect exchange of commodities:

marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01.htm

And exchange-value does not motivate exchange - commodities have equal exchange-values - exchange-value can only shape it.

Now what could this mean? Could this selective quoting mean that use-value does not affect anything outside of the moment of consumption? Why the fuck did Marx extensively use "use-value" in the book that is about exchange?

Or could it simply mean that people understand use-value of goods only through consumption? That only consumption is the value of use-value to people?

Marx also said other things, the ones you preferred not to quote.

For example, my quote here shows that it is use-value that drives the exchange:

Marx almost literally says that the act of trade is win-win if expressed in terms of use-values. But you did not respond to this.

Is already over.

"Labour" is not a commodity it is the measure of value. There is no more a "value of labour" than there is a heat of temperature. However, there is a "value" of labour power, the ability to perform useful labour. Surplus value rises from the fact that the value of labour is a commodity, while labour is not. So while the labourer receives the value of his labour power (this is the bit he is paid for in your example), it is typically much less than the value he is able to generate.

Read Marx.

Reminder markets are superior to planning

Thats all

What do I read to understand AnCom economics

Reminder that Socialism is not a mode of production but a transitional process from Capitalism to Communism.

10/10

It is expectation of use value that motivates exchange. You represented use-value as something different from how Marx used that term (>>1416778 and ). The quotation of Marx you bring up in does not show what you claim it shows, as the context is about repeating production and exchange. This is more clear in the German version. Compare:
>On the other hand, they must show that they are use-values before they can be realised as values. For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.
mlwerke.de/me/me23/me23_099.htm
>Andrerseits müssen sie sich als Gebrauchswerte bewähren, bevor sie sich als Werte realisieren können. Denn die auf sie verausgabte menschliche Arbeit zählt nur, soweit sie in einer für andre nützlichen Form verausgabt ist. Ob sie andren nützlich, ihr Produkt daher fremde Bedürfnisse befriedigt, kann aber nur ihr Austausch beweisen.
Where the English version says "show", the German version has "bewähren", which is more properly translated as standing the test of time. Where the English version says "the act of exchange" which might give a skim-reader the impression of a single act, the German version says, "ihr Austausch" = their exchange. It is not simply one single act of exchange of a unique thing that proves its use value here, but a repeating pattern with multiple units of a commodity, and it's not the type of exact proof on par with what counts as proof in math.

Your claim that exchange in terms of use-value is always win-win is false. You make this false claim because you are mixing up expectation of use value with use value itself.

Reminder that you are wrong:
t. Lenin
t. Marx

Thanks, but I'm finding it a little hard to follow your explanation. What value does the labourer generate?

If I understand correctly, the worker is paid in wages equal exactly to the value of his labour power (or is he paid for labour time? Are labour time value and labour power value equal?), but he produces more value than what he's paid for? What form does the unpaid value take? Use value?

Maybe I'm just stupid, or I could do with some kind of example, because it's somewhat hard for me to think entirely in terms of the abstract values.

The worker works longer than necessary to cover the wage. One can say that in that sense the worker is exploited. If one considers the reproduction cost of something its fair price, one can say that a wage that covers your living expenses is fair, even if there is a huge gap between that and what the stuff you produce for your boss sells for. The wage that makes it possible for a worker to live and reproduce is what it meant when Marx says workers are paid for the full value of their labor power.

What did Marx mean by alienation and overproduction?

So then is capitalism unfair beacuse people are only paid enough in wages to survive and reproduce? This doesn't make sense to me, because people are paid more than what they need at minimum in a variety of jobs (granted, not all jobs).

I just can't understand what's wrong with being paid the full value of your labour power, unless you are producing some ADDITIONAL value that you aren't being paid for. But that would make the transaction unfair.

What you say after the comma is the normal state of affairs.

Alienation for Marx was alienation from your own labor and its products. Your boss buys your labor time, so all of your labor is his and all that your labor creates belongs to him.

This is a bump for Kalecki.

pdf: "Kalecki in the 21st century"

time to btfo post-keynesianism, boYS

w-why would I want to do that?

His analysis is interesting, and it has some merit, but I think it's partially undermined by the failure of two of his predictions:

Inflation has not been significant this time around. In fact we had some significant inflation before the crash, especially in food and energy prices. Instead most governments have implemented austerity programs that roll back the welfare apparatus that he says capitalists support. In addition, for the first time in modern monetary history, the economic lever of interest rates reached its limits.

In formal terms perhaps, but what we've actually seen has been a protracted crisis that we've really not emerged from. Consumer spending is still ag historically low levels. Workers are being re-hired, but in most cases at marginally-productive service jobs.

Now, on the subject of politics under bourgeois democracy and regressive ideologies, there he has been proven to be spot-on. What has once been plastered over has been ripped open, and in the rubble the haute bourgeoisie have temporarily lost control of the apparatus of the state. The EU is falling apart under the strain of its contradictions and the reaction of the working classes to the imposition of a layer of bureaucracy that they can't even marginally control. In the US, as he said, it took a war to establish a strong central government. But without the political will generated by abolitionism, Europe will almost certainly regress into nationalism in the coming years.

nakedkeynesianism.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-soviet-economy-lessons-for.html
Been having some fun with reading this blog recently. There seems to be a good range of articles.

Linking specifically to that article because the bit about the USSR basically following the path of a middle-income country is something that hadn't occurred to me before. (Having always culturally been driven to classify it as a superpower semi-comparable to the USA, and completely "other" in economic terms.)

Mixing up what with what?

Use-value is not a pleasure you get. Such a thing is unquantifiable. Use-value is a perceived subjective (your, personal) value of a thing - how much do you personally value possession of a thing - that makes you either do something or not. And whether you act (exchange/make/acquire some other way) or not - is what quantifies use-value of the thing for you at specific moment.

There no "use-value itself". Use-value is an abstract concept that describes real-world processes. It does not exist IRL.

There is no difference between "expectation of use-value" and "use-value" when we discuss whether trade is win-win or not: the only thing that matters is the moment before the exchange. We cannot discuss whether trade is "win-win" or not by the results - because there are no results. There is no one final true moment when we can look back and say "hey! it was a good exchange!" or "no! that was a bad exchange!"

I disagree.

If "all commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and use-values for their non-owners" then it follows that any exchange would be beneficial in the terms of use-values: each non-owner acquires commodity that has use-value for him and loses commodity that has no use-value for him.

It is irrelevant whether it repeats or not.

This would've implied reliability being relevant. Here it is used in the meaning of show, demonstrate, or prove. Either way it is irrelevant.

No it isn't. Der Austausch is perfectly acceptable for singular acts - which is how it is used here. Now, if that was regelmäßiger Austausch, I'd might've agreed.

And if your "translation" is to be used, the piece of text you are trying to distort will make no sense:
> Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by repeated exchange.

What the actual fuck. Do you even process what you write?

If I make a mudpie and a sap buys it, does the labour in it retroactively become useful?

Not going to ask if you are autistic because i know you are

Welcome to Capitalism.

But you don't buy beer instead, do not get drunk, and do not get run over by a car.

You think you have omniscience, don't you?

You are wrong. Read the excerpts of Marx provided in this thread. You should be ashamed of yourself.

@!!XijnrwOqQI
Suppose your interpretation of use value = my individual feefees which can be totally different from yours were exactly what Marx meant, would it make sense to simply count multiple units of the same thing and speak of that same amount as that many units of use value? As a rule of thumb, no (falling marginal utility). But that's what Marx does.

Are the concepts of LTV and surplus value necessary to explain exploitation? If we consider price alone, without any theory of value, then it's already obvious that the worker is exploited. He will make more money to the company than he got in wages, since otherwise the company would not hire him.

bump for this

this is just embarassing

use-value depends on personal preferences of individuals
those preferences are subjective by definition
that's why use-value can't be the basis of prices
that's why we need just abstract value as the basis of prices
this is the ABC of Marxism

You and Stalin stache poster are projecting individualistic neoclassical reasoning about utility (something you have probably encountered before Marx) on classical economics.

Take specs with particular lenses. Of course, how useful they are depends on which individual these lenses are assigned to. But these preferences are not the kind of secret you can't possibly know without market exchange. (Neoclassical economics takes an overall contradictory position: that individual preferences aren't known and that people at the same time have perfect knowledge about everything.) Use value in the classical sense is the notion that what the specs are for can be understood in general, that the use value is due to the physical properties of the object. (Hence adding up identical objects and calling them the same amount of units of that use value.)

Now, I can see how you screwed up, since it does get a bit tricky as Marx also says a few things that seem to support the individualist interpretation: Marx notes that magnets only became useful after humans figured out what they are useful for. But this process of figuring things out does not refer to an individual, it refers to humans. It's about society.

If you take the view that it's all up to individuals what the use value is, not just in the sense that the prosthetic leg shouldn't be assigned to the person with two legs (duh), but that this individual private estimation is all what counts and that we can't even make a rough guess about the needs and wants of a stranger, you end up supporting markets like Stalin stache, even though he would deny this as his position, it's where his viewpoint leads: production for use value = market economy and there is no other way.

Classical economics are the ancient liberal laissez-faire economics. Neo-classical - are the revival of such liberal economics in 20th century. I.e. you are saying that we are projecting modern liberal reasoning on the ancient liberal reasoning.

This is one of the weirdest accusations I've ever encountered (outside of Holla Forums, at least).

Classical as in classical liberal? Or classical as in Marxist? Either way, this doesn't make much of a sense. There is no "understanding in general" in Marxism. That would be idealism. There is only understanding in specific context.

So, if only one human is aware of magnets and is buying them up, there is no use-value of magnets, because "society" (undefined - probably, undefinable - entity) isn't aware of it?

I can't say I agree with this reasoning.

How does your brain work?

Also, Marx was pretty adamant about use-value being independent from "objective" evaluation:
> The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.

I would. You are making no sense.

Except you didn't even attempt to explain how this leads to market economy.

It's not a revival. There was no other phase between these two. They are quite different, and have different concepts of equilibrium (classical equilibrium is equalisation of profit rates, neoclassical is supply and demand).
Since you are not familiar with classical economics, you are in no position to make such a judgment. It would be like somebody who doesn't speak German complaining about the quality of somebody's translation.

Your point of view is solipsistic (the unique individual in his unique individual situation) and in that similar to that of neoclassical economists.

Why is Stalinposter so shit at defending Marxist political economy? Where's Marxhead? Tired of having a socdem represent us in an econ thread.

He has read a ton and he usually writes good shit. The problem in this thread is that he is not arguing from the position of Marx, without him being aware of that. He is arguing from a viewpoint that assumes too much about the importance of individuals and their differences. He is not making a mistake as big as assuming individuals with personalities and tastes magically fixed outside of history, but he still makes the mistake of viewing cognition as something that is fundamentally a process happening in individual separated minds. This leads him to a mistaken conception of what use value is.

Because you have to be a dumb fucking autist to ddefend or worship stalin

Hot take on the left and markets: monthlyreview.org/1999/09/01/the-politics-of-capitalism/. Thoughts from proponents and opponents of models for so-called market socialism related to this article?

a dumb fucking, psychopathic autist to defend stalin

Why do you think that?

The first use of "use-value" by Marx (as far as I know) is in Poverty of Philosophy (1847), where Marx points out that dialectic nature of value (use-value / exchange-value) was already known before Proudhon:

marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch01b.htm

Unless Marx at some point changed his understanding of the term use-value, he equates it with estimation-of-value.

Then what is a correct conception of use-value? Some general "use-value itself" that is independent of expectation of use value?

...

What are you even trying to say?

No, you've outlined pretty well what it isn't in that passage, and what it thus is: the sum of all uses inherent to a commodity, as known by those exchanging it for a profit on the market.

Its funny how every discussion this dumb stalinist tripfag engages in turns into a discussion of meaning and linguistics

Im into pomo theory but this nigger takes it on a hole new level

plz respond

First, you need to understand that labor theory of value is the all-encompassing theory, under which in Marx's revision of Smith's and Ricardo's, surplus value is integral.

Second of all, yes: exploitation in the Marxist sense literally means "to make us of". It explains why, consequently, exchange values are divided into one portion for the worker's sustance, and as much as possible of the other portion goes towards market exchange. This exchange value is price, usually ever since money became the dominant commodity, this is money. The law of value ultimately presses SN(A)LT (sociallist necessary labor time), which then dictates how a firm should plan its production.

And why do you read individuals having oh-so unique individual thoughts into statements like that?

there's no way to quantitatively measure utility
you can calculate calories, but you can't calculate tastes
so theory of some objective utility as the basis of prices is in no way less useless than theory of subjective marginal utility as the basis of prices
plus I'd like to see how are you gonna disaggregate from macro to micro

prices are based on the costs of production, and they all come down to labor time in the limit
plain and simple

strawmanning
next you'll tell me HiMat is in conflict with LTV

you can make rough guess
but that's all you can

first, production for exchange is market economy
second, so what are your alternatives to the end consumer market? how are you gonna calculate SNLT?

So … use-value doesn't exist outside of market?
And that is why I don't understand Real Marxism and will inevitably end up with market economy?

How long will this nonsense continue? Use-value does not become magically objective and dependant on society just because some Technocrat scum wants to be the one making "rational" decisions about distribution of goods.

It is the exchange-value that is the emergent quality of the market, not use-value. Use-value clearly exists on individual level. You can decide to spend some time (labour) making some thing: it has more use-value for you than this amount of time (labour). Not only some grand process of exchange is unnecessary for you to determine use-value, you don't even need another individual.

Ergo: single individual is the source of use-value, not interaction between individuals.

Moreover, attempts to Revise this clearly make everything irrelevant. If production for use is the production you don't actually want and can't make decisions about - why would anyone support this caricature of Marxism?

He: "People who produce sandals for profit know what sandals are used for."
You: "So … sandals can't exist outside of market?"

Don't call yourself an ML if you are a market socialist.

*record scratch*
Now you can't even call yourself a Marxist or even watered-down Marxian anything anymore. Sad.

Dear !!XijnrwOqQI

Both use value and utility have in common that they are usually conceived in a way that abstracts away from the usefulness of a thing exchange against money or use in bartering. But that's about it.

Utility in neoclassical economics is conceived as individual preferences that are taken as fixed and pre-existing to any interactions with the world (as if some people were born with a gene for wanting an iPad), with no correlation between opinions of individuals assumed. Some models have numbers in them (which are not based on observations of actions or even surveys), supposed to represent happiness, with a typical assumption being that additional units of the same thing yield decreasing additional units of happiness, this assumption is called decreasing marginal utility. Strangely enough, this assumption is often dropped when the thing talked about is money. If the assumption is not dropped, the establishment economist can bring up another excuse to avoid the conclusion that a child would arrive at. The excuse is that comparisons between individuals are not allowed, because you can't really, really, really-really know for sure with absolute, pure, 100 % accuracy how happy people are with this or that. (Yet when it comes to many other issues the economic scientist is very much okay with some, let's say, rather "stylized facts" about the economy: such as assuming everybody knows everything about the present and future, and this does include the preferences of others, as long as one doesn't draw the haram conclusion from that.)

Use value in classical economics and Marx is like this: The use value of sandals is that they are for wearing. A description of the use values of what a shop got is a list of the stuff in inventory, that is how many units of each thing there are and what these things are made for.

Now, whatever you might think of yourself, you live under this society and as such your views are extremely likely colored by neoclassical economics. It's very likely that you read neoclassical economics before anything else. And even if you believe that the very first encounter with economics was the marxist kind - wellll, if you got there via an introduction written by somebody in the last 100 years or so, it's likely you are still suffering from second-hand neoclassical smoke. So, you find this "wisdom" about sandals very irritating, right? What the fuck do I want with sandals if they don't have the right size for me? Nobody else than you could potentially get to know what's your shoe size, hmm? If only there was another way to figure out whether shoes have the right size for you than via the magic of the market, eh? If only we could make educated guesses about who needs what sort of glasses, but we can't. Only the market can know. So if there is one pair with particular lenses in stock and person A puts them on and says he needs them to be able to read, and person B says he wants to put them in his hair to look stylish, we know who needs them more by looking at who is willing and able to pay more money…

You are , though I'm sure that's not intentional on your part, a shill for capitalism.

The objective qualities of a product that make it useful.

...

"Only the market can know. So if there is one pair with particular lenses in stock and person A puts them on and says he needs them to be able to read, and person B says he wants to put them in his hair to look stylish, we know who needs them more by looking at who is willing and able to pay more money…"
So, you read this and you couldn't figure out it was sarcasm?

I've reread what you've written and it was very informative thank you for posting it.

Is there a formal mathematical exposition of Marx's theory that I can read, like something I might get out of a normal econ textbook?

But the question is how "usefulness" is determined.

Is it done by individuals in each case separately and consequently is indeterminable by outside forces, or is it done by some supreme divine being that is euphemistically called "society" and then uncovered by the most holy specialists that worship/research this divine being?

Should individuals be allowed to make their own choice, or should their "choice" be forced upon them from on high?

If needs can be divided into "real" and "artificial", if all non-objective qualities that make goods desirable are determined by culture/advertising, if just a little bit of brainwashing is enough to make people willingly choose different fashion, taste, or whatever - then it logically follows that allowing choice of consumer goods (i.e. consumer good market) to population at large is wrong.

Consequently, consumer good market - the ability to choose how the labour vouchers/money are to be spent - is now a thing we need to abolish before we can claim Socialism. Hence:

Stop calling yourself a Marxist you petit-bourg autist spaz and keep your neoclassical brain aids to yourself.

You really need to elaborate.

And you need sources.

Marx explicitly said that it is irrelevant why exactly goods are wanted: either you want glasses because of myopia or because of fashion - it does not matter. And he also explicitly quoted his understanding of use-value - and it hinged on estimation.

How do you intend to prove your point with your opinion and your opinion alone?

It's very likely that you did not read anything about Dialectical Materialism and don't get the method of Marx's thinking.

And that was your only argument. Not some theoretical explanation, not reference to some text that elaborates upon your reasoning. No. It is but one example. Moreover, example is not about flavour of green tea, or color the sofa. It's about shoe sizes and myopia. Because it is evident that every want and need is just as objective and easily measurable as shoe size.

Now I'm thoroughly persuaded that if worker receives back "the same amount of labor which he has given to society" while being allowed to choose the form of said labour - it is Capitalism.

That was sarcasm.

I remain unpersuaded.

Technocracy is not Communism.

Veblen, Galbraith, Baudrillard - or whoever you've read - aren't Marxists. Even Burnham cut his ties with Trots. People do not have objective needs in Marxism because it presupposes that it is people's right to decide what they want. Technocrats argue against it - and for distinction between "real" and "artificial" needs - because it is their intent to divest people from this freedom.

Need I remind you about Lenin?

Absolute determinism of Technocrats - their belief in the ability to correctly identify "objective", "real" needs - springs from the attempts to attribute omniscience to the managerial elite - Petit-Bourgeois intellectuals. And things that managers obviously cannot predict get called "artificial needs" - you don't need to predict if it is irrelevant!

The difference between Communism and Technocracy is the difference between Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Dictatorship of the Petit-Bourgeois intellectuals.

Reminder that the trip fake ML is not actually familiar with classical economics and projects his neoclassical "education" on the googled bits he skim-reads to find support for opinions that he already held before doing any reading.

Just look at this:

And tripceleb's "rebuttal":

People familiar with classical economics wouldn't say that, see the statement about different eqilibrium concepts in .
And look how he is arguing. Muh single human as the starting point of investigation, with a completely asinine "thought experiment". A single person being aware of what fricking magnets can be useful for, and buying all of them up. Why are these things offered on the market then? Call me crazy, but I believe that people who produce a consumer good almost always know what that thing is used for. What would be an actual counter-example from real-life experience? Maybe some worker with downs having no idea what he is doing. That's about it. Whether you make shoes, glasses, dinnerware etc. you know what they are used for.

Do you want to get overly specific about what it means to know how a thing is going to be used - can I picture exactly all the dishes that will be prepared with these pots I am selling to this specific guy etc, of course not. And that isn't necessary. And to insist on the importance of these details means that you poo on those who have expectations that we are able to actually plan production to a great extent. That is, you are shilling for markets.

You really don't know what you are talking about.

Fashion is not intrinsic to an individual, fashion is a social phenomenon.

The Technocrats are for consumer products priced mainly according to energy inputs and consumers getting stuff with individual budgets, energy credits.

Take a look at their rally: youtu.be/RUregwsi_cw?t=570
Note that not a single car is white, black, or green. All uniform grey. That's what we are talking about. "Real" needs (car) and "artificial" needs (color of said car).

It is irrelevant what it is. My point is that reasoning about "objective" use-value is Technocratic and Marxism is not Technocracy.

Defining feature of Technocracy is subordination of society to the "rational" decision-making by the managerial "elite", not energy credits. If select few assume permanent (not during emergency) and complete control over production to "scientifically" manage distribution and determine specific consumption of population, then I see no problem calling this a Technocracy.

Topics Stalin trip has opinions about: classical economics, anarchism, mutualism, anarcho-syndicalism, Proudhon, Marx, Engels, Lenin, social democracy, conservatives, Russia, China, technocracy, quantum physics.

Topics Stalin trip is actually familiar with: neoclassical economics, Sonic.

You are humpty-dumptying. Nobody gives a shit what your private personal top-secret definition of words is, and it's not what other people mean when they use these terms. Energy-credit consumption points are part of the platform of the technocracy movement. You can't say it isn't what these people stand for, even though the material they publish features it, just because you have defined them in a different way. If you actually believe what you say I have to inform you that this is the magical reasoning process of a schizophrenic person.

And now you talk like a liberal autist. Great.

It doesn't matter.

You don't understand the purpose of counter-factual models and how to relate them to reality. Here is a simple example of the way you fuck up: We want to get a piece of furniture up the stairs and into a room. I figure out that it is so big that we have to take it apart, otherwise it won't fit through the door. You ask me how I figured that out without trying, it has a very complicated shape after all. I answer with a very simple model, where I replace the actual object with a two-dimensional rectangle that I claim is inside the object, and I easily show that there is no way to get that rectangle through the door.

Your reaction: WTF there is no two-dimensional furniture ayylmao

When somebody argues for a Marxist position, such as saying that even when people are paid the full value of their labour power they are exploited in a way, they don't actually mean with this that people are in every instance always paid according to the value of their labour power. People are in fact sometimes paid even below the level to buy the stuff for bare physical survival, and they have to rely on savings, family, go into debt. This issue is put aside so to not detract from the point that is made. You are mixing up abstract models of an idealized capitalism with actual existing capitalism. The point is not that actual real trade literally always is win-win in terms of use values. The point is that even the idealized and simplified capitalism is shit, and therefor, the real one is shit, too.

Do you get it now?

The point is that there are shitposters who hate people discussing anything and you are one of them.

Wrong

Wrong

Trade of use-values will always end up being a lose-lose tbh

Lel!

Humans can only do as they will, they cannot will what they will, you wont be able to decide what to produce because humans do not know what to will

>>Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption…

>What kind of blithering idiot would it take to think that expectation of use-value is not part of the influence of use-value
Karl Marx. The post you reply to is quoting Karl Marx.

Just repeat it enough. Then it becomes true, huh?

Are you calling this a shitpost? In an econ thread? And your contributions here (stale meme pictures + misrepresenting Marx in direct contradiction of what is quoted in here) are wonderful?

What do you think the following sentences mean then and how would you translate them?

>Der Gebrauchswert hat nur Wert für den Gebrauch und verwirklicht sich nur im Prozeß der Konsumtion.

>Unmittelbar ist er (der Gebrauchswert) die stoffliche Basis…

And the follow-up question for the trip-using poster: How do you square that with your interpretation of use-value as something that exclusively rests in the individual's mind?

And this one:
>Andrerseits wird die Benutzung gewisser Warenarten, z.B. eines Hauses, für einen bestimmten Zeitraum verkauft. Erst nach Ablauf des Termins hat der Käufer den Gebrauchswert der Ware wirklich erhalten.
Expected use value = use value, my ass.

That's a hair-splitting thing you are on about, but you are right. If one really wants to talk about use value in exactly the same way as Marx did, one has to say that the use-value of a thing is what a thing is useful abstracting away from using it in exchange, with an exception made for the use-value of money, which is its usage for exchange.

Money can be used outside of the realm of exchange value, it can be used a a tool for accounting, a company uses mometary units to analyze its performance, it is used as a method to store and show data, the data being the operative history of the firm or nation, therefore, we understand that a system like labour vouchers is just like money, as the use value, being useful when accounting and analyzing data, is still there

Fair enough.
Nah. It lacks the accumulation aspect. Money works as a tool for getting money itself. That's not true for these voucher thingies. If you believe that's not a big difference that's because you probably are not a porky. This other usage of money is something that is not available to most people as they don't have enough of it to bother even thinking about this, so it might not look like a big deal to you (I buy consumption with money now, would get my consumption with vouchers then, whatever), but it plays a big part in the current system being what it is.

This.
You just fulfill the role of both worker and capitalist, and directly serve the social abstraction you're creating and reproducing with your labour. You're still mired in commodity fetishism though the alienation isn't that bad because at least you control your own workplace and actions to an extent but you still have to direct your work towards what the numbers on the stock exchange tell you.

Yes. This sentence has been rendered absurd. It's clear that Marx could not have meant this.

Seriously?

Do we really need to have a repeat performance of "since der Austausch cannot mean a signle act of exchange, it is obvious that Marx meant a transcendent kind of Exchange which describes goods simultaneously existing before the exchange, during, and after - consequently, it is totally not schizophrenic to claim that Marx actually means owners when he says non-owners, and non-owners when he says owners"?

You are not even trying to argue now. You don't coherently present your case. You only hint that there is some unsaid meaning that somehow makes sense.

Look at your "arguments": half of a sentence is ripped out of context and has to be incorrectly edited - it doesn't make sense otherwise.

The whole sentence:
> Unmittelbar ist er die stoffliche Basis, woran sich ein bestimmtes ökonomisches Verhältnis darstellt, der Tauschwert.
If literal cargo-cultist interpretation of Marx is applied, this sentence could become "proof" of Marx saying that use-value is exchange-value - which is an obvious nonsense. But let us not dwell on it, since your attempt to substitute "er" (it) with simply use-value (der Gebrauchswert) is much more obvious sophistry.

Marx was clarifying for several sentences that the use-value he is talking about is the use-value that exists within economic exchange.

For others, in English:
> To be a use-value is evidently a necessary prerequisite of the commodity, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity. Use-value as such [use-value as use-value], since it is independent of the determinate economic form, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy.
> It belongs in this [economic] sphere only when it is itself a determinate form.
This is the use-value Marx is talking about. It is not real use-value - which is indeterminate. To what Marx refers is the use-value in the context of political economy. Or, to put it another way, how use-value (which itself is outside of economy) is expressed in economic exchange.

"Use-value" here is an effect of "actual use-value" (use-value as such; der Gebrauchswert als Gebrauchswert) and the material form (die stoffliche Basis) the desire takes - the object of desire - is shown as the link between the exchange-value and use-value. Not as real use-value.

I.e. the sentence simply demonstrates how two relations (use-value and exchange value; personal estimation and social - via market) interact. It does not explain what use-value actually is. As Marx already said, use-value "itself" is outside of political economy.

Consequently, the (full) sentence you offered for translation:
I would translate as:
> Immediately/Inseparably, use-value [in the context of economy] is some existing entity - through which specific economic relationship is expressed - exchange-value."

Or, to make the sentence more "English":
> Accordingly, use-value [in the context of economy] is some existing entity through which a certain economic relationship is expressed - the exchange-value."

For comparison, commonly accepted English translation:

Okay. The intent behind this one I can't even begin to understand. What are you trying to prove here?

Yes. Tenant fully obtains what he expects by the end of rental period. So what?

If anything, it should be me pointing out discrepancy between your interpretation of use-value being quality of consumption and Marx here saying that use-value becomes fulfilled only by the end of renting. One could argue it makes little sense for use-value to be truly consummated only when there is none to be had.

Do you even speak German? Yes or no.

The use-value of a cake is fully consummated only after it is fully eaten, since there is nothing of it left anymore. That makes little sense to you… why?

What I'm talking about is the "objective" interpretation of the term "use-value". We had several attempts to define it - of varying degrees of clarity - and some don't make sense in the context of this quote.

Unfortunately, I have no idea which interpretation is supported by the poster - he preferred not to elaborate (surprise, surprise). Which is why I wrote "one could argue", not "your interpretation clearly makes no sense within the context of this quote".

But that's not at all what you have been arguing here. Your position is that use-value is something in your special snowflake mind.

I've been asked specific question. Should I refuse to answer it if at some point in this thread I discussed something else?

That quote by Marx literally supports the opposite of your position. It supports those who disagree with you. Are you brain-damaged?

>Tenant fully obtains what he expects by the end of rental period.
Dear autist who likes Red Alert and lies on the internet about being able to read German, that's not what Marx said. There was no expectation in that sentence in the original. The person who pays in advance to rent something is only really done with obtaining its use value at the end of the rental period. The actual use value cannot mean expected one, unless expectation happens to perfectly coincide with reality. So, once again, it's ridiculous to claim expected use value is always the same as use value.

In the real world, contracts do not fully specify everything and there are regulations about what to do when it isn't fully specified in a contract, and people are not fully aware of all these regulations, and these regulations have ambiguities in them on top of that. Hence, trade is not always win-win in terms of use-value. Maybe one day you won't be a basement dweller anymore and you will figure out that tenants have no guarantee to get what they expect from the tenant-landlord relationship.

If taken outside of context. Meanwhile, multiple other quotes support my position.

Are you retarded? I never said there was

If you substitute "use-value" with "expectation" sentence would still make sense - which contradicted the assumed by my intent of posting the quote. That's all there was. I explicitly stated that I don't really understand the supposed argument. "Expected use value = use value, my ass." - is insufficiently coherent.

If you intend to claim that sentence is part of some other argument - then you need to actually post argument.

Read the goddamn thread. We already rehashed this argument several times and you are repeating same old arguments I already answered to several times (and not only me).

My position:
And there is no "objective" measure of use-value that we can compare our estimation to.

> the assumed by me intent of posting the quote.

Another day on leftypol, another chimp-out by a tripfag. Sigh. Use value of a thing is only realized in… *drumroll* using that thing.
marxists.org/glossary/terms/u/s.htm
"Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption"
-Karl Motherfucking Marx

Given that in the real world it occasionally happens that people are not perfectly informed about what they buy, real-world trade is not always win-win in terms of use-values. Counter to what you claim. This is utterly banal. Why does everybody have to tell you that. Why do you deny it. Why deny it after being confronted with that quote by Marx. Why keep on denying that. Guess you would have immediately conceded if not for making up some glorious online intellectual identity by using a trip.

Go and fucking hang yourself so you get the attention you so desperately need from your parents who have left the computer to babysit you, you faggoty little fish-finger eating nose-picking cock-sucking butt-plugging nigger.

(you)
>Tenant fully obtains what he expects by the end of rental period.

Go downvote someone on Reddit.

If you don't have any arguments, I don't give a fuck about your opinion.

Also your position:

Really makes one think that you have brain damage

BTFO

I see.

Question: If I were to have a job, for example system administration, where one only has to work when something is broken (simplified), am I still exploited? What "value" am I creating? Is the product of my work still a commodity?