Ebin new meme: Marx and Engels discover r/socialism

It is quite depressing that our user count seems to have dropped off from the 1000 mark yet we seem to have kept the worst offenders from reddit.

Does anyone have the counter to the 8pol now 4pol counter to this?

We should have made a better effort to create stickied threads that properly outline what the code of conduct here is, or at least what the code of conduct isn't. We lost a lot of potentially good people in that chaotic aftermath, and indeed only got more of the bad ones, but we owe it to our own improper reception.

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Redditfags think they're right about everything and will refuse to listen to anything they're told and stomp their feet until everyone gives up, like with everywhere else that has suffered their infestation. These meme forcing, moral crusading spazmos have forced away at least a dozen theorists that were carrying half the threads and as a result of that and their own input have driven the quality down greatly.

It was apparent to begin with that you're a redditor who was banned from that retard land and now wants to take a revenge on them through mean internet pictures, thanks for confirming that. Let me suggest you something: cease posting for some time(and I'm talking about weeks or even months) and lurk more, both Holla Forums and other chans until you start "getting it". In the meanwhile do something actually useful like reading the fucking books instead of relying on what you've learned from memes to make word salads in an attempt to sound profound on the internet.

top fucking kek

Nah, IDK where your screeching is coming from but I ain't a redditor; never even had an account. I've been here since the GET exodus and I'm not about to justify myself to some autist accusing me of being lebbitor. Take a chill pill, nerd.

Kek. Can't recall the amount of times I've unironically seen them say this, or some grand delusions of how having a co-op firm in capitalism means "destroying capitalism from within", or other memes like "workplace democracy" being socialism.

lol what exactly is this one trying to convey?

Originally the point was to provide evidence against the capitalist argument that hierarchy is necessary, but edgy liberals never seem to get the point.

Coops are socialism tho

That the "middle class" is an actual class at all. Only contemporary political discourse uses the term, and it doesn't refer to an actual class, but rather an average level of income (the whole "lower class", "middle class", "upper class" trifecta comes from sociological categorizations, which are just about how much wealth one has).

They're just capitalist firms like any other, except with equal shareholding and voting. So they're not. Don't be a redditor who falls for the "democratic ownership" meme.

Why are they capitalist firms? Because they engage in market exchange? Are you saying markets are capitalism, because capitalists use markets?

nothing wrong with marxian economics

Never mind, it's this retard again. The one who can't differentiate between exchange and use value and gets BTFO by the Marxists every single time. No more (You)s to you from me, clown.

But this is wrong. The term was already widely used in the 19th century and Marx and Engels themselves employed it meaning a variety of things according to context, some similar to how we use it today.

As expected, kapitalism101 makes several mistakes ans some of his videos contradict themselves, check the econ general

Planned production exist under capitalism too cuck

Of course a coop inside capitalism is pointless. Just like socialism in one country. Stop being dummy dums.

Bob Black anarcho-lifestylists don't know dick. Wish they would use trips so we could filter them

Coops are capitalism. A coop can not ever not be in capitalism.

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Cooperative is just the capitalist firm democratized, still producing for exchange. Autistically making poor parallels does nothing to change this fact. Read Marx (Economic Manuscripts, 1844):

Or Luxemburg, really (Reform or Revolution, 1900):

Market "socialism" in action in Yugoslavia, reviewed: insurgentnotes.com/2013/10/yugoslav-self-management-capitalism-under-the-red-banner/

Ah yes, the 1844 manuscripts, where we also get this lovely gem describing how communism means changing your profession every two hours because of muh alienation. Needless to say, I'll take Marx's words with a grain of salt there.

As for Luxemburg, while I respect many of her theories, here she is incorrect. Co-ops are just as viable as capitalists firms. Regardless, the goal of the cooperative movement is not just to start a co-op under capitalism, but to use co-ops to put the political economy under worker control.

Yugoslavia was an interesting case study into market socialism, but I believe they made the fundamental mistake of separating ownership from control, something of the opposite problem as in other eastern bloc countries. They state owned all the enterprises even if the workers controlled them, and with that cam high turn over rates and the state being on the hook for the debt of individual enterprises. This encouraged workers to take as much money as possible from the coop through wages and only reinvest with credit, eventually leading to a debt crisis.

Poor reading comprehension. All Marx here says is that it's possible. Tough luck, but try again.

Yes, and that's precisely what it is, really: cooperatives are just a more viable form of managing capital. They embody its very essence, and perhaps function better than the traditional top-down firm by delegating shareholding to all workers, creating the perfect abstract capitalist to do the bidding of capital accumulation.

A complete failure of a perspective, as any proper Marxist will tell you, because capital answers not to specific forms of hierarchy, but its own need to multiply. Cooperatives, if anything, only lengthen its lifespan, by hiding its contradictions as a problem of hierarchy instead of the contradiction between exchange and use value. Again, a failure to have a proper understanding of value form theory, so back to Marx with you, thank you.

Not really much to care about. You may now actually look at the article and see what it uncovers. When you are done with that, you will also read this: transform-network.net/journal/issue-092011/news/detail/Journal/workers-self-management-in-yugoslavia-an-ambivalent-experience.html. (That is, of course, if you are actually interesting in tackling your poor theoretical view of things, and aren't just here to be a demagogue for a total failure).

Also read this. In its entirety. This document burries the farce of market "socialism" so deep underground that you will come back a proper communist instead of the crypto-petty bourg you are otherwise. Cya.

The need for capital to multiply itself is implicit in the commodity production process. Developed commodity production is Capitalism. A developed division of labour gives rise to a need for reserve funds, even if you were to hope to end off every P cycle with P instead of P', M will always end with M' and C' with C'.

The abolition of Capital is the abolition of Capital. What "market socialist" advocate for is putting lipstick on a pig.

Holy shit, that's an amazingly accurate way of putting it.

He implies that we should make it a priority of ending the division of labor, and that this is immediately viable. It's autistic is what it is.

Central planning also occurs in capitalism. The point is not that Coops are communism, but rather they are a way for the workers to get control, a way to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat which gives power to the workers, thus enabling the destruction of capitalism as a totality.

I never made any claims about value, coops being socialism, or coops innately not being capitalism. My only argument here is one of pragmatism and describing the importance of empowering workers with such measures.

While we're on the topic, I suggest looking at this
digamo.free.fr/nove91.pdf

Economic planning as a singular mode of coordination is not only inefficient, but doomed to empower a small group of private individuals, not workers.

Failure to understand that the markets-planning dichotomy is not just a false one (planning implies the centralization of bourgeois planning, markets its decentralization, planning being substitute for coordinating labor at all), but also a failure to understand that Marx never advocated the notion of planning (a Kautskyist/Plekhanovian and later Stalinist development):
marxmyths.org/paresh-chattopadhyay/article.htm
marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1937/08/nonsense-planning.htm

Addressed in the PDF (and utterly destroyed). In fact, Nove's model for market "socialism" is the main one addressed by McNally, as it is the only fully functional concept of one at all.

Give up your delusions and obtain a proper understanding of capital.

Yes, yes, as you all like to repeat ad nauseam. And yet, if you actually read my post, you'd realize I was not saying coops are communism, but that they are needed within any dictatorship of the proletariat.

They are not simply not communism, they are simply capitalism pure and simple.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

No he doesn't. Where does he imply this? He implies the division of labour is alienating (our idealogical self interest come to resemble our material self interest) and Communism is the negation of this. He doesn't list a step by step program in what order this will be accomplished, which is what you are implying he says.

"Central planners" in Capitalism make use of price signals from the outside world. There is no "price signals" in communism, its the cooperation of the community to meet their material self interest. Just like says, this is a false dichotomy between the "centrally planned" aspects of the market and the market itself. They are the same.

marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1937/08/nonsense-planning.htm

Read this if you like. Marx said we should "centralize the instruments of production" under the state. None of this implies some omnipotent Stalinist bureaucracy. Rather, it means that they are centralized under the state. It means the abolition of the anarchy of production that stems from the failure of market production to coordinate itself. Nothing more, nothing less.

…you do realize I was exactly implying that planning is compatible with markets? Right? Not to mention, under capitalism, its not just the coordination of labor, but distribution, for what else is the purpose of a vertically integrated supply chain"?

I never claimed he did. But, I also wouldn't pin all the blame on stalin either, for Lenin was also an advocate of such a system.
t. lenin, the state and revolution
Regardless, it's very clear that there are only so many alternatives to market mechanisms. Generally speaking, you can have decentralized planning through worker councils or other mechanisms, or you can have centralized planning. Each carries there own problems.

Your editorializing isn't very convincing, and it's painfully obvious you haven't read Nove's original arguments.

Newfag here. So if coops are out, and central planning is out, how would you organise production?

These things are only "out" if you are an actual communist. You can consistently be a market """"socialist"""" and be in favor of ethical capitalism (cooperatives) all you like, or a Stalinist and in favor of central planning.

Free association of labor according to use values AKA communism.

But aren't market socialism and central planning meant as means of achieving communism? How will you get from Capitalism to Communism?

Right. You imply we "want" planning and that therefore we should have no issue with a transitory market because it contains within itself "planning". This is precisely our point, the spheres of Capitalism - capital on one end and labour on the other, is not abolished or curbed by "planning".

How? I agree with the criticisms about opportunity cost and a "lack of" price signals when lobbed as central planners, but how does this apply to real decentralized communal production? Where private property is REALLY collectivized, where the proletariat is the state. Not some supreme council of Soviet leaders.

Speculation about what "real communism" will look like is a waste of time and energy. We are going to project our ideological notions into it. It ignore the autodynamic and organic nature by which history progresses. We can however, talk about the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Capital. In that regard, markets are a regress. A step backwards.

No, not there, but if we are to expect his work to have logical consistency, we should apply his other thoughts on communism and how it will come about.

Well this is a fascinating claim. You imply that material self interested can be ascertained in the abstract, disregarding the demand for a good. That won't end well.

You can use such logic to disregard any analysis on the internal structure of organizations in capitalism, an exercise that will only decrease the body of knowledge and experience available to you.

No, but that's what it will lead to if you, as you have done constantly in the past, disregarded most of the body of work of analysis on the state. If the workers do not control the state, then the state has no interest in achieving communism.

On that note: States fail to do things all the time, they have problems and hiccups like all organizations, what possible case could you have for preventing people through co-ops of filling in those gaps in the economy when they occur?

They are an inherent step back to achieving this; to reembody the nature of capital is to set things up to head back that way, and necessitate more liberalization sooner than later (this is the trend we saw in both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, even though they were in practice not very dissimilar, Sovkhoz and Kolkhoz fulfulling an omitted function similar to cooperatives entirely).

Violent revolution with a dictatorship of the proletariat setting up the lower phase of communism, thereby abolishing the present state of things pertaining to all that is capital.

What?

I'm implying that the price signals a "centrally planned" firm works with in the market are products of the market.

What?

When did I say we should have a centrally planned state where the workers don't control it?I think you misunderstand me. I don't want the workers to sit back while daddy Stalin plans production. Communism, and a DOTP means production on a smaller scale organized by those who are directly involved in either the production OR consumption. History is a process of gradual change, and a cooperative popping up (for some reason?) every once a in a while that we can quickly make redundant is different than designating worker capitalism the means by which we achieve communism.

Do you not want planning then? And that was also not my argument for a transitory market.

And yet, that is precisely what you seem to want to use to abolish capitalism.

You assume the critiques of centralized planning would be the same as decentralized planning. Rather, the problem of decentralized planning is one of externalities, that there will be limits on flows of information, and the influence of local political power disrupting the larger economy.

Not when the alternatives are ill-prepared to take the lead. No, markets without capitalist muh privilege would be a massive step forward from where we are today.

When in doubt, just throw out some vague platitudes, works every time.

Yes, just like "we need cooperatives in DotP" or memes like "socialism within capitalism with co-ops". Good job channeling your own meme to its logical conclusion. Congratulations.

But co-ops consist of workers who own the means of their production.

I do not want some centrally planned bureaucratic planning, no.

This is a long winded way of saying "muh exogenous variables" which would be just as much a problem in a market as in any communally planned economy. Actually, exogenous variables are much more deadly in a market. This is literally the Austrian "you have to have perfect knowledge of everything that has been or ever will be for any sort of planning to work" argument. This is ludicrous. At any given moment in a market economy, there are million of prices that distort the true relationships between supply and demand. Worse, firms have almost no fucking idea what the other firms are doing, nor do they care. The judge how much to supply off how many times they accidentally sell a commodity. This is Marx's point, any "equilibrium" or moment of unity we find in a market is a mere accident. So its especially bizarre when opponents of ALL organized production talk about a "lack of information" because markets are the epitome of "lol we'll figure it out as we go along".

Ill prepared? By whom? The castrated left that spends their time beating up trashcans? Yes I agree. That doesn't vindicate the alternatives.

And how will you achieve a violent revolution? Revolutions need build-up, they don't pop out from thin air, and one could argue that the coop and labour movements could provide a base of support, perhaps extended to the local community.
What do you mean by this, exactly? We've seen time and time again in history that the economic base persists after the revolution, requiring the post-revolutionary government to reform it (like we are seeing in Rojava, where private enterprises are converted to communal). While this transition is happening the country is still capitalist, and thus is liable to liberalizing, as you say. What do you do then? To go back to my previous point, wouldn't it be prudent to attempt to establish an economic base before the revolution that would smoothen the transition?

t. marx

So? Any method of counting demand would be shaped by its own rules and the surrounding conditions. You still have the problem of calculating demand in central planning.

If central planning under communism has nothing to do with central planning under capitalism, you'll just throw out all the lessons of central planning under capitalism in your endeavor. Including the fact that it's planning needs inputs from the market, or a similar mechanism to function effectively!

And how will that be done, hmm? If you only have worker councils, you'll have massive externalities to deal with, so then you'll need a central planner along with them, but then, you'll need some method of figuring out actual demand and relative value, of which any mechanism you create will look eerily similar to a market unless you ask people to spend two hours every week ranking choices in a survey like the Austrians think we do. So, in the end, you'll still end up with something that looks almost exactly like what nove was proposing to begin with.

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Hence why I said speculating on communism is a meaningless affair.

GOOD THING I'M NOT FUCKING ADVOCATING FOR CENTRAL PLANNING WEW

What? "Production of things requires resources" is a meaningless truism friend.

You don't need a "central planner" if the "planning is based on free association and negotiation within communities. Austrians also think needs are magical and just pop up based on the mystical forces of supply and demand. They are unable to wrap their head around how needs change depending on the historic epoch. We don't have to worry about ranking all 1420 types of gum by gender and age because we aren't going to be producing useless commodities that play no part in the reproduction of everyday life aside from the fact capital is the reproduction of both life and itself. It won't look "similar to a market". It might to you, because you have a semi-vulgar view of the market as "le free exchange of goods" and not a qualitatively different way of organizing production within the division of labour as opposed to production organized by the community.

In a market you would at least have price signals to look at for coordinating supply and demand, are they always completely accurate, no, and they can be systemically distorted in certain ways, for example through the use of credit. But its still more effective then trying to figure all of this out in the abstract, a world which has even less bearing on the realities of supply and demand.

Well, if a firm has a high price for an item and all the other firms around it have a low price, guess what, they're going to sell less stuff and they're going to lower the price. Real competition exists and it's because of this that price signals matter, and in fact, such competition is absolutely necessary for LTV to work.

The america, the Green Party and Democracy and their platforms are much more viable than anything you lot have to offer.

You can blame Richard Wolff for that, a self entitled "Marxist".

Apple computers?

So, labour vouchers? That's it? That's what you're advocating for?

While the vague productivity of labour sets the trajectory of long term behaviours of price ultimately, prices set by the capitalist are always a distortion of the true relationship between the exchange of equivalents they hope to achieve an the smooth reproduction they hope to maintain. Again, you are implying "we are figuring this out in the abstract" rather than having the tacit knowledge of the community become a core part of production.

The LTV doesn't "need to work", it is what happens. It's the assertion of the laws that govern material production over the exchange of material goods. The form it asserts itself through can change, but you can't break free from the material. Have you not heard of sticky prices? Monopoly pricing? The reason prices diverge from labour values is due to the fact capital moves to where profit is highest, overproduces and drives prices down. A distortion of the needs of the material reproduction process is derived from the distortions of the market. The reverse is also true. Labour "value" regulated the long term prices of goods but that says nothing about short term price fluctuations. The inability of the market to coordinate itself on any level approaching efficiency except in the short term by accident is the basis for Marx's criss theory, the basis for his critique of political economy.

And they're only the most egregious example - think of all the overpriced clothing brands. Nike may sell less than your average dollar store shit, but it still prints money.

He explicitly doesn't call himself a Marxist, but instead a "Marxian".

When people say "Marixan economics" they are usually referring to their loose reading of Marx which they use to justify their reformist (usually "market socialist") views within the context of some economic analysis involving Marx.

Marx viewed his economic works as a critique of an illegitimate field of study; economics is a non-productive work that attempts to study and, nearly all the time, justify Capital. Nearly all economists argue for feeble reformism (see Richard Wolff) in a form that is still compatible with capitalism (trade unions, workers cooperatives).

In this sense, "Marxian" means economics that allegedly take Marx's critiques of capitalism into account, but never do. Being a Marxist means being a communist, "Marxian" softly signals a drift away from this, and it shows when there is advocacy for completely non-communist ideas like cooperatives as revolutionary subjects kek.

As such, there is no such thing as a "left economy"; communism is the real movement to end the economy as we know it in its entirety. Wolff is a liberal with little to no understanding of Marx, rehashing ideas that Marx himself debunked back when Lassalle voiced them (I wish I was kidding). He is not a Marxist, and he has absolutely nothing to do with communism - at all. He is implicitly arguing for all corporations to be commonly held and being structured as cooperatives, which has nothing to do with socialism. He also adheres to the notion that socialism can be "voted in to office", or is a matter of just convincing people into it, which is hopeless utopianism. He is wrong on basically everything he says.

As much as this is a thread explicitly bashing Reddit, these two Reddit threads on marxism_101 (one of the few actually really good left wing places on reddit, purely focusing on Marxism) provide much more extensive critiques:
reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/5fifub/new_to_marxism/
reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/5j2svv/why_are_rcommunism101_and_this_subreddit_two/

I dont see potential in this meme tbh

Will that sub ban me if I use words like "idiot" or "bitch?"

No, but there really shouldn't be much of a use. It's purely economic discussion, meant to educate or investigate Marxist communist concepts. Its more formal, general equivalents would be /r/leftcommunism, /r/ultraleft (shitposting) and /r/shitleftistssay (making fun of utopians and reformists).

Yeah, that's fine. I just don't want to get shit on by some cunt mod for "ableism" because I said "oh that's crazy" or "when I realized I felt like an idiot."

Time for me to bring up the computer-calculated iterative decentralized planning meme.

I'm glad at least one person pointed this out. It is stupefying how something so pitifully wrong could pass ITT without comment. The rest from that template were dogshit too, the only good ones were the examples ridiculing the idea of "Marxian economics" and "Communist ideology."

I mean, pic related came from that group of subs as commentary on /r/socialism's draconic "ableism" rules. I doubt many people will appreciate it if you're needlessly vulgar for the sake of it, but just saying "dumb" or "stupid" will absolutely not get you banned.

I believe that /r/Ultraleft created it as a means of being sassy towards /r/Socialism. Probably wasn't intended to reach Facebook or anything.

Why are leftcoms so based?

this guy reads marx

Denk you very much.