How many of you actually understand basic economics? I don't mean this in a taunting way, just so you know, but what makes you think any of your ideas (or the ideas you're following) is the the correct praxis? Why do you keep talking about "late stage" capitalism? How would you even identify the stages in capitalism?
So far only leftcoms are reasonable in terms of theory on this board.
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I took 6 years of economics classes in the highest form is middle/highschool in my country. That covers "basic economics".
Taking my intermediate microecon exam in a couple hours
Yeah, I'm pretty confident I understand basic economics. I have read quite a bit of economics-heavy literature from Adam Smith to Marx to Kevin Carson.
I don't necessarily think my ideas are more "correct" than anyone else's only that they appear to be viable and better than what we currently have. Of course, I am constantly re-evaluating my ideology and updating it as I acquire new information and ideas.
I don't. I've always seen the "late stage" meme as an entirely arbitrary distinction designed more for emotional appeal than any practical use.
This included both macro and micro economics, btw.
I've passed all econ classes with As and Bs.
I don't, the correct praxis has not been established because capitalism is still around and all historical leftist movements have failed. All I can do is identify what failed and not do that, such as the Vanguard or Catalonia's syndicalism in a civil war.
I don't. Capitalism has proved it is capable of mutating to adapt to most circumstances. It is going to have to be destroyed, else it will just come back.
Leftcoms reject economics and their praxis is waiting for the last stage of capitalism to end on it's own. You're either baiting or are an idiot.
Late stage capitalism is a fucking meme, it isn't meant to be taken seriously. I mean some retards always will, poes law and alk that.
Yeah, it's a very qualitative and hypothetical idea. We won't really know the period of late stage capitalism until it's gone
Why? Better to do nothing than make a crucial mistake like in the past.
Don't know why you're on our dicks because of economics. You're likely confusing Marxism and the critique of economics and political economy and knowing about these topics well enough with thinking economics and political economy are in any way legitimate because we understand them well enough theoretically as disciplines (in our "opinion", they aren't legitimate at all).
"Late (stage) capitalism" is also a discourse related term that means "the current (latest) form in which capitalism manifests itself)".
There are no real "stages" within capitalism, but we can see some ways in which capital incrementally realized itself, e.g. with the first instances of primitive accumulation and the mercantile relation of property between landed gentry and merchant.
Isn't "late stage capitalism" usually used to refer to the cultural things going on around today? So it is hardly pure economics.
Anyway I don't really understand a whole lot, but I've read enough to conclude that capitalism is unsustainable. The tendencies are pretty well documented, the primary one being the concentration of capital in the hands of a tiny minority.
I don't reject social democrat-ish "moderate" ideas on principle, if a viable way is found to introduce big enough global taxes on harmful things and capital itself, I'm gonna support that. (And I'm not aware of any economical reasons making a global tax impossible: as long as it really does cover more or less everywhere, so capital can't escape it). That said, such a thing would basically require a radically leftist movement winning globally…
I'm not advocating for any particular system to replace capitalism: I think that would be theoretically absurd. But alternatives may emerge when we are pressed to change things. My main mission, as far as politics go, is to try to keep the idea of an alternative alive, as well as to continue raising the issues that make capitalism unsustainable.
Doing nothing was a crucial mistake made by Bordiga himself.
Note: when I say "capitalism is unsustainable", I do not mean in the sense that it will collapse itself. I mean that it can not keep going on in a "good" way if its inherent problems aren't addressed. Maybe these could be changed with a radical change in the distribution of wealth and capital, as well as a big amount of political/democratic control, but could we really remove that part and keep the nice things?
(some major problems: inequality (-> political problems), new scientific discoveries (-> possible full-on dystopia, horrible genetic engineering etc), ecological problems (-> possible destruction of the environment we need for living) and energy problems (-> if people don't figure out how to evade a huge energy crisis, it'll be bad)
What a fucking joke, not that even college tier ed would teach you jackshit but neoclassics
once again commie scum doesnt even read their own literature
Oh, so you need to have a doctorate in economics to know "basic" economics?
Maybe you should take your retarded american ass out of here and realise that other countries have other better systems. All exchange students who went to america said that you get taught shit on university in the 4th year that they had in their introductory course in the first year.
Late stage capitalism is a meme relating to absurd forms of consumerism created under techno-capitalism, also the extreme measures taken by governments to keep their economy running in these dire times, and finally, the pure ideology of people defending capitalism, even if they acknowledge the problems, only to then turn 180 degrees and revere it as progress and necessary for capitalism to grow.
Basic economics is just that. Basic. You learn large parts of it in basic education. Adam+Keynes+Marx and voila. You can understand how basic economics work. Look for inconsistincies and fill out the rest with how governments and businesses have dealt with problems in the past. If you can understand the flaws of capitalism, you understand what to look for when capitalist are avoiding the pitfalls.
I have a minor in economics.
Late capitalism just refers to contemporary capitalism as it currently exists. It doesn't mean capitalism is in its final stage or end stage. The term was used because of a mistranslation.
Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism
I was thinking about the term 'late stage capitalism' the other day, and I think I've got an idea for a semi-rigid (heh) definition of the term. Forgive my autism below.
OK, so first of all, let's assume that von Mises is partially right - total demand is infinite under capitalism. That is, the mechanics of capitalist accumulation mean that every individual person under capitalism wants every possible resource in the world under their personal control. Since there is only one 'everything', not everyone can have it, and everyone ends up with less than they demand.
Next we assume that total demand across the population would be finite under communism. Communism is defined here as a system that has completely dispensed with the Law of Value (i.e., markets, money, wage labour), with no private property and free access to all resources. We justify this assumption by noting that hoarding is impossible without the private holding of storage space, accumulation of goods beyond that which is needed is pointless without exchange, and free access to abundant goods eliminates the perception (and reality) of scarcity and the concomitant desire to hoard goods. Let's call the finite total demand of the global population under a hypothetical full communism D. We'll note that D is the sum of each the demands of each individual person, D_i.
Now let's talk about the current system. Let's say we have a way of doing a global audit of the Earth's total accessible resources, energy production/distribution capacity, factors of production, and labour force/composition. We'll call the result of that audit S_max, or the total current supply capacity of human civilisation. You can think about it in terms of dollars if you like, or as a complicated sum of individual resources, energy sources, etc in natural units. Now of course we are aware that capitalism doesn't operate at full efficiency all the time, so S_realised < S_max. We also note that S_max increases over time, as our technology allows us to access further-flung resources and capture more energy, our labour pool grows, and we build more factories.
Now that we've defined a demand term and a supply term, we can start talking about comparison-based conditions. We start off by assuming that S_max < D at the dawn of capitalism, reflecting the low level of the development of the productive forces. We can call the period during which this condition is satisfied 'early capitalism'. As capitalism develops, however, it can be readily observed that productivity increases vastly outstrip population growth. That is, S'_max > D'. If S_max is growing faster than D, it stands to reason that there either will or has come a time when S_max >= D. We can call the period during which this condition is met 'late capitalism'. Of course due to the inefficiency of the market system, capitalism in this period likely simultaneously satisfies S_realised < D and S_max > D. This is a highly undesirable situation - capitalism at this point acts as a fetter on production.
To conclude (also tl;dr): it may be useful to define 'late capitalism' as the period where the productive forces have developed enough to materially support a direct transition to 'higher stage' communism.
pic unrelated
I just wanna to kill rich people tbh
I understand Marx tried to come up with rebuttal/solution/alternative to feudalistic aspects of modern capitalist economic theories by some amalgam of meaning from older economic theories
I've worked enough on Econometrics for capital banking to know purely economic theory is just voodoo.
Political and cultural economic theories are best to explain historical examples, and even so, are shit to make predictions, but at least the assumptions are not retarded.
masters in law & economics. I see socialism more of a search for solutions to some problems capitalism has, rather than glorifying some failed leaderships though. Anyone with basic economic education will know about things like market failures, bubbles and tax evasion schemes etc. which call for controverse non economical solutions. I don't claim to have the right ideas either, I'm just on the look out.
How well did that work out during WWII?
Define "basic"? Like supply & demand, wages, reinvestment, etc.? I understand that and the distinctions between socialism & capitalism, accumulation of capital etc. pretty advanced stuff. Where do you draw where "basic" is?
So it seems this board has a bunch of people educated in economics. Which is not apparent with all the post that insist that money has to be done away entirely and have no real plan to replace it.
I studied economics for my Undergraduate degree, and have continued my studies afterwards self-taught in Marxist economics. I answer a lot of economics questions on this board, but I don't post with a flag or anything identifiable as me. I'm certainly not a leftcom.
The idea of "late stage" capitalism is maybe a bit of a woolly term, but its use isn't reflective of a failure to understand economics at all. It reflects a Leninist theory of stages of capitalist development, and it would be a-historical to argue that capitalism has not developed in the course of its history, and it is perfectly reasonable to separate it (albeit fairly arbitrarily, as with any separations of a linear process) into "stages", depending on the context of the discussion.
This bait is too low-level to respond.
full blown communism doesn't make sense with money though when you think about it.
which is why people don't want communism, it seems too alien.
I mean, there are plenty of people in threads like this one who are at least ironically vocal about money being the devil.
"Praxis" is not a word. Stop using it, unless you support Frankfurt School.
How the fuck did Vanguard fail? All other attempts failed. As a result, Bolsheviks got cut off from the rest of the world in some semi-medieval shithole, but still managed to survive for 70 years and propagate Marxist ideas all around the world.
I'm gonna study economics fam
maybe, but one needs to be batshit insane to think that we can skip an "intermediate" step where we still need to have some sort of a system to control distribution of goods (to prevent hoarding etc)
money is a nice tool to let people choose between different things that they might want (maybe that comrade needs a guitar to play music and that comrade needs a better computer to help the guitarist comrade record it, why not give them money and let them go to a store where prices are regulated according to production)
at a higher level, maybe a concept of money is also useful to set kind of a worth for different goods for larger scale trade - this should be careful though
I'd imagine a lot of people here have done some sort of economics course, since we wouldn't be here if we didn't care about economics.
On the other hand though these "be honest" threads are obviously being coordinated by someone to either try and quotemine or just shit up the board. This one is a lot better than the Hitler one though well done.
Let me guess, you're a burger?
Many 'murican college studies teach you stuff a European middle school would already know.
I bet you think Hitler improved Germany's economy, don't you?