Brainlet here, can someone explain this to me

you dont need one,

youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TywSMCntM

This doesnt reflect use value though, which is what the wiki says it is.

Is the wiki wrong?

It does. It reflects how much on one resource is needed to create a product for use. So the use-value becomes that it can create other things.

I might want to ask and promose something more:

Wouldnt it be much more beneficial to plan according to input-output matrices but also keep track of the labour time and other variables? Keeping track of labour time could, for example, give a factory's workers or give new designers a quick overview of how much work it is to make plastic type A over plastic type B, and make a better, more economically efficient decision on which materials to use. You could also keep track of environmental impact (if you can quantify that somehow). This would allow you to make much more informed dicisions about what production to choose, even better than today (we dont take into account either environmental costs or labour time costs, just money). It wouldn't be much work to make extra input-out matrices for these, since its just the cost of the resources plus the cost of the production.

Hmm that makes sense I guess. How would this account for consumer use value though?

Calculation is capitalism. Read Lukács

WTF I hate lukacs now.

You know how you have to organise supply chains in games like Anno and Settlers? It's kinda like that, just way bigger and more complicated.

That makes sense, I'd imagine you'd organize and regulate that with workers councils or soviets or what have you right?

This brings me to my next question, why is value subordinate to labour time?

Also, can anyone quantify how calculating in kind is more efficient than say a monetary market based society? I'm interested in this from the point of view of material dialectics; in the past changes in society occurred because one mode of living would overcome the other if it was more efficient, for example agricultural and pastoral societies more often than not overcame hunter-gatherers. I'm genuinely curious as to why some form of Socialism hasn't overcome capitalism, is that the material conditions have not been met, or that capital has gained to much systemic power to be overcome in such a manner? I'm not looking for a gotcha moment or anything like that, I genuinely want to learn more.

Youre going to have to either read Marx or ask people who are smarter than me.
Not neccecarily. The advent of capitalism was due to the invention of the steam engine, which allowed for the cotton industry to explode, which made governments and landlords all over europe tell their peasants and serfs to fuck off and put sheep on previously food-producing land, due to the high price of wool. This forced masses of labourers into cities with no jobs, which allows the then comparatively small bourgeoisie to make massive profits due to masses of cheap labour. Capitalism wasnt more "efficient" than feudalism, the combination of new technologies that combined automation and fossil fuels forced society into it due to politics. Socialism doesn't have to be more "efficient" (though it will be), but socialism is going to be the natural result of growing unemployment, increasing automation and shrinking profits, all of which will stagnate the economy and impoverish lots of people, necessitating a change in how production is done.

Other than the wool example, the new steam engines allowed for one farmer to produce much more commodities than before, removing the need for many farmers. Landlords send most farmers away, made one of them farm all the fields with new technology and enjoys their new profits. Before this, the landlord needed the farmers both for the work and to defend his kingdom, but with so much money and so many landless people, they could just hire an army instead. All this created the same influx of workers as with the sheep. Read more about the initial accumulation of capital in Capital 1, part 8, primitive accumulation. (no prerequisite knowledge about Capital needed, its basically a book of its own imo) marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm.

So im just going to keep expanding on this and see if people reply.

So list the costs that exchange value (currently) does keep track of and which arent being kept track off.

Does keep track off:
Labour time, but badly due to wage differences, speculation and other factors
Resource costs, also quite badly due to it being in the context of money. You cant separate the labour cost and resource cost due to capitalism considering these to be the same (costs)

Does not keep track of:
Pollution emissions (unless you have pollution tax, which is often avoided). Can be kept track of.
Environmental damage, such as erosion or how much of an impact it has on nature. Think either farms or mining.

Can keep better track of with input output model:
Labour time
Resource costs

Any other usefull properties I missed?

Well yes, you couldn't have agriculture or pastoralists without domestication. In the same sense you cannot have Bourgeois without urbanization and guilds and so on.

I'm not sure if you understand my point, if Capitalism (in in it's multitudes of forms) was not in aggregate more efficient than feudalism/absolutism than it would have lost. However with the massification of society feudalism was untenable, and the "forces of Capitalism" was more efficient and more in accordance with reality.

I would have to disagree with your analysis on automation though. It would seem more likely that that upper class will merely hire MC Freikorps (tm) to protect their means of production. That is unless somehow there is open source automation which I doubt will happen.

That is beside the point though, I digress. Can you shed on any light on how calculating in kind would be more efficient than monetary market based society?

I personally haven't read any marx because I'm still working through the history of ideas in a mostly linear fashion, and mathematics isn't really my forte (my aptitude isn't really inclined for such) and it seems like it would be too dense and outdated to be beelining. What sort of stuff should I be focusing on if I was to pick up 18th century socialists? Das kapital?

I think there is where the misunderstanding is. The first is incorrect, the second is right. Capitalism is an economic system that better reflected the new reality of the world. You cannot directly compare feudalism and capitalism. Feudalism was much more "efficient" in feudal times, where it aimed to have as much people as possible per plot of land, as this gave the local land lord the most power, and as such this feudal lord had the power to spread this system. The frissians in the netherlands were a stateless/lordless agricultural society until pretty late into the medieval period. This system of subsistence living (which is what feudalism was) was the most efficient in that it had the power to spread the most.
Capitalism is the most "efficient" after the invention of the steam engine and the subsequent urbanisation because it has the power to spread instead of feudalism. Either lands are "liberated" or conquered for the free market, or local leaders voluntarily start it by adopting new tech for their own gain. In that sense it was more efficient than feudalism.

It goes deeper than just unemployment. To simplify what Marx explained mathematically with "falling rates of profit" into a scenario:
The only way to counter this (ie to delay the inevitable) is to expand the markets, which is what capitalism has been doing for the past century or so.

Depends on how you define "efficient". Calculating in kind would allow you to plan in accordance to the needs of society, rather than plan whatever the market dictates. The market is prone to bubbles, fluctuations, etc. The capitalists take such a large part of societies production that the demands of the market dont even reflect the needs of society, because those without money cant afford to "vote with their wallet".

I personally never really delved too much into calculation in kind so dont hold me as an absolute authority.
But just think about the wastes of capitalism. Every country has a massive unemployed population, with enough electricity, food, oil, houses, clothes etc etc to provide for them. These people all go unused, we pay them wellfare to sit around or if we want "to keep them busy", we force people with university degrees or great skill to clean streets, instead of putting them to work where they can do so much more, or allow them to try to and start something new again. This isnt just a policy problem, this is a systemic problem of capitalism.
If you want to know more, I highly recommend you make a new thread for this question alone, because its massively complicated.

Dont worry, Marx is pretty dense and you don't need to understand all the complicated math to understand the concepts.

Well Das Kapital is the book but it is also the densest one. Theres a reason so many people don't read it, its dense as fuck and quite hard to follow (havent finished it myself). Most people read bits and pieces, like smaller works from marx or works from other marxists about marx.
Like I said, Das Kapital 1, part 8 (not chapter), reads more like a history book than an economic text book. In the end, economics is 95% common sense and metaphor, 5% math. Its just that 5% math thats complex. But Das Kapital is one of the most complete, comprehensive and thorough analysis/critique of capitalism there is.

I think I'm not making myself clear, the confusion might be down to the fact that you're probably a determinist whereas I'm a probabilist (in the attribution of agency). In that assuming agency efficiency would be referring to conscious decisions as opposed to material reaction (opposing material forces in the superstructure). For example the paradigm shift of mass conscription in revolutionary France (Levée en masse) was a conscious choice which completely took the invading absolutist forces by surprise and created a total paradigm shift (for the worse imo). Whereas your example of the enclosure of the commons was more of a reaction to material forces.

I also don't mean to nitpick, but from my understanding of the rise of capitalism, it started much earlier than the rise of industrialization and had it's roots in England and the Netherlands with the rise of institutions such as the East Indies trading company and the sort of practices they pioneered (which they got from the descendants of the Templars, Jews and so on).

Well I should expand what I'm so pessimistic about automation. Once it has negated the need for lower classes the upper classes have no need to play by the deterministic rules of Capitalism, why do they need consumers when they can get all they need without being restrained by such a system? In fact it seems to me that once such a thing occurred lower classes will either be seen as nuisance and left to do their own (thus never removing us from the dialectical process that will loop on forever, never reaching a conflict free society) at best or an outright existential threat marked for extermination.

The same as above. That is if you are willing to entertain the concept of free will.

Okay, I agree with that. Now my next question follows, I don't know the specifics here, but why didn't socialists/anarchists in Spain and Ukraine allocate their resources in self-defense more efficiently than invading imperialist forces (ranging from tankies, fascists, Republics and so on). This really seems to be a stumbling block for the idea for me. I'd rather live in a fascist society with class-cooperation and corporatism (despite the fact that it is oppressive) because of the measure of security it provides and the prospect of something better. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here and this is more an issue with anarchism.

Anything in particular? And anything that would really prime me for Das Kapital?

Calculation in kind is discussed in the thread Soviet Cybernetics, in particular here:

That is not entirely correct. I am Dutch so I know a fair bit about it. During ye olde times it was common for farmers and landlords to buy into a fund to reclaim new land (polders) which they then could own and/or sell. This investing was part of the cultural landscape for a long time. During the dutch golden age, rich merchants started pooling together funds to collectively buy ships, rather than each on their own. When the state made the VoC the official and only allowed company to conduct trade and warfare in the east, they opened up a stock exchange where the rich could invest money into this company and trade or sell stock of this, as well as other products. But the vast majority of the population still lived in agricultural societies, with feudal-like systems. The exploitaitons of the east india company and the slave and spice trade did result in a lot of material wealth for the Dutch, but apart from the VoC there wasn't any widespread capitalist-like institutions. These institutions did lay the groundwork for the practices later copied and adopted by capitalist nations, but the economy was not capitalistic in itself and did not function according to the system that we today describe as capitalism. There was no widespread devide between owner and worker. While there were markets (and the infamous tulip bubble), this did not drive the economy itself. People farmed like they always had, fished like they always had, and if they couldn't find a place to do so, they joined the VoC on a ship (often while drunk) and move to the colonies.

It wasn't until industrialistion kicked in that the mode of production changed from feudalistic farmers under a lord under god to workers selling their labour to those who owned the factories. It wasnt until industrialistion that this made sense to do so. Before industrialisation, a craftsman would be a craftsman, maybe with an apprentice or two, but the tools he or she used werent massively expensive so the apprentice could work for his own. When industrialisation happened though, those with big machines could undercut the craftsmen, the now unemployed craftsmen and landless farmers had no choice but to work under the capitalist, with no chance to buy machines like that themselves.

Assassins creed isnt real yo, but that aside.

Very good observation. This is 100% true, but you must realise that before we get to this point, we will have had a society with 50% to 99% unemployment and poverty. Nobody will accept this. So the people will revolt and achieve socialism, or we will live under a total tyranny and be treated as cockroaches. Its either socialism, or barbarism.

The free will debate is pretty useless, but that side. If you propose that capitalism could have existed in feudal times, then I must ask you why it did not for thousands of years? We as marxists (and most anarchists) say that history is formed by reality. If it wasn't for the industrial revolution, there would be no capitalism.

I dunno, valid critisism of anarchism, but I am not an anarchist. Also keep in mind that catalonia was much more similar to "marxists" in their practice (authoritarian, laws, dictatorship of proletariat), but very small, while ukrainians as far as I know were a loose collection of bandids fucking around next to the soviet union.

Euuuuuh, communist manifesto is always a good start for the absolute basics (its a pamplet) but doesnt neccecarily 100% reflect marxism as a whole. Other than that, critique of the Gotha program and state and revolution (lenin) seem to be popular.
I would personally recommend wage and labour and also this youtube series if you want to understand the labour theory of value, although that might not be what you are looking for. youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM&list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7

I would like someone who has read a bit more than me to recommend some books, if anyone is reading this.

Hope I could help you with that, I should be going now.

Fuck my memory is terrible that reply is made to one of my own posts yet I dont remember reading it at all.

polite sage because i just posted

Read Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Fihlo's "Marx's Capital". It has all of the major ideas in Kapital condensed to a book that fits easily in a jacket side pocket.

That's what I assumed the basic gestalt was on the subject.

bruh;

"In the 12th century, the need to transfer large sums of money to finance the Crusades stimulated the re-emergence of banking in western Europe. In 1162, Henry II of England levied a tax to support the crusades—the first of a series of taxes levied by Henry over the years with the same objective. The Templars and Hospitallers acted as Henry's bankers in the Holy Land. The Templars' wide flung, large land holdings across Europe also emerged in the 1100–1300 time frame as the beginning of Europe-wide banking, as their practice was to take in local currency, for which a demand note would be given that would be good at any of their castles across Europe, allowing movement of money without the usual risk of robbery while traveling."

I wasn't joking about MC Freikorps (tm). I think that this is actually a large cause of idpol and immigration (that is the support of it by Capitalists) as they want to have us all at each others throats so they can do a little population reduction. I mean it seems so strange when we have had access to tech such as 4th gen nuclear fission power (basically fusion lite; not in the technical sense, but in the sort of energy it produces) since the 60's that we have the issues that we do today, considering the universal applicability of 4th gen nuclear power.

This seems to missing the point I was making. If we continue with my example of the Levée en masse, while it would certainly would have never been possible without it being materially possible, it would have never been possible without insight and will. While you might argue that such things are also defined by material reality I would be inclined to disagree. If you were to entertain the idea of the possibility of such it would seem odd that past revolutionaries (of a kind) were more successful with implement their radical ideas against almost universal opposition. I know rev France and rev Catalonia are not a 1:1 ratio.

I was under the impression that it was outdated. Could be okay if I was interested in the historical context right.

Wage Labor and Capital, and Value Price and Profit are both pretty short and give you a lot of the concepts that will be expanded on in Capital. I would also recommend Economic Manuscripts of 1844 after those two. That should give you a pretty good understanding of Marx's analysis of capitalism and they are all very easy to find on the net for free.

Of course, but you could argue that it was too early for such a system to really take off and surpass Feudalism; a Capitalist system could exist at the time, sure, but it would be difficult for any kind of reason, like technology/dominant external forces/etc. This would also explain how the many blips in contemporary history have seen most attempts at Socialism to never succeed. In other words, some of us are deterministic insofar that development, especially technological development, broadens the window, so to speak, for a new system (capitalism) to prevail over the old one (feudalism), but the old system can also successfully resist and maintain itself. Thankfully, it mostly hasn't
Exactly. Some leftists have mused about these questions and how a sort of "Bourgeois Communism" could exist. I haven't looked too deeply into it myself, but from what I understand this sort of apocalyptic scenario is called "Exterminism". With this said, along with the above explanation on how technology can potentially broaden the window of opportunity for new systems to prevail, is why trying to implement Socialism can be seen as a race against time. Considering that (presumably) you and I are both working class, automation really does have the potential to be an existential threat, but its developments, as well as developments in computing and the efforts of mathematicians like Cockshott, make the idea of Communism seem much, much more feasible. The biggest obstacle then becomes trying to get people to be conscious about this and demand this change, but the only real way to do that en masse is to start making noise during an economic crisis, which is what a lot of people are depending on despite how hurtful it would be. Other than that, another obstacle is sectarianism.

As an aside, this is why I'm generally non-sectarian. I have my own tendencies of course (I would personally want to establish an Anarcho-Syndicalist society to work towards an AnCom society), but I'm perfectly willing to work with MLs, Maoists, AnComs, Market Socialists, etc.

fug shitpostin' flag

If you are still here I can try to explain the whole LTV but I don't want to write all that shit down if nobody is going to read it.

I'm still here

I honestly don't understand how people would go along with socialism both cybernetics. It kind of remind of me of Nick Taleeb, in that in his works Black swan and Anti-fragility seem to preculude such a thing; it seems too static and unresponsive.

Dissing nazbol

Also another question, why does most of Modern Socialistic thought seem to exclude biology from their analysis'. Surely such a powerful material force would be worth considering despite the fact that the focus is on socioeconomic forces?

I honestly don't understand how people would go along with socialism before cybernetics. It kind of remind of me of Nick Taleeb, in that in his works Black swan and Anti-fragility seem to preculude such a thing; it seems too static and unresponsive.

Well the USSR economy did work sortof in the earlier period because it had so few commodities coming from a barely post feudal society, it was alot simpler. However you do need computers to plan a modern economy.

Wasn't the USSR state capitalism?

Okay, I'll try to explain how Marx's Labour Theory of Value works. I'm not an expert though, this is my own understanding of it and I have no idea how it compares to other interpretations.

We start with use-value. A thing has use-value to someone when it satisfies some need of that person. Why the need is present and what kind of need it is is not important. Use-value is a relation between a person and a particular thing. It is based on the concrete properties of that particular thing. We call it a qualitative relation, because it cannot be measured, compared, it's based on quality. For our purposes you can think of it as a true or false question, is it useful to me or not, anything beyond that is a concern of psychology, not economics.

When a thing that has use-value to someone is being exchanged, it becomes a commodity. Exchange here is not a farmer at the market choosing the best looking apple at the groceries and giving a pint of beer for it, but capitalists exchanging megalitres of beer for tons of apples. Now we have an equation of X megalitres of beer = Y tons of apple. We say that X megalitres of beer has equal exchange-value as X tons of apple. Exchange-value is a relation between quantities of commodities. It is a quantitative relation. We also know that this exchange-value changes with time and place.

Now we can write that X units of commodity A = Y units of commodity B = Z units of commodity C = … and so on. This means that there is something common to all these that enables us to compare them. This common thing is what Marx calls value. Since it is only appears in exchange-value, we can consider the two to be the same thing. But what is this value? Where does it come from? We started with use-value, and many people claim that it comes from use-value. However, as we have seen, use-value is connected to the concrete properties of a particular thing. It is qualitative. But what we have here is quantitative! We no longer have particular things, just an abstract mass of commodities, so it cannot be from use-value, which is concrete.

The only other property that all commodities have in common is that they are all products of labour. So Marx said that value must come from labour. However, since we are still in abstract, it can come only from abstract properties of labour. So labour loses its particular form and is reduced only to quantity: labour time. However, it still cannot be the concrete labour time spent on a particular commodity, because that's still too concrete. So we have to use socially necessary labour time, which means the average time spent by the average worker using average tools producing the commodity at our present conditions.

This is why value is based on abstract labour time. It might sound a bit fragmented like this, so let's put some pieces together. A commodity gets exchanged because it has use-value to someone. A commodity gets produced to be exchanged for another commodity that has use-value to the producer. If we follow all of these connections, we can see that value actually approximates the contribution of each worker to the social division of labour!

I hope this helps!

The USSR was state capitalist, it employed people for a wage and sold commodities for a profit, which it then reinvested. The state owned the means of production and controlled them.
Just like modern corporations, they set the prices they set their commodities at.
Every corporation today is a mini-USSR competing with all the others. Its one of the weird things about capitalism, on one hand they say that "the free market is the most efficient and gives the best outcome" yet at the same time every corporation is a centrally planned entity. Planning is not the opposite of capitalism, capitalism inherently has central planning, but distributed and competing. The USSR had a different goal with its planning than a corporation though. A corporation wants to maximise profits, while the USSR wanted to maximize its own economic growth and the welfare of its people.

*they sell their commodities at

That's retarded. The very existence of linear optimization is proof that enough that a general equivalent is unnecessary. It's already been done before and only requires further generalization across the entire economy.

If you don't say what you are optimizing for, how does that constitute proof?

I want to emphasize these quotes because most socialists have this weird view that if you opposed industrialization and therefore capitalism during feudal times then you are a reactionary, when in fact it was workers (both employed and independent) that opposed industrialization/capitalism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Gee user youre making me blush.