Genuine explanation of LeftCom needed

You should read Wage, Labor, and Capital, and Value, Price, and Profit as prerequisites.

Why does bordoga get pushed here constantly, he was objectively the worst leftcom theorist.

I get that by transporting you can move the stuff from a place where it won't be exchanged to a place where it will be (which means the "real change in use value") but how does that add value or increase anything?

t. councilkiddie

because more labor is put in
R-right?

His theory forms much of the basis of present day left communism (including communisation). He understood that the abolition of capitalism necessarily meant the abolition of the firm, not simply making the firm subject to democracy - which is more than I can say for liberalcoms such as yourself. :^)

That shouldn't matter because SNLT changes with both time and location, so value will be determined by the SNLT at the destination.

A pizzeria offers pizza where they are located and they also have a delivery service. The delivered pizza costs more. Pizzaism is fundamentally different from capitalism, so Karl Marx is outdated You can think of the pizza delivered to you and the pizza you have to go to as two different products, even if the ingredients of these two pizzas are the same, since the delivery is part of the "package" of what you buy.

But they have the same bodily form.

Would you also say two objects composed of the same parts are the same, even if the parts are arranged in a different way?

Would you also pay the same then for pizza delivered to me as for the same pizza delivered to you?

If that would make you happy…

Is sentence the good how changes never sentence a in words the rearranging that say also you would?

Left communism is more characterized by relativity to contemporary communist tendencies than anything concrete in and of itself before that.

Originally left communism was a split in the Comintern that opposed the hegemonic Comintern line, but not because they had a different tendency necessarily. Within left communism were among others Leninists and various other 2nd International-type Marxist communists which would theoretically be almost indistinguishable from the leading Comintern, who were also mostly Leninists and post-2nd International Marxist communists. The split was really more concerned with the general polity of the Comintern than anything else. Leninists within the communist left allied with council communists to strengthen the protest against that.

So historically, left communism or the ultra-left is more characterized by an opposition to turns perceived as counter-revolutionary or "right-communist" than anything else. In China for example the rebelling factory commities during the cultural revolution which wanted to go beyond the limits of Mao were characterized as left communist/ultra-left because on virtually the exact same grounds they opposed the leading line and established a separate class-party and in China's case even a commune over Shanghai with several councils (see: thenorthstar.info/?p=9866, and marxists.de/china/sheng/whither.htm).

Today if you speak of clearly self-identifying left communists though it's generally going to be some theoretical successor of the Italian left (Leninists) or Dutch-German left (council communist), though combinations exist and against "generally" is to be remembered. There is even today a left communist/ultra-left current called "communization theory" that is at the base suggesting something entirely different from either fundamentally the class-party or workers' councils, but draws theoretically upon the Italian left in Bordiga and Damen and in the Dutch-German left on Pannekoek.

The reading list/pic posted here:

suggests some good lit, and I doubly recommend Barrot and Martin's Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement, which is one such communization theory texts, because it gives a historical rundown of the more notorious left communist factions (as well as non-left communist and anarchist tendencies to inform and compare): libcom.org/library/eclipse-re-emergence-communist-movement.

Bump

The Italian school of left communists are people who think theory is more important than practice and who generally have no interest in the workers. They're virtually indistinguishable from anarchists.

German leftcoms are pretty cool though. Still a little silly and more or less strict adherents to formal logic (and not Hegelian or Marxist logic), but what can ya do.

what

You're right.

Anarchists at least like freedom. Italian leftcoms are mad that Stalinists provide TOO MUCH freedom.

Don't run your mouth when it's obvious you don't have the faintest idea of what you're talking about. The vulgar description you just gave of both should if anything literally be inverted, and the it would still be total bullshit.

Just being honest about my experiences and by what I read from German leftcoms and could stomach to read from Italian leftcoms.

Bordiga adherents are literally the most insufferable leftists I've ever talked to. I would rather work with a coalition of smashies, tankies, Mautists, and Hoxhaists than have to spend even five minutes talking to Bordigaists.

I don't honestly see why you can't abolish the firm by subjecting it to democracy

Same

If you've read even a few pages of both tendencies and you end up putting the Italian left in the camp with anarchists and not the Dutch-Germans in "doing nothing" you're either lying or have reading comprehension issues.

It's the Dutch-Germans that have historically been considered crypto-anarchists by the wider communist left and it is the Dutch-Germans and their councilism, fetishizing spontaneity and mass democracy, that have been branded as nothing-doers because they used the autonomous establishment of workers' councils by workers in the early 20th century to basically develop a praxis of "everything but councils are bad, so do nothing until they appear by themselves".

And you compare the Italian left to Stalinism when the Italian left opposed Stalinism on virtually every ground, saying that they really didn't simply because they don't fetishize democracy and are Leninists? You're a Trotskyist; you're a type of Leninist yourself, and Trotsky was one of the most brutal when in power. And speaking of anarchism before and the accusations you launched at the Italian left: alextalbot.blogspot.nl/2012/07/voline-and-trotsky.html.

Honestly this is so stupid no matter what angle you look at it that I'm going to ask you to explain in what sense you're talking about "subjecting a firm to democracy" more precisely, and also why you're using that flag.

Pretty sure he was referring to anarchist in attitude, not in theory.

Sure, the Italian left opposed Stalin on many issues, but this was mostly due to their own sectarianism and dogmatism, not because of Stalin's death count, despotism or brutality. Bordiga advocated for the same political processes that produced Stalin except with less apologetics.

This sounds like every leftcom I've talked to regardless of their tendency, except for the councils, which are at least a form of democracy and therefore make the Germans more bearable than the Italians.

I was comparing their praxis to that of Stalinists, not their relationship. Like all leftcoms, they think anything other than fully automated luxury communism (with technocratic characteristics in Bordiga's case) is pure capitalism.

Trotsky got his hands dirty in order to help save a revolution and is therefore infinitely more admirable than any leftcom out there.

> And speaking of anarchism before and the accusations you launched at the Italian left: alextalbot.blogspot.nl/2012/07/voline-and-trotsky.html

I'm not gonna read some fucktard's blog, give me a real source.

In a minute he'll denounce you for using the term fully automed luxury communism, at once without being able to outline any way economics would function without commodity production (besides inverting the definition of commodity production) cuz that's utopianism don't ya know!

communism is the FREE exchange of goods so start doing that and then we have communism gg

A solar panel has higher use value in Rome than it does in Helsinki.

No, we are talking about use use value, not exchange value. Good try though

In attitude? The fuck does that mean?

Yeah dude, Bordiga totally didn't write mounds upon mounds of correspondences to the Stalinist Comintern disavowing the direction Stalin brought it to; it was all sectarianism and dogmatism. Being against the purging and coalescing of the Party away from international perspective and purging dissidents within it is just sectarianism and dogmatism. He was so sectarian that Bordiga never stopped trying to reason with all associated of the Comintern.

Lmao. You do know that the councilists, up until the biggest names among them like the KAPD, all had appreciation for democracy uniquely if it appeared spontaneously, right? You do know that while you're levying le doing nothing maymay, there are today still many communist parties developed from the Italian left and literally none that are councilist precisely because the latter never tried to even engage with tenant workers' organizations at all, right? And also that the Italian left developed and became incorporated in just about any type of organization, even the ones they disagreed with, precisely because they emphasized the need to work with whatever workers' movements exist at any time; that unlike in councilism you need to tail the most revolutionary forms of organization wherever they may potentially arise? That even though they are opposed to trade unionism, Bordigists are involved in Italy with new types of class-unions that appeared in the mid-'00s?

Lmao no. The Italian left's problems with Stalinism weren't the fact that they weren't in any capacity socialistic yet. It was that they feared that the line they were towing would never lead beyond the capitalism they were currently sitting on. I hereby remind you of the fact that the Italian left was Leninist, and acknowledged that the Leninist form of capitalism under a DotP would be necessary, aligned with the representational class-party apparatus and so on. They praised this in Lenin's time and wanted to see it go beyond that too, or at least be steered in a direction that would secure the future of the party's rule in Russia as well as ultimately internationally. Bordiga's polemics against the Russian economy appeared only in reaction to Stalin's insistance that the society he led was socialist. Up until then the most important point was that Bordiga saw that if the Comintern kept up its current line it would never go anywhere and end up regressing. Once more, Italian left were Leninists, and agreed with Lenin when he said "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly" in Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It.

Lmao Bordiga founded the largest historical communist party ever in Italy and led the revolutionary split he wanted and was asked to carry out by Lenin away from the PSI. He helped organize mass strikes, factory occupations, attempts at forming workers' councils, started a trade union front and the Guardie Rosse against fascism and the police and contributed mounds of theory to the communist movement. Hilarious that you trash Bordiga on this but leave the Dutch-German communist left dry on this, likely not knowing that no communist on that side comes close in such a puerile dick measuring contest.

Sources are at the bottom, dipshit. And this is just one iota of all the blood Trotsky has on his hands when it comes to anarchists (*cough* Red Army and the Makhnovschina and Kronstadt sailors *cough*).

More utopian and authoritarian version of marxism-leninism. Nothing zero value to add to communist theory.

It would also be really nice if people read this post I made before trying to weigh in in the future:

Thank you very much.

Some comrades lookin a little bothered here.

That makes three recommendations of Eclipse and Re-emergence. It is only 169 pages long, so why haven't you read it yet user?

Are you a new poster here, or recently made the switch? Never seen a decent leftcomflag avataring with smoking waifus before here.

This is why liberals are so easily spotted.

bordiga looks like a bed bug

He's almost 80 years old in that pic, and still expressive and Devito as fuck.

BTW there's a channel on Youtube owned by an Italian comrade who helped translate and encode this interview with Althusser: youtube.com/watch?v=feepQg_Dx7U. He's gonna do a RAI interview with Bordiga that's in Italian too and properly sub it, where Bordiga talks about the origins of the party and the history of the workers' movements he was involved in, democracy, the rise of fascism, the trade union front (fronto unico sindicale) and Marxism and communism in general, so be on the lookout for that one.

Learn to read nigger, was it comintern in its international form that created Stalin? No, it was the bolshevik party and the state apparatus it created. Bordiga openly advocated for a totalitarian one party state, and for the removal of anyone from the party who disagreed with the official line.

I seriously don't get what's so hard about reading a bit of theory. This board seems to be more interested in larping than understanding the basic elements of marxism and communism.

Btw, why bordiga thought Stalin would empower the international character of comintern in Russia is beyond me. Idealism much?

Lmao is it this guy again? Tell me bub, have you yet found that historical example of revolutionary organization that didn't proceed to (have to) do exactly the same basic thing the Bolsheviks or any other organization did: centralize power and unite under representation?

If your idea of reading theory is bordiga then buddy, there's no hope for any of us

For a nigga whom'st is saying that he knows that Bordiga was basically Hitler Stalin, you sure aren't familiar with even the basic arguments. Almost like you haven't even read a single bit of material on their correspondence.

The fuck are you talking about?

And anyway, the fact that all Leninist forms of revolutionary organizing have consistently descended into "opportunism" and failed to create any sustainable dictatorship of the proletariat should maybe tell us we should try something else, huh.

The twentieth century is over, take this fellow's advice here and stop larping

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By "left" they mean radical left aka capitalism needs to be "dismantled" yesterday instead of being patiently reformed/entryism'd/accelerationism'd out of relevance.

And Rosa means so much to them.

When exactly did i imply that? Bordiga was a good theorist but he just reaffirmed what Marx had written earlier.

All his good ideas were taken from marx, yes. When it came to his original ideas, such as trying to outline what a dictatorship of the proletariat should look like, organic centralism that is, he was perhaps the most bankrupt thinker of them all.

...

Rosa would have kicked bordiga's totalitarian loving ass of given the chance

The communist left also developed from her orthodox (second international) Marxism, within which she was not very unique. She was also most certainly not a left communist because left communism came a few years after, and she was also not prototypically left communist either (councilists and KAPD were absolutely of a different thrust).

The few left communists who went into Marxist humanism like her a bit though, like the MHU, though mostly for her proper wording and arguing of the Marxist critique of reformism, trade unionism and the theory of self-management in the famous Reform or Revolution.

...

Bordiga was essentially right. The content of communism isn't democracy, it's a programme within capitalism to abolish itself. Thus pursuing democracy for its own sake is useless.

Don't bother. This guy is such a fetishist for democracy that even the anarchists are more sophisticated than him (marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1926/05/neither.htm).

He's about to drop his 21st century mixtape in a bit though so look out for even more of that.

They are tyrannical anti workers that should be shot on sight.

What a drawn out way of saying "Haha, my tendency still exists so that means we DO stuff after all!"
You are literally just describing Trotskyism.

Are you telling me that leftcoms are Trotskyists?
That's not what I meant by getting his hands dirty. Don't get me wrong, organizing the workers is absolutely crucial and downright heroic, but my point was that what you call "brutal" I call "not letting the counter-revolution win".

Makhno was a marauding bandit who was actively trying to sabotage the Soviet project and who refused to negotiate any long-term peace with the Bolsheviks because he knew his "territory" survived by looting and pillaging and that peace would be the death of him. The Kronstadt sailors had absolutely fundamentally reasonable demands and it's possible Trotsky was mistaken in the way he dealt with them, but you have to admit that they picked quite possibly the worst time and place to pick that fight.

Nigga your ideological grandfather went as far as wanting to deny workers the right to strike under his market utopia under the pretext that it would be illegitimate.

Pretty much, the revolution is tyrannical towards capital and abolishes the working class.

Basically, yeah. Your claim was that "my" (I don't particularly fancy myself either) tendency does nothing. I provided you with factual modern day activity within the Italian left's descendants, something you said wasn't the case, while being utterly aware of not just that but of the reality of councilism historically as well as today (being non-existent).

Are you telling me that leftcoms are Trotskyists?
Having similar types of attitudes does not make left communists Trotskyists. I respect Trotskyists a heck of a lot more than MLs but they have their differences, which I can talk about if you're ready to have a level-headed discussion and admit you don't know as much as you pretend you do (this very question again reveals that…).

Literally in a thread where the communist left was shown to do everything within its power to oppose the counter-revolution in Russia and elsewhere.

Equivocating lol. You start out in this thread saying left communists would suppress anarchists, then when the vidence comes under your nose that Trotsky did this to anarchists you start saying "well, anarchists r dumb anyways", and then full-on equivocating on the Kronstadt sailors. You also didn't address the historically recorded things Trotsky did to that other anarchist I linked you about, Voline; simply killing them because they were an anarchist.

...

Yes, but it will have to be rainbows and sunshine. If it isn't, some sneaky Bordigist must have been behind it all.

Wow, it's almost as if the small scale expresses itself according to the fact that it is small scale, and that the larger the scale, the more pressingly unity under representation is necessary.

Literally fetishizing localisms while omitting the obvious: these little islets of self-management don't just manage to have a relative form of horizontalism simply because they are small, but their total irrelevance on anything beyond the regional scale makes them irrelevant. I'm also mad keking at Rojava where things are currently led by a military structure that doesn't bother giving more than its own militants a ring when making a move. If Rojava succeeds to survive and manages to go beyond its small interwar federal structure (I hope it does), I'm gonna be laughing mad hard at you when it turns out that, just like the situation demands it, the larger scale of the activity will have to be accompanied with much more clear and strict centralization, and I will again while laughing at you wish them the best in their efforts.

Yeah, for as long as it's possible for it to be there. Ring me up when the Zapatistas do more than self-manage a derelict hovel with indigenous peasants and Rojava goes beyond its civil war military form.

But go ahead, smugly circle jerk about how muh democracy will totally actually happen and persist this time!

Rofl.

As a descriptor for the reality of revolutionary activity? Looked more like you were using it as a buzzword in bootyblasted fashion, bub.

Fucking totalitarian! You're basically Stalin now!

you know, I'm beginning to think it's physically impossible for bordigists to argue in good faith. i'm not an anarchist, I'm not a horizontalist, and I would have hoped I'd made that clear by now.

The reason I cite those small scale examples is because they are indeed the only cases of mass rule in modern times, of laborers having control over their production and own communities. I'd be perfectly content with democratic mechanisms that we see in many european countries, of regular old voting systems, so long as there is recall-ability and plebiscites, basically, an orderly way for the masses to overrule the leadership when needed. But the problem is that we exist in bourgeoisie society, they control all the larger economic and ideological foundations of society that politicians and states must be beholden to, industry, the media, think tanks, ect. And because the bourgeoisie are a minority, such a situation can never be called a democracy without a strong sense of perversion of the word. It is tragic then, that whenever a leninist revolution attempts to create such a proletarian context for society they descend into despotic autism and ""opportunism"".

I find if hilarious, truly, that even then leftcoms will complain so much about democracy, and then go on to say that the workers themselves are/would be "hammering away" at commodity production if only the opportunists wouldn't stop them. How ironic! It's as almost as if authentic democratic control would have been useful to bring us closer to communism.

As a descriptor of a one party communist state; a method to suppress all bourgeois cries for freedom.

What the fuck? The communist programme exists until capital is abolished, not when the proletariat takes political power.

If you mean that the proletariat pursues communism for its own immediate material interests you are correct. History doesn't care what is useless and what is not.

You know what I mean, it's the penultimate moment, everything else is just lead up.

then stop fetishizing it, and pass it on to your autistic friends while you're at it.

also

You're not talking to a Bordigist (I just appreciate Bordiga's theory here and there a lot), and the only reason you're wheezing like a mong and whining about muh bad faith here is because you're literally incapable of addressing the following pressing reality: centralization of power into representation is unavoidable for anything that wishes to go beyond the small and inoffensive.

You could point your finger at any other cooperative and see the same thing, lad. If that's your thing just read this: libcom.org/files/The myth of Mondragon Cooperatives, politics, and working class life in a Basque town.pdf.

Because just like with those systems, you reveal the underlying fact that even if you want more, you're restricted to not getting anything more at all than bourg representative democracy that is literally made to go nowhere beyond that, and will fail to deal with issues faced?

It is tragic then, that whenever an anti-Leninist democracy fetishist fails to cite a single example of any event that didn't end up doing literally exactly what the Leninists did but under different names or pretenses, and that the anti-Leninist democracy fetishist fails to give us more than vague "uh yeah, more democracies and uh, vote systems and uh, yeah, that'll solve it all", and will point to demonized figures that ruined it all whenever this fails to solve any issues.

How ironic: he fails to see that the original expression of the still (non-)represented revolutionary proletariat carries in it the basic seed of a communist programme, one that the Leninists accept will at some point need to be put into the hands of centralized power under representation, and that otherwise the whole thing will fail to even survive to see the light of day beyond that.

Ah, yes: authentic democratic control. And the only reason we don't have it is because of those damn pesky Leninists! And anarchists, who did the same! And market socialists, who did the same! And literally everyone else that didn't call themselves Leninist and had promises of democracy (just like the pre-Leninists)!

Can you now meaningfully address this invariable historical tendency for power to centralize itself in response to its necessity in spite of all promises, and then tell us why your nebulous Bookchin-tier (reminds me of that mong) utopian schemes for unbreakable democratic institutions for the future won't follow suit in the same way? The workers' movement is waiting.

If this is the same guy from that other thread who was whining at reddit despite having not one but two (if not more) reddit accounts and posting on them frequently and sharing Holla Forums shit on them I'm gonna laugh.

Also, just noticed:

I've already said several times that I am perfectly fine with centralization and representation so long as it can be overruled and checked by the masses.

I fail to see your point here, are you saying cooperatives are examples of mass rule?

You do realize I outline that these systems would only be democratic when they can be orderly overruled by the masses and when ALREADY placed in a proletarian context.

I can do it too!

Have you even read a single word I've written this entire time. I've denied no such thing. Centralization and authoritarianism is needed to create a revolution and create a dictatorship of the proletariat beyond moments of pure defensive action against capitalist retaliation. The problem becomes that that these revolutionaries take it upon themselves not only to create a framework for this class dictatorship to flourish, but never yield power and allow all to descend into tyranny. It is entirely true that all the major communist movements and states of the 20th century fell into this trap. They were, after all, operating under the same basic ideological framework mainly developed, in regard to revolution, the state, and the dotp, by lenin.

The fact is, it is not a broader historical tendency though. Bourgeoisie democracy and decentralization flourished at many points, as did city-republics under feudalism and slavery, they were not so insecure to attacks from other classes as you lot are, and they are far fewer in number than us.

Reddit spacing is putting spaces between quotes and text you moron.

if you're referring to that specific post then my gott, learn how to detect irony.

Are you unironically retarded?

Ah, yes, this brings us to the next omitted accusation launched against every 20th century revolutionary: they didn't put in le golden means and le checks and balances (false), and they did (not do) so because they just weren't enlightened yet by my new invention: recallability (which again, never existed, everyone in the 20th century was a dumbdumb).

You point to places like Chiapas that are just capital's self-management on a regional scale. You can get that just as well in a coop, and it's just as non-revolutionary, docile and perfectly congruent with global bourgeois society (Chiapas is still there because of the Zapatista ninjas, after all, and the Zapatistas aren't assimilated into and cooperating with the Mexican State to manage their islation at all!).

Again giving us more nice blueprints as if they're a totally new invention that didn't already exist and fail to be effective enough, suggesting that this 21st century mixtape of yours is what we need to not revert into defacto invariable Leninism again.

But you can't. I fully assume the invariability of the Lenininist form of revolutionary politics, or whatever we want to call the irreconcilable tendency for the need to centralize power into representative leadership. I just also, unlike you, don't fall into the libtard-tier reasoning of "then everything is also just Stalinism" because I accept that the representation is contingent on its own subjectivities. The representatives of the revolutionary proletarian dictatorship are just as much sensuous humans; they've just taken on the necessary nuclear form that thrusts the mass foward. Your mong-tier understanding of what Bordiga meant by opportunism as "when it's not me in charge" is invalidated by the fact that Bordiga fully assumed that Comintern leadership was able to be reasoned with, which is why he did, and never stopped doing so.

That's an interesting way of saying that everyone had to do what was necessary to even try to go forward. Either that or you think everyone was a retard, and that indeed here they needed an enlightened democracy fetishist to show them the way and insist on avoiding the pressing need of centralization of power.

I posted an excerpt of a text on democracy historically above that reveals this as well. The point is that for the precise purpose of proletarian dictatorship this mode of organizing is invariable because of this exact condition, just like other conditions enabled or did not enable democracy at certain times:

You can read that in full here: marxists.org/archive/camatte/demyst.htm. I'll share Malatesta's, a very based anarchist, conspectus of democracy here too because he raises some incredibly uncomfortable truisms in it, if not more on the nature of democracy itself as a conditional thing, and indeed a conservative one: marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1926/05/neither.htm.

You literally did that.

Once again, no.

They did so because they were quite preoccupied with copying lenin's actions, instead of listening to what he actually said. If you had actually read lenin, you'd know he himself advocated for the recallability but wasn't able to implement it because of the extreme situation of the russian revolution. People forget just how exceptional the whole thing was and just how long and destructive the wars were. People just saw a seemingly successful revolution. The despotism of stalin wasn't widely accepted until his death, and the total failure of the soviet union wasn't seen until the 90's. They didn't look to what Lenin actually wrote for guidance, they just thought it would be best to copy what he did. And sure, it helped some people get into power who weren't before. But these people were not the workers and they did not bring communism.

On the contrary, if coops became the dominant mode or production we'd very easily knocked down one of the greatest barriers to the general socialization or production, that is, the worker opposition to monopolies and consolidation. Marx clearly outlines that capitalism, if left to its own devices, would destroy the anarchy of production through this tendency of the law of value and that such a situation would compel state ownership and then the rest of socialism. Instead of resulting in state ownership, anti trust laws have undone consolidation and continued to prevent centralization and general socialization, mostly due to the workers being opposed to such a concentration of power under capitalism.

Oh I'm sorry, did one of this tin pot eastern bloc countries actually have free and fair elections? Give me a break. There was never any systemic check on leadership or any real power in the hands of workers. Why are you still defending this bullshit? The USSR nor Yugoslavia nor Albania nor china can in anyway be construed as dictatorships of the proletariat, you're deluding yourself m8.

Literally the definition of idealism. There are structural factors at work here and if you can't see them you don't deserve to call yourself a materialist.

Sure, and Stalin could quote Marx as often as the day is long. The fact was though, the logic of the state and indeed the particular form of the USSR's state, had already been cemented. To blame all of it's failures on the sensuousness of the human beings on top is to EXACTLY claim that "if only Bordiga had been in charge it all could have been prevented".

And it's exactly what revealed him to be foolish idealist. Stalin had industry, military and ideological power behind him, and the organization of comintern was built around that power. Perhaps the leadership could have been reasoned with, they could have rejected stalin and been assassinated, purged and reduced to irrelevance, and nothing would have changed in the slightest.

Not at all, like I said earlier, only Lenin's actions were truly what was necessary to go forward, everyone else was literally just copying him. I think the leadership of the communist movements in the 20th century were going off the best information they had. They assumed Lenin's methods had been proven to succeed in the creation of the soviet union, and there was some good evidence to support them. It is only with the hindsight we have now, of watching the soviet union's rise and fall, can we see that it didn't turn out so well after all.

But the problem is precisely that proletarians are not like other classes in that their status is not purely abstract and social, it exists by participating in a concrete action. you could be a slave owner and not do anything with your slaves, you could be a lord and never set foot in your serfdom, and you could be a capitalist and never step foot into your factory. It was all abstract ownership.It was only because of their abstract nature that they could be purely represented in regular old despots. Because the worker exists only in relation to a concrete activity, being labor, democracy is the only possible method of class dictatorship, as it is the only method for workers actually doing labor to fully engage in politics.

Do leftcoms include Rosa or is she too close to Lenin for everyone's tastes?

Rosa critiqued lenin and many leftcoms claim to be leninists.

That critique, I think, is a must read for everyone on this board
marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/index.htm

Rosa died before the split that defines leftcom happened. She's an influence though, just like Lenin.

Thanks, between this, John Reed, and Trotsky I think I should have a pretty good grasp on October as a whole.

Everyone in the 20th century had a boner for Lenin when they became defacto Leninists? Interesting and hot take.

Literally repeating what I said: the conditional nature of centralization shows that the rest is equally conditional as well. If recallability is desirable, it'll likely happen, if it isn't then it won't. Even better are examples like in Revolutionary Catalonia where the CNT started to suppress the factory councils' abilities to influence polity, again precisely because the situation made democratic gerrymandering undesirable. Were those fanboys of Lenin, or were they just secretly evil totalitarians; flies waiting to be lord at any moment like your immanently liberal logic of human behavior would describe?

I want to focus on this a little too because actually, the later we go in Lenin, the more we find that he ceased to become skeptical of the State and indeed increasingly embraced it; where he would at first denounce Kautskyist notions of the vanguard as substitutionist he would later on accept them fully and even praise Kautsky for them, as seen in later texts like “The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism. It becomes clear just how much this is when compared to almost 10 year older texts like What Is To Be Done? and State and Revolution. The later line Lenin spun in the Comintern; the one actually doing the complete opposite of enabling recallability by limiting heavily the power of the Soviets and instituting the NEP, only reaffirm this, and without all of this again, as you've accorded me yourself beautifully, there was no other way.

Cooperative versus limited is a question of modes of management. Capitalism is a mode of management. If you want one of the best ethnographies showing how this changes nothing, consult the PDF I included (which you didn't quote or apparently read) to see how cooperatives fail to fundamentally change anything at all, as does the fetishistic assertion of democracy into a particular sphere.

Miss me with that gay shit bub. Yawn.

Rofl. If structural factors were so limiting you'd have to wonder how it's even imaginable to go beyond normal bourgeois political structure of liberal democracy. In your view man is apparently at once subject capable of desiring what he wants as if it is already there (peak idealism as if there ever was any), or he is fully limited and unable to overcome a structure because man really ain't sensuous at all. And in both cases we're happily forgetting the invariant axiom: centralization of power under representation is non-negociable and wholly caused by equally non-negociable conditions faced. Come to think of it, if we folllow the same vulgar structurality you espouse it wouldn't even be possible to afford ourselves the ability to enforce recallability within the same structure, because here even attempting something will fail is not allowed in your view.

Where did I do that? I said that subjectivity of the human subject is indeed an important factor, and may be a crucial one. Equally, or IMO in the case of Russia, much more crucial were many of the cards the party in Russia was dealt with. Read: libcom.org/library/when-insurrections-die. It seems we finally come to a part where human subjectivity can't be denied, but you make it the boring game of suggesting, now that you've admitted it's a crucial factor, that this was the determining factor for me all along. Again, miss me with that gay shit.

Then we have to wonder why it hasn't, doesn't and will never happen as such. Well, mostly I wonder: you seem to avoid giving me a concrete argument for the blueprint you apparently have that totally will work and has never been thought of before (do you?).

Anyways, I'm out for today. Weak posts over all with a lot of circularity. Disappointed that it always took you this long to just repeat the same shit every time and stumble around when you did. There'd better be some good shit for me here when I get back.

See:

and the rest of the thread. TL;DR: she wasn't a left communist because that wasn't a thing yet, and she can't be described as anything more than a small element of inspiration for one tendency and a minute one in the other. She was a very basic run of the mill orthodox (Second International) Marxist.

If you want history I suggest reading Alexander Rabinowitch's trilogy of Prelude to Revolution The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising → The Bolsheviks Come To Power: The Revolution of 1917 → The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd. It's usually hailed as the most factual account on the subject, including the relevance of the various other factions in the early workers' councils, the anarchists, the left socialist revolutionaries, the Black Hundreds, the Whites, and so on, omitting theoretical squabble.

...

>marxists.org/archive/camatte/demyst.htm
Communism, Camatte says at the end of that essay, "is not a question of having or of doing, but of being." Doing is being, you unbearable mystical faggot. (Even an archive is not simply a thing, it is an ongoing process, since the art of making old documents understandable must be constantly updated as our social practices and language changes.) How does a human live without doing anything? Maybe if you "live" as a leftcom. Do you even leave your armchair to take a shit? Or have you mastered the art of shitting out of your fingers into the internet? What's the deal with so many leftcoms being mentally ill? Jacques Camatte became an anti-class struggle shit-eating primitivist spaz. (I guess the anti-class struggle position is the logical endpoint of leftcom armchair autism.) Deleuze committed suicide. Good riddance and yiff in hell. I also heard he grew super-long fingernails. Well anyway, looking forward to sensible discussions with you in the future.

take leftism and make it the most authoritarian ideology you could imagine

I've been here for a while. I usually don't flagfag though unless it is related to the thread.

The waifus are just because there are a lot of anons with leftcom flags in this thread.

and are also me.

Oops not . I like Bordiga.

I meant .

You had me worried for a moment lol.

1. Anime girls shouldn't smoke
2. Use value is qualitative, not quantitative.

NO SMOKING !!

I like Bordiga but I dislike how some leftcoms try to rehabilitate Trotskyism through the backdoor.

Trotskyists are conniving anti-socialist states little rats that always align with neo-cons. They are the worst kind of revisionists.

seriously though this is a shitty argument that mls actually believe, good enough as any philistine's pointing to excommunists and completely ignorant of the actual positions most trotskyists have taken which have included hardcore "critical" support of natlib, ussr up to 1991, north korea etc.

...

OP here
thank u all for the reading recommendations
bordiga seems like the most commonly mentioned name so i believe i will begin to look into him further and build upon some of the ideas i hold
though i woulnt consider myself a LeftCom at this point i have found that i agree with a few of the ideas including and especially those exposed by bordiga

thanks to all who helped

i think for time being i could also just use the LeftCom flag is that O.K? or should i finish reading all suggested material before making assumptions about the ideology? like i said though i think i agree with it on large amount of things

thanks once again

leftcom is not an ideology.

i should have said tangent/tendency sorry

Yeah, go ahead and read Bordiga for yourself. Start with this
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/class-party.htm
It's the most self refuting bullshit I've ever seen.

Note how the bordigist will cry all day about Stalin's mistakes, and then propose the exact same political system that produced him, a totalitarian one party state that """""organically™"""" kicks out those who oppose the official line.

Why don't you actually start with Marx and Engels.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Economic-Philosophic-Manuscripts-1844.pdf
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critque_of_the_Gotha_Programme.pdf

It is an ideology, don't delude yourself. I swear, you lot are nearly as bad as neoliberals in thinking you're beyond ideology.

idk why you're making it seem like leftcoms themselves don't want them to start with M&E (the pic above says everyone should before anything do that, and the same texts are mentioned). and if you are the same guy whining about the past and then do nothing but say "stick to just marx and engels", which are 19th century, while talking about the 21st century, what's wrong with you?

it's more that left communism is relative like the post above ( ) said. it does not concretely mean a particular ideology. it may be leninist ideologically, or council communist, or even trade unionist. 'left communism' means nothing in particular, in fact just like 'marxism' does not (depends on which type or readings of marxism), because you have people like de leon who were marxist, but very different from for example karl korsch or lenin.

and really that edit is dumb if you compare it to leftcom posters here or any other historical leftcom groups. they if anything really have a focus on marx and engels no matter what. where did anyone here say 'go read bordiga if you want to know about marxism'? hope you're trolling.

I'm nod a nadzi I juszd wanna to prodegged whide race

Can you prove that with formal logic please?

My bad. Should I have said greater use value? Better use value?

Are we all just going to forget the dozens and dozens of insufferable "read bordiga" memes?!

And oh, I'm sorry /bordigism/ is an ideology, it is distinct from leninism, as is luxemburgism as much as people like to pigeon whole theorists, they're ideas are distinct and produce different ideological frameworks for understanding, in particular, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It's axiomatic.

If use value is comparable, then what's the point of exchange value?

what "read bordiga" memes? the last time that was a thing was like a year ago. i double checked on the leftybooru dates, that shit is old, and it was not spammed. compare this to cockshott or bookchin shilling and i wonder how you can be this disingenuous. find me a bordiga shilling meme or post on the board right now that is not just a response to a question about bordiga or his poition in leftcom right now or stop pretending like you're not trolling.

and so what if someone recommends to read bordiga? the whole point was your claim that people who think bordiga is useful say "don't read marx, read bordiga". that's false.

it's hard to even say there is a bordigism imo. looking at it myself bordigism isn't a thing but italian leftcom is a thing, and that is not even close to just bordiga. "luxemburgism" is also not a thing BTW. a poster recently explained how a lot of -isms based on a specific ideologue are, and marxism included, not really saying anything. in the case of luxemburgism for example it's hard to say that's a thing if you compare her to the marxists of the time (orthodox), even just in her party she was not disagreeing much with ppl like liebknecht.

honestly, it just looks like you're a contrarian hater. you are in this thread just to troll, and fail at it too looking at it. you can't even produce strawmen that are slightly believable to anyone who is barely knowledgeable on the subject (for example myself as i admit it, funnily).

Hahahahaha nice revionism.

Look at the fucking thread m8, no one can seem to talk about anything but Bordiga. It seems pretty clear that matters more to leftcoms than anything Marx seems to say.

see pics related (btw, 5 of those 11 mentions of marx are from my posts)

I came here to debate leftcoms, and they don't seem quite up to the task apparently. So many strawmen so little time. And I've even been debating Bordiga's ideas in his own terms here, m8.

you are in a thread featuring questions about leftcom and that includes bordiga. and you're surprised he gets mentioned? "hahaha" nice proprietary browser btw (and proprietary OS too, most likely a windowsfag).

and nah bordiga shilling was really minor. it wasn't even shilling, more shitposting with bordiga images, and it happened barely. find me evidence that it was even close to as frequent as bookchin shilling which has been ongoing for over a year and is still in full force (queue people avataring with a set of bookchin images wherever possible), or cockshott shilling which is everywhere. this fact alone shows how prepared you are to tolerate everything you wouldn't tolerate if it's done with bordiga (when it isn't even the case).

you didn't come here to debate at all. you came here to troll, and even with this you fail. it's almost sad, you have been in this thread almost 18 hours looking at your posts, never really going away, obsessively trying to bait and shitpost. give it a rest, you're wasting OP's thread and everyone who came here for leftcom perspective, and you're bad at the trolling as well.

the fact you give this a free pass, not just the shilling but cockshott himself, BTW is hilarious. cockshott in the opening of the most shilled booked here literally says the USSR was socialism and that stalin had established a true socialist society. if you sit on bordiga's dick because he tried to reason with stalin but ignore cockshott who basically says "USSR but with better and computerized central planning" i'm gonna laff.

and yeah you will ignore the hardcore bookchin shilling. i suspect you're one of them looking at your democracy solution to everything in this thread. of course you would. lmao.

I have a partitioned drive, with linux installed on my other half.

There are nine leftcom related threads in the catalog. 5 Bookchin related threads and 4 cockshott related threads.

To the extent cockshott does apologetics for stalinism, he does need to be called out. However, he does offer a more democratic system than the soviet union and puts forward some positive theories. I haven't read his book, and I don't worry to much about him. Unlike leftcoms, who claim to be a true alternative to stalinism and the despotism of the 20th century but secretly offer the same thing, at least Cockshott's type will always have to renounce the soviet union in order to get anywhere, and will be stuck in irrelevancy until they do.

yeah, right. and you just "happened" to be using porky: the OS while trolling here.

again the fact that there is talk of leftcom does not make it shilling. one for example is literally a cockshott shill sparking up cockshott versus left communism, the other a question asking about leftcom vs ancom. the rest are also in no capacity shilling at all, or even shitposts made by leftcoms. face it: you're desperate, and in all those threads you're trying to troll and failing hardcore just as well. what's going on here is that you're deadly afraid of people giving leftcom theory a chance or getting informed about it. it was never about muh shilling or muh crypto-stalinism at all, or else you would be found in the cockshott thread sperging out there.

the guy is LITERALLY a stalinist. at his most foundational. he can be summed up as: we need ML but with cybernetics, because the biggest problem of the USSR was inefficient central planning. cockshott's whole life was spent in tenant ML orgs like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_Irish_Communist_Organisation, issuing apologia for everything from the hungarian invasion to the suppression of political dissidents.

they don't at all. they claim that in virtually every way stalinism cannot be seen as separate from the conditions it was the product of, and that in virtually aspect stalinism could have been steered into a better direction. and then we just talk about the italian leftcoms and bordiga. the rest are completely anti-class party councilists, or in the case of communization theory they think party politics will never reemerge again because capitalism's trajectories has made that type of politics impossible, and consequently the spontaneity type of ideas like worker councils as well.

i just told you you can read the first few parts of the most shilled book (i remind you here there is actual shilling) from the cockshott types and see that all they renounce is its inefficient mode of central planning, and cockshott has spent his entire life defending literally all else.

so yeah, have fun with that dude. get a trip or something so people can ignore your terrible trolling attempts in the future. it's clear you want to be recognized because you can always tell it's your desperate spooked ass.

i should add that this is great because the increase in genuine interest, discussion and appreciation of leftcom shows that leftcoms are doing a good job and that their theory is interesting. even a libertarian socialist like me appreciates them in many places. but most importanty it also shows your trolling is either completely inefficient or counter-productive, which is beautiful and it seems your constant engaging with the threads keeps them in view all the time. i would never for example learn about bordiga his talks with stalin without this thread.

uh huh

Anyway, I condemn Cockshott for all that bullshit, but you can't deny that inefficient planning was A problem in the USSR.

I have no problem with anti-class party councilists, but if you'd see as in this thread, many leftcoms on here are still concerned with class parties, and to that extent I will oppose them. The tankies are practically self refuting, I don't worry to much about them. It's the bordigists who need to be confronted for their bullshit.

I'd love you to point me towards actually interesting leftcom theory. I've only read Bordiga, and it's really only him I detest. If there is some useful bit of theory in leftcom somewhere I would like to see it.

If I wanted to troll, I wouldn't be taking so much time to argue in good faith, believe me, I don't particular enjoy spending my time constantly refuting this bullshit, but someone has to do it. If really all you took away from this thread was that Bordiga didn't like stalin then you're completely blind. Where's you're outrage at these idiots advocating for the same despotism as stalin? Why does no one else seem to care about opposing totalitarian one party states which will doom socialism over and over again?

And anyway, no I will not put on a trip, or put on a flag either. I'm not here to attention whore, I'm here to debate concrete ideas.

Normative statements can't be axiomatic, silly.

I'm kind of a newfag so explain this to me if I am wrong, but this is how I thought use-value worked:

Although use-value cannot be expressed numerically–because it is a measure of multiple attributes–items do still have a definite range of situations and contexts where they can be useful. Therefore, the use value of objects can be compared quantitatively by the limitations of when and where they can be of use.

So to go back to my solar panel example, a solar panel in Helsinki will be able to effectively generate power for fewer months out of the year than it would in Rome. It therefore is useful in a broader range of contexts when it is in Rome, than when it is in Helsinki, and has a quantitatively higher use value.

"One and the same use-value can be used in various ways. But the extent of its possible application is limited by its existence as an object with distinct properties. It is, moreover, determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively."

Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy - 1859

Exchange value on the other hand, is supposed to be a predictive measure of equilibrium prices, and can be represented numerically as a summation of socially necessary labor time, constant capital, and variable capital. The last of which can be further broken down into SNLT and constant capital.

Use value being qualitative means there is a difference with the concept of utility in neoclassical economics. In neoclassical economics, we pretend people actually compare every item and assign happiness scores to the items (and it gets more complicated with some bundles of items having different scores than just the sum). In classical economics, it is not assumed that people make an endless series of comparisons where they rank or rate everything. Use values in the classical sense are not tricky math formulas or simple ones, they are descriptions of what the things are useful for. A bed is a different thing than a lamp as these things don't have the same uses, so you would say they are different. But you wouldn't say that one of these items has a higher use value than the other. That's I think what wants to tell you.

However, there are a few possible comparisons you can make and say that some thing has a higher use value than another thing in the classical sense. That is when one thing A has all the functions that B does and A does them as well and on top of that it has additional useful functions. And of course, you can talk in quantities when the things in questions are just piles of several units of the same product, and one pile is bigger.

So, even though it is generally right to say about use value that it is qualitative, in a particular case (a bit different from the one you mentioned) with two solar panels of different quality generating different amounts of electricity in the same environment, you could unambiguously say that one panel has a higher use value than the other. Now we get to the issue that you actually mentioned, the same solar panel in different places generating different amounts of electricity. Hmm, I guess you could say use value is situational and in some cases like your particular example use value is quantitative, while for most comparisons between random items we have to say the difference is more complex than a simple quantitative one. Everybody happy now?

Thanks user, that helps.

Is this a sufficient explanation of and in your view?

But when discussing Labour, Marx says that its qualitative properties (its character, i.e. is it digging, assembling, etc.) are abstracted away and only the quantitative remains (labour time). So why didn't the same thing happen to use-value?

Also, as far as I know, use-value only needs to be present in the commodity, and it's characteristics does not influence exchange-value. So only its presence and absence matters, even if you could "increase" it it wouldn't add value.

Exchange value is more about the average ratio different goods trade at than equilibrium price

This was one of the more dubious parts of the theory for me. Certainly ltv works ceteris parabus a given level of demand, but take for example oil and kerosene, one is the byproduct of the other, thus they both take about the same capital and labor to bring to market. But one has a much greater demand and price than the other.

I've asked this question before without getting a good answer but is there a proper solution to this conundrum beyond allowing some scale to use value? I welcome suggestions.

We are trying to figure out what this means: but the leftcoms keep talking about obscure books about meme theorists instead of answering a supposedly easy question.

Help me leftcoms, I'm about to become an ML with MTW characteristics. I don't want to be an edgy larper.

But when discussing Labour, Marx says that its qualitative properties (its character, i.e. is it digging, assembling, etc.) are abstracted away and only the quantitative remains (labour time). So why didn't the same thing happen to use-value?
Because it is primarily a qualitative measure in the first place. It represents a set of attributes, not just one attribute (equilibrium prices).

This is correct, but irrelevant to the topic at hand as we are not talking about exchange value.

We are discussing this quotation:

Explain.

Price is equal to exchange value adjusted for supply, and demand. Use-value does not have an effect on exchange value beyond needing to be present, but it most certainly has an effect on price, as it is one of the primary determining elements of demand.

Forgot my green text, this is what the first part should look like for clarity:

Because it is primarily a qualitative measure in the first place. It represents a set of attributes, not just one attribute (equilibrium prices).

I posted that quote. I understand that moving a thing from somewhere where nobody wants it to somewhere else where it will get exchanged realizes value. If it's not produced at the destination, transportation could even be included in the SNLT.

But it seems to say that utility is increased just by moving, and this increases exchange-value, which I can't understand how could be possible.

In the abstract, a coat is worth x amount of linen. The market gives a specific ratio of this proportion. For example, 1 coat is worth 3 lbs of linen.

And yet I'm not talking about the price of a particular commodity, but indeed the exchange value. To continue using the example of gasoline and kerosene, both have the same amount of embodied labor in the abstract as one is the byproduct of another. In fact, the extraction process of crude oil produces much more gasoline than kerosene per gallon, but gasoline is worth more, and would presumable be worth more even if there wasn't opec around to supervise the price, after all, the demand for oil far exceeds that of kerosene. (Technically speaking, they are actually the same price, but like I mentioned, LTV would predict kerosene to be much more expensive as far less of it is produced with the same labor needed to produce a certain amount of gasoline).

Here's what Marx says
(Wage Labour and Capital)

This is not true in at least some cases. Perhaps this is just due to distortions caused by opec. In that case, let us consider the situation in the abstract, with coal this time.

There are two kinds of coal here being mined in this mine. One is of a low quality and one of a high quality. The process by which the coal is extracted is done in such a way that the separation of the low quality coal from the high quality is a necessary by the very act of extracting the coal. It thus takes the same amount of labor to extract both kinds of coal and both are produced in equal amount. However, for obvious reasons, there is more demand for the higher quality coal. Why wouldn't the company charge more for it if there were more people willing to buy it? On a generalized level, if we assume that there is such a demand that there is no shortage, there would also be no interest in lowering prices to undercut competition, as they can not sell anymore coal to reap the benefit. Thus, the average price of every commodity and the proportion it exchanges for other commodities wouldn't be determined by the costs of production in this case.

The quote doesn't appear in the pdf.

This is true. I'm not sure where user got it from.

I answered your question, in this post: , and defended my answer in subsequent posts.

You are correct in that exchange value in the abstract is a ratio rather than just an equilibrium price. To get the equilibrium price you have to specifically define the exchange value in terms of currency.

You are incorrect in saying that it is the average ratio, rather than the equilibrium ratio. Under normal circumstances these would be equivalent, but as you pointed out, there are some cases, such as that of gasoline, where the average market price is much higher than the exchange value. This can be attributed to consistent low supply in relation to the demand, which is itself the result of government regulations and geopolitical dynamics.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/francois-martin-and-jean-barrot-aka-gilles-dauve-eclipse-and-re-emergence-of-the-communist-move#toc13
I'm not sure why they are different.

It seems to be an older edition…

comrade, can you, please, dump your smoking folder?

ITT leftcom BTFO

That still doesn't address the hypothetical scenario of the coal that I outlined, even without the government interference, how would such a situation operate according to the labor theory of value.

user you just said in that "increase in use-value" does not add value and now you claim that it does? You are confusing me…

That would make sense.

Why?

Explain.

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.

Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program -
- Section One

It does not add exchange value, but it does increase the demand and therefore increases the price.

...

I didn't meant in offensive way, I would just like to have them. I will share what I have with you then. Can you please make thread on Holla Forums and post them there?

Who cares about demand? The text claims that moving goods around adds exchange-value because it increases use-value. Can you explain how is that possible?

Your coal issue is an example of joint production. Sraffa-inspired authors have written about that type of complication. I haven't read that stuff myself, but using this term in a search engine should yield something. Your example is probably the most simple question of this type, so I'll just give it a go without having read shit: Situation 1: Add temporarily two very unrealistic qualifications to the situation, that the two types of coal are always sold in a fifty-fifty bundle (not mixed, but two separate piles you have to buy together), and that's exactly what the customers want. In that case, there is no complication. Situation 2: Now suppose that the customers do have a problem with that, yet the coal is still only sold in that bundle. The customers can open their bundles and trade the different types of coal with each other. Situation 3: Now let's drop the other temporary qualification. Customers can buy each types of coal separately from the supplier. I guess the price of the two types of coal added together amounts to the same revenue as in case 2 (we assume away the extra hassle from transport costs in case 2). Does this make sense?

I suppose so, however it does feel a bit cheap, no pun intended. You're basically counting the two goods as the same commodity

Where does it claim that moving goods ads exchange value because it increases use-value? That would indeed no be possible if my understanding is correct.

I've posted all I have unfortunately. I've repeated some in different threads.

I should apologize, I never really addressed your coal example. I was leaving for dinner so I left that quote from the Gotha program to fuck with you.

Your example perfectly illustrates why exchange value is not the same as average value. The equilibrium prices of both types of coal should be determined by socially necessary labor time, and would be equivalent, but the different qualities of the coal, leads to different demands, and different prices.

Marx used the term average instead of equilibrium, because he believed that under normal conditions, markets would self correct and fluctuations would eventually average out at the exchange value.

So in your coal example, the increased demand of the higher quality coal would lead to increased production, and decreased supply. This would mean that the amount of labor required to find this higher quality coal would become greater, and consequentially the exchange value would rise to meet the average price.

Does this make sense?

wtf I hate german leftcoms now thanks a lot you dickhead I can't be liked by a trot

It does somewhat, but at least in the example I cited, as that other user pointed out, there is joint production going on. An increase in production of one kind of coal would necessarily lead to an increase in production to the other kind, thus, by the nature of their production the ratio between the two quantities will always remain fixed, and the labor content of both goods will remain the same, but the different levels of demand would drive them to both different average prices and different equilibrium, perhaps making equilibrium in one market possible, but not both simultaneously.

Admittedly this is a pretty esoteric example, and in the case of two ordonary commodities with the same labor content but different levels of demand, this would cause the labor content of one to change to approach equilibrium. However, commodities created as by products do occur, and the phenomena is not without real world precedence, for example gasoline and kerosene, or more close to home, donuts and donut holes, ribs and brisket, sawdust and lumber ect.

It occurs to me that this is also a good conundrum to throw at the theory of general equilibrium

Value and exchange-value are the same things.

Bull shit, you've never read Cockshott if you think thats what he says, hes spends the first 3 chapters of TANS critiquing Stalins economic problems in the ussr for not going far enough in abolishing wages and commodity production. Furthermore his reason of calling the USSR socialist is based on historical materialism and studying societies as they actually exist and not as an ahistorical ideal. Thats not the same as endorsing the USSR - its the opposite. Saying USSR = not real socialism is just a way to avoid responsibility for the failure of the ussr and the need for reflection on why that was the case. You are confusing some tank's misreading of Cockshott with his own concepts.

Where exactly does he do this? Where does Cockshott go tank and say Stalin dindu nuffins? Nowhere, saying that the USSR/Stalin did some things right is not the same as 'holodomor did not happen' level tankism. Every fucking time, leftypol, every fucking time. Anything positive or counter to western propaganda about the ussr = TANK TANK TANK lel you must suck Stalins dick
fuck off
NOWHERE IN TANS DOES COCKSHOTT SAY RE IMPLEMENT THE SOVIET SYSTEM.

Except he wrote TANS right as it was evident the soviet system was collapsing and its failure was apparent to all. Also in TANS in the later parts such as chapter 13 'On Democracy' he advocates direct democracy which is the precise OPPOSITE of one guy being a dictator. He was in the ML party in the 1970s, WAYYYY before he wrote TANS. Ocalan was an ML before, do you think that means hes a tankie?

This is not your thread.
Get banned.

bump

Unrelated, but this is some good leftcom aesthetics

...

lmao what is this supposed to mean? stop being so desperate. you are the ONLY one who is sperging like this, and indeed it's just sperging.

no you don't. i still don't see you in the ML cybernetic thread doing the same ineffective sleepless shitposting you are doing here. and the problem of the USSR wasn't even really the inefficient planning. i mean if it was so awful many people would not today prefer to go back (even if it's impossible). much of the lies about how there was starving and shit are untrue, or even that life was a hell. what matters is that it was incapable of going beyond that and just crashed.

you have no problem with them because they don't really exist on this board, and nowhere else really. and again if you had a problem you would oppose all leninists. i will get to the rest in a bit cuz it will prove why you are literally wasting your time and not even being successful in your imagined goal.

again "i disagree = uninteresting". this dozen of threads with people asking shows they are interested. even for a libsoc like me for example his critique of democracy and activism is good, or should be taken in consideration in the parts where i feel it raises some points. outside bordiga i also liked the pannkoek critique of trade unions, or herman gorters' reply to lenin.

you don't argue in good faith at all, or are just bad at it. for example the point the leftcoms here raise about how everything always ends in class-party or something exactly like it but with a different name throughout history, even for me as a libsoc that's an interesting point. all you said were these vague small examples of irrelevant things to go against it. that's not an argument, and then the vague description of more democracy is also worthless if you don't first address why this time it won't go as it has gone literally every single time before.

well that's the point really. in this thread a post shows left communism is just relative, and there is not just no bordigism for them because they think bordiga was not too different from lenin, but because left communists just follow whatever there is and try to keep it as efficient as possible, and then there develops new theory or development. the guy here when he said he's not a bordigist probably meant he is a communizer or something, which means he already accepts that if class party politics happen, it is much less likely than for example immediate communization without the DotP necessary (no state seizing, no transitional society, no lower phase, etc.). literally no post ITT suggests they would be leninists unless leninism becomes the reality or must become it.

stfu and read literally the first chapter in TANS:
(also you)

>Here we base ourselves on the classical Marxist analysis of society. In Marx’s view, the most basic distinguishing feature of different modes of social organisation is the manner in which they ensure the ‘extraction of a surplus product’ from the direct producers. This requires a little explanation. The ‘necessary product’, on this theory, is the product required to maintain and reproduce the workforce itself. This will take the form of consumer goods and services for the workers and their families, and the investment in plant, equipment and so on that is needed simply to maintain the society’s means of production in working order. The ‘surplus product’, on the other hand, is that portion of social output used to maintain the non-producing members of society (a heterogeneous lot, ranging from the idle rich, to politicians, to the armed forces, to retired working people), plus that portion devoted to net expansion of the stock of means of production.
so that part is literally just bullshit and repeats the ML idea of socialism as a state capitalist stage.
>Soviet socialism, particularly following the introduction of the first five-year plan under Stalin in the late 1920s, introduced a new and non-capitalist mode of extraction of a surplus.
lol.

and look what he did in his past and never changed on (because's he's still a tankie and never even disagreed with stalinism!):
interesting for you since you are a luxemburgfag. even bordiga never cared to talk shit about her and if you read his stuff he agreed with her, even tho he's a tankie demon apparently.

It's 8ch m8, we're all spergs here, even you.

I'll have you know I sleep quite well. I do only have so much time between work and sleeping though. these posts take less time than you might think, I'm a very quick typist.

People want to go back because of the stability and economic safety-net that the USSR provided. There was much lower inequality, great job stability, and many social welfare benefits. However, when competing with other capitalist countries, this system proved unsustainable. Certainly, the economic research that's been done on the subject shows that there were many inefficiencies with the planning system, and that smaller decentralized production and distribution wouldn't have been more helpful in at least some cases. The biggest failures in the USSR was often the small stuff, spare parts for washing machines and refrigerators were always in shortage, there wasn't good maintenance for infrastructure, ect. That it broke up, however, was ultimately due to the satellite states being more expense to keep than they were worth to Moscow. Indeed, it was incapable of going beyond, and the lack of accountability to the workers probably had a large part of that. Look at what, in all the crisis in the collapse, was most well preserved: the nomenklatura. What had become central to the soviet system was not an economic system, but the power of a class of bureaucrats.

I have no problem with them because I like what I hear of their theory. I wish more did exist on this board, I've seen a handful on twitter at least.

I don't consider bordigists leninists or MLs leninists either. Lenin himself wasn't half bad, although there were better. I consider MLs though to be a pretty self defeating joke, I don't see how anyone could take most of them seriously. It's always just muh anti-imperialism and despot apologetics. To the extent people like Cockshott talk about theory that isn't related to vanguards, I appreciate it. I'm not about to shit up the soviet cybernetics thread as I think talking about cybernetics is a useful endeavor.

I'm literally asking for something like economic analysis m8, anything that isn't muh class party autism or constant complaining.

You're not a libertarian socialist if you believe in their vision of despotism.

right back at ya.

Except you're missing the point completely.
The point is not that some serious of level of centrism and authoritarianism is required to militarily defend a revolution from its enemies, this is well established and true. The question is what happens when the fighting stops. The capitalists hardly needed a class party, much less a one party state to defend their new system. And every time socialists have tried this approach of one party states, it has ended in miserable failure.

Well, that is a debatable theoretical point, hardly Stalinist apologetics.

Regardless, you can't deny that stalin did greatly increase production and industrialize russia. He still deserves to be denounced for all the horrible crimes and despotism he did.

I'm going to assume that alphabet soup is the list of parties he belonged to. Needless to say, one doesn't have to agree with everything his party says. I denounce all ML parties although I don't see why I have to, they are already relegated to the dustbin of history, and thankful, Cockshott doesn't regurgitate such talking points to his readers.

As for Luxemburg, I'm not sure where they agreed, although you're welcome to point me towards a work. Certainly their ideas of the DOtP are radically divergent and I find Bordiga's to be utterly detestable.