Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and the Labour Theory of Value

March 2024 Forums General discussion Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and the Labour Theory of Value

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  • #184388
    ALB
    Keymaster

    She’s the Democrat member of the US House of Representatives who calls herself a socialist. Last month she tweeted:

    Workers are often paid far less than the value they create.

    This provoked the British financial magazine Business Insider to write a whole article on what she said, saying

    That is essentially a restatement of Karl Marx’s “Labour Theory of Value”.

    It’s certainly not incompatible with it (workers are always paid less than the value they create), but then they went on to give a mistaken interpretation of Marx’s theory as an underconsumptionist one (“workers can’t buy back”):

    The theory suggests that economies run into trouble when workers can’t afford to buy the products they are making.

    They never can of course. Still, as the article said, it’s not often that you see Marx’s Labour Theory of Value discussed in the mainstream media.

    #184428
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    I’m convinced that if AOC was eligible to run as president she would be in the running.

    She is 29 and you have to be at least 35 to be the US President

    #184440
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Engels was in some part of his life he was  a subconsumist , and then he changed his mind

    This is the first Marxist statement that she has made until now

    Even a social Democrat is a big shoe for the USA political environmental

     

    #184443
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Business Insider is a US financial magazine. I got mislead by the way the word “labour” was spelt. They were in effect arguing that too low wages were slowing down the growth of the capitalist economy and, to remedy this, workers should get some more of the value they create. She might agree with this but had made the statement in connection with a demand for a higher minimum wage.  Ironically — cruel fact as it is, but capitalism is like that — some people on very low wages are on them because their skills are not enough to create much more value than that of their wages. The real way out of course is to abolish the whole wages system so that people can satisfy their needs irrespective  of what they are able to contribute.

    #184447
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47532522

    Former Indian central bank governor Raghuram Rajan told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme

    “I think capitalism is under serious threat because it’s stopped providing for the many, and when that happens, the many revolt against capitalism,”

    He said governments cannot afford to ignore social inequality when considering the economy.

    He said authoritarian regimes arise “when you socialise all the means of production”.

    #184459
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Yes, there does seem to be a trend developing to say that capitalism, at least in its so-called “neo-liberal” form, has “failed”. There’s him, the famous Elizabeth Warren, Corbyn & McDonnell, the Business Insider and the analysts it cites. But Rajan is being a bit of an economic determinist when he says:

    “I think capitalism is under serious threat because it’s stopped providing for the many, and when that happens, the many revolt against capitalism,”

    as if there was a direct link between worsening economic conditions and people revolting against capitalism (also of course he’s wrong when he suggests that at one time capitalism did provide for the money, whereas it never has or can.) Fortunately or unfortunately, this has not proved to be the case. The outcome this time is most likely to be a revival of reformist movements that aim to try to put things right through more government intervention and regulation in the capitalist economy.  Reformists as, once again, more or less consciously “the breakdown gang of capitalism”.

    Of course capitalism becoming a dirty word again is grist to our mill but, as we know, discontent with capitalism will not lead to a movement to end it unless people hear, discuss and come to agree with the case for socialism.  Hence the need for a group like us to do all we can to help ensure this happens.

    #184472
    ALB
    Keymaster

    More on her thinking here which someone has posted on our facebook page (I wish the Americans would write 11 March as 11/3 not 3/11).

    Pity she opts, to benefit from “techno-futurism” and breaking the link between work and satisfying needs, for universal basic income and not for socialism as a society of common ownership, democratic control, production geared to satisfying people’s needs and not for profit, and distribution on the basis of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”, i.e., a world of abundance every man women and child on Earth can have unconditional free access to what they need just because they are members of society.

    #184476
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    This is the epoch of the wrong conceptions and distortions, Capitalism has never benefited mankind, and the state has never existed as a public institution to benefits the majority of the human beings. We have been suffering under capitalism since it emerged, and the state has always existed as the institution to benefit a minority of peoples, an it has always oppressed the majority of human beings . We do not need worsening condition in order to overthrow capitalism, we need class consciousness to understand that this system will never work for us, and that socialism-communism is the only viable solution, and this system can not be reformed

    #185161
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called capitalism “irredeemable.”

    “Capitalism is an ideology of capital — the most important thing is the concentration of capital and to seek and maximize profit,” she explained, during an interview. “To me, capitalism is irredeemable,” she added.

    Nevertheless,  her words still put the fear of death into the right-wing in America.

    In the six weeks from February 25 and April 7, her name was mentioned 3,181 times on Fox News and Fox Business; not a day went by that she wasn’t discussed. Hosts and guests smeared and misrepresented Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda, caricaturing it while painting it as radical, dangerous, far-left socialism. They often draw bleak comparisons between her progressive vision and the turmoil in Venezuela, to “bring the kind of socialism that destroyed Venezuela.” to attack her policies. They’ve repeatedly attacked her intelligence, used her age to discredit her, and dismissed her as a “little girl.” They have accused Ocasio-Cortez of using “minority privilege” to criticize Fox personalities and trying to push “Latin American values” on the U.S.A

    The irony here is that AOC isn’t really a socialist. She is a progressive neo-New Dealer who calls for the reform of capitalism, not its abolition.

    But in the end, it may all come down to good business practice.

    Fox presenter Stuart Varney acknowledged, “We have an AOC segment every single day, almost every single hour. She’s good for our ratings”

    https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/12/Six-weeks-of-Foxs-Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez-obsession-Totalitarian-ignorant-scary-and-wagin/223386

    #185178
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    If  many peoples believe that the Fire Department is socialism, it is a clear indication that there is a huge social confusion, and some so called socialists running  within a capitalist party instead of being a member of a socialist or communist party it will ad more confusion to the real situation. Ocasio Cortez is just a social democrats like Bernie Sanders and all the others so called socialists running within the Democratic Party, they are not a threat to capital , and also,  the Democratic Party is not a leftist political institution either. The class struggle and the class division have been placed under the carpet, the USA is a society divided between rich and poor, wage slaves and non wage slaves, and  exploiters and exploited, it is not divided between conservatives and liberals

    #185180
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Trump, Fox News and other right-wingers are determined to describe Democratic Party as left and far left.

    If the past is anything to go by, designating it as such will make “centrists” and “moderates” shift to the right to avoid the appellation and the overall effect will make the Democratic Party more right-wing. We already witness it in the general reluctance to defend Ilyan Omar and AOC from the media smears, in case the mud sticks to the Democratic Party.

    I find it particular ironic that Fox News host questioned if Omar is a real American when the TV channel’s owner, Australian Rupert Murdoch, took out US citizenship in 1985 just to circumvent the law that restricts foreigners from controlling the media and he only re-located his HQ from Australia to America in 2004 to attract more Wall St cash. And it is said that his former marriage with Wendi Deng floundered because of a supposed link to Chinese intelligence (as well as her alleged affair with Tony Blair.)

    Murdoch must be the archetypical “globalist” that the right-wing fear-monger about, yet it is Soros who gets the attention.

    #185370
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    AOC in a very effectively-made whiteboard video explaining the Green New Deal

    #186568
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    We’ll take it with a pinch of salt but the latest poll says 43% of Americans now think socialism is a good thing – and AOC along with Sanders get the credit.  47 percent of Americans would vote for a socialist candidate for president  even higher percentages say they would vote for an atheist (58 percent) or Muslim (60 percent)

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/257639/four-americans-embrace-form-socialism.aspx

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/22/four-10-americans-believe-socialism-good-thing-gallup

    But the number of Americans that believe socialism is a bad thing for the country increased to 51 percent

    #188608
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    After so much bullshit Alexandra Ocasio Cortez ended up  agreeing with Nancy Pelosy to push a deal against the Emigrants favoring Donald Trump plan . I do not know what  the leaders of her political party known as the DSA would about say  this. Reformism has not limits, proven that leftwing and rightwing are two wings of the same bird  known as capitalism

     

     

     

    #188609
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Marcos, can you clarify. Last thing I read was that she was still condemning the funding deal and had not voted for it.

    Are you mixing it up another previous vote from several months ago where she did vote for a package that also provided ICE with an increased budget?

    “Ocasio-Cortez asserted that the “whole congressional allocation was a farce because if he really cared about human lives he wouldn’t have needed us the same way he bypasses us for a wall….Ocasio-Cortez condemned lawmakers in her own party for supporting a flawed border funding measure, referring to those who backed the Senate version of the measure as “horrible Democrats.” ”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aoc-accuses-trump-of-provoking-border-crisis-to-‘squeeze-out-money-for-a-wall’/ar-AADNUyH

    She has been rattling the bars on the cages of the Republicans and Democrats by exposing the inhumanity of the migrant cages. I think we can all applaud her efforts to show solidarity with detainees in the US and the excluded on the Mexican side of the border. I don’t believe it is politician bull-shit but a sincere position she holds.

    It may be a bit of hyperbole but she certainly rattled the Establishment’s cage when she said the USA was heading towards fascism.

    “Are we headed to fascism? Yes. I don’t think there’s a question. If you actually take the time to study, and to look at the steps, and to see how government transforms under authoritarian regimes, and look at the political decisions and patterns of this president, the answer is yes.”

    https://news.yahoo.com/the-us-is-headed-to-fascism-says-ocasio-cortez-after-tour-of-detention-facilities-at-southern-border-195842239.html

     

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