Marx and Automation
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MBellemare wrote:Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:
competing paradigms…[manifest]… different worlds. [Each is] looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But …they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Before they can hope to communicate fully, one…or the other…must experience a paradigm shift. It is a transition between incommensurables [and] the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all…The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Conversion will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, [and then] the whole [society]…will again be…under a single, but now a different, paradigm.
And as I like to say, "some only turn towards verity, grudgingly and with much anguish!"
That expression about banging the head against a wall was written by Robbo. Post industrial ? It looks that you have not travelled too much around the world, and you are not in contact with the workers from others parts of the earth, you are thinking like many peoples in the US who thinks that they are living in an island, and the rest of the world does not exist. Probably, the manufacturing industries have decreased in Canada and the USA due to the natural imperialist expansion of the capitalist economy, a process that was described by Rosa Luxembourg, on her book the anti-Critique, and despite that you have not spoken or heard that there are still many factories in New York and in Los Angeles, and sweatshop using Latinos, and in New York there are many Dominican women still working in the textile industry, and in Italiy the textile industry is coming back and they are employing peoples from others countries and they are paying them low salary.A poor country like Haiti they have many Maquiladoras like in Central America where they are employing thousands of women, and they are employing women because they are able to pay small salaries, and most men have emigrated to others countries. The whole area of Central America they have thousands of Maquiladoras, and the protest against low wages, and unsafety working conditions are done published daily in the Latin America newspapers.In Central America they have sugar cane factories and they are employing young children to cut the sugar cane using machetes and mochas, the agriculture has been mechanized, and the sugar factories operate 24 hours every day. In the Dominican there are many sugar cane factories who were sold by the state to private investors.In Costa Rica they have many maquiladoras and others type of industries who are employing women to pay low salaries, the maquiladoras left to China, but many of them came back because the cost of production is increasing, and there are many Chinese investor who are opening factories in the USA due to the increase of the cost of production .The Free Zone in the Caribbean( Puerto Rico, Saint Cross, and La Romana ) were eliminated but the factories are coming back and instead of having them in one particular town they have been spread into diffeerent cities due to the fact that in different cities the wage slaves have different prices, and in some cities they do not have workers union.There are thousands of factories in China, Vietnam and India who are employing millions of peoples. In Vietnam the new ruling elite is serving to the European capitalists the whole work force in a silver platter. Why do you think that China an Asia are called the factory of the earth ? In Cuba the European capitalists have many factories to produce different type of commodities, they are not only investing in tourism as the capitalist press is propagating.The goverment of the USA is trying to indicate that Mexico is a parasite, but it is the opposite way, they do not mention about the hundred of factories that the USA capitalists have in that country, from cars manufacturing and many others type of industries.There is a whole wide world outside of your limited borders
MB, I wonder if we are simply just ideologues, as you seem to accuse us of.Or are we those "impossiblists" that still maintain the ideas of socialism that have travelled through the generations from the early ACTS 2:44 followers of the Jesus movement to the peasants of the Middle Ages and Omnia Sunt Communia of middle age peasant rebels like Muntzer to the Diggers and Levellers who endeavoured to turn the world upside down to create a common treasury for all to the Chartist socialists and Kropotkin anarcho-communists and then the IWW-ers who strive to end the wages system who like Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law..seek the revolutionary demand – The Right to Be Lazy or the Situationists of the 20th C who likewise sought the Right to be Greedy…Or would you prefer to associate with the non-organic, non-social evolution "system-builders" with their pre-conceived projects who dismiss the role of people as the vehicle for change by imposing upon people their blueprints of "new worlds" who are indeed the ideologues and the doctrinaires.If we are to be accused, let it be because we stick to basic principles and defend those. rather than seeking short cuts in every turn and twist of the road that stray from the road-map to the cooperative commonwealth, sign-posted by many who started taking the path before you or i chose to join the movement.Sorry for the bit of crusading campaigning language there…but i think you get what i am trying to say…I sign off with a Debs quote…but it was a choice of him of Joseph Dietzgen
Quote:" If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself."Tim Kilgallon wrote:MBellemare wrote:Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:
competing paradigms…[manifest]… different worlds. [Each is] looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But …they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Before they can hope to communicate fully, one…or the other…must experience a paradigm shift. It is a transition between incommensurables [and] the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all…The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Conversion will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, [and then] the whole [society]…will again be…under a single, but now a different, paradigm.
And as I like to say, "some only turn towards verity, grudgingly and with much anguish!"
The problem is that you see a post industrial society from your very limited perspective of cosy North American academia.Try telling this to the billions of Chinese and Indians (and others) who are now being dragooned into factories, former peasants being starved and displaced into the ranks of the proletariate. Is this a post industrial society for them? Try telling the banks of minimum wage Brits working in call centres, that their industrial scale employment is non exploitative and isn't part of the accumulation of capital by the small minority who own and control!Your ascertion, that you have come up with some kind of novel solution, the concept of a collection of self contained cooperative communities, is a laughable re run of the failed ideas of Prudhon.Merely paraphrasing crude, sentimentalist incantations about "the rabble" doesn't make you a revolutionary, any more than Johnny Rotten wearing bondage trousers and putting safety pins through his nose made him an anarchist. Sadly it shows you up as just another wannabe anarchist poseur, attempting to look wind swept and interesting. Another sheep in wolf's clothing.
And Proudhom was also an anti-Communist, and he was not the father of Anarchism either.He said that he has taken some of his idea from Louis Althousser who was a member of the French Left, an individual who never broke completely from Stalinism and Leninism, and the vanguard party, and was a defender of Maoism. He was never an Anarchist
Group, MBellemare, Marcos, all. Sorry for my confusion about your vocabulary rules. My mistake.
MBellemare wrote:Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:
competing paradigms…[manifest]… different worlds. [Each is] looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But …they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Before they can hope to communicate fully, one…or the other…must experience a paradigm shift. It is a transition between incommensurables [and] the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all…The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Conversion will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, [and then] the whole [society]…will again be…under a single, but now a different, paradigm.
And as I like to say, "some only turn towards verity, grudgingly and with much anguish!"
yeah, sorry I guess I just didn't understand the whole trick to redefining a collection of commodities based only on the change in government to call them "material objects in a general store". We can easily fix all my arguments at once with just a search and replace. So if I just replace do a find on any time I wrote the words "commodities" and replace that with "what would be called commodities in a capitalist system but are now called material objects after a hypothetical someday worldwise socialist revolution" then would that be ok? ps. After launch of my project we're going to call all commodities "people goods" I think it's just better phrasing. There are no material objects or commodities in my econnomy and there is only "people goods". if you can't underatand that then you don't really understand my ideas.
Tim Kilgallon wrote:MBellemare wrote:Yes, Steve San Francisco, you are banging your head against a wall, a certain wall of ideologues, trapped in the past. Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument. So don't fret too much about it, this is how new paradigms come to the foreground. To be positive and optimistic, one can only hope on this forum, that some, who are truly interested in furthering knowledge, will examine the evidence objectively. The fact is that Marx's analysis cannot fully explain the post-industrial condition. He is helpful in pointing in the right direction and offers good insights, but cannot explain a litany of post-modern, socio-economic phenomena, which are out of reach of Das Capital. So let me quote, the American, philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who can incapsulate how these issues with Marx and his ideologues will be resolved:
competing paradigms…[manifest]… different worlds. [Each is] looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But …they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Before they can hope to communicate fully, one…or the other…must experience a paradigm shift. It is a transition between incommensurables [and] the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all…The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Conversion will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, [and then] the whole [society]…will again be…under a single, but now a different, paradigm.
And as I like to say, "some only turn towards verity, grudgingly and with much anguish!"
The problem is that you see a post industrial society from your very limited perspective of cosy North American academia.Try telling this to the billions of Chinese and Indians (and others) who are now being dragooned into factories, former peasants being starved and displaced into the ranks of the proletariate. Is this a post industrial society for them? Try telling the banks of minimum wage Brits working in call centres, that their industrial scale employment is non exploitative and isn't part of the accumulation of capital by the small minority who own and control!Your ascertion, that you have come up with some kind of novel solution, the concept of a collection of self contained cooperative communities, is a laughable re run of the failed ideas of Prudhon.Merely paraphrasing crude, sentimentalist incantations about "the rabble" doesn't make you a revolutionary, any more than Johnny Rotten wearing bondage trousers and putting safety pins through his nose made him an anarchist. Sadly it shows you up as just another wannabe anarchist poseur, attempting to look wind swept and interesting. Another sheep in wolf's clothing.
I think your projecting a lot onto me without much knowldege. I'd happily include links to my project or my facebook page for the project or my personal facebook page or other evidence to help you revise your capitalist and socialist preconceptions about where this solution is comming from, but the forum mods won't allow it. I guess you and the people here will have to keep believing what you want as long as you keep censoring people from including links to demostrate otherwise. p.s. I also worked as a user experience designer making technology innovation upgrading their emergency disaster supply chain management software so it would work better in an emergency with limited communications and be more usable. I went out of scope on the project when I realized some of the programs and software initiatives were being run in violation of the organizational governance documents. Then I submitted a report arguing that the projects would need to be managed under their governance rules instead of ignoring them and also proposed some more effective solutions for the governance of SFGOV ( the technology agency and website that runs the electronic machinery of government). The solutions I suggested included as worth considering included things like Holocracy that is based on and considered a superior form of management compared to the mondragon experiment. In holocracy there are no bosses and if you can't understand that then you need to learn more about it. the word "boss" in an organization based on holocracy has no meaning just like the word "commodity" has no meaning in socialism. that didn't go over well for fairly obvious reasons with the bosses and for that reason and for my habit of putting ethics ahead of profit my carreer in busines and academia has always been much of a struggle against the establishment. lucklly i've allways been capable of doing things better than anyone else on the job so that's been enough to get me by in spite of the fact that I am generally apposed to authority due to childhood issues I talk about with my therapist. ps.. no I'm not rich enough to have a fancy therapist, I just realized that all I had to do was walk into the doctors office with my poverty provided free obamacare and say "I'm about to lose my home and I blame the business and corporations and I don't know what I'll do, but I worry it might be bad for the very richest and most entitled people in san francisco if I have nothing to lose because I already blame them for my situation. Do you realy think you can write me a recommendation for seeing a psychiatrist for free even though I'm unemployed and work doing community service now?" This turns out to be surprisingly effective way to get free mental health in san francisco and it could work for others so I advise others as often of my can of this strategy to make the most of the system.
alanjjohnstone wrote:MB, I wonder if we are simply just ideologues, as you seem to accuse us of.Or are we those "impossiblists" that still maintain the ideas of socialism that have travelled through the generations from the early ACTS 2:44 followers of the Jesus movement to the peasants of the Middle Ages and Omnia Sunt Communia of middle age peasant rebels like Muntzer to the Diggers and Levellers who endeavoured to turn the world upside down to create a common treasury for all to the Chartist socialists and Kropotkin anarcho-communists and then the IWW-ers who strive to end the wages system who like Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law..seek the revolutionary demand – The Right to Be Lazy or the Situationists of the 20th C who likewise sought the Right to be Greedy…Or would you prefer to associate with the non-organic, non-social evolution "system-builders" with their pre-conceived projects who dismiss the role of people as the vehicle for change by imposing upon people their blueprints of "new worlds" who are indeed the ideologues and the doctrinaires.If we are to be accused, let it be because we stick to basic principles and defend those. rather than seeking short cuts in every turn and twist of the road that stray from the road-map to the cooperative commonwealth, sign-posted by many who started taking the path before you or i chose to join the movement.Sorry for the bit of crusading campaigning language there…but i think you get what i am trying to say…I sign off with a Debs quote…but it was a choice of him of Joseph DietzgenQuote:" If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself."His concept of ideology is wrong, as it was wrong on Louis Althusser. Ideology is the prevailing ideas of the ruling class. Communists are against all kind of ideologies. The state propagated the ideology of the ruling class, but it is not the main source of the bourgeoisie ideology
@AlanJohnstaone, you wrote. . .
alanjjohnstone wrote:If we are to be accused, let it be because we stick to basic principles and defend those. rather than seeking short cuts in every turn and twist of the road that stray from the road-map to the cooperative commonwealth, sign-posted by many who started taking the path before you or i chose to join the movement.Quote:" If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself."there's more than one road map that leads to any destination. Sometimes a direct strait line of travel is not the best way to reach someplace especially if there's a big mountain called "capitalist vested interest" between you and your destination.You might need to choose some valleys and make some detours if you want to complete the journey. if you're really clever you could maybe get a free ride up the mountain at capitalist expense by tricking them into thinking you are on their side and then coast down the other side of their mountain to reach your destination once you've seen the lay of the land from up top. I chose long ago to explore the left hand path that was less traveled and I stuck with it. I've worked as a cog in the heart of their machine for enough time to understand how the heart of their capitalist machine works and i've explored and catalogued their achilies heals along the way at their expense for us to return to later when I come back with a revolutionary rabble. I remember making presentations to promote the idea of capitalism the real power wanted the public to believe in as a capitalist fantasy and I remember the parts of the presentations that the real decision makers in the economy insisted we don't mention. The most successfull attack against an superior powered oppenent is rarely a direct strait forward line of approach. Most of the people here seem to be using the conception of capitalism that was created to mislead socialist and others into the wrong path that would leave them trapped in a dead end. I know, because whenever brainstorming led to one of those paths that threatened the profit motive of the people at the top, that presentation version got cancelled. But I remembered and I put the pieces together over my lifetime and now I have a solution and road map that the capitalist have been trying very very diligently to hide behind the scenes. Here's an idea that occured to a capitalist somewhere. . . "why not give the people a rosy collored definition of capitalism or even a dirty colored version of capitalism that hides the actual critical flaws and suggest another fake flaws and fake weakness that we set up to trap them logically?". the social norms that would result in socialism are things like acceptance of chain letters for example that are anti-thetical to capitalism and must be suppressed in both capitalist and socialist thinking with pre-conceptions that prevent them from being considered as solutions. And they succeeded becauase socialist or communist have all addopted the solution of discriminating against all chain letters and discriminating against all surveys just like the capitalist mind trust wanted. if you're enemy has a spear you can not defend against well, then you need to convince the enemy that a spear is more dangerous to the person holding it and that's kind of what the capitalist did with surveys and chain letters and other forms of communication and exchange of value that they can't control to their benefit or that had inherent threat to their supremacy.From my travels, I've concluded that the most vulnerable achilies heel for capitalism is an income based pricing structure. this scares the Sheet out of the higher ups whenever it's suggested as a solution to any problem or even hinted at in a presentation. Projects get quietly cancelled or sidelined and I get instructions forbidding me to talk with others in the company about them or invited to find a job where I would fit in better. Crowdsourcing design and developement of products publicly also freeks out the powers that run business and demand servants to make presentations for them to argue about big issues privately amongst themselves.
An ideologue, is one who, with tooth and nail, defends his or her own ideology by professing all other forms of thought as totally false, misunderstood and lacking in comprehension. Marx is still valuable, I never said he wasn't. Much of what I say is grounded in Marx. I simply think that what Marx saw as an exception in 1867, is now paramount in post-industrial, post-modern society. His law of value, and the fundamental basis of his whole theoretical apparatus as being founded on quantifiable labor-time is now marginal. It is has been pushed to the capitalist periphery such as India and China, while American Capitalism, functions increasingly on a post-industrial, post-modern basis, i.e., arbitrary/artificial constructions of value, price and wage. This is why Bernie Sanders states, without fully knowing why, capitalism is rigged, the whole system is rigged where the same people lose all the time or most of the time, while the same select few always win. It is rigged because even if workers get higher wages, capitalists can recoup their loses by arbitrarily raising prices a few percentage points above any wage increase. And presto! the workers lose again, even while, superficially winning a pay raise. As a result, capitalists appease workers by giving them pay raises (they are happy) and appease their capitalists stock holders by increasing profits, via a slight price increase that off-sets any pay raise, slightly increasing profits via small increments. Of course, this sort of system cannot continue indefinately, hence, the ever-increasing debt-load workers have to carry. But hey! capitalism is still intact! To quote Guy Debord " society has gone from being, to having, to appearing".Two good examples are the automobile industry and the North American Housing Industry: Today, no-one can truly afford a new car, in North America, but everyone can LEASE a new car, making it look as if one owns what one does not actually own. Moreover, one can LEASE a luxury car, a Mercedes, a BMW, a JAGUAR etc., via reasonable inflated monthly payments, making it look as if one is a massive success, despite the fact that, in reality, one, at best, only owns the steering wheel, or the key-chain. I ask how did this happen, when production costs for automobiles, have been steadily decreasing for roughly a century. And according to Marx, price should be decreasing as well, accordingly. The only plausible answer is that price have not been decreasing but increasing. But the opposite APPEARS to be the case because of all sorts of creative financings and leasing going on (A different type of mortgage). So yes! more people are driving and seemingly "buying" cars (The American Dream is Still IN TACT) , but they, in reality, own less and less of the cars they seemingly "buy" and drive because, in truth, the majority of North Americans citizens, do not in fact "buy" brand-new-automobiles anymore, they RENT/LEASE them. The majority of North Americans cannot afford new Cars, because prices are outlandish and out of whack, out of the realm of their real salaries, but they drive new cars because of creative financings. The truth is that behind it all, the majority of these new cars, with "SOLD" written on them, still belong to the car-companies and their dealerships. So leasing a new car, looks like real ownership, feels like real ownership, looks like real ownership to others, eventhough in reality it is not! In a world of arbitrarily-constructed values, prices and wages, debt-management is key. its all about managing debt, i.e., different types of mortgages, and one's ability to unleash capital, i.e., borrow. The same logic applies to the North American Housing Market. No one actually owns a house anymore, because, housing prices are out of whack and outlandish, despite building costs for new homes steadily decreasing over the last 50 years. And according to Marx, prices should as well have decreased in the housing market in the last 50 years, but they have not. In truth, WE PAY MORE FOR LESS. And this applies across many spheres of production. But via creative financing, more people than ever can seemingly borrow, thus more people then ever can seemingly "buy" a house, a MCMANSION in fact. However, how much of that MCMANSION do most people actually own, maybe, if thing are slightly good for a few years, the FRONT DOOR. A house mortgage is a fancy term for a rent-to-own scheme. Thus, North Americans rent from the BANKS the houses they seemingly appear to OWN and hope to eventually own outright on fine day, but they do not in truth currently own. (The American Dream is DEBT-RIDDEN). Moreover, add property taxes onto this and we, in fact, rent the land from the city and the house from the banks. Why is this? because values, prices and wages are no longer founded in production, i.e., real expenditures of quantifiable labor-power within the production sphere, but upon ideological nonsense, unfounded capitalists desires and network-power. What I am describing as post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, is far-more dangerous, far-more crazy, than Marx ever concieved. At least, Marx had sound economic laws to corral capitalists and explain values and prices. For Marx, everyone was subject to such economic laws, which limited behavior and instilled a sense of fairness across the sum of social reality. In constrast, Post-Industrial, Post-Modern capitalism is in effect lawless, extreme and fundamentally unfair. And even worst, for those who lack power and network-support. Its scary because when values, prices and wages are arbitrarily-determined, the working population, can theoretically lose everytime and indefinately, the game called post-industrial, post-modern capitalism. In fact, its not even a game, as games have set rules, which every player, regardless of social standing, must follow. Post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, is theoretically a free-for-all, where "whatever one can get away with in the market-place" is valid and legitimate, once normalized. And things can get very chaotic, alienated and violent, because it is a lawless free-for-all. The truth is that I wish Marx was completely right, because, what he described in DAS CAPITAL was an ordered economic universe, understandable, rational and scientifically sound. The Capitalism we live in now is opaque, confusing, odd, seemingly irrational and unscientific, without order and sound judgements. And the only logical principle I have been able to extract from this nonsensical capitalism is the logical principle: "To maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". From this logical principle, stems all the nonsense the post-industrial, post-modern capitalism generates. In post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, there are even super-profits to be extracted from all sorts of human suffering and disasters!
"Buying" through leasing with so many clauses to the contract on the "sell-back" to the company…Or that house purchases are done through borrowing (as it always was even in Marx's time) rather than renting as is the prevalent method of housing in most of Europe i'm not so sure are fundamental differences to capitalism which in any way undermine the basics.In fact, i doubt if they even influence the price of either a car or a house in any effective way.My recollection of buying a house is that it is not so much the building that determines the price of it but the cost of the land it sits on… You are over-egging the pudding, i believe by giving cosmetic appearances something much deeper meaning and declaring that it makes Marx dated.
Quote:Capitalism we live in now is opaque, confusing, odd, seemingly irrational and unscientific, without order and sound judgements. And the only logical principle I have been able to extract from this nonsensical capitalism is the logical principle: "To maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". From this logical principle, stems all the nonsense the post-industrial, post-modern capitalism generates.No-one on this forum and certainly not Marx who did not describe capital as " ordered economic universe, understandable, rational and scientifically sound "Where on earth did you get tht idea. He spent his life trying to sort through all the contradictions and mysteries of capitalism and came up with the conclusion that the only way towards society that is " an ordered economic universe, understandable, rational and scientifically sound" is by replacing capitalism and establishing socialism…a system where people themselves and not economic laws rule.You seem to expect capitalism to possess a power it does not have, MB.And you appear disappointed that it doesn't. So you try to make the round peg go into the square hole. Not as others would …chuck the damn thing away in its entirety as no longer fit for purpose. Here on the forum, espite Steve's plea that we should give credit to capitalism where it is due – which we do – we say it is a social system that has out-lived its use…a redundant mode of production. It holds back social progress and shackles the potential of technologyCar washing…i recall every filling station had an automated car-washing machine…very complex piece of machinery…cost of labour fell …and hey…back to the man with the sponge…It is as you state very rightly " a free-for-all, where "whatever one can get away with in the market-place" is valid and legitimate, once normalized. And things can get very chaotic, alienated and violent, because its a free-for-all. " and can't be anything other…No Sanders regulation, no Keynesian legislation, no central planning of the State or invisible hand of the market is going to change things. Only people taking control and making decisions over what, where, how and when things are produced will do this.Socialism is simple idea…So is the bare bones of capitalism easy to understand once the veils is pulled off….why do you persist in over-complicating things, MB?The cost of something is the social time put into its creation…and around that cost…all the small and temprary variations is due to advertising and monopolies and intellectual ownerships and fashions ….little bits of elasticity to the human labour that goes into building a product.Limited land is less determined by supply so house prices tend not to fall…unless you make swamps into solid ground as Florida did and wasn't the great boom in the early 20thC the low cost in Florida of houses.Anyways, i prefer my politics straight-forward where a PhD is not required to understand it …i'm robbed by the wealthy who parasitically live off my and my co-workers blood sweat and toil (so to speak – in reality we dodged as much labour as i possibly could without being caught and sacked) Whether a prices is low or high – that is the fact we rebel, isn't it?
MBellemare wrote:An ideologue, is one who, with tooth and nail, defends his or her own ideology by professing all other forms of thought as totally false, misunderstood and lacking in comprehension. Marx is still valuable, I never said he wasn't. Much of what I say is grounded in Marx. I simply think that what Marx saw as an exception in 1867, is now paramount in post-industrial, post-modern society. His law of value, and the fundamental basis of his whole theoretical apparatus as being founded on quantifiable labor-time is now marginal. It is has been pushed to the capitalist periphery such as India and China, while American Capitalism, functions increasingly on a post-industrial, post-modern basis, i.e., arbitrary/artificial constructions of value, price and wage. This is why Bernie Sanders states, without fully knowing why, capitalism is rigged, the whole system is rigged where the same people lose all the time or most of the time, while the same select few always win. It is rigged because even if workers get higher wages, capitalists can recoup their loses by arbitrarily raising prices a few percentage points above any wage increase. And presto! the workers lose again, even while, superficially winning a pay raise. As a result, capitalists appease workers by giving them pay raises (they are happy) and appease their capitalists stock holders by increasing profits, via a slight price increase that off-sets any pay raise, slightly increasing profits via small increments. Of course, this sort of system cannot continue indefinately, hence, the ever-increasing debt-load workers have to carry. But hey! capitalism is still intact! To quote Guy Debord " society has gone from being, to having, to appearing".Two good examples are the automobile industry and the North American Housing Industry: Today, no-one can truly afford a new car, in North America, but everyone can LEASE a new car, making it look as if one owns what one does not actually own. Moreover, one can LEASE a luxury car, a Mercedes, a BMW, a JAGUAR etc., via reasonable inflated monthly payments, making it look as if one is a massive success, despite the fact that, in reality, one, at best, only owns the steering wheel, or the key-chain. I ask how did this happen, when production costs for automobiles, have been steadily decreasing for roughly a century. And according to Marx, price should be decreasing as well, accordingly. The only plausible answer is that price have not been decreasing but increasing. But the opposite APPEARS to be the case because of all sorts of creative financings and leasing going on (A different type of mortgage). So yes! more people are driving and seemingly "buying" cars (The American Dream is Still IN TACT) , but they, in reality, own less and less of the cars they seemingly "buy" and drive because, in truth, the majority of North Americans citizens, do not in fact "buy" brand-new-automobiles anymore, they RENT/LEASE them. The majority of North Americans cannot afford new Cars, because prices are outlandish and out of whack, out of the realm of their real salaries, but they drive new cars because of creative financings. The truth is that behind it all, the majority of these new cars, with "SOLD" written on them, still belong to the car-companies and their dealerships. So leasing a new car, looks like real ownership, feels like real ownership, looks like real ownership to others, eventhough in reality it is not! In a world of arbitrarily-constructed values, prices and wages, debt-management is key. its all about managing debt, i.e., different types of mortgages, and one's ability to unleash capital, i.e., borrow. The same logic applies to the North American Housing Market. No one actually owns a house anymore, because, housing prices are out of whack and outlandish, despite building costs for new homes steadily decreasing over the last 50 years. And according to Marx, prices should as well have decreased in the housing market in the last 50 years, but they have not. In truth, WE PAY MORE FOR LESS. And this applies across many spheres of production. But via creative financing, more people than ever can seemingly borrow, thus more people then ever can seemingly "buy" a house, a MCMANSION in fact. However, how much of that MCMANSION do most people actually own, maybe, if thing are slightly good for a few years, the FRONT DOOR. A house mortgage is a fancy term for a rent-to-own scheme. Thus, North Americans rent from the BANKS the houses they seemingly appear to OWN and hope to eventually own outright on fine day, but they do not in truth currently own. (The American Dream is DEBT-RIDDEN). Moreover, add property taxes onto this and we, in fact, rent the land from the city and the house from the banks. Why is this? because values, prices and wages are no longer founded in production, i.e., real expenditures of quantifiable labor-power within the production sphere, but upon ideological nonsense, unfounded capitalists desires and network-power. What I am describing as post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, is far-more dangerous, far-more crazy, than Marx ever concieved. At least, Marx had sound economic laws to corral capitalists and explain values and prices. For Marx, everyone was subject to such economic laws, which limited behavior and instilled a sense of fairness across the sum of social reality. In constrast, Post-Industrial, Post-Modern capitalism is in effect lawless, extreme and fundamentally unfair. And even worst, for those who lack power and network-support. Its scary because when values, prices and wages are arbitrarily-determined, the working population, can theoretically lose everytime and indefinately, the game called post-industrial, post-modern capitalism. In fact, its not even a game, as games have set rules, which every player, regardless of social standing, must follow. Post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, is theoretically a free-for-all, where "whatever one can get away with in the market-place" is valid and legitimate, once normalized. And things can get very chaotic, alienated and violent, because it is a lawless free-for-all. The truth is that I wish Marx was completely right, because, what he described in DAS CAPITAL was an ordered economic universe, understandable, rational and scientifically sound. The Capitalism we live in now is opaque, confusing, odd, seemingly irrational and unscientific, without order and sound judgements. And the only logical principle I have been able to extract from this nonsensical capitalism is the logical principle: "To maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". From this logical principle, stems all the nonsense the post-industrial, post-modern capitalism generates. In post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, there are even super-profits to be extracted from all sorts of human suffering and disasters!This is all very impressionistic, Michel , but can you give any hard emprical evidence to back up what you are saying? For example , you talk about automobiles and say "production costs for automobiles, have been steadily decreasing for roughly a century. And according to Marx, price should be decreasing as well, accordingly". You say on the contary that the prices have been increasing and are now "outlandish". But according to the evidence I presented earlier the prices of new automobiles ARE decreasing in relative terms (allowing for inflation) along with a number of other categories of goods, due to increasing producitivty. True, there are some goods where the prices have gone up relatively speaking for various reasons – like branded goods . The direct costs of producing these goods may have fallen due the production being relocated to low wage economies in the Third World but, I suspect, you neglect take into account the increased costs of marketing these goods in an increasingly competitive global market Then you talk about the North American Housing Market. "No one actually owns a house anymore, because, housing prices are out of whack and outlandish". I am not too familiar with the US figures but what is the differnece between now and, say, fifty years or 100 years ago? You make it sound like there was some golden age of working class housing in the past when everyone owned their own home and things have just deteriorated since then. In continental Europe for example there has long been a tradition of renting accommodation and the greater emphasis on purchasing a home is a relatively new development Finally you go on about that these super profits that the capitalists procure today in our so called post-industrial postmodern world due to the outrageous price mark ups and price gouging they engage in today though you dont quite explain what stopped them from engaging in mark ups on the same scale in the past. It seems to me your basic mistake is to assume that profits are made at the point of sale rather than at the point of production (the Marxian explanation) and again you dont explain where all this additonal purchasing power is supposed to come from to afford these outlandish price increases. If the answer is workers getting more into debt then all this really boils down is a redistribution of surplus value from the industrial capitalists to the financial capitalists. It doesnt in itself neceesarily mean an increase the total amount of surplus value generated in the economy As I said before the long term evidence seem to point to the rate of profit gradually declining, not rising . See the link I posted earlier http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1126/rate-of-profit-continues-to-fall/.. How would you respond to this point?
@mBellemare,
MBellemare wrote:And the only logical principle I have been able to extract from this nonsensical capitalism is the logical principle: "To maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible".mBelelemare, I agree completely. But paradoxically I am glad of this because I have discovered a novel way to very quickly increase individual seller profits that has the unintended and unavoidable side effect of slowly and inexorably reducing innequality incrementally over time which I think ends up reducing the power of the rich class of people as a group. I'm developing this as a crowdsourced 100% public way as a non-profit consistent with the principles of socialism and communism as I understand them. I think I'm in danger of flooding the group and I am trying to respect and stay vigilant of the mods unstated rule to slow down and not dominate a conversation with repreated postings. So I think I need to turn off this discussion and just stay away for a while. The mods will probably censor me for it, but If you want to hear about the paradoxical solution I discovered, it's not that complicated and you could find it by googling "code for san francisco" and looking on their project page for the "hours equals price" project at the bottom. there's a short 10 minute slideshow that explains it pretty well with pictures and stories that you can find there. ps. if you check it out and like the idea, don't write anything on on the project pages that would let others know this is favored by socialist or communist or similar. Don't even mention the words socialism or communism on the project pages please. The idea has to be percieved as coming from capitalism to be accepted and grow fastest here in san francisco. I'd give you a direct link but I'm pretty sure that's not allowed and now I promise to ignore this forum for a while for the pleasure of the mods and so I can focus on more pressing personal matters.
MBellemare wrote:An ideologue, is one who, with tooth and nail, defends his or her own ideology by professing all other forms of thought as totally false, misunderstood and lacking in comprehension. Marx is still valuable, I never said he wasn't. Much of what I say is grounded in Marx. I simply think that what Marx saw as an exception in 1867, is now paramount in post-industrial, post-modern society. His law of value, and the fundamental basis of his whole theoretical apparatus as being founded on quantifiable labor-time is now marginal. It is has been pushed to the capitalist periphery such as India and China, while American Capitalism, functions increasingly on a post-industrial, post-modern basis, i.e., arbitrary/artificial constructions of value, price and wage. This is why Bernie Sanders states, without fully knowing why, capitalism is rigged, the whole system is rigged where the same people lose all the time or most of the time, while the same select few always win. It is rigged because even if workers get higher wages, capitalists can recoup their loses by arbitrarily raising prices a few percentage points above any wage increase. And presto! the workers lose again, even while, superficially winning a pay raise. As a result, capitalists appease workers by giving them pay raises (they are happy) and appease their capitalists stock holders by increasing profits, via a slight price increase that off-sets any pay raise, slightly increasing profits via small increments. Of course, this sort of system cannot continue indefinately, hence, the ever-increasing debt-load workers have to carry. But hey! capitalism is still intact! To quote Guy Debord " society has gone from being, to having, to appearing".Two good examples are the automobile industry and the North American Housing Industry: Today, no-one can truly afford a new car, in North America, but everyone can LEASE a new car, making it look as if one owns what one does not actually own. Moreover, one can LEASE a luxury car, a Mercedes, a BMW, a JAGUAR etc., via reasonable inflated monthly payments, making it look as if one is a massive success, despite the fact that, in reality, one, at best, only owns the steering wheel, or the key-chain. I ask how did this happen, when production costs for automobiles, have been steadily decreasing for roughly a century. And according to Marx, price should be decreasing as well, accordingly. The only plausible answer is that price have not been decreasing but increasing. But the opposite APPEARS to be the case because of all sorts of creative financings and leasing going on (A different type of mortgage). So yes! more people are driving and seemingly "buying" cars (The American Dream is Still IN TACT) , but they, in reality, own less and less of the cars they seemingly "buy" and drive because, in truth, the majority of North Americans citizens, do not in fact "buy" brand-new-automobiles anymore, they RENT/LEASE them. The majority of North Americans cannot afford new Cars, because prices are outlandish and out of whack, out of the realm of their real salaries, but they drive new cars because of creative financings. The truth is that behind it all, the majority of these new cars, with "SOLD" written on them, still belong to the car-companies and their dealerships. So leasing a new car, looks like real ownership, feels like real ownership, looks like real ownership to others, eventhough in reality it is not! In a world of arbitrarily-constructed values, prices and wages, debt-management is key. its all about managing debt, i.e., different types of mortgages, and one's ability to unleash capital, i.e., borrow. The same logic applies to the North American Housing Market. No one actually owns a house anymore, because, housing prices are out of whack and outlandish, despite building costs for new homes steadily decreasing over the last 50 years. And according to Marx, prices should as well have decreased in the housing market in the last 50 years, but they have not. In truth, WE PAY MORE FOR LESS. And this applies across many spheres of production. But via creative financing, more people than ever can seemingly borrow, thus more people then ever can seemingly "buy" a house, a MCMANSION in fact. However, how much of that MCMANSION do most people actually own, maybe, if thing are slightly good for a few years, the FRONT DOOR. A house mortgage is a fancy term for a rent-to-own scheme. Thus, North Americans rent from the BANKS the houses they seemingly appear to OWN and hope to eventually own outright on fine day, but they do not in truth currently own. (The American Dream is DEBT-RIDDEN). Moreover, add property taxes onto this and we, in fact, rent the land from the city and the house from the banks. Why is this? because values, prices and wages are no longer founded in production, i.e., real expenditures of quantifiable labor-power within the production sphere, but upon ideological nonsense, unfounded capitalists desires and network-power. What I am describing as post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, is far-more dangerous, far-more crazy, than Marx ever concieved. At least, Marx had sound economic laws to corral capitalists and explain values and prices. For Marx, everyone was subject to such economic laws, which limited behavior and instilled a sense of fairness across the sum of social reality. In constrast, Post-Industrial, Post-Modern capitalism is in effect lawless, extreme and fundamentally unfair. And even worst, for those who lack power and network-support. Its scary because when values, prices and wages are arbitrarily-determined, the working population, can theoretically lose everytime and indefinately, the game called post-industrial, post-modern capitalism. In fact, its not even a game, as games have set rules, which every player, regardless of social standing, must follow. Post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, is theoretically a free-for-all, where "whatever one can get away with in the market-place" is valid and legitimate, once normalized. And things can get very chaotic, alienated and violent, because it is a lawless free-for-all. The truth is that I wish Marx was completely right, because, what he described in DAS CAPITAL was an ordered economic universe, understandable, rational and scientifically sound. The Capitalism we live in now is opaque, confusing, odd, seemingly irrational and unscientific, without order and sound judgements. And the only logical principle I have been able to extract from this nonsensical capitalism is the logical principle: "To maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". From this logical principle, stems all the nonsense the post-industrial, post-modern capitalism generates. In post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, there are even super-profits to be extracted from all sorts of human suffering and disasters!That is not Marx definition of ideology. and the defintion privately dscribed by Engels is wrong too. The definition given above is called dogma, it is applicable to religion. Since you do not understand the real concept of ideology, it forces you to consider that the working class is not a revolutionary class. it is not only a matter of mental condition. With and without political consciouness the working class is a revolutionary class. That is a very reactionary thought which is also the same reasoning of the capitalists, and others peoples which like to denigrate the working class.You are visuaizing the world from your personal island known as North America. There are human being in this world who have never own a bycicle and owning an old car is a far reaching objective. A car is not an example of the world situation because there are place where peoples do not need a car. In New York workers do not need a car, it is much better to travel by train, and in several countries in Europe there is not need to own a car, it is preferable to travel by train. Who is going to drive a car in Manhattan, London, Paris, Berlin, or Madrid when you can take a train or a subway ? New York city has the best subway system, and peoples leave the cars parked in their housesThe actual condition in several places in North America was created by the car industry, the construction companies, the insurance companies, the petroleum company, the court system, and the police, and fee income for the states, Most train transportation companies were purchased by the Automobile industry, and the states built roads and freeways as a means of transportation, like in the State of California, it is similar to the production of the electric car, the project was eliminated in order to sell the SUV which is vehicle that consume a large amount of gasoline. Years ago trains were popular in the particular case of the USA, and a car was only a luxury, and the maximum price of a car was $7,500.00 and despite that price, workers were forced to finance a car using a bank because nobody was able to buy them with their own money.Your explanation sounds like the slogan of the Nationalists to make America Great Again, America was never great for the workers, it was great for the capitalist class, but for the workers, specially for the blacks, the Indians, Latinos, and Asian was a place of poverty, and it was the same for the white peoples, capitalism has been a terrible system since it came about in England and until the present time. There is not such thing as a post industrial society, it is like saying that there are industries around the worl, and there is not such thing as a post modern society, the capitalist system is a barbaric system which has been producing hungers, poverty, wars, killings, oppression and diseases for more than 300 years. If we are living under a post industrial society, Who are making the TV, computers, cars, houses, tools, foods, etc. etc. ? We are living under a society which produces enough resources to satisfy the needs of all human beings, the problem is the private possesion of all those resources, and the fight for market around the world.The same situation is with housing, peoples never owned a house, and there are places where peoples have never owned a house, or even a title deed of a house, there are poor countries where peoples own their small houses, and they also own the land, the main is the price of the real estate, or the price of the land, it is the inflated value of the land, and land has not value because it is not produced by the working class, human beings take resources from the land in order to produce value. There are poor countries where capitalists own all the lands and peoples do not own anything, they do not even own a lot in the cemetery, and many peoples are living under the bridges, and next to the rivers.
The logic of capitalism has always been to produce profits, that is the reason why it is called the system of profits, without profits capitalism will collapse, that the capitalists iare producing large profits, it is due to the fact that capitalism has expanded itself all over the world, it is the only single system that exists over the earth, but despite that, in the long run the rate of profits has declinedIn regard to price, there are many commodities that their prices have been decreased like in the case of electronics, a few months ago the price for a 4k television was over 5,000.00. and right now some 4k tv cost around $500.00, The first IBM computer its cost was around $4,000.00 and there are computers for $150.00. The Chinese are producing a car that might cost around $800.00 and the maximum price might be around $5,000.00. A car much better than one built during the 70 by the US Automobile industryThe Rolls Royce company is complaining because the Chinese have manufactured a car similar to their car with the same features, the same exterior and interior and luxury, and the same type of engine for $33,000.00.Inflation and monetary devaluation must be taken into account for the price of certain commodities. Several years ago the dollar was at par value with certain currency from other countries, and the price of the commodity was almost equal, with the cost of the inflation and the over emission of currency the price of the commodities have increased to compensate for the inflation and the devaluation
Marcos wrote:In regard to price, there are many commodities that their prices have been decreased like in the case of electronics, a few months ago the price for a 4k television was over 5,000.00. and right now some 4k tv cost around $500.00,Yes, this is why I think Michel's whole argument is highly dubious. He talks of prices steadily rising , boosted by the "creative power" of the capitalists (meaning, marketing or branding) to revalue commodities upwards, while the costs of production have been steadily declining. That just doesnt make any sense. The figures dont add up. Since the wages of workers are a signifcant component of these costs of production that would suggest workers' earnings are dropping (which is not true – they have actually slightly increased in recent decades). But if the purchasing power of workers is diminishing how are those commodities going to be sold if businesses insist on steadily raising their prices? The reality is more complex. Some prices have been rising in relative terms – particularly for status goods – but other prices have been falling in these terms due to falling unit production costs and the competitive need for busineses to attract more customers by undercutting each other pricewise. The rise in prices of status or Veblen goods is a reflection of a secular trend in contemporary capitalism towards increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income, Veblen goods (which is really what Michel is talking about) are different from ordinary commodities in that increased prices (which the rich can afford anyway) is precisely what induces them to buy more of these goods, Its a way of differentiating them from the riff raff – us workers – who cannot afford such things. Marx's labour theory has not been marginalised as Michel claims. It is the circumstances that have changed but the theory allows us to understand what is going on behind these changes. The rate of profit – not the the same thing as the mass of profit which can increase with increased output despite a fall in the rate of profit – has been declining in the long run but at the same time the share of social wealth appropriated by the capitalists has been increasing. Most of the value of productivity gains over the last few decades has gone to the top 1 per cent. There is a lot of money swilling around in their hands but they find it increasingly difficult (relatively speaking) to productively reinvest it. Which is why some big corporations are sitting on big piles of the stuff and why you find an increasing tendency for the super rich to splash out on the unproductive consumption of status goods like posh houses and fancy yachts
Quote:There is a lot of money swilling around in their hands but they find it increasingly difficult (relatively speaking) to productively reinvest it. Which is why some big corporations are sitting on big piles of the stuff and why you find an increasing tendency for the super rich to splash out on the unproductive consumption of status goods like posh houses and fancy yachts..Conspicuous consumption has always been a feature of the parasite class and their offspring. The desperation to find new areas ot invest in was what led to the speculative behaviour prior to the crash.
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