Bijou Drains
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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 Semantics and the ignoring of concrete facts as somehow illigitimate, is the last resort of an outdated argument backed-up against the wall, a dying argument.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!"
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.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:robbo203 wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:No. That's not what Marx or I meant in every case that we use the phrase "immense accumulation of commodities". I'm refering to a region of space like a store where an immense collection of things like toasters and blenders (aka commodities) are accumulated. You could define "an immense accumulation of commodities" with geography and a map in the lexicon of discusstion that's relevant and I'm using. Capitalist call that a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities". Socialist call it a store and it fits the definition of "an immense accumulation of commodities".I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall here. You clearly dont understand what a "commodity" is if you think a non market socialist system of production is one in which there will be "an immense accumulation of commodities". Everyone, apart from you, seems to understand that socialism in the Marxian senses entails the abolition of commodity production. Your eccentric interpretation is something that is unique to you alone, dont bring Marx into the picture. He would have guffawed heartily at such an example of profound ignorance on the subject
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service ("products" or "activities"[1]) produced by human labour[2] and offered as a product for general sale on the market.[3] Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_(Marxism)I understand your definition of commodity well enough I think. that definition from wikipedia is more right than wrong isn't it? Do you not understand the definition of the word "accumulate" maybe? I can link to that too you need help. Or is it just when you put them together that your preconceptions prevent you from understanding? you have a prek-conception about what marx meant that somehow makes one region of space called a store "an immense collection of commodities" in capitalism and if you change government to true socialism then that same region of space called a store is no longer "an immense collection of commodities"? can you explain how this works in more detail? the way I interpret Marx, A general store in capitalism or in communism is "an immense collection of commoodities".
I will try to spell this out for you as simply as I can.In a socialist economy there will be no buying or selling of any kind.Therefore, if you look at the part of the quote from wikipedia that I have marked in bold, you will see that by DEFINITION, there can be no commodities in a socialist society because there is no buting or selling!!!!!!
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:This is certainly something we can agree upon – I am certainly no Einsteinian physicist. and this wiki entry simply blanked my mind rather than illuminate it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalenceI fared a little bit better with this explanation of Marx's economics https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/social-reproductionWell, the wikipedia entry isn't completely wrong, it's just limited and being used wrong in some arguments, Just like a lot of the posters in this forum are not wrong about socialism or economics, they're just using a limited understanding that leads them to wrong conclusions in some arguments. For E=MC2 the problem is the false assumption that that all matter is stationary and nothing in the universe moves. The E=MC2 equation failes when objects start moving and but not by much. You have to move things around at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light before the short equations starts to become seriously wrong. for most everyday objects like tossing a ball to put it in motion you can safely ignore the thousands of a decimal place difference between the truncated short equation and the longer more accurate equation. That was in the video at the link I gave and probably a better source for accessibility and simplified better than the wikipedia entry of E-MC2. Likewise the posters in this forum aren't entrirely wrong, it's just they assume that prices have to be in capital based dollars and not income adjusted dollars. If there were no such thing as pricing on a sliding scale, then I wouldn't have much of a disagreement with people who argue for a political revution and abandoning capitalism. The moral here is that being close minded will close your mind to some solutions. I looked at your social-reproduction page. thanks for the helpful link. It's not wrong, but it omits the "surplus value" capturered by the retailer in any sales transaction and it also doens't allow for a variable extraction of surplus value from the equation during the sale process. According to the page you linked there is no such thing as a sliding scale and the existencce of aa sliding scale price tag breaks the theory. So Marx thoery as described in the page you linked only works if you ignore the existence of a sliding scale price tag. for most current purchases around the world, that's a pretty safe assumption and slding scale pricing makes up probably less than 1% of econmic transactions in todays average market so ignoring the sliding scale price tag seems reasonable in todays market for today. It was definitely reasonable to ignore the existence of a sliding scale price tag when Marx was doing his work and writing. But If I can make a sliding scale conveneint and ubiquitous so it makes up a larger percent of economic activity then we'll see a strong divergence between the results of the truncated marx model on the page and a better representation of how surplus value moves in an economy. in general there seems to be some inattention to the sales part of the flow diagrams and it conflates the identity and motives of the retailer with the motives of the communal good of all the rich people together. "The essential capitalist condition is “only if communal wealth can be syphoned off by the capitalist class [in Marxian terms, only if surplus value Ⓢ can be realized by the capitalist class]”." ignores the rather obvious fact that in a capitalist economy people DO NOT make communal purchasing or job decisions and they can't make some communal decisions about price or jobs because of how capitalism forces competition between people first and uses a crowdsource price setting solution. That's a problem for the whole theory because the rich people don't act out of comunal for all rich people as a group in solidarity, they act out of personal profit seeking and will gladly take money from their rich neighbors. so there's no overArching organized and authoritarian "rich people club" with the power to set prices in the marketplace from a top down structure, it's just individual business people individually trying to make the most money that sets the price and indiidual sellers will undercut and do other pricing tricks that don't get explained by traditional capitalist or marxist economics. you'd have to usa a behavioral economics or institutional economics analysis to really point out the faws in the page you liinked to, but since so few people understand behavioral or institutional economics principles I didn't bother with that kind of explanation. What marx is describing in his diagram or whoever created the diagram is a good representation of the state of a nation scale economy at a time many many years ago when it was probably pretty close to accurate. There was no thought back then to how a sliding scale price tag might affect things in a society. We know better now. after reading the first article and commenting above I read further down the page and found this quote that seems relevant. . ."Marx states point blank in Capital Volume 1 that political economists have “never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him”. This is the expression of determinism."So what does an income based sliding scale do exactly in regards to this quote from marx above? It asks the question of what if labour is represented by the something other than the value of it's product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. With a sliding scale price tage the labour is NOT representative of the magnitued of the product time. Instead your buying power (your labor buying power) is adjusted at the cash register so that if you are rich because you captured a lot of surplus value in some way hten your price goes up. This meens the value of your labor is NOT EXACTLY represented by the value of it's product and labor time, but instead the value of your labor is represented by your salary in combined with and modified by the price adjustements at the cash register.
Steve I think you make the common mistake of using the term Value and price/wage, to mean the same thing. In common parlance this might seem sensible, however from a Marxist point of view, value and price are very different.You might find the link below uesful:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/
Vin wrote:Gates is not that much of a philanthropist. I have asked him on numerous occasions to lend me a tenner and he has blanked me everytime. After everything I'v done for capitalism, that's what I get.That's 'cos he knows your a Mackem
MBellemare wrote:
Let me answer your other question, why doesn't a network of capitalists raise prices to outlandish new highs. Well, sports does it all the time. Stadiums have raised the price of entry in North America with huge mark-ups. Sport stars demand obscene salaries, CEOs command obscene bonuses and salaries. To support such salary-hikes requires fundamental network-control over the nodes of production, consumption and distribution.Michel Luc BellemareOk let's test out this scenario. My beloved football team decide that for me to go and watch my back and white herooes I will have to pay an Additional £20. As a loyal fan I go along to the match as per usual. Before the match I meet up, as usual with the lads in my hostelry of choice, however instead of my usual modest consumption of 10 pint Bottles of Newcastle Brown, I only have enough money to consume a pityful 8 pint bottles. Similarly, on my walk up to St James' Park I stop off at the bakers. The baker happily bags up my usual order of five large pork pies, but to his dismay I shake my head and indicate I'm only going to purchase 3 of his delightful comestibles.In the aftermath the brewer and the baker get together. "Oh my god, the fat bastard has cut down on his consumption, what are we to do!" they cry amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Well they decide there are only two options, we can either reduce production, to meet the new requirements, or we can reduce the prices to ensure the glutton continues to consume our wares and doesn't go off in search of other cheaper purveyory of beer and pork pies. Either way, they decide, it will mean a cut in profits.And when the final scores come in, I have spent the same amount of money, The football club have made greater profits and the baker and the brewer have made less. Sadly, no pixie dust, just simple straight forward maths, that even I, with 8 pints, 3 pork pies and the two kebabs I purchaed to celebrate another home victory, gurgling away in my stomach, can work out!
MBellemare wrote:Another quick comment, if you factor in creative-power, i.e., both unquantifiable and quantifiable labor-powers expended both in production and outside of production, in everyday life. My economic models introduced above, work and function adequately in explaining, that the rate of profit, and the falling rate of profit etc., can be circumvented, indefinately, via creative networking,Michel Luc Bellemarefactoring in something means taking account of (something) when making a calculation, if this is unquantifiable, how can "creative power" be said to be factored in, in any meaningful way. You may as well say that you have been factoring in magic pixie dust and when you do that it explains the meaning of life, the world and everything.I have previously asked you to back up your view that capitalists can increase prices by small amounts when they wish without impact (If they could do this with impugnity, it begs the question, why don't they?). You have studiously chosen to ignore the question of the magic capitalist price rise impugnity. If we add this to the Pixie Dust of "creative Power", we can see that your "economic models" seem to have more in common with JK Rowling that Karl Marx!
alanjjohnstone wrote:It appears to be more a play on a forum user's name drawing attention to what is perceived to be the tone of his responses by Michel, and i would be slightly hesitant in suggesting it possessed any racist undertones, Tim-nice-but-dim, from Al-everyone's-pal.So what your saying is that making a sterotypical reference to someone's perceived ethnicity, which is intended to demean or belittle that person, i.e. calling Marcos "Sub-Comandante", in an attempt to belittle him, does not have racist overtones?It is not merely a play on a person's name, it is not about Marcos's name it's about his perceived ethnicity and an assumption that the person's view is of less worth because of that ethnicity.And by the way, I'm not particualarly dim and I'm certainly not particularly nice.
MBellemare wrote:I agree with you David B. on most all you've stated. I think you see the concept of creative-power, and how it informs value, price and wage. And your right persuading people as to certain artificially fabricated price, value and wages is a major task of capitalists. Hence why controlling the means of both mental and physical production are so vital to capitalists. It seems to me, that we are normalized to pay certain prices and to conceive certain imagined values onto things. And if capitalism, was not the dominant political economic framework of society, we would cast-aside and/or discontinue the production of many capitalist commodities.
As for sub-comandante Marcos, and his statement that I am not using the term "value" correctly, I see value as arbitrary and as an artificial social construction. As a result, I am using the concept of "value" arbitrarily and as an artificial social construction. Just like Marx did, although he would never admit it, because he couched it in labor-time, quantifiable labor-time! Quantifiable labor-time, which is only validated when it is realized in circulation.Am I the only person on this forum that thinks that the use of the term "sub-comandante Marcos" is actually an attempt at a racially stereotyped slur?
MBellemare wrote:No worries, Alan, Personallly I love good solid quotes! A small point on TWC and fictious capital, to broaden the term. There maybe such a thing/concept as "unquantifiable" fictitious capital/value. Isn't the whole so-called Royal Family-Apparatus, a form of "unquantifiable" fictitious value? A nonsense founded in the conceptual-perception of people? Why would anyone, in Canada, pay 35.99 for a plate, worth in reality 99 cents, with a picture of a royal wedding on it? Yet, Canadians do pay and pay in large numbers. Doesn't this pricing index seem a bit arbitrary and artificially fabricated? Hence, how the conceptual-perceptions of a segment of the canadian population can imagine into existence value, value that is not really there. This is post-modernism at its best.Cheers,M. BellemareAgain you seem to be using the term value and price interchangeably. In marxist terms they are not. The price of the plate may well be $35.99, the cost of producing the plate may well be 99 cents, however the Value in Marxist terms is neither of those to things.
MBellemare wrote:3. Shareholders place pressure on these companies and/or capitalist to augment profits, annually. So out of the blue or via group agreement, one of the nodes of the network will raise his or her prices, thus profits as well, slightly over time. It may be only a few dollars here and there. They label it inflation, and there maybe some inflation involved, but what stops a capitalists from raising prices, other than the network in general he or she belongs to, inflation plus a little more is nothing. The public won't even notice, its the price of doing business. My competitors, who are not really competitors, due to our mutual networking set of rules, feeling the same pressures will raise prices, accordingly, thus raising profits, across the specific sphere of production. Why would they do this, when they could lower prices and undercut their adventurous competitor? They do this so as not to trigger the coercive laws of competition, which are bad for everyone across a specific sphere of production.You claim that you are not like the currency cranks who can create money at a stroke, however this passage from your notional scenario betrays you. If one group of producers raise prices, in a system where there is a finite amount of currency in circulation, this has the impact that there is less currency to be used for the purchase of other commodities, therefore the amount of other commodities being purchased or the price paid for these purchases will fall. The Price/value equilibrium will be maintained across the economic activities. Prices cannot be raised without impact, just as a man cannot pull himself of the ground by his own boot straps and you cannot pull price up without reference to value.Perhaps you should read, or re-read this:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/
gnome wrote:A total of 70 enquiries from the inserts in the New Statesman and New Scientist have now been received. Nearly all have taken advantage of the free three month subscription to the Socialist Standard and over 40 also opted for the information pack containing a copy of the current Socialist Standard, the pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism, an introductory leaflet and a covering letter.The next batch of inserts will be included with the September edition of the William Morris Society magazine which goes out to 1100 subscribers.Thanks for the update, that news alongside the video launch makes for some good news about activity.
I don't know if it's just me, but observing Socialist Studies slow decline takes me back to the childhood experience of watching a wasp caught in a spider's web, slowly losing it's potency and gradually falling into the icy grip of death.Not particulalry educational, but you've got to admit it's compelling viewing
jondwhite wrote:Bob Hope, comedy's answer to Kissinger, ever-willing to entertain the troops on the latest US military adventure.Quote:Bob Hope was the establishment. Bob Hope was friends with Nixon. Bob Hope was speaking in favor of the [Vietnam] War. Bob Hope was expressing that kind of backward, suburban, WASP view of minorities, homosexuals, the women's movement. Even his comments on the women's movement were very condescending. He did a special in the '70s on the women's movement and it was so silly, so backward. And [in his act] the woman who had some big political office was dusting the chairs in between her meetings. It was just awful. He got mail … from feminists.He was clueless at that time. That was why that generation of comedians turned off to him. … It's hard to be [a] comedian and be part of the establishment because comedians, their job is to satirize and to poke fun at the powerful people. And this is something that Bob was — one of the powerful people. So just as a comedian, he became less and less relevant.http://www.npr.org/2014/11/24/366137941/the-rise-and-fall-of-comedian-bob-hope
The author asks who started stand up? and comes up with the answer Bob Hope?"I was always wondering who kind of started standup comedy," Zoglin says. "And I really think you have to say it was Bob Hope." Guess he's never heard of Mx Miller, who was way ahead of Hope, in more ways that one!
