Marxist thought

All Marx related posts will be moved here.

From last night's debacle of breaking a rolling lol (mea culpa):

  On 4/17/2021 at 5:02 AM, cyanobacteria said:

indeed automating household housewives' manual labor away can introduce similar ratios in the workplace. 

Lol that’s not what it’s about at all. But good job in not reading Marx. 

 

  Quote

The new machine hands are exclusively girls and young women. With the help of mechanical force, they destroy the monopoly that male labour had of the heavier work, and they drive off from the lighter work numbers of old women and very young children.

 Now Marx goes on to describe the horrible working conditions, and they were, but regulation and enforcement improved those working conditions (Marx also makes a lot of assumptions that show correlation but not necessarily causation).
 

And, as Solow shows in his seminal paper, technology has such a huge impact on the aggregate production function that it doubles or more GNP per worker. This of course results in more revenue, meaning more tax (in well managed countries), meaning more social services, infrastructure investment etc etc. 
 

As well, as study after study shows (see appendices), technology increases wages both for low skill and high skill workers. It may or may not increase inequality, but that is often a function of between plant differentials, regulation and social determinism more than a strict correlation with technology. 
 

Indeed, Marx himself confirms that technology and the people skilled enough to use it, results in an increase in wages:

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The wage of the machine hands rises compared with that of the house-workers, many of whom belong to the poorest of the poor.

So really the question is, as you so pithily put it, why do you hate the proletariat? You would see technological progress be removed from the workplace because in the short term it may cause some displacement? In fact, you can ironically see the result in China, where because of the demand for their technological prowess, wages have increased (a large part of the rise in China’s economy). 

There are of course pitfalls, and when the US and UK turned in the 80s to profit maximization, and the culture of greed arose, regulations that had limited widening inequality, removed corporate tax revenue, and diminished government expenditures on infrastructure and social services were introduced to deleterious effect. 
However, in many other countries, technological advancement has led to rising prosperity and increased social living standards. Of course the issue is that Americans tend to think their experiences with capitalism are universal, when that really isn’t the case at all. 

lol

if marx were alive today he would vape

real talk tho i feel like my relationship with marx's work is like when there's some mega-popular indie musician who you secretly think makes good stuff, but you can't say it out loud because you don't want to associate yourself with the fanbase

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草

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exploiting the loletariat

lol

a spectre is haunting watmm

  On 4/17/2021 at 7:00 PM, brian trageskin said:

a spectre is haunting watmm

Like a spook?

  Quote

All Marx related posts will be moved here.

—Moderator on a forum

Prloletariat

That's what you get for not reading a thread through, before posting. I'll leave this stinking turd here for all to admire.

Karl Marx, wringing tears & potato chips out of his beard: it wasn't supposed to be like this...communism was supposed to be about SMOKING WEED and NOT HAVING PEOPLE MAKE FUN OF YOU FOR WEARING SWEATPANTS WHEN YOU GO TO BUY CANNED HERRING AT DOLLARAMA

  On 4/17/2021 at 7:53 PM, Cryptowen said:

Karl Marx, wringing tears & potato chips out of his beard: it wasn't supposed to be like this...communism was supposed to be about SMOKING WEED and NOT HAVING PEOPLE MAKE FUN OF YOU FOR WEARING SWEATPANTS WHEN YOU GO TO BUY CANNED HERRING AT DOLLARAMA

he sent his maid to go get the canned herring.. some of which was sometimes delivered to the children he all but abandoned.  or maybe that was Engels or lenin.. 

carl marks failed to consider the following

following. Marx was right about everything.

all you did in your OP was make up straw men to attack.  did I ever claim to be against technological advancement?  indeed never would I claim to be so and never would I claim marx had been so, if you had actually asked that question of me you would know this, but you did not.  didn't I explicitly point out how the luddites were not against technological advancement either but merely the destruction of their way of maintaining their lives, and in general saught to merely avoid the immediate and unplanned unemployment forced upon them that would cause literal death and destruction for their families? it's great that you know what you're talking about on this topic, but at least know who you're responding to and what brought up the topic, or whether what you're writing is even relevant.  it is not.  the behavior of the luddites makes absolute sense in terms of class analysis.  in enacting class violence against the bourgeoisie they mirrored the class violence applied to them when they are evicted and forced to become homeless and when they are forced to not take food from the stores.  does this represent them being against "technological progress"?  what is technological progress to those who are being replaced with no alternatives? it is not progress to them, even though it is to the consumers of the stereotypical textiles whose machines the luddites enacted class violence upon. is the revolutionary theory and plan of the luddites excellent and final in what needs to be done?  of course not, but it makes complete sense.  nothing else was claimed

lol