Marxist thought

also this is a thread about a discussion of marxism, at least use the term "surplus labor" correctly.  people working on water infrastructure or the society needing to find extra people to work on it is not surplus labor.  surplus labor is labor the worker is coerced into working unpaid by the owners of the means of production, so that the surplus value of their labor can be extracted from this surplus labor.  working on vital water infrastructure thus does not count as surplus labor, but rather the socially necessary labor for the reproduction of the population, because people will die without water

  On 4/20/2021 at 9:44 PM, cyanobacteria said:

describe how capitalism is better at overcoming such events

Because people are incentivized through monetary rewards for selling their labour. 
Which is clear from an examination of history. 

every discussion of marxism must first answer the question: without capitalism, how can we convince people to have a society where they can drink water?

  On 4/20/2021 at 9:24 PM, cyanobacteria said:

you're really comparing china, a country which less than a century was a peasant agrarian nation and which now has a population of over 1 billion people, to the US,

Also, sure, let's compare water supplies of China with Japan  and South Korea then. Both countries devastated by WW2 and the Korean War, and yet somehow they have potable water in their urban centres through well-maintained water infrastructure. South Korea was also a less developed country at the beginning of the 20th century.

  On 4/20/2021 at 11:07 PM, Alcofribas said:

every discussion of marxism must first answer the question: without capitalism, how can we convince people to have a society where they can drink cybercum?

  On 4/20/2021 at 11:12 PM, chenGOD said:

 

i think the answer goes without saying: cummunism

  On 4/20/2021 at 10:47 PM, chenGOD said:

Because people are incentivized through monetary rewards for selling their labour. 
Which is clear from an examination of history. 

people are incentivized through monetary rewards for selling their labor under capitalism.    you really think there arent other ways to incentivize labor, like for instance the threat of widespread death by dehydration and the desire to live in a happy stable community, one of the hallmarks of socialist culture?

  On 4/20/2021 at 11:09 PM, chenGOD said:

Also, sure, let's compare water supplies of China with Japan  and South Korea then. Both countries devastated by WW2 and the Korean War, and yet somehow they have potable water in their urban centres through well-maintained water infrastructure. South Korea was also a less developed country at the beginning of the 20th century.

give them some time they literally have over 1 billion people.  i promise theyre working on it

  On 4/20/2021 at 11:25 PM, cyanobacteria said:

people are incentivized through monetary rewards for selling their labor under capitalism. 

As the historical tidbit of the peasant revolt against collectivism (first under Lenin and then Stalin) shows, people vastly prefer that to Marxist-Leninist thought. The same goes for China. 

The current grey and black market economy in North Korea, as well as the legitimate real estate market, also demonstrate that people have a preference for monetary reward. Now money can be a substitute for some other immediate reward, but the implied consequence is that people want rewards that are immediate to the sale of their value (be that labour or good), and this is true in virtually all economies. For example, even the potlatch economy of the Pacific Northwest, the reward is honour and more importantly safety, as demonstrations of wealth and power show it is futile for smaller families to attack more powerful ones. 

You asked why capitalism solves the problem better, and that’s why. Command economies are generally very poor at allocating resources, and have difficulty managing and planning to maintain and improve their economy. 

  On 4/21/2021 at 1:16 AM, chenGOD said:

As the historical tidbit of the peasant revolt against collectivism (first under Lenin and then Stalin) shows, people vastly prefer that to Marxist-Leninist thought. The same goes for China. 

The current grey and black market economy in North Korea, as well as the legitimate real estate market, also demonstrate that people have a preference for monetary reward. Now money can be a substitute for some other immediate reward, but the implied consequence is that people want rewards that are immediate to the sale of their value (be that labour or good), and this is true in virtually all economies. For example, even the potlatch economy of the Pacific Northwest, the reward is honour and more importantly safety, as demonstrations of wealth and power show it is futile for smaller families to attack more powerful ones. 

You asked why capitalism solves the problem better, and that’s why. Command economies are generally very poor at allocating resources, and have difficulty managing and planning to maintain and improve their economy. 

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capitalism is not an effective allocator of resources.  take for instance the complete devastation of the environment for the purposes of producing massive amounts of consumer vehicles rather than mass transit.  take the millions of homeless and destitute people in capitalist countries living next to enormous wealth and decadence.  the ideology of capitalism is continually used to justify these atrocities and it's seriously getting old.   computational central planning capabilities have improved exponentially with moore's law, as has the ability of people to interact with computing interfaces and the possibility of implementing decentralized democracy over control of the means of production and the allocation of work and resources.  if people don't want to allocate work to water infrastructure, they will all die of dehydration, and the problem will solve itself as the remaining water supply will be enough.  how stupid do you think they would have to be to allow this to happen.  if you can't conceptualize beyond capitalism that is your own lack of thought

  On 4/21/2021 at 1:30 AM, cyanobacteria said:

capitalism is not an effective allocator of resources.

It’s the most efficient model found so far. 
I’ll need your definition of decentralized democracy before I can make any arguments one way or the other. 

  On 4/21/2021 at 2:01 AM, chenGOD said:

It’s the most efficient model found so far. 
I’ll need your definition of decentralized democracy before I can make any arguments one way or the other. 

youre using vague language which seems completely meaningless.  I'm sure it is efficient to let poor people starve to death and die of preventable diseases if they can't be used for generating profit.  and I mean direct democracy assisted through computer interfaces

  On 4/21/2021 at 2:12 AM, cyanobacteria said:

I'm sure it is efficient to let poor people starve to death and die of preventable diseases if they can't be used for generating profit.

You understand that famine and disease have killed many many more people in the so called communist nations, and that through the implementation of more widespread trade and markets, more people have been lifted out poverty. 

  On 4/21/2021 at 2:12 AM, cyanobacteria said:

I mean direct democracy assisted through computer interfaces

So would you have everyone vote on every economic decision made by every actor? 

  On 4/21/2021 at 2:48 AM, chenGOD said:

You understand that famine and disease have killed many many more people in the so called communist nations, and that through the implementation of more widespread trade and markets, more people have been lifted out poverty. 

 

So would you have everyone vote on every economic decision made by every actor? 

you understand that during the times when communism was being attempted, it was being done so in the most backwards agrarian nations with a complete lack of industrialization, and that this famine and disease was caused by a variety of many complex factors related not just to capitalism vs socialism.  all of your examples are historically illiterate and completely ignore information you need to ignore to reach your conclusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

where is the efficient capitalist market here? oh, right, white supremacy and capitalist imperialism were what was really at play:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/1/churchills-policies-to-blame-for-1943-bengal-famine-study

>In the book, Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II, written by Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill was quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.

it's very unproductive to even discuss these topics with you

where;s the free market when it comes to crippling sanctions on targeted countries, imposed by capitalist empires like the US? if free markets and capitalism are so great, how do you rectify the fact that when capitalist nations rise to global supremacy, they restrict other nations from engaging in the same capitalism they themselves engage in? where is your blame being sent to the US and other capitalist nations engaging in agreements alongside them to embargo venezuela, cuba, iran, north korea, etc?  where is the free market there? where's the blame for the devastation these policies cause? absolute hypocrisy or ignorance, I don't know which is worse, either way it's impossible to discuss capitalism with capitalists because they are not honest about what capitalism is, and how capitalism acts in the real world.  enjoy your theoretical models about how efficient capitalism is while it literally kills people and fails to even serve the healthcare needs of its own population.  do you even have any friends outside of first world countries?  lmao fuck capitalism and fuck its apologists.  apologists for death, starvation, disease

>want to do capitalism? indebt yourselves to our world bank and engage in austerity measures against your population until you can pay us off.  no, don't invest in infrastructure either, take our foreign aid so you're dependent on us

>want to unite the continent of africa with a cross-continental irrigation project and a unified african currency, then form the United States of Africa? no, we'll fucking bomb you and kill your leader, good luck escaping USD petrodollar hegemony now. oh by the way now you have open air slave markets again due to the power vacuum

>native peoples want to unite to form a political movement in a south american country to help better themselves and gain political power stolen from them during spanish colonization?  no, we're going to play nazi GLADIO sleeper cells all throughout your continent to kill you if you try

capitalism IS white supremacy because that's its current instantiation.  that's how it works in practice and that's how it will continue to work into the foreseeable future.  all the theoretical bourgeois justifications of capitalism and the economic metrics used to show that it's the cause of the world's progress rather than the labors of the people are just rationalizations and excuses.  anyone supporting capitalism is supporting mass suffering and enslavement on a level beyond even their own comprehension

fuck capitalists

Lol talk about vague ramblings. I’ll just address one of your points.

  On 4/21/2021 at 3:36 AM, cyanobacteria said:

if free markets and capitalism are so great, how do you rectify the fact that when capitalist nations rise to global supremacy, they restrict other nations from engaging in the same capitalism they themselves engage in?

You understand that the US and members of Breton Woods actively pursue free trade and encourage capitalist practices in countries like China, India, and so on yes? This notion you have is very backwards. 
 

  On 4/21/2021 at 3:36 AM, cyanobacteria said:

fails to even serve the healthcare needs of its own population.  do you even have any friends outside of first world countries?

A) that’s America, where lack of proper regulation has created that particular nightmare and 

B) I do have friends in developing nations (third world and first world refers to something else), but I’m not sure how that’s relevant? If you want to bring personal anecdotes into this, we can swap stories and pictures about places we’ve been to that have implemented non-market economies if you’d really like. 

  On 4/21/2021 at 3:27 AM, cyanobacteria said:

you understand that during the times when communism was being attempted, it was being done so in the most backwards agrarian nations with a complete lack of industrialization, and that this famine and disease was caused by a variety of many complex factors related not just to capitalism vs socialism

I lied I’ll address this too: you understand that the US was once upon a time an agrarian nation where the majority of people did subsistence farming (I won’t call them backwards, that seems a tad imperialist to me). Japan rose out of some pretty terrible destruction to become a highly successful country, as did South Korea (which had suffered the deprivations of colonization before the Korean War). 
 

  On 4/21/2021 at 4:25 AM, chenGOD said:

Lol talk about vague ramblings. I’ll just address one of your points.

You understand that the US and members of Breton Woods actively pursue free trade and encourage capitalist practices in countries like China, India, and so on yes? This notion you have is very backwards. 
 

 

A) that’s America, where lack of proper regulation has created that particular nightmare and 

B) I do have friends in developing nations (third world and first world refers to something else), but I’m not sure how that’s relevant? If you want to bring personal anecdotes into this, we can swap stories and pictures about places we’ve been to that have implemented non-market economies if you’d really like. 

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america, the peak of capitalism, the fucking capitalist vanguard, you can't just ignore it and pretend like it's the odd one out, it's not some random little european country

where's the free trade they allow in venezuela? once again you did NOT address my point.  they restrict free trade to capitalist countries.  they restrict trade entirely between socialist countries and capitalist countries.  they don't believe in free trade, they believe in maintaining THEIR market dominance.  they don't want countries nationalizing their oil

  On 4/21/2021 at 4:31 AM, chenGOD said:

I lied I’ll address this too: you understand that the US was once upon a time an agrarian nation where the majority of people did subsistence farming (I won’t call them backwards, that seems a tad imperialist to me). Japan rose out of some pretty terrible destruction to become a highly successful country, as did South Korea (which had suffered the deprivations of colonization before the Korean War). 
 

the US built itself out of colonialism on a fresh slate after it committed genocide against the entire population, and used literal chattel slavery from imported africans to built its wealth, dont give me this bs comparison to china which picked itself up by its actual bootstraps in comparison. south korea is plugged into the US empire and is an ally of the US, same for japan currently.  isnt it crazy how the one country you for some reason keep trying to ignore in your capitalist equations is the one dictating most of the material conditions on earth presently through its imperial decisions

  On 4/21/2021 at 6:38 AM, cyanobacteria said:

they restrict free trade to capitalist countries.

The biggest trading partners of the us are all capitalist countries. 
 

China at one point was the richest nation in the world. Slaves were abundant throughout imperial China’s dynastic history. Following the civil war, with the rise of communists to power, people were slaves to the state (forced labour in the communes). South Korea and Japan may be allies with the US but their largest trading partner has almost always been China. 

  On 4/21/2021 at 1:14 PM, chenGOD said:

The biggest trading partners of the us are all capitalist countries. 
 

China at one point was the richest nation in the world. Slaves were abundant throughout imperial China’s dynastic history. Following the civil war, with the rise of communists to power, people were slaves to the state (forced labour in the communes). South Korea and Japan may be allies with the US but their largest trading partner has almost always been China. 

youre a lost cause completely making shit up like "chinese commune workers were actually slaves, believe me" and ignoring the other countries I mentioned

get your ass over here zeff: 

  On 4/21/2021 at 7:36 PM, cyanobacteria said:

youre a lost cause completely making shit up like "chinese commune workers were actually slaves, believe me" and ignoring the other countries I mentioned

Chinese commune workers literally had no choice, they could not refuse a work order. They may not have been chattel slaves, but they were certainly slaves in terms of forced labour. Adam Smith argued that free labour is far more productive than forced labour, and was vehemently against slavery. He also ironically argued that slavery would be impossible to eradicate under democratic governments where politicians owned slaves, but would be possible under centralized regimes (which certainly didn't happen under China or Russia centralized regimes, and continues not to happen in North Korea).

I addressed China, Japan, and Korea. The statement that capitalist countries don't trade or promote capitalism with other countries is completely false. The US continues to trade with Venezuela, albeit at much reduced rates. The Venezuelan government's completely erratic process of nationalizing the oil industry, combined with their reliance on oil and ridiculous monetary policy has contributed much to the demise of their economy. They even managed to bungle oil trade with China. I don't want to waste more time on your erroneous claims, and your hatred for America clearly blinds you.

Why don't we talk about Marxist thought (as the title of the topic suggests?) - because as much as I don't believe Marxism will lead people to economic prosperity, I do think he had some valid criticisms of capitalism. I think the idea of alienation to the products of labour has been an unintended consequence of specialization:

  Quote

First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself...

So what would be a way for workers to better appreciate the products of their labour, assuming they are not in a small or medium enterprise (which a substantial percentage of the American work force is), beyond raising wages (which assuredly needs to happen)? How do they "affirm themselves in their labour?" while recognizing that production facilities such as factories need significant capital investment that is beyond the reach of one individual?

clearly by eliminating surplus value extraction and by achieving collective ownership of the means of production, removing the surplus value accumulation capabilities of capitalists and the political, economic, and violent power this gives them over the workers, through the elimination of their class entirely and the achievement of worker self governance

  On 4/21/2021 at 9:26 PM, cyanobacteria said:

clearly by eliminating surplus value extraction and by achieving collective ownership of the means of production, removing the surplus value accumulation capabilities of capitalists and the political, economic, and violent power this gives them over the workers, through the elimination of their class entirely and the achievement of worker self governance

what part of get your ass over here don't you understand?

  On 4/21/2021 at 9:26 PM, cyanobacteria said:

clearly by eliminating surplus value extraction and by achieving collective ownership of the means of production, removing the surplus value accumulation capabilities of capitalists and the political, economic, and violent power this gives them over the workers, through the elimination of their class entirely and the achievement of worker self governance

furthermore, the elimination of alienated wage labor entirely in favor of free associative labor.  this requires very advanced forms of communism to achieve and a heavily developed means of production. this should be clear from even a casual reading of Marx so I don't get the point of these questions