General

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Andrew Cain — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:35:20 GMT

Here is a materials list that I put together.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

LogisticEarth — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:08:57 GMT

Poking around on Wikipedia regarding this, I found this quote from Engles on the Surplue Value page:

"Whence comes this surplus-value? It cannot come either from the buyer buying the commodities under their value, or from the seller selling them above their value. For in both cases the gains and the losses of each individual cancel each other, as each individual is in turn buyer and seller. Nor can it come from cheating, for though cheating can enrich one person at the expense of another, it cannot increase the total sum possessed by both, and therefore cannot augment the sum of the values in circulation. (...) This problem must be solved, and it must be solved in a purely economic way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force — the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?" "

The bolded part is one of the big problems with the LTV. The idea is that exchanges occur when values are equal, rather than the marginalist/subjective view where exchanges occur when both parties value the other's goods more highly than the seller. This is, I believe, why so many of Marx's criticis focus on his lack of attention paid to time, and how it affects the utility, and therefore prices. Since, for Marx, exhange is a zero-sum game, if one party is to prosper, it is at the expense of the other, rather than a mutally beneficial exchange.

In reality, due to marginal utility, wants, needs, etc, every successful trade increases the overal "psychic profit" (as Rothbard puts it in MES) of the system. Marxism, to my knowledge, doesn't address this, which is why they balk at the idea that a worker can "benefit" from being paid in wages now rather than waiting to sell the "full product" later, if they did all the work themselves and accumulated thier own capital. Once they see that they're wrong about the possibility of a mutually beneficial exchange in the form of wage labor, they must fall back on the "worker doesn't have access to capital" argument. Of course, since in a free society any worker, through savings, can accumulate his own capital, they then attack the ownership of capital in the present. Because the capitalist uses force to restrain the worker from using his machines, he is put in an advantagous position to demand a raw deal from the worker. This is the heart, I believe, of the Marxist criticism of capitalism, and ties back into the Capitalism/Feudalism stuff that started off this thread.

Notice though that we have totally demolished the idea that it's wage-labor that they claim actually causes the "problem". It's devolved into a dissagreement over property rights and ethics/morality. In my limited understanding, this basically throws Marx's whole crisis theory out the window.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

LogisticEarth — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:36:13 GMT

I recall it being similar, but Marx still boils it down from Use-Value=Labor-Input. The theory then goes and equals total revenue = total value = total labor input *). A real distinction with labor waste isn't done, but I only recall this vaguely. It maybe worthwhile for me to read it up.

I'm not so sure Marx ever says use-value=labor-input. My understanding is that use-value is a seperate "property" of a commodity, and "value" is the amount of labor required to produce that commodity. This is what Marx is talking about in the first pages of Capital, vol 1. when he talks about comparing corn and iron. That is, say, one bushel of corn exchanges for 10 kg of iron, and the "common element" at the base of this exchange rate must be labor. This is regardless of use-value, and according to Marx creates an equilibirium exchange-value. He then later talks about how supply and demand can have the price (which is different than value) fluctuate around this equilibrium. But "if supply and demand and reletively balanced", the price will equal, or be very near to, the shared labor-value of the two commodities.

Regarding "wasted labor", I'm pretty sure this is where "socially nessecary labor-time" comes in, which is the "socially average" time nessecary to produce a commodity. If you take longer than the "socially averege" time to produce your commodity, you're wasting labor and not producing value.

I don't have Capital in front of me, and I'm certainly not an expert on it, so unfortunately I can't give you page numbers referencing the above topics.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Torsten — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:11:56 GMT

LogisticEarth:
There's some bits in the first pages of Capital that labor that doesn't create "use-value" (utility) doesn't create value, and that therefore that labor is "wasted". This is why the common "mud-pie" argument against Marx is technically a strawman. My understanding is that Marx claimed that ANY labor that created a use-value was likewise created value, regardless of marginal ultility.

I recall it being similar, but Marx still boils it down from Use-Value=Labor-Input. The theory then goes and equals total revenue = total value = total labor input *). A real distinction with labor waste isn't done, but I only recall this vaguely. It maybe worthwhile for me to read it up. So if you could post the refering text relating to value/labor as you mentioned this would be helpful, since I will be working it into an introductory lecture on the historical background of lean manufacturing.

*) value of labor = price of product. The argument is that the profit the "capitalist" makes is an (unjustified) extraction of surplus labor, hence the capitalist is exploiting the workers.My counterargument is then "How do you know", perhaps the capitalist is exploiting the customers by charging to much? I then just take it further and let's ignore the seller side for an argument. Assume it's a bakery, the workers there make bread. What would happen, if the "capitalist" wouldn't pay them wages, but simply give them the bread they produced in the bakery? Would they accept that? No, they want the money for their labor.

Btw.: The author I had in mind concerning taylorism and the power struggle in the work place (according to him to get the skilled workers in place) was Harry Braverman and the book in question would be Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century .

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

LogisticEarth — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:40:57 GMT

As far as I know Marx didn't discriminate between that. Plainly spoken a labour was a labour hour for him.

There's some bits in the first pages of Capital that labor that doesn't create "use-value" (utility) doesn't create value, and that therefore that labor is "wasted". This is why the common "mud-pie" argument against Marx is technically a strawman. My understanding is that Marx claimed that ANY labor that created a use-value was likewise created value, regardless of marginal ultility. I've tried to get Marxists to define this but there's a lot of obfustication around that topic. I think because going down that rabbit hole leads you to the conclusion that labor is valueless without provided utility, thus confirming that labor is not a "value-creating substance" as Marx claims, but rather that value is a subjective concept in people's minds.

This leads to a lot of funky stuff on the part of the Marxists like "simple-labor" and "complex-labor" and all that jazz. The bottom line is that a lot of Marx makes sense at a casual glance because labor is indeed a large cost of producing anything in the aggregate, but the claims he makes from those basic observations don't hold up.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Torsten — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:44:25 GMT

LogisticEarth:
I've seen a lot of online lectures from various proffessors, (e.g. David Harvey), but since the basic premises of the argument are wrong, (ie. LTV) it's usually very frustrating to try and sit through them.

Most Anti-Capitalists and Marx supporters won't realle know what the Labour Theory of value and "extraction of surplus labour" is. They simply base their argument on the view that is "unfair" if a worker earns US$1000 per month, while some businessman earn US$1.000.000 per month. They look at these facts and just say it's unfair, which then settles the argument for them. Marx wanted to use these people, but was actually writing to convince people that are a bit more sophisticated. There problem was that workers got richer over time in Western countries and most of them didn't care that much about others having multiple times their wealth, so they came up with a new theory on how taylorism and scientific management was taking the power away from workers in the process. Just to bad that business are moving away from this, too and are looking now into initiatives like lean manufacturing and austrian economics that involves (and empowers) workers again. I started a thread on this, too. You may want to look at it. The concept of lean thinking / lean manufacturing is also interesting in connection with the value theory, as worker activities can be value-adding activities, necessary, but not value-adding and of course just waste. As far as I know Marx didn't discriminate between that. Plainly spoken a labour was a labour hour for him.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

LogisticEarth — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:53:45 GMT

Thanks for all the input guys.

Now that I think of it, is there any Austrian/Libertarian "study guide" or whatnot to Capital? I've been trying to read bits and peices of it to get a solid grounding in Marx's arguement, so I can't be accused of straw-manning or being ignorant of his theories. I unfortunately don't have a huge amount of time, and trying to plow through Marx is difficult. I've seen a lot of online lectures from various proffessors, (e.g. David Harvey), but since the basic premises of the argument are wrong, (ie. LTV) it's usually very frustrating to try and sit through them.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Andrew Cain — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:23:11 GMT

Actually Marx waffles on the definition of Capitalism.

At times he calles it "free buying and free selling" and at other times he seems to like it to the exploitation of the proletariat by the state controlling bourgeois.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Isaac "Izzy" Marmolejo — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:06:23 GMT

a quick thing to remember though is that 'capitalism' is a term that was coined by Karl Marx. Many people like the(some) Left libs, dont like the word capitalism because they hold on to the Marxist definition to it which is something like, "private ownership of the means of production with the legal structure on commerce and the market is provided by a given State." I mean in that sense, I guess, I am anti-capitalist, if we were to give capitalism that meaning.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Torsten — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:15:35 GMT

Johnny Doe:
Problem with the word "capitalism", is that people associate it with any type of society, i.e. from laissez-faire-/anarcho- etc to crony-/state capitalism etc.

That would make it (emotionally) loaded terminology. And this maybe just the problem with the word capitalism. When Marxist and those influenced by them talk about it you even don't know, if they are talking about supporters of an ideology of "capitalism" or the owners of capital. I recall a debate with someone, where I pointed out that the Greens were just Marxists using ecological issues to have an argument against "Capitalism" (meaning private ownership of factories, machines and the like). He replied that he would have an issue with "Capitalism", too (meaning international corporations). The issue at hand was that the government needed excuses for regulation/intervention something that would restrict private business and may even benefit larger corporations (like it is the case in the pharmaceutical industry).

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

vive la insurrection — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:39:05 GMT

Yeah left lib types who insist - no matter where they are what situation they are in - will call things like capitalism, free market, etc different, (which for us is irrelevant just use whatever works to the audience) ; and than refuse to care about anything than constant sloganing, anti concepts, and creating noise, and setting us-them "cool guy" purely intellectual categories.

When you encounter someone like this get out of the conversation - they are not speaking or thinking economics, science, philosophy, etc what they are doing is more along the line of trying to subsidize their social signaling devices by using the right words at the right time.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Johnny Doe — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:32:28 GMT

vive la insurrection:

It isn't feudalism, it's Capitalism - hence the different names.

Get rid of all words like "free", "slave", "serf", "illegit" and any other meaningless morality play word - than speak of the universal mechanics involved in human action.

Problem with the word "capitalism", is that people associate it with any type of society, i.e. from laissez-faire-/anarcho- etc to crony-/state capitalism etc. So without the words ""free", "slave", "serf", "illegit" and any other meaningless morality play word", people might think you are refering to something completely different than laissez-faire/anarcho etc.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Phaedros — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:25:03 GMT

I think it is true that access to land is restricted, but that's not because of capitalism. It's because of the state and environmental regulations, etc.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

Johnny Doe — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:08:00 GMT

Autolykos:
LogisticEarth:
The counter to this, I believe, may be to argue that is is illegitimate for someone to physically force someone to labor for you (slavery), but it is equally illegitimate to steal the fruits of ones labor (stealing the property of the capitalist). The only morally acceptable outcome is to come to voluntarily agreement about how the "capital-less worker" can aquire some of the employer's property in order to survive. One of these possibilities is wage labor.

I think Marxists and many other leftists are mistaken about what the fruits of a wage laborer are. They aren't the physical products of his labor. Rather, they're the wages he receives in exchange for his labor. After all, he didn't agree to make things that are then sold to the capitalist. Thinking otherwise is a hold-over from the old cottage-industry era.

The laborer receives wages in the form of fiat-money, i.e. money that is regulated/given a monopoly by a government which is controlled by lobbyist on behalf of special interest groups.

Re: Capitalism = Feudalism!

vive la insurrection — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 09:16:02 GMT

It isn't feudalism, it's Capitalism - hence the different names.

Get rid of all words like "free", "slave", "serf", "illegit" and any other meaningless morality play word - than speak of the universal mechanics involved in human action.