/liberty/ - Liberty

>>65313

That's solid enough, but a bit roundabout. As far as I'm concerned, Marx' argument is already refuted by the fact that labor value is a senseless concept, impossible to operate in practice, leading to ridiculous conclusions and he gave no reason why it should be more important to the worker than the greater use value of the goods (usually his wage or salary) that he receives in return. You cannot establish that exploitation in the sense of extracting the surplus value (Marx' used the word exploitation in several meanings) is bad without bringing in normative assumptions, or without denying that the hours invested in entrepreneurial functions are labor, or some absurd shit like that.

To come back to your argument, Marx quoted Condillac as saying that differential use valuations among actors condition exchange, but I think he then went on to dismiss this idea. Not sure what his exact argument was, but his arguments were always trash and I'd have remembered this one if it had been the exception. Might be relevant, but I don't know yet. I haven't yet arrived at his theory of a fall in profit rates.

>>65325

>>65327

Is it so damn hard to actually refute what we say? At least something as simple as the conditions of exchange under Marx or his defense of the LTV should be possible. We're not asking you here to give a rundown of his economic theory, just the points that are immediately relevant. If you can convince me that our understanding is actually lacking, and that we didn't miss yet another point that Marx himself was utterly confused on, then I might consider reading your two articles.

>Seriously guys, if you are going to criticise Marx, first please read him with an intention of actually understanding what he is trying to say, and only when you are confident that you understood, attempt to find flaws.

Did you read Mises too before you dismissed him? I'm not sure I met a single lefty who bothered to read through the entirety of Human Action. If I did, I don't remember it. Hell, hardly any of them have bothered with For a New Liberty.

That said, I've read the Communist Manifesto and the Critique of the Gotha Manifesto, and have been hanging on the Capital for a few months now, as I do with all the big economic treatises. Some of the things I most despise about Marx, like coming up with the social necessity-criterion out of thin air, are things that I figured out myself.

>>65340

I'm pretty sure I addressed the main error in OP's post without which their whole theory collapses, i.e. that one person asymmetrically profits from exchange.

As for your post, I tried to make sense of it as well as I could but I barely succeeded. If I understood it correctly, you have trouble with the concept of labour power, which is very clearly explained in Wage Labour and Capital, which I linked to you along with Value, Price and Profit, which is a shorter summary of the concepts from Capital. If you can more clearly express what your problem is, I can try to address it.

>>65343

I've read the relevant passages from the Capital already. I don't read two secondary articles just to understand what "exactly" he meant, not when Marx' theory of labor value is so obviously wrong on every count.

With that said, here is what I said in my post in a more elaborate and accessible form:

>As far as I'm concerned, Marx' argument is already refuted by the fact that labor value is a senseless concept,

This is mostly my conclusion, my reasoning follows.

>impossible to operate in practice

You cannot operate the LTV. You cannot calculate labor time, not in any meaningful sense. You cannot calculate it in practice, and you cannot even calculate it conceptually. One of the main problems is that labor is not homogenous. There is no "unit" of labor. One hour of moderately exhausting physical labor, twenty minutes of intense cognitive labor, two hours of demeaning and humiliating but lax labor and half an hour of very exhausting and intense labor that's a lot of fun don't have a common denominator. That's the conceptual problem. There's a more practical problem in that even if we had a unit of labor, we cannot really see how much work is actual work and how much is hidden leisure. Staring off into space when you're supposed to think over a legal case or a scientific problem is not exactly working, but how do you know it happens (or doesn`t happen)? But suppose we solve that too, which might be possible in concept, how do we then solve the problem of regression? The capital in use by the workers was created by other workers before them. The capital these workers used was created by yet other workers, and so on. You have to overlook the entire production process to know how much labor went where.

Then there's the problem with the social necessity-criterion. Like I said, Marx came up with it from thin air. He never justified this criterion. Why is the labor relevant that's socially necessary, not, say, the labor that was actually expended? How do we even establish what's socially necessary without arbitrarily putting goods in specific categories? That's a huge problem in itself, and would be even if he could show why social necessity was relevant. Does a mahogany table belong to the same category as a garden table? Is the socially necessary labor time for the one also socially necessary for the other? That this would discriminate against the producers of the higher quality mahogany table should go without mention.

Now, there may be some ways to solve some of these problems, but I'm not confident of that. Not in the slightest. When you find so many holes in one theory and none of them strikes you immediately as stupid, then chances are the theory is at fault and not you for not understanding it.

>leading to ridiculous conclusions

That's the mudpie argument. I got sneered at by marxists whenever I mentioned it but besides vague suggestions that Marx also acknowledged that there was a use value, I never got to hear what's wrong with the mudpie argument.

>and he gave no reason why it should be more important to the worker than the greater use value of the goods (usually his wage or salary) that he receives in return. You cannot establish that exploitation in the sense of extracting the surplus value (Marx' used the word exploitation in several meanings) is bad without bringing in normative assumptions, or without denying that the hours invested in entrepreneurial functions are labor, or some absurd shit like that.

That really ought to have been understandable, if nothing else was. If the surplus value I create is extracted, why should I care if more of my needs are fulfilled than if it hadn't been extracted? If my utility rises after the exploitation, then it can hardly be called exploitation. You could say that the exploitation wouldn't be necessary, but we know that entrepreneurs and capitalists are needed in the production process and that their work has to be renumerated too, You can abolish them as concrete persons, but not as functions.

You could say that the extraction of surplus value, while beneficial from an economic perspective, was morally reprehensible, but for all their moralizing, leftists really don't like the concept of morality. Even though it's the only way I see of salvaging their theory somewhat.

>>65313

Don't bother using economic theory. Marx's writing is based on his philosophical assertions and social theory. Everything he's written is based on that entirely. Check out Sowell's "Marxism: Philosophy and Economics to get a glimpse of what I mean. It is of no use to argue with Marxists. They speak their own language and accept only their own meanings, and argue only within their own definitions. Engels was silly enough to warn Marx about that, but Marx thought that's all the more better. Of course, their own propositions contain contradictions (fuck, even the word "contradiction" they use differently) even within their own rules. Again, it's of no use bothering. A normal person will never get that deep to need to read Böhm-Bawerk's dismantling of Marx's definition of Capital. An already fully assimilated Marxist that does will not budge because it would mean losing too much. They would have to abandon their whole identity and method of reasoning, which for most people that invested is worse than death. They will gladly starve themselves, or the world for that matter.

>>65355

>They speak their own language and accept only their own meanings, and argue only within their own definitions.

Reminds me of Scientology.

>>65352

It's not enough to read something, you will actually have to actually understand it. Which you have clearly failed to, as what you have just described has very little to do with Marx's theory.

There's no concept of "labour value" in Marx's theory.

Socially necessary labour time (SNLT) is not a criterion. It's the average amount of labour time necessary for the average worker with average skills, using average tools available, working at average intensity, under normal work conditions in a given society at a given time to produce the commodity. It's really just the average amount of labour needed to produce a given commodity at a given place and time.

The value of a commodity in exchange is this SNLT (at the time and place of the exchange, not the production). So this goes away with the persistent "if I work more it's worth more" bullshit. However, more important is that value only exists in exchange of commodities, and to be a commodity a good must have both use-value and exchange-value (without use-value it won't be exchanged, and it cannot be exchanged without exchange-value). Mudpies are not commodities, they have no value.

So why did Marx came up with all this shit? He wanted to understand what was common to commodities that made them interchangeable. What is this common thing that allowed Aristotle to say 5 beds = 1 house. This common thing was called value in classical economics. You could say it's based on use-value, but that would have the same problem that you pointed out with labour. Use-values are of different kinds and cannot be compared. Also, use-value depends on the individual properties of the particular commodities, which are lost in exchange, as it abstracts away use-value and commodities appear as exchange-value only (the 5 beds are the same "ideal" commodity). Marx pointed out that all commodities are products of labour, and labour without form can be understood as labour time. However, since commodities are in abstract, they cannot have a value that equals the actual amount of labour time that went into their production. This is why value is based on abstract labour time, which is the SNLT.

>>65352

>You could say that the extraction of surplus value, while beneficial from an economic perspective, was morally reprehensible

there's literally nothing morally wrong with exploitation tbh

t. Marx

>>65371

Thanks brah!

>>65419

>It's not enough to read something, you will actually have to actually understand it. Which you have clearly failed to, as what you have just described has very little to do with Marx's theory.

Somethings tells me this will be all about semantics and not substance.

>There's no concept of "labour value" in Marx's theory.

Pure semantics.

>Socially necessary labour time (SNLT) is not a criterion.

Also semantics.

>It's the average amount of labour time necessary for the average worker, with average skills, using average tools available, working at average intensity, under normal work conditions in a given society at a given time to produce the commodity. It's really just the average amount of labour needed to produce a given commodity at a given place and time.

Funny, didn't you just say something about how one has to not just read, but understand? Yet here you are, missing just about any point I made. Here, let me quote the relevant bits for you:

>Like I said, Marx came up with it from thin air. He never justified this criterion. Why is the labor relevant that's socially necessary, not, say, the labor that was actually expended?

Why is the wooden chair I created worth two hours of SNLT and not one hour, just because some lazy assholes drove up the average?

>How do we even establish what's socially necessary without arbitrarily putting goods in specific categories? That's a huge problem in itself, and would be even if he could show why social necessity was relevant. Does a mahogany table belong to the same category as a garden table? Is the socially necessary labor time for the one also socially necessary for the other? That this would discriminate against the producers of the higher quality mahogany table should go without mention.

This is relevant because you mentioned "given goods". Goods aren't "given". Two products can be physically almost identical, yet can have different uses depending on the time they're sold, who they're sold to and so on. A box of ice cubes in summer and a box of ice cubes in winter are physically identital and yet during summer, the ice cubes obviously have a far greater use value and are harder to create. Are they still the same good, or different goods? How do you differentiate?

>The value of a commodity in exchange is this SNLT (at the time and place of the exchange, not the production). So this goes away with the persistent "if I work more it's worth more" bullshit. However, more important is that value only exists in exchange of commodities, and to be a commodity a good must have both use-value and exchange-value (without use-value it won't be exchanged, and it cannot be exchanged without exchange-value). Mudpies are not commodities, they have no value.

Why bring in the SNLT at all, when use value already explains everything? You can fully explain exchange and even market prices without ever mentioning SNLT by simply comparing the ordinal utility rankings of different actors.

Concerning the mudpies, you still didn't show why, if they offer some use to someone, no matter how limited, they shouldn't sell for a high price. You vitiated the argument, you didn't defeat it. The reason why you didn't defeat it is because the main problem, that SNLT is completely irrelevant in the context of exchange (or any other context), is still there.

>So why did Marx came up with all this shit? He wanted to understand what was common to commodities that made them interchangeable. What is this common thing that allowed Aristotle to say 5 beds = 1 house. This common thing was called value in classical economics. You could say it's based on use-value, but that would have the same problem that you pointed out with labour. Use-values are of different kinds and cannot be compared. Also, use-value depends on the individual properties of the particular commodities, which are lost in exchange, as it abstracts away use-value and commodities appear as exchange-value only (the 5 beds are the same "ideal" commodity). Marx pointed out that all commodities are products of labour, and labour without form can be understood as labour time. However, since commodities are in abstract, they cannot have a value that equals the actual amount of labour time that went into their production. This is why value is based on abstract labour time, which is the SNLT.

All of this is unnecessary. The Austrian School offers a much more elegant solution, the aforementioned comparison of ordinal utility rankings. You can even explain how monetary systems evolve out of barter with the Austrian model, and every step of it can be justified with clear logic. On the other hand, your account is full of gaps in the logic, and it doesn't offer any explanatory power either. It fails both as an a priori and as an empirical theory.

>>65424

>Why is the wooden chair I created worth two hours of SNLT and not one hour, just because some lazy assholes drove up the average?

Because you can't know what time the individual pieces actually needed? Come on, it's not that hard.

>Two products can be physically almost identical, yet can have different uses depending on the time they're sold, who they're sold to and so on.

Use-value only needs to be present, otherwise it's totally irrelevant. I made it clear that SNLT changes with time and space so I'm not sure what the fuck are you going on here.

The mudpie argument says that LTV is wrong, because the mudpie is a product of labour but has no value because nobody wants it. But Marx's LTV is about commodities, and something cannot be a commodity without having a utility.

Saying that it's unnecessary does not mean that it's wrong. Marx explain how exchange came from banter where communities interact in the second chapter of Capital, clearly and logically. I'm not sure why you compare my shitty explanation that was hastily written to address your specific concerns with the full works of your priests, but it's dumb.

>>65355

>>65358

Except Marx uses the language of classical economics with some Hegel mixed in. It actually predates the terms we use today.

>>65430

He uses almost exclusively modified Hegelianism with a minimum of "classical economics" which he defined narrowly himself as Smith and Ricardo only. The rest were inconvenient, especially the pre-marginalists.

>>65432

Marxism can always be called "modified Hegelianism." It's a useless appellation unless you specify exactly what you object to in this "modified Hegelianism." At this point, I'm not even sure you understand what "Hegelianism" implies.

Moreover, Hegel didn't have much of an economic theory for Marx to base his language upon. A few parts of the Philosophy of Right touch upon political economy but only in its relation to the state and society.

>If Marx's theory held true, consumers would quickly see trade as some sort of elaborate trick where the commodity producer invents a price above the cost of production resulting in a swift end to all markets

Ah yes, magical ancapland where you can just not eat food or drink water and be fine.

>The flaw in this should be obvious–if this were the case, all exchanges would soon occur for no profit, as the consumer would successfully negotiate lower and lower prices as the producer does not value the good beyond its exchange value, which fluctuates around an intrinsic value that supposedly aligns with the cost of labor input. However, this is observably not the case, as all commodities–even those that are extremely cheap to produce–must be sold for a profit, otherwise no non-coercive production would have ever occurred or have continued to occur.

Except thats litterally what happens, competition drives down the profits down to near zero. It then continues until so many companies drop out that the remaining large ones (economy of scale) can inflate the price just enough to make more profit, but still prevent smaller companies from undercutting them.

Do ancaps even understand their own economic models?

>>65438

Unfortunately historical examples do not back up what you describe.

>>65419

> It's the average amount of labour time necessary for the average worker with average skills,

The problem is the comparison of average skills among different professions. 1 hour average labour of a skilled industry != 1 hour average labour of a less-skilled or differently-skilled industry. I never got a definitive answer on measuring "simple labour" besides "inputs". How do you measure these inputs objectively?

>>65429

>something cannot be a commodity without having a utility

But isn't utility subjective?

>>65424

>semantics

I'm broadly on your side, bruh, but semantics are important as hell. The fact that people use that as a basis for dismissing arguments is terribly unfortunate.

>>65438

> magical ancapland where you can just not eat food or drink water and be fine.

<producing your own goods doesn't happen

>competition drives down the profits down to near zero

In a static market (which is only a conceptual model, never a reality) profits trend toward zero. However, in the real world, innovation and product differentiation (driven by competition), combined with fluctuations in the availability and demand for goods upset this tendency. What AnCap theory are you reading that says that profits actually reach near zero in the real world? The "profits tending toward zero" is in an artificially constrained hypothetical scenario for the purpose of isolating and identifying a particular causal force, so that it can be integrated into a broader understanding, not as a model of actual markets.

>>65524

>I'm broadly on your side, bruh, but semantics are important as hell. The fact that people use that as a basis for dismissing arguments is terribly unfortunate.

I know what you mean, but in his case, it was about me misnoming concepts when it was clear what I meant. Not sure what to call that if not semantics, but yeah, another word would be better.

>>65520

>the idea of a group of ppl containning certain characteristics is merely a spook

absolutely nonscientific

>>65325

My understanding of Marx's value-form and related concepts come from Eugen Bohm von Bawerk's critique, some passages from Das Kapital that were recommended to me, and vid related which was repeatedly recommended to me by Marxists that I've argued with this topic about. I'm not going to spend $90 on three volumes of Das Kapital, nor am I going to read the thing front to back on my computer. I almost went blind trying to do that with The Phenomenology of Spirit, I'm not about to repeat that endeavor with 2000+ pages of even more byzantine writing. If you have a relevant passage as a rebuttal, then cite it. By page, not chapter.

>Is value here use-value or value (exchange-value)?

My understanding of Marxism is that use-value gives the producer signals regarding resource allocation. I contend that this is impossible, as all signals must derive from an observation of value relationship, such as those seen in exchanges via the price signal. Since Marx contends that use-value cannot be compared between parties, there is no way that use-value can be used to inform resource allocation under Marxian economics.

>What do you mean by "inherent?"

Objective-that is, independent of contextual subjective human valuation, and measurable through labor or SNLT or whatever. I'm sure that you'll try to weasel out of this with exchange value, but even the academic Marxist in the video claims that labor is the unifying concept that allows insight into inherent value in a "transformed" communist economy. Please let me know if he's wrong.

>Is capitalist here actually a capitalist or just someone who produces and sells?

Production and selling are two functions of the capitalist, along with entrepreneurship and assumption of risk via time-preference deferral/investment. However, here I am only addressing the capitalist in the Marxist sense-as the "owner of the means of production."

>This is simply untrue. In exchange (C-C, C-M, M-C, C-M-C) only commodities change hand, value does not. You get exactly what you gave away, just in a different form.

Asserting that values do not change hands does not refute my point. Value determines prices, which determines what is exchanged. Value is observed, not exchanged, so I repeat: a high asymmetry in use-values between producer and consumer would result in a sharp crash in prices. As I stated above, we learn about values via the price mechanism. The distinction between use-value and exchange-value is irrelevant, because all value relevant to economic calculation and subsequent resource allocation is observed through prices. Remarkably, the Keynesians have done a really great job of illustrating this point by showing the redundancy and irrelevancy of Marx's value-form through the far greater explanatory power of price theory. Anything that Marx tries to awkwardly explain (read: use to ad-hoc justify the sociological underpinnings of the value-form) is better explained through price theory–there you have it; a consequentialist counterargument to the "empirical science" of Marxian economics. As a slight digression, non-Austrian neoclassical economists (e.g. Anwar Shaikh in Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises) have shown empirically that labor-value estimates by Marxists do not actually differ much from market prices, showing that the "transformation problem" is not actually a problem at all.

Also, the number of criticisms and attempted amendments of the value-form by later Marxists and assorted leftists with even more outlandish and contradictory assumptions just begs for Occam's razor.

>>65686

> I almost went blind trying to do that with The Phenomenology of Spirit, I'm not about to repeat that endeavor with 2000+ pages of even more byzantine writing.

buy a kindle

>>65573

Fine replace everything with robots. Then the people don't have money to buy their shit and can't be rich no more.

Even some corruption apologists in my country who own supermarket chains have come out and saying that things can't keep up like this. No wonder…their profits are getting lower.

>>65712

>Then the people don't have money to buy their shit and can't be rich no more.

"The people" is a rather broad and vague denomination. Who are these people? Is the entire nation composed of burger flippers and shelf stackers? Do you assume that once those jobs are gone no new jobs will come up as a result?

>>65711

>Imagine if a tenant farmer grew corn, and every year come harvest time, the landlord came and confiscated (perhaps as a form of rent) all the seed necessary to plant the fields for next year.

Really? With all the possible real world examples you could have given you come up with something this dumb and implausible? What is with Socialists and being stuck forever in pre-industrial age agrarianism anyway? I'm going to go ahead and not imagine the land the farmer is paying rent for just popped into existence along with him and a landowner descended from the clouds to take his produce. Probably because it's divorced from reality. A reality in which only the farmer and landowner trade with each other and there is nobody else to affect the prices they set for their produce.

> Come spring the landlord then sells the seed back to the farmer, explaining to him that the landlord is a necessary part of this system because without him the farmer would have nowhere to buy his seeds from.

That is some strong weed you're on. Even if the farmer were to somehow agree to pay in seeds (the market for seed must really be booming then, which would make the seeds really expensive to purchase in the first place anyway), why would he absolutely have to purchase back specifically from the landowner and why would the price be that high without them existing on an isolated rock in space and time?

>in the grand scheme of things, all that matters is that the farmer is producing both corn and seeds and is being forced to give part of his produce up to somebody who produces nothing

So in the grand scheme of things capital allocation in the market happens automatically thanks to the magic of perfect information as nobody ever has to risk or speculate what is in demand?

You should have gone all the way to full retard and had the farmer ask to be paid in tractors and pitchforks.

>>65714

>dude, when capitalists do away with most jobs with automation, so they can profit more by not having to pay workers, new jobs, that will decrease their profit, will just pop up! why do you think that won't happen?

>because it would decrease their profit

>dude, u dumb

This is literally the level of your argumentation

>>65725

> the working class as a whole is deprived of the capital that they produce

If what you said was something actually based in reality, then we wouldn't have workers that saved their capital so that in time they could start their own company and become a rival of their former employer.

>>65725

so the landlord is gonna steal the farmers seeds and then pay him back less than what the seeds are really worth? What the fuck is he gonna do with those spare seeds then?

>>65726

Hypothetically sure, but in practice 80% of businesses fail within 10 years so for most people it's not a long term solution. It also doesn't address the main issue since the fact that some workers may be able to one day become parasites doesn't change the fact that capitalism is a system based on parasitism.

>>65728

Jesus fucking Christ it's a metaphor meant to illustrate the relationship between the working class and capitalist class, and the fact that workers produce both components of wealth creation (capital and labour). Stop taking it literally you teenage mongoloid.

>>65734

No it's not a metaphor you fucking retard, you are attempting to produce a model of the relation between the capitalist and proletariat, and you have failed miserably at it. I suggest you kill yourself.

>>65734

The very fact that this does happen, and that some of these companies go on to become successful corporations means it is a viable solution for those that succeed at it. Workers also are constantly allocating their saved capital to be transformed into investment capital by banks and investment firms, which in turn helps startups, fuels economic growth, and creates jobs. There is no parasitism if the worker has a choice in his own destiny. In your system of ideology what reward is there for the worker to work harder, what does he gain from risk?

>>65711

Your example lacks relevance. Under what system of ethics is the farmer required to pay the landlord? Serfdom? A contract? Divine right of kings? A better hypothetical scenario to discuss would be that of the relationship between the factory owner and laborer, as Marx often does. Here, we can definitively isolate the relationship as one based in contract. While this point is mostly sufficient to demonstrate a voluntary interaction, it is insufficient to disprove your accusation of "parasitism." However, what is usually left out of such applications of conflict theory is the assumption of risk by the capitalist–where the laborer is guaranteed a wage, the capitalist is not. In doing so, the capitalist offers a mutually beneficial service to the laborer, among other things.

>labour and labour alone is capable of turning capital (which ultimately comes from nature) into wealth

So you admit that investment is a form of labor?

>>65747

>The very fact that this does happen

Yeah it happens, at statistically insiginificant levels.

>There is no parasitism if the worker has a choice in his own destiny.

There is parasitism as long as people are accumulating the wealth produced by others. Even if workers are doing it by investing in other companies, they aren't being made any less parasitic.

>In your system of ideology what reward is there for the worker to work harder, what does he gain from risk?

There is no risk, if you work harder, are more productive etc you are rewarded. Simple as that. The difference is that rewards are given based on actual contributions to the common economic stock, not how effective you are at taking the wealth produced by others.

>>65742

>No it's not a metaphor you fucking retard, you are attempting to produce a model of the relation between the capitalist and proletariat, and you have failed miserably at it.

M8 your only criticism is "hurr durr what is the landlord going to do with all those seeds", as if the seeds are the fucking point. The seeds represent all forms of capital, because in the context of a farm they are a material necessary to carry out production. The farmer produces the seeds, just like workers produce capital, the landlord takes them, just as capitalists take the capital produced by workers. The capitalists then parcel use of capital back to workers, thus making them dependent, just as the farmer is dependent on the landlord. The thing is that the farmer isn't actually dependent, because he produces his own capital, just like workers aren't actually dependent, because they produce their own capital. The landlord and the capitalist are only necessary within the confines of their own system, but because the workers are the source of both labour and capital, the role of the capitalist is ultimately unnecessary. Also your last post says

>so the landlord is gonna steal the farmers seeds and then pay him back less than what the seeds are really worth? What the fuck is he gonna do with those spare seeds then?

Which shows you clearly can't fucking read because I didn't say anything about the value of the seeds or the landlord paying anybody.

>>65753

Except I'm not talking here about the ethics of the system, who deserves the products of whose labour, whether the arrangement is fair or not, etc. I'm simply talking about who is producing wealth and who is not.

>So you admit that investment is a form of labor?

Investment requires capital, capital is produced by labour.

It's really quite simple, I'm sure we would all agree that there are two aspects of wealth creation: capital and labour. Conventional wisdom tells us that in a capitalist enterprise, the owner provides the capital, and the worker provides the labour. But the fact is that even the most basic forms of capital that exist in an unrefined state in nature cannot be made useful without labour. If somebody wanted to make use of some dirt then they need to apply labour to move the dirt, so it's obvious that labour is the only force capable of creating wealth, or at least creating anything that has value. If this is the case, than simply providing capital in the form of an investment doesn't actually constitute a contribution unless that capital was directly produced by the capitalist in question.

Whether or not investment can be considered productive labour is a different story, since I would agree that directing the flow of capital is necessary and would still occur even under full communism. I would say that this varies on a case by case basis, since different capitalists undoubtedly take different roles. I'm sure some capitalists micromanage their investments while others hire people to do it for them. The main point is that "providing capital" itself does not constitute a contribution when that capital is produced by somebody else. Also that capitalists as a class are unnecessary, since their existence is based on the assumption that the workers, or some institution accountable to them, can't manage the capital that they produce.

Marx's labor theory isn't really rigorous. It's hardly even clear what, precisely, "value" is. His concept of use-value seems similar to utility, and exchange value seems to essentially be the exchange ratios between commodities valued in socially necessary labor time, so in some sense, we can, in this framework, define "exchange value" to be "socially necessary labor time". Marx often uses "value" as shorthand for "exchange value" anyway. Price seems to be the exchange value between a given commodity and the money commodity, or an expression of the exchange value of a commodity in the form of some universal commodity. "Value" in the Marxist sense somehow composes all of these, but again it's not really rigorous so who knows. Some space must always be left for wriggling out of arguments with "But that's not what he REALLY meant!". This also ignores the difficulties in building Marxist economic models, or why we should bother building them at all.

>>65755

>Except I'm not talking here about the ethics of the system, who deserves the products of whose labour, whether the arrangement is fair or not, etc. I'm simply talking about who is producing wealth and who is not.

When you throw an example out that lacks explanation of how it came to pass that the lord is taking produce from the farmer, we can't even begin to discuss the implications without first being able to agree on whether the premises are ethical. Most of us here would reject such a scenario prima facie if it were coercive. Context is important. And anyway, my main point is that the capitalist is not "parasitic" on the grounds that he provides a service to the laborer through assumption of risk.

>Conventional wisdom tells us that in a capitalist enterprise, the owner provides the capital, and the worker provides the labour.

I discussed in an earlier post how this was an incomplete conception of a capitalist.

>If somebody wanted to make use of some dirt then they need to apply labour to move the dirt, so it's obvious that labour is the only force capable of creating wealth

Some things will have a demand that exists independently from the application of labor. Real estate is a good example.

>simply providing capital in the form of an investment doesn't actually constitute a contribution unless that capital was directly produced by the capitalist in question.

If I invest $800 in gold now, with all other variables other than demand remaining constant, and then sell it in a year for $1200, then I have produced wealth without any additional labor besides assuming risk. It does not matter where the initial $800n came from. I could have been given it as a gift and the result would be the same.

>Also that capitalists as a class are unnecessary, since their existence is based on the assumption that the workers, or some institution accountable to them, can't manage the capital that they produce

As we have repeated on a near weekly basis, it is not that the workers can't manage the capital associated with producing commodities, it's that they don't want to, and for very good reason.

Posting to evade the bomb

>>65754

>Which shows you clearly can't fucking read because I didn't say anything about the value of the seeds or the landlord paying anybody.

>What I'm trying to say is that much like the farmer producing both product (corn) and capital (seeds) the working class produces both product (shoes, computers, dragon dildos etc.) and capital (raw materials, machinery, warehouses, factories, etc.)

Are you actually fucking retarded? Don't answer because it was rhetorical, your entire model completely falls apart because you cannot explain shit with this one-to-one relationship. You can't suppose any of this without introducing exchange first hand, but you're too fucking stupid to realize this. Unless the capitalist has information (from the market) regarding what to do with his business, your magical model of the capitalist "exploitation" doesn't hold.

>>65758

>When you throw an example out that lacks explanation of how it came to pass that the lord is taking produce from the farmer, we can't even begin to discuss the implications without first being able to agree on whether the premises are ethical

Again, I'm not making any assessment about the ethics of capitalism with my example, I'm just examining who is producing wealth and who is not.

>And anyway, my main point is that the capitalist is not "parasitic" on the grounds that he provides a service to the laborer through assumption of risk.

The assumption of risk doesn't negate the parasitic role of the capitalist. Parasitism is defined as extracting something without giving anything in return. Everything the capitalist supposedly provides to the worker in exchange for their labour is in reality produced by the workers themselves, mainly both capital and wages. The fact that the capitalist undergoes risk for their own personal benefit of their own free will doesn't constitute an actual contribution.

>Some things will have a demand that exists independently from the application of labor. Real estate is a good example.

And who would buy real estate without any intention to develop it? Furthermore selling real estate itself requires the contribution of labour.

>If I invest $800 in gold now, with all other variables other than demand remaining constant, and then sell it in a year for $1200, then I have produced wealth without any additional labor besides assuming risk

No you haven't, the forces of the market have increased the value of the gold and you have simply exchanged it for more than you paid for it. You didn't actually produce that $1200, it was produced elsewhere and you simply traded your gold for it.

>As we have repeated on a near weekly basis, it is not that the workers can't manage the capital associated with producing commodities, it's that they don't want to, and for very good reason.

Which is why the best option is to have it be managed by institutions accountable to the workers.

>>65789

The one-to-one relationship in the example is representative of the fact that in the broadest sense of capitalist society there are only capitalists and workers, and as a whole each class interacts with the other in a way similar to the way I described.

Workers produce capital and are promptly alienated from it, thus making them artificially dependent on the capitalists who extract rent from them for the use of that capital.

>>65794

>promptly alienated from it

They are not alienated from it. They are paid wages for their labor.

>>65793

>The assumption of risk doesn't negate the parasitic role of the capitalist. Parasitism is defined as extracting something without giving anything in return.

The worker assumes no risk in the endeavor of commodity production. The capitalist does. The worker exchanges a portion of the revenue generated from commodity sale for the service of not having to assume that risk. ASSUMPTION OF RISK IS WHAT IS GIVEN IN RETURN, along with access to resources and the memes of production (the purchase and operation of which also have associated risk). Otherwise, the worker would not engage in the production of higher-risk commodities, and no commodities not used for subsistence would ever be produced without coercion. I suppose that's alright if you're a primitivist.

>And who would buy real estate without any intention to develop it? Furthermore selling real estate itself requires the contribution of labour.

The demand for the real estate exists independent of the labor. You can increase the potential value of the land by applying labor to it, yes, but the scarcity of the land imbues it with a demand that exists before labor is applied.

>No you haven't, the forces of the market have increased the value of the gold and you have simply exchanged it for more than you paid for it.

No, because I have taken a RISK by deferring time preference. I could just spend the $800 right away on other commodities, but I choose not to. I have no way of knowing for certain that the market for gold will strengthen, and I stand to take a loss if I do not. Ergo, the $400 was produced by me, as the proprietor of the gold.

>Which is why the best option is to have it be managed by institutions accountable to the workers.

Wage labor is an institution accountable to the worker. They agree to work for a guaranteed wage, but are not bound to continue working against their will. If they are not paid, they have legal right to sue for breach of contract.

>>65801

>The worker assumes no risk in the endeavor of commodity production. The capitalist does. The worker exchanges a portion of the revenue generated from commodity sale for the service of not having to assume that risk

Except there would be no need for anybody to assume risk in a socialist economy, so once again we find that capitalists only have a use within the context of their own system, whereas labour is necessary under any system. Risk isn't inherent to the process of economic production, it only exists under capitalism.

>along with access to resources and the memes of production (the purchase and operation of which also have associated risk).

Resources and means of production produced by other workers.

>Otherwise, the worker would not engage in the production of higher-risk commodities, and no commodities not used for subsistence would ever be produced without coercion. I suppose that's alright if you're a primitivist.

Why not? If a community comes together and decides that they want to produce a non-subsistence item then where is the coercion in them planning the use of their resources and labour to produce it?

>Ergo, the $400 was produced by me, as the proprietor of the gold.

Did your gold sitting in the vault magically increase the overall wealth of the country? No, it's value simply increased relative to the dollar. All this means is that people are willing to trade you more dollars for the same amount of gold than they did before. Of course this is ignoring the fact that the gold was produced by labour anyway.

>Wage labor is an institution accountable to the worker. They agree to work for a guaranteed wage, but are not bound to continue working against their will.

They're bound by this thing called starvation. The fact is that even if the capitalist isn't imposing the threat of starvation on them, from the perspective of the worker it is no different than a gun to the head. The option is work for the capitalist or die. Is this coercion? Maybe not, but it isn't voluntary either as far as the worker is concerned. This wouldn't be the case if the means of production were socialized and democratized, where workers would have expanded economic and personal agency rather than being beholden to an unaccountable elite whose interests are more often than not opposed to the worker.

>>65804

>Except there would be no need for anybody to assume risk in a socialist economy

This is an assertion. Demonstrate it as an argument.

>Resources and means of production produced by other workers.

This argument can be reduced back to homesteading. Get a new one. Also, it still implies risk, even if the workers assemble their own means of production.

>If a community comes together and decides that they want to produce a non-subsistence item then where is the coercion in them planning the use of their resources and labour to produce it?

There isn't any coercion, there's just less incentive. Why hasn't the Mondragon corporation come to dominate the world yet?

>Did your gold sitting in the vault magically increase the overall wealth of the country?

Yes. It was previously sitting around appreciating in value, but not used in any other endeavors. Now, I have an additional $400 to use with as I see fit, and the other party has a sum of gold to use with as they see fit. This action is what drives all economies, and it would not happen if economic actors did not assume risk.

>Of course this is ignoring the fact that the gold was produced by labour anyway

Sure, but the additional $400 was earned through my sale. I could have waited longer and earned less if the gold market tanked.

>They're bound by this thing called starvation

And this oh-so-existential threat that communists always bring up when they have their backs against the wall will disappear under communism? Bread will just appear and never be scarce? Not even Marx was able to elaborate how he workings of a communist economy would solve his perceived problems with capitalism, only that economic relationships would be "transformed," whatever that means in Hegelian terminology.