/biz/ - Business & Finance

Literally every single person who talks about "commies" in a contemporary context is absolutely retarded.
It's like saying "Oh the fucking Spanish Inquisition are plotting again"

everyone will die of virus. Give gibs. NOOOOO give gibs that we write for ourselves.

>>18035161
You obviously don’t see the shilling attempts by leftypol or you are one yourself

>>18035161
literally this. they think they sound edgy really they just sound stupid

>>18035229
Yeah watch out for the Knights Templar bro those guys are really coming to get you as well.

>>18035138
Yep. They're just mad Bernie isn't as popular as they thought...

>>18035138

Well let's say we continue down this quarantine path with an economic collapse and 50% unemployment or more. In that case then yeah, we'd have to figure out a new economic system and FAST, one which rations food, fuel and housing so people aren't starving and out on the streets because the civil unrest would be on another level.

>>18035138
everyone and their mothers are pushing their agendas hardly right now. you just recognize some of the pbvious ones.

>>18035138
They're going to pay me. Country is theirs.

>>18035138
What kind of fag doesn't take advantage of political crises to push their political agenda? If you can't find a way to spin the circumstances in favor of your ideology, it's because your ideology is incapable of handling the situation.

>>18035411

>>18035161
THIS
>>18035229
retarded mutt

>>18035447
>Nooo you can't just politicize this situation for your benefit, that's not fair!
The only people who say this are Republicans after mass shootings and neoliberals obsessed with "civility" to avoid questioning the status quo.

>>18035161
>>18035304
t. commie and proud C U C K
gas yourself faggot

>>18035304
>comparing a fringe but still common political philosophy to old institutions/groups of people that no longer exist
I know you think you sound very smart but you actually sound retarded. And this is coming from someone who never uses the term “commie” in a modern context

>>18035138
The banks, government, and elitists are the cause of the issues. Anything else is either an inadvertent psy op or misplaced trust. Be aware.

>>18035138
Landlords are really seething, aren't they

>>18035161

Based

>>18035797
>still common political philosophy
this is what absolute retards actually believe

>>18035986
Kek if youd actually gone to college you’ll find there’s a lot more self proclaimed communists and Marxists than you think

>>18036227
There are practically none. Colleges are overwhelmingly liberal.

>>18035161
>>18035286
Commie faggot

>>18035161
>>18035286
hi /leftypol/, trying to poison the well of anti-communism again?

How come people who agitate for communism never want to move Venezuela, Cuba or North Korea?

>>18036269
Nope, I'm a liberal and I know the difference between a liberal and a Marxist. There are tons of Marxists on university campuses.

But you are a disgusting opportunist communist, I can tell by the way you use "neoliberal" as a slur. Kill yourself.

>>18036269
>t. Just got his ged

>>18035161
Yeh, no one has ever said the nazis are among us again.

>>18036945
>There are tons of Marxists on university campuses.
There's also tons of furries. That doesn't really change anything.

Have you ever seen a DSA meeting or what these Marxists do with their days? They talk about pronouns.

>>18036902
not trolling, just wondering. why is communism bad?

(((Discord))) banned the /biz/ server, get in the new one bros
discordb gg kjGsbrW
adwhrtrteh

>>18035161
The spanish inquisition or “black legend” was the most humane wel organized and pursued legal actions in european history.

Ill let you guess why it was slandered.

Thats right! Protastant propaganda to slander the catholic church!

>>18037433
Because you retarded brainlets don't understand that liberalism is cultural marxism.

LGBT agenda = cultural marxism
Intersectionality = cultural marxism
Political correctness = cultural marxism
Progressivism = cultural marxism

It's not that hard to understand. Liberals are communist pawns, they are just too stupid to understand that they are.

Lenin called them useful idiots.

>>18035138

>>18035304
>muh nazis

>>18039553
No modern commies look like that. They're all dysgenic faggots. Stalin would gulag all of you.

>>18035161
>>18035286
>>18035304
>>18035411
>>18035579
>>18039553
Communists get the rope

>>18039553
LOL imagine depicting the Aryan phenotype as a communist when all of you look like pic related.

Faggot larpers.

>>18035161
Easiest way to spot a deluded MIGApede/cuckservative. I'm glad they're outing themselves as the jewish landlord-worshippers they are.

>>18036945
>2020
>defending neoliberalism
Shalom

Much ink has been spilt in responding to the recent New York Times article extolling Marx’s economic, philosophical and historical contributions (Jason Barker: "Marx was Right"). In critically analyzing this article, several authors have, quite rightly, pointed to the practical impossibility of implementing outright socialism due to the problem of economic calculation, and to the enormous death and destruction that all attempts to implement Marx’s ideas have wrought.

Nevertheless, a very important point made by the author of the NYT article, Jason Barker, has not received the attention it deserves. Specifically, there has, as yet, been no detailed response to Barker’s claim that “Marx’s basic thesis — that capitalism is driven by a deeply divisive class struggle in which the ruling-class minority appropriates the surplus labor of the working-class majority as profit — is correct” (emphasis added).

This article seeks to address this point, and does so by providing a summary of Böhm-Bawerk’s scintillating criticism of the entire economic edifice of Marx, advanced more than a century ago in his Karl Marx and the Close of his System (Böhm-Bawerk 2007).2 As explained in more detail below, Böhm-Bawerk attacks the three main pillars of Marx’s economic system: the labor theory of value, Marx’s law of value and his theory of surplus value as the source of the capitalist’s profits. At the end of his onslaught none of these pillars is left standing, and the entire edifice comes crashing down. Böhm-Bawerk’s critique remains, to this day, one of the most powerful criticisms of the argument that the source of the capitalist’s profits lies in the exploitation of workers.

>>18040583
Marx on the Labor Theory of Value: Böhm-Bawerk’s Criticism

Böhm-Bawerk begins his critique of Marx’s theoretical edifice by taking aim at the proposition that serves as its foundation: the labor theory of exchange value.

His first criticism addresses the proposition that Marx borrowed from Aristotle, that goods of equal value are traded in an act of exchange. This, to Böhm-Bawerk, “seems…to be a wrong idea,” for, he notes, where there is equality of value there is no incentive to exchange. “Where equality and exact equilibrium obtain, no change is likely to disturb the balance” (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 68). The transfer of commodities that characterizes an act of exchange, on the other hand, results from the prevalence of an inequality of value, where what is valued less is traded for what is valued more.

But even if one were to set this objection aside, and assume for the moment that exchange is characterized by an equality of values, does Marx do a good job of showing that it is the quantity of labor that is the “common element” of “identical magnitude” that determines these equal exchange values? Böhm-Bawerk answers this question in the negative, and does so for three main reasons.

First, Böhm-Bawerk notes, in his quest to find this common element Marx restricts his analysis to only “those exchangeable things which contain the property which he desires finally to sift out as the “common factor,” while leaving “all the others outside” (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 70). In fact, Marx, throughout his analysis, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly)3 assumes that a commodity must be the product of labor. This, right at the outset, implies that scarce gifts of nature cannot be commodities.

>>18040605
And third, and most egregiously, Marx, while noting that labor power has qualitative aspects as well as a quantitative aspect, proceeds to ignore the former while concluding that the latter is the common element that he is after. But why the different treatment of labor power and use value?

As Böhm-Bawerk asks, doesn’t Marx see that “the same evidence on which Marx formulated his verdict of exclusion against the value in use also holds good with regard to labor?” (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 76). Why, in the case of labor alone, is he willing to overlook the “concrete forms” of it, “the labor of the joiner, the mason, or the spinner” and focus instead on the “abstract human labor” that is present in all commodities (Marx 1990: 128)? To ask such questions, however, is to uncover the “dialectical hocus pocus” that is Marx’s argument in support of the labor theory of value (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 77).

>>18040625
The Composition of Capital, the Rate of Profit and Surplus Value: The Contradictions of Marx’s Law of Value

So much for Marx’s justification of the labor theory of value. Let us assume, for the moment, that it is true, and turn our attention to the law of value that is implied in it. Do prices, the exchange ratios of commodities for money, actually fluctuate around and tend towards amounts that reflect their respective exchange values as determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time embodied in them? Does the labor theory of value, via the law of value, provide an accurate explanation for the price phenomena that we see around us?

To answer these questions Böhm-Bawerk subjects Marx’s theory of surplus value and exploitation to greater critical scrutiny. Turning once more to our example of cotton yarn production, let us focus on the relationship between the surplus value and the profits that it gives rise to and the various components of the capital expended by the capitalist.

Note that during the production process the exchange value of the material inputs, the twenty pounds of cotton and the four hours of machine-time, simply passes over to the twenty pounds of cotton yarn that is produced. “The value of the means of production,” which in this case is forty eight hours of necessary labor time: forty hours for the cotton and eight for the machine-time, “is maintained” and “reappears in a different form in the value of the product, but adds no surplus value” (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 16).

Given the unvarying exchange value of the material inputs during the production process, Marx calls the capital invested in them “constant capital” [denoted by c] (Marx 1990: 317). In our example, it amounts to twenty four gold ounces.

>>18040651
The case of the capital invested in labor power is entirely different. This part of capital, which Marx terms “variable capital,” [denoted by v] “does undergo an alteration of value in the process of production,” reproducing both “the equivalent of its own value” as well as an “excess, a surplus-value” (Marx 1990: 317). In our example, when the capitalist extracts twelve hours of labor time from the worker, it includes both necessary labor of six hours and surplus labor of six hours, with the latter giving rise to the surplus value that is source of the capitalist’s profits. The amount of variable capital is therefore three ounces, giving rise to three ounces worth of profits.

Based on these concepts, Marx defines the “rate of surplus value,” (Marx 1990: 326) which is “the ratio of the surplus value [denoted by s] to the variable capital” (Marx 1990: 327). This ratio, which always equals the ratio of the amount of surplus labor to the amount of necessary labor, serves as a measure of the degree of exploitation suffered by the worker at the hands of the capitalist. In our example, this ratio [s/v] stands at 1, or 100%, since both the surplus value and the variable capital amount to three gold ounces.

Now, whereas the rate of surplus value does not depend on the amount of constant capital, the rate of profit earned by the capitalist is found by dividing the amount of surplus value by the sum of the constant and variable portions of the capital [s/c+v]. This rate is thus not equal to the rate of surplus value. In our example, for instance, the rate of profit is 11.1%, which is significantly lower than the rate of surplus value.

>>18040679
Consider now a different production process; that of baking bread. The baker, in order to bake ten loaves of bread must, just like the yarn manufacturer, pays three gold ounces and hire the services of a worker for a day. And he too extracts six hours of surplus labor from this worker in addition to six hours of necessary labor. Thus, his variable capital is also three gold ounces, as is his surplus value, with a rate of surplus value equal to 100%, just as in the case of the yarn manufacturer.

But, unlike the yarn manufacturer, the baker needs to combine these twelve hours of labor time with constant capital worth only six gold ounces to produce the ten loaves of bread. His rate of profit is thus higher [s/c+v= 3/9], and stands at 33.3%.

An important point follows from these two examples: capitalists with the same rate of surplus value may earn differing rates of profit owing to their differing compositions of capital. The yarn manufacturer, for example, had a much higher ratio of constant to variable capital [c/v] as compared to the baker. Despite the same rate of surplus value [s/v] he had a lower rate of profit. This point, as Böhm-Bawerk emphasizes, has significant implications for the empirical relevance of the law of value and therefore for Marx’s theory of surplus value and exploitation, which is merely the logical extension of this law.

>>18040698
In fact, as Böhm-Bawerk notes, Marx, in the posthumous third volume of Capital, concedes two crucial points. First, that for technical reasons, the proportion of constant to variable capital, and therefore the composition of capital, “differs greatly in different spheres of production, and frequently even in different branches of one and the same industry” (Marx 1894: 112). Thus, assuming that the law of value holds, and commodities do sell at prices that reflect the labor time embodied in them, this implies that the rates of profit will also differ across industries; and this despite the same rate of surplus value prevailing in these industries.

Second, Marx acknowledges that a scenario where different industries do not earn the same rate of profit is one that leaves room for the forces of competition to act. Starting with the observation that “if commodities are sold at their values,…very different rates of profit arise in the various spheres of production,” he goes on to add that “capital withdraws from a sphere with a low rate of profit and invades others, which yield a higher profit” (Marx 1894: 142). And as a result of this “incessant outflow and influx” of capital (Marx 1894: 142), the rates of profit in the different branches of industry tend to be equalized.

It is vital to note, however, that the prices at which the rates of profit in the various production processes are equalized are not the prices that conform to Marx’s law of value. In fact, at prices which do conform to this law, and do reflect the relative amounts of labor time embodied in the commodities and money exchanged, there can only be an equalization of the rate of surplus value and not of the rates of profit.

>>18040720
This point, as Böhm-Bawerk argues, undercuts the entire Marxian economic edifice. For, in the first volume of Capital, he notes, “it was maintained, with the greatest emphasis, that all value is based on labor and labor alone,” and that, “apart…from temporary and occasional variations…commodities which embody the same amount of labor must on principle, in the long run, exchange for each other” (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 29, 30).

This, as emphasized earlier, was what gave empirical significance to Marx’s law of value and to his theory of exploitation. It is precisely this proposition which implies that the actual, realized prices fluctuate around and tend towards amounts dictated by this law; that this law, like the law of gravity is an ever-present determinant of the prices that we see in the real world.

But “in the third volume (of Capital),” Böhm-Bawerk adds, “we are told briefly and dryly that what, according to the teaching of the first volume must be, is not and never can be; that individual commodities do and must exchange with each other in a proportion different from that of the labor incorporated in them, and this not accidentally and temporarily, but of necessity and permanently.”

>>18035161
>force a pointless argument about terms
Classic commie

>>18040734
The prices of commodities do not then, in the real world, tend to those dictated by Marx’s law of value, but instead to amounts that reflect the underlying costs of production, where, “besides working time, investment of capital forms a coordinate determinant of the exchange relation of commodities” (Böhm-Bawerk 2007: 89).4

Thus, the empirical irrelevance of the entire kit and caboodle of the labor theory of value, law of value and the theory of exploitation is laid bare. The entire system runs aground on the shoals of the forces of competition, the existence of which cannot be disputed. The profits earned by the capitalists are, after all, not determined by the surplus value squeezed out of workers and by the forces of exploitation and daylight robbery. For a correct and empirically valid explanation of the phenomena of interest and profit one must look elsewhere.

They really want to change opinions

>>18035161
Fuck you commies. You don’t realize we will not tolerate your nonsense in the New Republic. You’re dead.

>>18035304
Kys JiDF

>>18035304
>MUH NAZIS ARE TAKING OVER AMERICA

>>18035755
Glow more mossad. Every mass shooting is a MK ultra victim that the Obama fbi psyopped

>>18036269
Liberalism literally communism in 20th century you blue pilled tranny

being a commie is easy our agenda pushes itself capitalist society is literally collapsing all around us we don’t have to do anything lol

>GOSH JUST LOOK AT HOW SARCASTIC I AM! I NEVER SAY WHAT I MEAN ONLINE! YOU RIGHT WING PUNKS BETTER WATCH OUT

>>18041484
But when communism collapsed it wasn't real communism right comrade?

>>18035138
This is 4chan. They're just trolls. Communism just cannot be taken seriously anymore. At least the boomers get that much right. Sure there are college underages who wear their capitalistically produced Che Guevara shirts and LARP about the revolution but they will fall in line when they graduate and realize that they were pumped full of forced memes in an echo chamber. Either waging away, making it, or just sheer temporal distance will cure them of such delusions.