/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11736952]

>you obviously havn't read marx

Is this the only rebuttal Marxists have when confronted with an argument against Marx? Literally everything Marx said, he apparently didn't say when you present it to Marxists as a flaw.

[Anonymous No.11736959]

You haven't read Marx, Donald. Go back.

[Anonymous No.11736969]

>>11736952
depends on what your argument is, are you providing arguments against something Marx said or are you a /biz/ tier brainlet

[Anonymous No.11736972]

>>11736952
>mfw OP gets so buttblasted in the ongoing Marx thread that he killed another one to soothe his butthurt

[Anonymous No.11736973]

>>11736952
Marx's analytic mind was profound minus a couple things (his theory of technology and wages), his predictive power much less so

[Anonymous No.11736974]

>>11736969
He's just pic related, dude, realize it.

[Anonymous No.11736995]

>>11736952
I have the ultimate argument against Marx:

[Anonymous No.11737001]

>>11736995
Posting this again doesn't make it any less true.

[Anonymous No.11737007]

>>11737001
w0t

[Anonymous No.11737027]

>>11736969
this is an argument against keynsianism and a good one, but not against capitalism itself

[Anonymous No.11737034]

>>11737027
>keynsianism
Back to reddït you go, fag

[Anonymous No.11737035]

>>11736995
they would probably say "muh commodity fetishism" or something like that

[Anonymous No.11737038]

>>11737027
This was supposedly an argument against Marx's LTV in a thread yesterday, but I don't see how it's an argument against Keynes, you'll have to elaborate

[Anonymous No.11737047]

>>11736995
How exactly does the diamond water paradox contradict the LTV? Diamond isn't a mass produced commodity, which Marx's whole analysis is based around.

[Anonymous No.11737062]

>>11737034
>only redditors discuss, analyse and critique the theories of one of history's most prominent economists

[Anonymous No.11737066]

I don't think have ever seen someone talk shit about the determinism of Marx on internet. At best you see people saying that historical materialism is bullshit but that just someone talking shit about historical cycles.

[Anonymous No.11737068]

>>11736995
Its called the LTV, not the labor theory of price

[Anonymous No.11737069]

Where does one start with Marxism?

[Anonymous No.11737092]

>>11736995
How is this an argument against Marx? Diamonds are rare and need to be mined, and water covers seventy percent of the Earth. Diamonds require much more labor to obtain than water, so they are more valuable.

[Anonymous No.11737097]

>>11737092
how can value come from labour when there's nothing inherently valuable in an object having been subject to labour?

[Anonymous No.11737103]

>>11736995
What? It's the labour theory of value, not the necessity theory of value. If anything the water diamond paradox can only be explained by the LTV.

[Anonymous No.11737111]

>>11737103
What is value?

[Anonymous No.11737119]

>>11737111
t.

[Anonymous No.11737124]

>hey guys marxism is just a descriptive theory :)
>oh btw did you know that you're being exploited by capitalists?
marxists actually say this with a straight face

[Anonymous No.11737133]

>>11737111
LTV concerns exchange value, the good's standing in relation to other goods.

>don't you mean price
No, not quite. It correlates with price but that's not what Marx was getting at.

[Anonymous No.11737146]

>>11737124
But that's an objective fact.

[Anonymous No.11737152]

>>11737097
Labor has value because it is necessary to produce any commodity. There is value in subjecting an object to labor because it wouldn't exist or there wouldn't be access to it without labor

[Anonymous No.11737178]

>>11737146
Marx considered exploitation to be wrong.

[Anonymous No.11737184]

>>11736995
Digging a well requires a lot less work and time than mining and cutting a raw diamond.

[Anonymous No.11737197]

>>11737178
True but he doesn't expect the bourgeoisie to see it that way and appeals to the material self-interest of the proletariat rather than to moral sensibilities.

[Anonymous No.11737212]

>>11737197
Just because he tries to appeal to people's material self-interest doesn't mean the doctrine isn't normative. If I believed murder was wrong and I convinced you not to murder people by pointing out that you would likely go to jail for a long time my doctrine would still be normative. He isn't just appealing to their material self-interests. He is appealing to their material self-interests because he is motivated by his morality. Likewise, whenever someone mentions that you are being exploited by the capitalists they are just behaving in accordance with the normative doctrine they accept.

[Anonymous No.11737229]

>>11737133
>>11737152
But then why doesn't labour have any intrinsic value and why does it have an ontologically exceptional status among all the other factors that combine to determine the value of something?

[Anonymous No.11737238]

>>11737212
Your personal beliefs would be normative but the argument you made to me is not. You simply pointed out the concrete facts of the situation, murderers usually get caught and go to jail for long times. You were absolutely morally motivated in doing this but what you said is still purely descriptive.

Marx himself believed things that were not purely descriptive. But Marx the man is not Marxism the theory and the theory is descriptive.

[Anonymous No.11737260]

>>11737238
If you hadn't noticed I am attacking marxists not marxism.

[Anonymous No.11737267]

>>11736995
If I only I could read that piece of shit

[Anonymous No.11737270]

>>11736952
Op a faggot confirmed. Kys braindead retard.

[Anonymous No.11737272]

>>11737229
>and why does it have an ontologically exceptional status among all the other factors that combine to determine the value of something?
It doesn't, it's just that "labour theory of value" is an absolutely terrible term that we unfortunately are still using. Not only does it cover wildly different theories of value from economists with extreme differences in view but it also implies there's only one kind of value that exclusively comes from labour.

In reality whenever Marx talked about "value" it was generally accompanied by another word to describe what kind of value and never as synonymous with price. Marxian LTV exclusively concerns exchange value which is just one of the things that correlates with price. The average labour required of a good tells us the cumulative investment that has been channelled into that good i.e value. It doesn't necessarily tell us the price, or the social significance of that good.

For instance MTG cards. Any given card no matter how rare or common is going to have required approximately equal amounts of socially necessary labour time. But because of the peculiarities of its consumer market this doesn't reflect in price in the slightest.

[Anonymous No.11737343]

>>11737272
Then it's just stating the obvious; that the amount of work put into something has something to do with how it is valued. So what's the point of it?

[Anonymous No.11737373]

>>11736952
If you're arguing specifically against Marx' works, then you'll get called out if you make a point that convey either a lack of reading or a lack of understanding. If you are arguing against Marxism, and try to ascribe something to Marx that didn't come from Marx, then you'll get called out on that too.

[Anonymous No.11737378]

>>11737069
Socialism: Utopian And Scientific, and The Principles of Communism, both by Engels.

[Anonymous No.11737451]

More Libertarians and Conservatives have read Mars than Marxists have read Friedman or Hayek even though claim them to be part of the neo-liberal conspiracy.

If they knew anything about Hayek as a thinker, writer and man compared directly to Marx it was cause them to pause and think for a moment beyond vague generalizations fed to them in propaganda. I honestly believe this for most people.

[Anonymous No.11737488]

>>11737092
> Diamonds are more valuable than water because they take more labour
Ummm except for when water is more valuable than diamonds to a dehydrated man in the desert and less valuable to the one giving him the water for the diamonds.

Face it value is subjective and labour is important, why make a big deal out of debunked 18th century pseudo sciences?

[Anonymous No.11737499]

>>11737378
Thanks, I'll give it a read.

[Anonymous No.11737662]

>>11737488
There's a difference between use value and exchange value, the LTV applies to use value.

[Anonymous No.11738041]

>>11737272
>For instance MTG cards. Any given card no matter how rare or common is going to have required approximately equal amounts of socially necessary labour time. But because of the peculiarities of its consumer market this doesn't reflect in price in the slightest.

This inverts the two. This example shows that the labor involved is negligible for the ultimate value of the card, and that its value stems from something completely different (namely what people are willing to pay for it).

[Anonymous No.11738089]

>>11737451
I've read Friedman, Hayek, and Rothbard and I think they're even dumber now than before.

[Anonymous No.11738116]

>>11737047
Neither is water, but they do have different use values. Marx dedicates the first pages of Capital to bridge the concepts of use value, exchange value, and labour value. But you knew that, since you've read him, right?

[Anonymous No.11738138]

>>11737451
>More Libertarians
false, 90% of lolbergs dont read and only want weed and guns
other part is true though, for example david harvey is primetime brainlet
far-leftists are notoriously illiterate in history of economics

[Anonymous No.11738173]

>>11736952
peterson drones do exactly the same. it's a cultist tactic.

[Anonymous No.11738196]

>>11736952
Why are you discussing Marx anyway?

>Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

[Anonymous No.11738468]

>>11738041
Not at all. The use-value of both cards is the same, it is the prices that are different.

[Anonymous No.11738474]

>>11736952
Try read Marx then come back, so you can at least make some quality shitpost.

[Anonymous No.11738506]

>>11738468
But the use value isn't the same, because you cannot do with one card what you can do with another, hence the difference in price and value.

[Anonymous No.11738552]

>>11738468
>use-value
And the phlogiston? What about the phlogiston?

[Anonymous No.11738582]

marxist communism never worked in history
>inb4 muh real communism

[Anonymous No.11738715]

>>11737343
This is the thing, LTV isn't actually nearly as central or important to Marxism as non-Marxists think it is.

>>11738041
That's literally what I said
>But because of the peculiarities of its consumer market this doesn't reflect in price in the slightest.
Again price and exchange-value aren't synonymous.

[Anonymous No.11738726]

>>11736995
the value is not necessarily the price.
marx's analysis still factors in supply and demand, as well as monopoly pricing

this is why it's important to read volume 3

[Anonymous No.11738738]

>>11737343
Because it was used to build the rest of his theory, in the same way economists use mundane concepts like supply and demand curves to start building out concepts for undergrads. Marx used "socially necessary labor time" to begin framing a manner of thinking about the economy. For instance:
>>11738041
This is correct, MTG cards can systematically diverge from their labor values because of other factors in their desirability. Marx wouldn't disagree with that if he knew what MTG cards were. It also doesn't blow up his theory if this is never resolved into a price correction closer to values. In fact, Marx said prices never have to coincide with values. This has been interpreted by some to suggest that value and price have nothing to do with each other, but if you think of his value theory in terms of the reproduction of the production of commodities, of the whole industrial process, then you see that these micro deviations aren't a flaw. Many products could actually deviate from their values, but ultimately aggregate price and values are connected. In shorthand, value theory is frequently called a theory of costs because that is how it looks. Labor is considered the cost to make any good, and this corresponds to magnitudes of price. If the price remains below labor and fixed capital (basically considered industrial commodities themselves and so some eternal recursion back to labor) costs indefinitely, then production is unsustainable. On a macro scale, all costs need to be paid for. All labor needs to reproduce itself.

1/

[Anonymous No.11738760]

>>11738726
>>11737184
>>11737092
>>11737103
>leftists can me-

[Anonymous No.11738787]

I really like the part where Marx says the US should *conquer* Mexico because it's full of born losers who haven't even gotten to mature industrial capitalism yet (they still haven't and never will). I think source is an essay or letter of late Engels quoting Marx.

[Anonymous No.11738797]

>>11738738
Actually I just got busy, so I don't know if anything else needs to be said. The core thing to understand in regards to things like MTG cards is that aggregate values and aggregate prices are connected. Marx would say they have to be for the coordination of the labor market to create valuable goods. If prices systematically diverged on a macro scale (like say, in a totally normal economy the price of towels was just exceptionally above their costs such that the profit rate was 100% higher than average profit rates) then investment would disproportionately flow into industries with systematically high prices. This would probably cause a crisis. Moments where we have gotten experiments like this are price fixing debacles.

2/2

[Anonymous No.11738804]

>>11737212
>because he is motivated by his morality
He was as poor as the people he was motivating though so he is still self interested in a way.

[Anonymous No.11738840]

>>11737069
literally start with Capital
>>11737035
commodity fetishism doesn't mean what you think it means
>>11737488
The LTV is supposed to be applied specifically to a whole economy, not a fucking desert, this point is retarded.
Marx states that PRICE "oscilates around the value of a commodity" because of equilibrium supply and demand that (on most goods) happens on a large scale economy.
>>11737343
because he used the LTV to build his exploitation argument. The price of labour POWER (the capacity for labour power) he assumed to be the price of the necessaries of life that allow for the existance and reproduction of labour power (or for the labourer to sustain himself and a family). Then, assuming such necessities can be produced in a period of time shorter than the working day, the worker ends up producing more value than he was paid for.

[Anonymous No.11738889]

>>11738787
Can you please link a source for this?

[Anonymous No.11738902]

>>11738840
>reproduction of labour power (or for the labourer to sustain himself and a family).

Something to note about this, I think to not create confusion, is that price and values are in a delicate kind of balance at any moment and what is reproduced isn't actually just the Dickensian subsistence level of a mob of dirty workers, its the mass of laborers at their current level. As anyone knows, laborers have certain costs specific to their circumstances. These can reflect a lifestyle that is actually quite comfortable, but the lifestyle needs to be reproduced. If it isn't on a large scale, then even though everybody can be fed and clothed and housed still, it could cause a crisis because a mass of laborers who can't pay for their houses, can't pay for their cars, can't pay for their consumption habits etc. means a group of other laborers can't pay for those things because their money came from the others. The entire economy continuously reproduces itself. Small pockets can fail, and that is the flexibility of the process, but there is a hypothetical non-negligible amount of failures that indicates a real crisis of production. Over time there can be huge changes in what is being reproduced. I just think it's important to note because people looking to poke holes seem to often assume that the Marxian theory suggests the reproduction of labor means total subsistence. It doesn't have to, this is all socially determined.

[Anonymous No.11738924]

>>11738902
>>11738840
>>11738832
thoughts?

[Anonymous No.11738955]

>>11736952
Mike Davis just came out with a fantastic new book on Marx. In the preface he mentions this exact thing. In it he says that only about 1 in 1000 communists have read a substantial part of Capital, “and of 1000 anti-Marxists, not even 1”. The reality is that Marx’s economic writings are kind of difficult, and that means few people actually read them. Instead people rely on third and fourth hand “popularizations”. It should be no surprise that misunderstandings abound.


Another problem is that Marx is distinct from the other “great thinkers”. Unlike Kant, Aristotle, or Spinoza there is a massive political consequence at stake for his understanding. Thus there is a huge motivation from his opponents to just lie about what he said or thought.

Take Stephen Hicks for example. He’s made an entire career out of literally just lying about Marx and “postmodernism”. I even messaged him about an extremely obvious and important contradiction in the first chapter of his book. He responded, acknowledging the problem, and then nothing. And of course, why would he? He’s making loads off the book and spreading his political worldview so why would he?

Here is another example; https://www.amazon.ca/Das-Kapital-Critique-Political-Economy/dp/089526711X/ref=sr_1_47?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536163178&sr=1-47&refinements=p_27%3AKarl+Marx

The editors introduction of this abridged edition establishes that he thinks Marx was wrong about everything and accuses Marx of being a strong economic determinist. And then in his abridgement he cuts out everything in the book which contradicts his thesis and keeps in everything that could support it.

When you have books like that floating around is it any surprise that so much misunderstanding exists? Marx’s critics aren’t above just lying, making up fake letters and essays, and making dishonest and misleading abridgements.


In that context it makes prefect sense that accusing critics of ‘not having read Marx’ is actually pretty reasonable. There are a few standard anti-Marx responses I’ve seen in the Peterson reddit (for example) and to anybody who has read even a little bit of Marx it’s obvious they are not even in the same ballpark.

[Anonymous No.11738964]

>>11738924
I’m answering here just because I hovered over it, but I’m not sure yet. I feel like I need to read Sraffa eventually to get a better feel for whether or not neoclassical econ can claim to be consistent. I’m under the impression the Cambridge capital controversy dealt some kind of critical blow to neoclassical econ that was never resolved, and since Sraffa’s project was something like resolving the issues in classical value theory that suggests to me that he was claiming marginal utility was deficient in some way.

But from what I know now I wouldn’t deny that marginal utility may describe the economy pretty well. But as I understand it it is a micro theory, whereas Marxian economics is really a macro theory.

[Anonymous No.11738986]

>>11738964
>Sraffa
Good read, he also attacks the LTV

[Anonymous No.11738993]

>>11736952
It's typically a valid rebuttal. The fact is that most opponents of Marx have read The Communist Manifesto at most.

[Anonymous No.11739011]

Kolakowski proved the LTV was wrong and beyond saving.

He obviously didn't read Marx, right?

[Anonymous No.11739021]

>>11738955
>admitting 0.1% of marxists even read it either
i'm starting to regret bothering now myself

[Anonymous No.11739034]

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/letters/46_05_17.htm

The best rebuttal against Marxists

[Anonymous No.11739047]

>>11739011
>Kolakowski proved the LTV was wrong and beyond saving.
Nice imagination

[Anonymous No.11739052]

Yes, Marxists are all retarded

[Anonymous No.11739163]

>>11739047
There's a whole section on the LTV and why every argument trying to save it is wrong.

You haven't read Kolakowski.

[Anonymous No.11739173]

>>11739034
So eloquent and agreeable

[Anonymous No.11739257]

>>11739034
he wasnt wrong, as Leninism and Stalinism have shown

[Anonymous No.11739276]

>>11738089
Read Hazlitt and Mises instead and Rand as a philosophic suppliment
Rothbard in particular is an insect compared to Ludwig von Mises. And was a filthy anarchist

[Anonymous No.11739286]

>>11737092
>Diamonds are rare

fecking lol. it's called artificial scarcity, m'boy

[Anonymous No.11739291]

>>11736959
Wtf guys? This is a based timely comment

[Anonymous No.11739297]

>>11739257
Of course he was. The historic achievement of Leninism shows just how mistaken he was.

[Anonymous No.11739308]

>>11739163
>You haven't read Kolakowski.
Keep telling yourself that.

[Anonymous No.11739333]

>>11739291
It's politically charged reddit drivel. Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.11739342]

>>11736995
>Hurr value not price , because you don't charge for the full price as a seller and but "price" being subjective doesn't mean people suddenly won't understand my arbitrary inherent value theorems
How fucking retarded are tankies anyways? Marx was a hack fraud and retard

[Anonymous No.11739350]

>>11738840
>See that scenario where water is more valuable than diamons even though diamonds take more labor contradicts my beliefs too much, can you not
No, the man in the desert is just a metaphor for greater economic differences.

[Anonymous No.11739361]

>>11738955
>Take Stephen Hicks for example. He’s made an entire career out of literally just lying about Marx and “postmodernism”. I even messaged him about an extremely obvious and important contradiction in the first chapter of his book. He responded, acknowledging the problem, and then nothing. And of course, why would he? He’s making loads off the book and spreading his political worldview so why would he?
Oh yes. I'm sure this happened.

[Anonymous No.11739415]

>>11738955
Why would anyone waste their time reading drivel from a boil covered loon

Just look at the retarded, overly technical "arguments" about what something's value should be. The price of something is determined by what the consumer will pay for, it's not complicated.

[Anonymous No.11739433]

>>11737047
>Diamond isn't a mass produced commodity

It literally is. We've been able to make them for a long time and they are mass produced.

[Anonymous No.11739437]

>>11739342
Goddammit, rightie, you were supposed to get the meme which every leftie missed.

[Anonymous No.11739537]

>>11739415
>what something’s value should be

Another example of why people say what they say in the OP. Marx didn’t talk about what value should be, and value doesn’t mean “I like thing” for Marx. It’s closer to saying “cost”. So you’re suggesting Marx was saying what something’s real material cost should be, which is wrong because things HAVE a material cost. If we had the choice, we’d want everything to be magically conjured from the air.

[Anonymous No.11739545]

>>11739350
Its a stupid metaphor that doesnt work

[Anonymous No.11739553]

>>11737007
I thought you were being ironic. I hate this board and its perpetual contrarianism.

[Anonymous No.11739565]

why don't drumpfags read marx before they criticise it ?

[Anonymous No.11739574]

>>11739537
>Marx didn’t talk about what value should be
Literally the 1st chapter of Das Kapital is Marx going over inherent value theorems based around a combination of "use value" and the labor theory. He advocated for changing the way society values things in the 1st chapter of his Magnum Opus

[Anonymous No.11739578]

>>11739361

That was the beginning of June. It’s now September and he hasn’t made any post which seeks to clarify this massive problem.

[Anonymous No.11739586]

>>11739361
>>11739578
Fck

[Anonymous No.11739587]

>>11739565
You don't have to eat shit to know it tastes bad.

[Anonymous No.11739593]

>>11739586
lol, btfo

[Anonymous No.11739647]

>>11739574
It seems like you're conflating things to me, because this still would be such a mundane statement that it doesn't make much sense to me. When Marx describes the mechanism by which values change, he basically talks about something like productivity increases. These can make values for a good fall. This is akin to saying the relative material costs have fallen for producing some good. So to say Marx advocated for changing the way society values things appears to be conflating the term value as in "I like this" or "this is meaningful to me" and the term value as descriptive of material costs in capitalism. In the latter case, to say you wanted to change values for goods would probably be saying "I want values to be lower", which would be just like saying "I want things to be cheaper to produce". That is a mundane statement that anybody would make and requires no argumentation. It's just desirable for most people that things would be easier to produce, so it doesn't seem deserving of calling Marx a boil covered loon or whatever. If you're saying that he advocated for changing the way society structures production, sure, that is also mundane. We all know Marx promoted communism. But values in this sense and the other sense are separate, and even if he advocated for "changing values" in the other sense, it wouldn't be some controversial position. But I don't remember Marx ever making a statement in chapter one of Capital like "socially necessary labor time of goods should be less, IT SHOULD BE LESS!!!"

[Anonymous No.11739656]

>>11737027
>this is an argument against keynsianism and a good one

[Anonymous No.11739695]

>>11739586
I think that's not impossible to solve.

Just to give an example: he could say post-modernism merely tries to worship that which already failed, out of religious fanaticism.

I am NOT saying that is the case, just that he could say it.

Anyway, I think his view is weird. I don't believe an economic system has to reflect a cultural environment. In Italy, for instance, modernism was quite socialistic (fascistic). Pound loved the Carta del lavoro.

(I won't discuss the issue. I know nothing of philosophy and am just lurking the thread.)

[Anonymous No.11739725]

>>11739647
>But I don't remember Marx ever making a statement in chapter one of Capital like "socially necessary labor time of goods should be less, IT SHOULD BE LESS!!!"
I guess because you forgot in the first chapter he advocated for *inherent value theorems* and went over the mathematics and reasoning for them?

Do you not understand the purpose of intrinsic/inherent value theorems? No I am not semanticaly confused between definitions of value, I'm assuming that the man who wrote the Communist Manifesto and an entire book on the economics behind communism advocates for communism via his observations and theories.

[Anonymous No.11739772]

>>11739725
>No I am not semanticaly confused between definitions of value, I'm assuming that the man who wrote the Communist Manifesto and an entire book on the economics behind communism advocates for communism via his observations and theories.

You're *assuming* wrong. He claimed through his value theory that profit was sourced in surplus value extraction, paying workers less than they produce, and that he believed capitalism would eventually eat itself anyways. That reasoning wasn't rooted in whether or not things were valued correctly or incorrectly.

>I guess because you forgot in the first chapter he advocated for *inherent value theorems* and went over the mathematics and reasoning for them?

He didn't advocate for "inherent value theorems". He used the value theorem that had always existed before him from Ricardo and Smith and tried to resolve their problems. He may have mentioned Say or the physiocrats or something, I can't remember, but the purpose of Capital wasn't advocacy of the value theory in contrast to some other theory. Value theory was the prevailing theory.

[Anonymous No.11739837]

>>11739772
>That reasoning wasn't rooted in whether or not things were valued correctly or incorrectly.
Part of the labor theory of value and marx's intrinsic value theorems are their interactions with with the surplus value that the working class generates , which is that the surplus value which they produce is possible via the LTV, Marx's intrinstic value theorems are also a tool of the prols to gain control of the means of production.

Plz actually read Marx instead of 2nd hand sources on Marx. Marx only viewed capitalism teleologically leading to communsim in the times before the failure of the Paris Commune , afterwards the process became much more authoritarian than communism simply coming about through natural changes in the economy

[Anonymous No.11739848]

>>11739415
Here are a few things that complicat it right off the bad.

The price of a good has to be on average *at least* the price it cost to produce. If it isn’t the seller will run out of money and not be able to keep making it. Of course sometimes you can produce at a loss for a period of time (and firms will if shutdown cost is greater etc) but in the long run in our basic model there is a minimum price that a commodity has and no consumers want it at that price that good will just not be produced.

Marx also argues that there is an equalibrium minimum wage which is equal to the cost of basic sustenance, because if a wage isn’t at least that then the worker won’t be physically able to return to work each day.

So when the price of any good at equilibrium will be at least the price of those wages.

>>11739695
It’s certainly not impossible to solve in general, but it is with the definitions he’s established. In general people usually use ‘modernism’ to refer to something that starts happening around 1880-1900 which sees a dramatic change in art and the mindset of society in general. Postmodernism is then something that happens in reaction to that trend and starts to emerge between 1945 and 1960.

Hicks conflates modernism and “modernity”, ie the whole post-Medieval period, and then defines postmodernism as being a break with basically everything in culture that happens between the Renaissance and World War II. Because of his definition of modernism, which is completely unique to him, everything else in his analysis breaks because he cannot explain how anything relates to anything else without contradicting the periodization he’s established.

There are loads of smaller problems with his characterization of specific thinkers but that’s really secondary to the fact his basic schematic fails to even get off the ground.

[Anonymous No.11739860]

>>11737062
What's the point in discussing a retard's ideas? I guess that's a pointless question to ask in a Marx thread though

[Anonymous No.11739880]

>>11739860
>Marx
>Retard
Wew lad. I suppose Ricardo and Smith were retarded as well for being so out of date?

[Anonymous No.11739891]

>>11739848
>Marx also argues that there is an equalibrium minimum wage which is equal to the cost of basic sustenance, because if a wage isn’t at least that then the worker won’t be physically able to return to work each day.
Kind of stupid because and equilibrium minimum wage is subjective based on culture and economic context, because certainly the bare minimum of sustenance is different in the 1st vs 3rd worlds

[Anonymous No.11739903]

>>11736952
Marx is pretty gud I think. Historical materialism is of course a gross simplification, dialectics is a wack way to analyze history.

Arguing about LTV and such seems kind of gay. Sure, most people don't think it is an accurate way to reckon values but even so it doesn't sink his battleship.

I'm a literal fascist. Sort of. I don't really get why people hate on Marx so much. It was an early stab at a comprehensive explanation of cultural evolution. Pretty neat, really. I'm not into it (I prefer Marvin Harris) and I think people who are way into Marx are a bit silly but it is a neat curiosity.

[Anonymous No.11739909]

>>11739848
I think dividing recent history between modernism and post-modernism is ridiculous. It should be used for didactic purposes, perhaps, but never seriously. The human mind is crazy for patterns, and it cannot resist finding them in history, which is then transformed into a novel-like narrative when in reality it's just a crazy succession of facts.

[Anonymous No.11740030]

>>11739891
Marx aknowledges this. He says (parraphrasing) that while "the group of commodities and their value (that determine the price of wages) vary according to time and place, in a definite situation these are well known"

[Anonymous No.11740038]

>>11739903
>its wack
>its kind of gay
>i'm a literal fascist
Wew

[Anonymous No.11740178]

>>11739903
>It was an early stab at a comprehensive explanation of cultural evolution
>I'm a literal fascist
You don't say

[Anonymous No.11740218]

>>11740178
I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment. I don't really care about race very much so much as I care about trying to have a society here, man.
>>11740038
Dialectics is wack because the interaction of population pressures, technological change and ecology are sufficient to explain cultural evolution

Nitpicking about what are (to me) relatively minor problems with Marx is gay as AIDS, friend. It does no damage to Marx and wastes every one's time.

Fascist is probably inaccurate really, I just wanted to indicate that I am evil and right wing &etc. Really I think the ideal form of government is under an absolute sovereign who has a true claim as descendent of the sun god benignly negligently presiding over a distributist-Georgist world empire.

[Anonymous No.11740231]

>>11740218
>Really I think the ideal form of government is under an absolute sovereign who has a true claim as descendent of the sun god benignly negligently presiding over a distributist-Georgist world empire.
why can't we have this, why do we have to have Neoliberals, Trump, and democracy. Is it the devil

[Anonymous No.11740263]

>>11739297
Stalin cured leninism by killing trotsky, and Kruschkev cured stalin and lenin by indirectness through killing the soviet union.

[Anonymous No.11740294]

>>11740218
>distributist-Georgist
aka pauperism

[Anonymous No.11740310]

You see the main issue with marxists is that they get too attached to their own descriptive system and aren't able to make revision to it because of some hegelian/kantian "categorical" reasoning, when there really is no lebinizian "universal character" placed in the philosophy in the first place so it kind of contradicts, really all marxist philosophy comes down to is some type of pseudo attachments to vague nothings because of their preset political goals ( which in the case of proudhon is absolutely fair and respectable because he doesn't claim some merit on the tradition of continental philosophy like Marx does with Hegel). Basically marx fanboys are a bunch of impotent virgins who haven't read their theory enough even when they pretend that's all they do.

[Anonymous No.11740338]

>>11740294
get a load of this capitalist

[Anonymous No.11740353]

>>11740218
>Really I think the ideal form of government is under an absolute sovereign who has a true claim as descendent of the sun god benignly negligently presiding over a distributist-Georgist world empire.

[Anonymous No.11740361]

>>11740338
there's no collectivization or difference between a capitalist welfare state and a distributist state

[Anonymous No.11740389]

>>11740338
;)
>>11740361
wrong

[Anonymous No.11740393]

>>11740389
literally what's the difference you guys still believe in private property retard

[Anonymous No.11740401]

Just cracked open Capital after reading some of the good discussions on LTV in this thread. Found this:
>The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it.
and
>Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.

So now I'm thinking maybe the problem is just that Marx's LTV doesn't work because he just ignored all the times it doesn't work. Labor determines value... unless it's really productive labor or the labor doesn't produce something that is useful. It just seems like he's talking around value being a subjective assessment.

Oh and the people saying that the LTV is not central to Marxism can just fuck right off. His critiques would make absolutely no sense if there wasn't some correct definition of value to compare actual capitalist definitions with. Also, he himself clearly said
>The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the labourer by the capitalist.

[Anonymous No.11740409]

>>11740393
>"what's the diff between distributism and welfare capitalism"
>calls others retarded

[Anonymous No.11740411]

I'm a philosophy professor specializing in Marx and I can certify that none of the anti-Marxist people ITT have ever read Capital.

[Anonymous No.11740414]

>>11740411
>water is wet
What else is new

[Anonymous No.11740424]

>>11740411
>I'm a philosophy professor specializing in Marx
And I'm the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler

[Anonymous No.11740785]

>>11736995
>what is the relationship between scarcity and value

[Anonymous No.11740968]

>>11739891
Not according to Marx, he’s referring to literal biological function there as being the absolute hard limit. Now he gives reasons why this limit wouldn’t necessarily be reached, like workers organizing to form unions and striking for higher wages, or laws that implement floors which are higher than that point.

Lurking at the edges of everything in Marx is hard biological necessity. The fundamental reason why Marx treats labour and economics as being primary to any analysis of society is biological. He says very clearly in The German Ideology that for a person to continue to survive they need to continue to eat, they need to be able to reproduce the conditions of their own survival. What an “economy” is fundamentally is an organization of labour which metabolizes nature into the means of our continued existence. And while there is no guarantee that it does that for everybody, if the economy provides that for nobody then a society ceases to exist.

If on average wages aren’t enough to allow for the reproduction of the working class then production will cease for everybody.

[Anonymous No.11741018]

>>11738089
Why? Hayek is a guy that fled the Nazi's and you can get a sense from his writtings that not only was he a kind and gentle man, but his style of writting is not as dogmatic as Mises' or Rothbards, he tends to play with ideas and give opposing views the benefit of the doubt, sort of goes on a journey with a reader which is a fascinating style to write in but shows a lot about his character. Then look at Marx and the classic shit about the way he treated his family, maid and the way he lived like a grub. Very contrasting figures.

Leftists claim that Hayek is part of some vast neo-liberal conspiracy but once you've read the Use of Knowledge in Society and the Constitution of Liberty you can get a genuine sense that this man not only wants humanity to thrive but he has an organic view of society and the economy that shocked and scared him but came as a great revelation.

It's hard to attribute to a man - that viewed society and the economy as a spontaneous organism that when meddled with by those that claim to be elite, causes damage like a naive man trying to garden the amazon rainforest without disrupting the complex ecosystems - a vast conspiracy to undermine society and put a group of corporate elites into supremacy over all.....it just doesn't fit or at least should cause people to stop, think and come up with a more nuanced view of the man.

[Anonymous No.11741107]

>>11736952
Yes, people doesn't read Capital. That's the fucking problem, they read the Manifesto and thinks that Marx is "only the manifesto".
This post is useless if you haven't read

Hell, how the fuck am I supposed to discuss marxism with you, appoint it's flaws, it's wrong/right predictions, and what it did right, if you haven't read the basics, the fucking basics.

It's like: let's discuss Hitler's works never reading The Mein Kampf, or the Alfred Rosenberg' diaries or like, Mussolini and never reading The Doctrine of Fascism or you like Evola and never read Revolt against the Modern World.

It's impossible. Now stop crying and go read Capital. There's even a sumary by Carlo Cafiero that you can find online, at least read that.

[Anonymous No.11741110]

>>11739909
I suppose, but what is history if not various untrue stories that we tell?

When we are talking specifically about art the category of modernism seems to be pretty well defined, and the transition to postmodernism while less cut and dry is still pretty clear. Trying to generalize that idea to be all encompassing of all aspects of our history i agree is over stating the case.

There is a very concrete change that takes place in all the arts in a fairly short period of time.

In or around the 1880s you’ve got the mature works of Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Grieg, Saint-Saens, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky. By the 1910s it’s Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok etc.

In art you while you had people like Van Gogh the dominate trend was still realist or romantic painting, which quickly transforms into all your “isms”; cubism, futurism, constructivism etc, and pure abstraction with Kandinsky and so on.

The late 19th century was the period of high realism in literature. George Eliot, Flaubert, Twain, Tolstoy, Zola, it was the dominate style from 1850 until the second decade of the 20th century with Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner and so on.

However, if you want to periodize political events, it’s far more meanful to do it like Hobsbawm does, with the ‘long 19th century’ and the ‘short 20th’, and this doesn’t fit the modernist/postmodernist idea that well.

[Anonymous No.11741458]

>>11739880
Marginalism was already spreading by the time Marx was writing Capital, tho.

It's suggested the reason he didn't write a fifth volume was because he was stuck trying to find a way to address it.