Quick rundown of Marxian political economics

[PyramidHead]

This is a basic, well-worn criticism of Marx that presents an alternative conception of value, which predictably rescues the capitalist from the spotlight as an antagonist to the worker. These were exactly the same kinds of arguments put forth in times of slavery to absolve the slaveowners of responsibility toward their chattel, or in feudal times to create the impression that lords were deserving of fealty from their subjects and serfs. Always, there is the implication that those in socially sanctioned positions of hierarchical authority earned their spot and are shouldering the appropriate amount of burden. Marshall and Menger dutifully playing their roles in this performance, entirely anticipated by Marx in his analysis of bourgeois economics that were contemporary to him, hardly undermines his overall thesis.

The problem with the labor theory of value is that it in effect says that finding a more efficient way to do something is bad, not good.

What are you even smoking. Marx's value theory is about exchange value, not use value. Something with a given use value will become less valuable in the sense of exchange as it gets easier to produce, but this doesn't make it worse, it just means it can't fetch the same price as it used to.

 

[PyramidHead]

This is a basic, well-worn criticism of Marx that presents an alternative conception of value, which predictably rescues the capitalist from the spotlight as an antagonist to the worker. These were exactly the same kinds of arguments put forth in times of slavery to absolve the slaveowners of responsibility toward their chattel, or in feudal times to create the impression that lords were deserving of fealty from their subjects and serfs. Always, there is the implication that those in socially sanctioned positions of hierarchical authority earned their spot and are shouldering the appropriate amount of burden. Marshall and Menger dutifully playing their roles in this performance, entirely anticipated by Marx in his analysis of bourgeois economics that were contemporary to him, hardly undermines his overall thesis.

The problem with the labor theory of value is that it in effect says that finding a more efficient way to do something is bad, not good.

Another problem with the Labor Theory of Value is that the premise that the value of an item is purely dependent based on the amount of labor that went into it without any reference to market conditions. In other words, given the following two scenarios:

1) A local hog farmer and butcher does X amount of labor to produce Y amount of ham in a sustainable fashion. There is currently a famine going on and, even if everyone in the local town wasn't starving, they all think ham is delicious.
2) A local hog farmer and butcher does X amount of labor to produce Y amount of ham in a sustainable fashion. There is plenty of food in the town. Actually, there is plenty of ham in the town. In fact, everybody's fridge and/or freezer contains not just one ham, but also a primary, secondary, and tertiary backup ham. Everybody in town appreciates that the hog farmer is a fine and upstanding member of the community, but frankly are starting to get sick and tired of ham being the only meat that they can get for most meals.

According to the LTV, the ham is equally valuable in both scenarios. This is obviously false.

Clearly you haven't read the OP or Marx. The labor theory you are describing is Adam Smith's. Marx did not (repeat: DID NOT) hold that labor was the only determinant of value, nor that it was the determinant of PRICE as opposed to a more general concept of value. Nor did he look at the particularity of an individual (your local hog farmer) as the input of labor; departing from Smith in this regard, he looked at the abstract labor embodied in a product, which is a reflection of how much labor capacity a community decides to allocate towards making something. Even here, he's not saying the price is equal to the amount of abstract labor, but that the value of the product--whatever it ends up being sold for due to other factors like those you mention--only exists because a community wanted or needed it enough to allocate a certain amount of labor to producing it.

 

[untermensche]

All value can ever be is exchange value.

You cannot force a person to value more than they value.

But all value comes from labor, from laboring on some material and the labor to extract the material and deliver it.

 

[PyramidHead]

static

I have no idea what you keep going on about with this "static" stuff. Total mystery to me.

I already pointed out to you that Marx had no problem with unproductive labor and acknowledged its role in the system. The word "unproductive" is not the pejorative you think it is, it's just a neutral observation that they don't produce anything. You seem to believe his entire programme was about abolishing unproductive labor in some communist utopia, which is an odd thing to fixate upon given his almost total silence on communism.

By the way, like any system, communism would of course have producers and non-producers, people who make a surplus and people who live off it. This isn't immoral, it's just natural in a species that has evolved to be able to make much more than it can consume. Children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and yes, the unproductive are all among those who can and perhaps should live off the surplus produced by others, even according to Marx. His complaint about capitalism wasn't that it included non-workers or unproductive ones, it was that they were the ones who appropriated and distributed what was produced by the workers.

To indulge your speculation about communist production, imagine a society that didn't operate like this. Would it have non-producers? Of course it would! It would have people at cash registers, people cleaning floors, people keeping records, and all the usual tasks that organized production requires; Marx was not opposed to this. What he primarily opposed was the inner antagonism of capitalism that said: now that you have finished making this chair, it belongs to me and I get to decide what to do with it, how much to sell it for, what the target consumer should be, how many to make tomorrow, and what to do with the extra cash I receive for selling it above what I paid you to make it. A communist system would be one where this parasite (who historically has been a CEO, a tribal elder, a party official, or a mafia boss) does not exist.

 

[PyramidHead]

So Marxism is essentially a theory of makers and takers, with workers being the makers and landowners and business leaders being the takers. Many right-wingers and capitalism apologists agree that humanity is divided up into makers and takers, but their identification of makers and takers is very different from the Marxist identification of them. Many US right-wingers and libertarians believe that business leaders are the real makers in a business and everybody else is nothing but takers -- even those business leaders' employees. US ones, at least, are very adamant that governments are nothing but takers.

Karl Marx was good at identifying problems with capitalism, but not very good at identifying solutions. I get the impression that he wanted something like worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives, something like being self-employed but on a larger scale.


The best-known attempt to implement Marxism is Marxism-Leninism, often called Communism. It involves rule by a centralized, autocratic party that claims to represent the workers. Some of its critics have described it as a form of capitalism where the State is the sole capitalist, a criticism that seems to me to fit very well. Robert Kaiser, in his book about the Soviet Union, described it at one point as "USSR, Inc."

But this attempt was a flop, a miserable flop, though many Cold Warriors seemed to think that it was a glorious success.

I agree with your take, but I don't see why worker-owned cooperatives wouldn't be a good starting point. The issue I see with them currently is that our cultural and educational infrastructure doesn't prepare people to think about cooperative enterprise. Nor do our policy incentives. I'll give an example of a place that does a great job encouraging these kinds of firms: Italy. In Italy, there is a law about unemployment benefits I think America should adopt. When you go on unemployment in Italy, you have a choice. You can receive the benefits you are entitled in the usual fashion, in installments over a period of time. Alternatively, if you can find 9 other people who are unemployed and want to do this, you can opt to receive all of the benefits for all of the participants up-front as one lump sum, provided that you use it as capital to establish a worker-owned cooperative. It's such a simple idea, but it has led to an explosion of worker-managed companies in Italy and is a very popular policy.

Another good one, albeit less direct, is Germany's law that requires the board of directors to be voted upon by the employees of a company after it reaches a certain size, and the threshold of employee approval is set by the size. In other words, a giant corporation that employs many thousands of people would have to select a board of directors that was more accountable to its employees than one with just a dozen employees, to counterbalance the natural tendency for less accountability as company size increases.

Neither are strictly Marxist proposals, as they all occur against the backdrop of capitalism and its preservation, but they are steps toward more worker control.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

All value can ever be is exchange value.

You cannot force a person to value more than they value.

But all value comes from labor, from laboring on some material and the labor to extract the material and deliver it.

Once again, pretending that preaching is a response.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

static

I have no idea what you keep going on about with this "static" stuff. Total mystery to me.

Because it can't cope with change. He even realized it couldn't industrialize.

 

[untermensche]

All value can ever be is exchange value.

You cannot force a person to value more than they value.

But all value comes from labor, from laboring on some material and the labor to extract the material and deliver it.

Once again, pretending that preaching is a response.

That is not a rational response.

It is totally useless nonsense.

As if your characterization of things without any supporting argument has any value.

 

[lpetrich]

So Marxism is essentially a theory of makers and takers, with workers being the makers and landowners and business leaders being the takers. ...

I agree with your take, but I don't see why worker-owned cooperatives wouldn't be a good starting point. The issue I see with them currently is that our cultural and educational infrastructure doesn't prepare people to think about cooperative enterprise. Nor do our policy incentives. ...

I actually agree that cooperatives are a good idea, at least for small businesses. However, they may not scale very well.

I think that the Left has failed to adequately address the problem of how to avoid the emergence of Yet Another Arrogant Ruling Class. That is what happened with Marxist-Leninist regimes -- the Party bosses became an elite class.

 

[untermensche]

I actually agree that cooperatives are a good idea, at least for small businesses. However, they may not scale very well.

Only a plus.

To scale just requires many small parts working together.

It requires a system of cooperation as opposed to one of competition.

 

[Trausti]

I actually agree that cooperatives are a good idea, at least for small businesses. However, they may not scale very well.

Only a plus.

To scale just requires many small parts working together.

It requires a system of cooperation as opposed to one of competition.

 

[lpetrich]

Trausti, define "socialism".

 

[PyramidHead]

static

I have no idea what you keep going on about with this "static" stuff. Total mystery to me.

Because it can't cope with change. He even realized it couldn't industrialize.

Cite?

 

[Treedbear]

... Like many others, he didn't see a big difference between being owned by a master as a slave and being rented by a capitalist as an employee. He never specified what a post-capitalist society would look like in its details, but favored actual communism--workers asserting control over the fruits of their work--as the way of arriving there, not state manipulation or authoritarian takeover. ...

I'm sorry for not yet taking the time to read your entire explanation. I see capitalism as one part of a system that needs to be balanced with socialism or socialist-like redistribution. Not so much as an ideology since this is something, I think, that pure capitalism would not allow for. My question is about how communism deals with this in a fair way given the variation in individual ability to work productively. Isn't there also a need for a government in order to provide equal opportunity for all as well as a safety net and care for the infirm and elderly? Putting the workers in control certainly doesn't guarentee humane treatment for all. Both systems it seems need a "master-slave" relationship.

The problem here is you are mixing up a safety net with socialism.

I do think there should be a safety net and probably a better one than we have at present. (Although the real problem with our safety net is more that we make it very hard to climb out of.) I don't like redistribution beyond what's needed for a safety net, though.

My point was really about how in both capitalism and communism the citizens and workers need to yield some authority to a master of sorts. The role played by the Leviathan. Otherwise unsustainable inequalities result and you get anarchy.

I agree about the main flaw with the current safety net. In my opinion at a minimum it must provide the ability to save something in order to take advantage of opportunities as they come along. Whether that's to further one's education or to just buy groceries when they go on sale rather than paying full price when actually needed. Otherwise it's not capitalism for all. It works when you can manage your own finances.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

All value can ever be is exchange value.

You cannot force a person to value more than they value.

But all value comes from labor, from laboring on some material and the labor to extract the material and deliver it.

Once again, pretending that preaching is a response.

That is not a rational response.

It is totally useless nonsense.

As if your characterization of things without any supporting argument has any value.

Because you're preaching you can't provide a proper response to any disagreement with what you say.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I actually agree that cooperatives are a good idea, at least for small businesses. However, they may not scale very well.

Only a plus.

To scale just requires many small parts working together.

It requires a system of cooperation as opposed to one of competition.

History shows it doesn't scale.

The problem is that it requires that people work against their self interest. Only when the group is small enough that your slacking off hurts your friends does it work and even then it doesn't work too well. Such groups rarely persist.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Because it can't cope with change. He even realized it couldn't industrialize.

Cite?

Because it required industrialization to have already happened before it could be implemented.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem here is you are mixing up a safety net with socialism.

I do think there should be a safety net and probably a better one than we have at present. (Although the real problem with our safety net is more that we make it very hard to climb out of.) I don't like redistribution beyond what's needed for a safety net, though.

My point was really about how in both capitalism and communism the citizens and workers need to yield some authority to a master of sorts. The role played by the Leviathan. Otherwise unsustainable inequalities result and you get anarchy.

Actually, the inequalities are controlled by death. The great fortunes don't persist even without the system acting against them.

I agree about the main flaw with the current safety net. In my opinion at a minimum it must provide the ability to save something in order to take advantage of opportunities as they come along. Whether that's to further one's education or to just buy groceries when they go on sale rather than paying full price when actually needed. Otherwise it's not capitalism for all. It works when you can manage your own finances.

The problem with this is the people on the safety net have for the most part already shown they aren't good at planning ahead--else they wouldn't be there in the first place. (Note: Disability income is a different kettle of fish entirely and I think should be handled differently.)

What we need to do is make it easier to climb out of the safety net. As it stands now you're facing practically a cliff--earn too much and you lose benefits that put you farther behind that you were when you were earning less. If you can't raise your income in one step enough to scale that cliff you probably can't get out of it.

 

[untermensche]

That is not a rational response.

It is totally useless nonsense.

As if your characterization of things without any supporting argument has any value.

Because you're preaching you can't provide a proper response to any disagreement with what you say.

I made a claim.

I said that all value is exchange value. I also claimed that all value is the result of labor.

Only a fool would call that preaching.

 

[PyramidHead]

That is not a rational response.

It is totally useless nonsense.

As if your characterization of things without any supporting argument has any value.

Because you're preaching you can't provide a proper response to any disagreement with what you say.

I made a claim.

I said that all value is exchange value. I also claimed that all value is the result of labor.

Only a fool would call that preaching.

Do you value something your friend or family member gave you as a personal gift because you can exchange it for something else?