Shit, I just realized that I’m letting you pull me into the labyrinth. I refuse to go.
The problem is that this stuff continually insists on oversimplifying things. Marx and Engels use simplifying assumptions and build everything on them. Here’s one:
Simply not so. The assumption here is that I can take any person, apply a set amount of training to them, and produce a certain “intensification” of the labor they produce, which I can then multiply by the simple labor to get value added.
People aren’t machines. There are some people who can make magnificent chairs on my machinery with little to no training. There are others who won’t ever be able to make a decent chair. What would you say was the intensification coefficient for the value added to artwork by, say, Van Gogh?
I see. You know why it can’t be explained? Because of the initial assumption that value is a function of labor. The hole analogy pretty much gets at the root of it. The value of something is based on how badly people want it. The chair you just made is of no value to me because I already have chairs. However, it may be of great value to Bill, because he needs chairs and thinks yours are the best. The value of something is a measure of how badly people want it. Maybe this is the part that goes on “behind the backs of the producers”.
You’re leading me down the primrose path by asking me to identify for you the exact place where I add value. That sucks me into the assumptions of your argument that I disagree with. Adding value isn’t like pouring water into a glass. The value added by labor isn’t a measure of the labor, it’s a measure of the desire of other people to use the item produced.
Yep, correct so far. Eventually, I may quit selling chairs and start selling tables. After a certain amount of time, no more table are needed, but some people now need chairs. It’s a self-correcting system. Because I don’t want to be broke, I quit making things people don’t want to buy.
You act as if, all of sudden, all of the items being produced are going to no longer be needed and the economy will come to a screeching halt. For one thing, this scenario is happening every day. Right now, some company is struggling while another is growing phenomenally. You can’t isolate one example and act like the whole economy is moving in lockstep.
Take the Depression, for instance. You act as if the economy completely failed and capitalism came to a standstill. The economy slowed down, it did not fail. Left alone, it could have recovered quite quickly. Unfortunately, FDR and his cronies came in and decided to rescue everyone, and threw a whole bunch of money into propping up failing businesses. Thus extending the Depression by years. Or in Marx/Engels simplification: Too many chairs were being made and people were being laid off, so the government decided to give money to the chair makers so they wouldn’t have to fire people or change their business strategies. So, more worthless chairs were being made–on taxpayer dollars.
The hell of it is, we’re still doing it. We’re still buying up excess agricultural products for no other purpose than to keep them off the market and artificially inflate the price.
Fantastic. Because of this the average person (me) can purchase all sorts of goods that help improve his life. Hell, I can purchase the tools myself at a fairly low price and build my own chairs if I want.
[/q]
And I’m sure many are built better then chairs were in the past. Of course you’re probably going to be paying a higher price for those. I expect my dining table and chairs to last me through the next 50 years. I might have to reglue the chair and possibly refinish.
**
Or I might just decide that my factory should build some other wood product. And even if I do end up firing some people how is this a flaw in capitalism? We don’t live in a static bubble and things do change from year to year.
**
We seem to have been pretty successful here. Even during the Great Depression the GNP was increasing every year after 1929. Except for maybe a year or two where it slid back or remained the same. And poverty in industrialized capitalist nations seems better then in other nations.
Nonono. The only simplification is coming from your end. Again with a quote (don’t worry it’s short)
**
This was dealt with in several chapters of Capital. I’m not going to address it because it deals with a seperate issue, speculation and non-commodity value. Right now I’d like to limit the discussion to commodities.
**
But what then creates value? Specificly what creates value which allows surplus value to be extracted and transformed into wealth? Labor of course. There is only one way to determine if 2 tables are equal to 4 chairs. And that is by comparing the ammount of labor that went into production. Of course in our society this is fogged with a series of abstractions. But at the root of it is that pesky Labor theory of Value.
**
It’s not value added by labor, but value created by labor. Many people desire air to breath, but it has no value, because no labor is required to use it. Likewise, fresh water has no value in an area abundent with it. In an area where you must expend labor to get water it has value.
**
I’m sorry I oversimplified. Actually we both oversimplified. Sometimes a neseccary step. Go back and read my first posts, I believe they adequetly deal with this issues you bring up.
I’m not even going to touch this one. This is a whole nother debate. If you want, go open up another thread. I’m betting Kimstu and gadarene will come in and argue with you on that one.
See, there you go again. Your simplifying assumption is that value is somehow a quality of the product. We say that the chair has value, so you conclude that this is a feature of the chair. If you want any of the subsequent arguments to hold weight with me, you’re gonna have to convince me of this, because you yourself offer evidence that this is not so.
If I say that a chair has value, it is an elliptical statement. Fully expanded, it would be, “The chair has value to X”, where X is a person who wants the chair. The amount of value it has is a function of how badly X wants it. I’ll say again: The value of the chair is not a function of the work that produced it, but a function of X’s desire.
If the chair’s value were a function of the labor, then it would not be possible to produce too many chairs. Yet, you yourself have said that capitalists may make too many chairs.
Look at it like this: If you had a hundred chairs, you would probably figure that was more than you needed. You might even be willing to trade me a few of them for a table. On the other hand, if you had only one chair, you might decide that a table was of no use without a chair and be unwilling to trade it to me for any number of tables. The value of the chairs, to you, is a result of your perceived need.
Let’s say that a chair and “a bread” take the same amount of labor to produce. You have made three chairs, and I have made three breads. Should I trade you a bread for a chair? They are of equal value, so it should not make any difference to me whether I have chairs or breads or a combination of the two. As it turns out, I would like to sit in a chair and eat a bread, so I trade a bread to you for a chair. Actually, I can live without chairs, but you cannot live without food, so you may be willing to trade me two chairs for a bread. Once again, the value is a function of your desire, not the labor input. The labor input can result in things that you deem valuable, but it does not in and of itself define value.
I notice you added the qualifier, “in an area abundent [sic] with it.” Doesn’t that tell you something?
Your whole theory rests on this “pesky Labor Theory of Value”. So far, you insist this theory to be true, but offer no evidence, and insist on ignoring evidence to the contrary.
jmullaney:
I am assuming that you mean a value-adding employee. I am not particularly interested in a foray into semantics. My labor does result in our services being more valuable. However, that increase is not a function of the amount or intensity of the labor I contribute. It is a function of how much my labor makes our services desirable to the customer. Which is why I am paid on salary, rather than by the hour.
Never contend with a Sicillian when death is on the balance.
Never get into a argument on economics with Marxists. Those folks are pros.
Still…
The thing is, you’re wrong. A primary driving force of humanity is the search for art - or pleasure, which is basically the same thing. Why do we buy expensive cars? Because they look nicer and are more fun to drive. Why do we eat in restaurants? Because it tastes better than bread and Spam. Why do we buy televisions? Because we laugh at the shows. An object’s value comes from how much people like it. This is relative, subjective and totally unpredictable. A leisure society - which we have - follows different rules than a simple industrial society.
On an unrelated note - what’s the Marxist take on Bill Gates, history’s greatest capitalist? Was he born a member of the opressive middle class? Does he rob from the poor by selling them expensive software? Does he exploit his workers by paying them $90K a year? Not to mention stock options! The People want to know!
OK, I’m confused about this whole labor == value thing.
Let’s hypothesize:[ul][li]I build a robot.[/li][li]It takes me years of hard work and research (all labor) to build this robot.[/li][li]By your logic, the value of the robot is the labor I have put into it.[/li][li]At my current job, I have worked several years and earned less than a million dollars.[/li][li]Therefore, the upper limit on the value of the robot is a million dollars.[/li][/ul]
Correct so far?
[ul][li]The robot I have built runs on solar power.[/li][li]The robot I have built knows how to build chairs, ‘breads’, and more robots.[/li][li]It thus costs me nothing for labor to build chairs, breads, and robots.[/li][li]I sell my chairs and bread, and become MegaChairAndBakery.com.[/li][li]I make several billion dollars because I can make bread and chairs for cost of materials alone.[/li][/ul]
Questions:
Did the value of my original robot change from $1,000,000 to several billion? How? I added no more labor to it. Do you think someone would pay me much more than $1,000,000 to buy my robot?
Since no labor goes into my bread, is the value really zero? I know by your logic that the materials I use only have value because of the labor put into getting them to my front door. What if my robot knows how to mine for metals, grow wheat and wood?
If I have to hire someone to maintain the robot, or at least distribute the bread, I assume that we then must add their labor to the ‘value’ of the bread. Did the robot become a ‘means of production’? If it is the hypothetical robot that can mine the metal and grow the wheat, is it a member of the proletariat? Am I exploiting it? Will it revolt against me?
As the robot makes more robots to multiply the quantities I can produce, does the value of each individual robot change? Does the first robot maintain much more value than each of the identical copies, because no labor goes into them? Or does the value of the first robot equal the value of all other robots, which decreases as more are created?
You claim that goods have value because people have to labor to produce them. If a good requires no labor then it has no value. But this makes no sense. I can go out in my backyard and pick an apple for no labor. Does that mean that the apple has no value? Yet there are identical apples on the shelves of the supermarkets that did require labor to cultivate, transport, store, and keep track of. Why do those apples have value while the apple in my back yard has no value?
My apple is just as valuable as the other apple. Just because I didn’t pay for it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. How about this. I value my wife’s love. Now, how much labor does that love take to produce? If she just loves me and I don’t have to labor to get that love does that mean that her love is valueless?
Then you say that Marx and Engels have of course taken into account the fact that some people’s labor is more valuable than others. But you say that without explaining why it doesn’t demolish the labor theory of value. It’s like saying, “Of course Marx and Engels knew that pixies don’t exist. It says right here in Das Pixital that pixies don’t exist. Now let me continue with my pixie theory of value.” You have to do better then show that Marx considered this objection to his theories, you have to show why it is not a fatal objection.
The answer to the conundrum is that items do not have a fixed, objective value. Different people value differnt goods differently. If there were an objective standard of value then there would be no need to exchange goods–since your table is worth exactly two chairs you gain nothing by the exchange.
Let me explain further. Right now I have a desk. Even if you offered me a desk for free and offered to haul it out to my house for free I still wouldn’t place much value on the new desk. I have no need for it. But my wife’s work chair is broken. She needs a new one. There are millions of people in America today who would not pay $79.99 for a new office chair at Office Max. My wife would. What is the difference between my wife and those other people? According to Marx the chair has exactly the same value both to my wife and to the others. Why is my wife willing to pay for the chair yet others are not? I believe it is because they put a different value on the chair. Some people would buy the chair if it was $69.99, or $39.99. For some it would have a negative value…if it is ugly or out of style they’d pay a garbageman to take it away and throw it in the landfill.
So this explains how a capitalist can make a profit. She takes raw materials that others value less than she does. She pays for labor that the workers value less than she does. She transports the chairs in trucks, the use of which the truckers value less than she does. And she sells the chairs to people who value the chairs more than she does. She can create chairs that have more value than the labor and materials used to create them because people want the chairs more than they want the labor and materials. The difference between what it cost to produce the chair and what people are willing to pay for it is her profit.
This is the key. There is no objective standard of value. How much is a gold nugget worth? One day it is worth a million dollars, the next it is a worthless rock. How much is a chair worth? If you have no chair and need one it is very valuable, perhaps worth $79.99. The next day you have a chair, so another chair is only worth $17.99 to you. Next year you are moving to Florida, so the chair is worthless and you give it to your neighbor or toss it on the bonfire. This is why Marx is wrong, the chair’s value is not given to it by how much labor it takes to produce, but by how much someone is willing to pay for it.
So now that I’ve explained everything, will you please stop with the Marxism already and lets go debate something sensible like reincarnation or the ten greatest westerns of all time…
Thanks Alessan. I love you too. Seriously, I’m definetely not a pro at this. I’m in this debate over my head, I figured I should start to back up some claims in another thread. I do apologize for any clummsiness or restating or backpeddaling on my part. You will probably see a fair ammount of it.
Anyway, I was going to respond to everyone else, but I have to run and go see Cecil B. Demented. I’ll get to everyone tomorrow. Needless to say I do have answers and rebuttals, they’ll just have to wait.
Also, I know you guys won’t do it, but I’m posting the link to Marx’s explanation of the labor theory of value for people to read. If anyone does read it let me know.
This contains basicly every argument I’ll make. We can all save ourselves a lot of time if you go and read it. You can then comment on what Marx says and I’ll defend that.
If the value of something is totally dependent on the labor it took to create it, is it ever possible to add more labor to something and make it go down in value? If so, explain how that fits into the Labor Theory of Value. If not, explain how it is that a horse-drawn plow is worth less now than it was 50 years ago, even though it would take far more labor to make one (the special machine tools no longer exist)?
Why is it that old houses go down in value, even though their construction was far more labor intensive than new houses?
Why did Japanese cars become more expensive than American cars, even though their cars require much less physical labor to build?
Let me give you an example of how an evil capitalist creates value: Jack Welsh recently became CEO of General Electric, at times the large corporation on Earth. One of his first tasks was to re-energize the company around a new management process known as ‘six sigma’. Six Sigma is a methodology for rooting out waste and inefficiency in all aspects of a business. It is derived from engineering and scientific methods.
Anyway, Jack trained a team of people to go in and apply his ‘six sigma’ methods to an assembly line. After they were done, the defect rate dropped from 3% to .0002%. The quality of the parts went way up. Therefore, the company could now make more of these items for the same cost (and the same amount of labor) and charge even more for them on the market. I repeat: Labor per unit went down, price per unit went up. Explain using Marxist principles, please.
Now, Six Sigma has been applied throughout the company. 70% of all employees have to be certified in Six Sigma by 2001. This required an investment of 500 million dollars by GE. It was a big risk. But, a year later, GE had saved almost 2 billion dollars from process improvements due to Six Sigma. Check out GE’s stock price since Welsh took over.
Oh, and in case you want to use this as an example of greedy capitalists getting rich at the expense of workers… GE has been using the money to raise salaries, hire new employees, step up employee training, and offer a bunch of new benefits. Oh, and most of us are not unionized.
Oh, BTW: Air is not free because it is devoid of labour - it’s free because it is not scarce. Scarcity often IS a factor in the value of something. To the extent that labor often is a factor in scarcity, it contributes to value. That’s partly why a Steinway piano costs so much money. But a Steinway wouldn’t be valuable at all if it sounded like a Kazoo, even if it took the same amount of labor to build it.
Here’s another big meta-question for you: If labor is the sole factor in the value of something, explain how our economy has increased ten-fold in the last 50 years, even though the population hasn’t even doubled, and people are working shorter weeks? Where did all that extra value come from?
No. Despite all of its flaws it appears that through capitalism the industrialized nations have achieved the highest standards of living. I don’t see how capitalism is destined to fail any time soon.
If you bear me the indulgence, I’d like to repost one of my old posts. Huge apologies to those (such as oldscratch) who have already read it, but I feel that it is my best argument against a total free market.
[/quote]
**Regulation **
Marginal Costs and Benefits
First, a concept. For the benefit of those who aren’t economists and also for those who may have forgotten:
Marginal costs are the infinitesimal extra costs (be they wealth or utility) incurred when output increases infinitesimally.
Marginal benefits are the infinitesimal extra benefits (be they wealth or utility) incurred when output increases infinitesimally.
If you have a problem with ‘infinitesimal’, instead think in terms of how many units of utility are added for one extra unit of output.
Suppose marginal benefits are larger than marginal costs. Then if output is increased by one unit, utility has a net increase. This is good. We should therefore increase output.
Suppose marginal costs are larger than marginal benefits. Then if output is decreased by one unit, utility has a net increase. This is good. We should therefore decrease output.
The optimal situation then is one for which marginal costs = marginal utility.
What is the point of this? Well regulation has marginal costs and benefits too. The optimum level of regulation is that for which the marginal costs and benefits are in synch.
Personal philosophy affects to what extent you believe the marginal costs and benefits exist and how strong they are. Clearly Oldscratch will end up firmly on the side of lots of regulation, Libertarian on the side of little. My aim with this is just to clarify.
Anyhow, on with the benefits:
Benefits of Regulation
[ul]
[li]Confidence is key to our financial system. There is always the risk of wholesale collapse of faith resulting in economic ruin. Regulation seeks to ensure that failure of one participant in the market does not threaten the whole system. Parties therefore have increased faith in participating.[/li]
[li]Asymetric information – particularly in retail markets (individuals rather than institutions). If suboptimal choices are made then we have an inefficient allocation of financial resources. This is particularly important when the choices have significant impact on the future economic welfare of individuals (think choices about investment, life assurance, pensions). A regulator can insist on full information disclosure in an understandable form.[/li]
[li]Conflicts of interest – regulation enforces ‘Chinese walls’ to stop insider information giving unfair advantage (which would cause loss of faith in the system).[/li]
[li]Negotiation – individuals are weak compared to institutions. Regulators can redress this balance, for example by insisting on price controls, regulation of selling practices, right to terminate agreements, cooling-off periods etc.[/li]
[li]Capital adequacy – (for those into Captial Asset pricing theories, this is the reduction of systematic risk). Regulation can ensure that institutions hold sufficient capital to cover their liabilities. I’m thinking in particular here of the insurance and pensions industries.[/li]
[li]Competence and Integrity of financial practicioners – Regulators will insist of qualifications and membership of a professional body and prevent and individual from working in a particular industry if they are not ‘fit and proper’ to hold that position.[/li]
[li]Compensation schemes – Regulators can insist companies pay into a central fund for compensation of those who suffer due to company failure.[/li]
[li]Stock exchange requirements – Regulator will insist that companies fulfil entry and stability criteria and give disclosure. Individuals can then invest with the confidence that the company is being monitored for wrong practice.[/li]
[li]other – market should be transparent, orderly and provide protection from disaster in the case of failure by a third party.[/li][/ul]
Phew! Well that covers the benefits. Each of the above helps to increase utility. How about the costs?
Costs of Regulation
Direct Costs:
[ul]
[li]Regulation costs money. The regulator incurs considerable costs in regulating the system[/li]
[li]Companies incur considerable costs ensuring that they comply with the regulations.[/li]
[/ul]
The above results in higher taxation and higher fees for consumers.
Indirect Costs:
[ul]
[li]Investors and consumers may suffer a reduction in the level of care they take with respect to their choices, eg of their financial services provider. Protection reduces adverse consequences of bad decisions.[/li]
[li]There is an undermining of the sense of professional responsibility amongst intermediaries and advisers – “if my advice is bad then they’ll still be okay”[/li]
[li]There is a reduction in the consumer protection mechanism developed by the market itself. The idea that alienating your consumers is bad business practice, so the market would develop its own (possibly more efficient) checks and measures.[/li]
[li]Reduced product innovation – companies must comply with regulation; they may be worried that new products will not stand up to this or may be unprofitable because of it.[/li]
[li]Reduced competition – regulation is a constraint on the market and causes a barrier to entry.[/li]
[/ul]
The above indirect costs are all examples of moral hazard – a change of behaviour for the worse due to knowing that the consequences have been dulled.
So that deals with the reasons for (and against) regulation. However this regulation could take the form of government or self-regulation. What are the advantages and disadvantages here?
Self-regulation
Following on from this, it is worth considering the advantages and disadvantages of self-regulation:
Advantages
[ul]
[li]Implemented by those with the greatest incentive to achieve the maximum cost-benefit ratio.[/li]
[li]Responds rapidly to changes in market needs.[/li]
[li]Easier to persuade firms and individuals to co-operate with a self-regulatory organisation than a government bureaucracy.[/li]
[li]Governments may impose rules that are unnecessarily costly without achieving the desired aim.[/li][/ul]
Disadvantages
[ul]
[li]Closeness of regulator to the industry it is regulating. Danger that regulator accepts the industry’s point of view and is less in tune with views of third parties.[/li]
[li]Can lead to a weaker regime than is acceptable to customers and other members of the public. Even if operating efficiently, it can still lead to low public confidence. It is not enough that it is fair and objective – it must be seen to be fair and objective.[/li]
[li]May inhibit new entrants to the market by framing rules in such a way as to act as a barrier to entry.[/li]
[li]A regulatory body may be more efficiently run by achieving economies of scale through grouping its activities by function (ie regulation of all industries done centrally) rather than type of business.[/li][/ul]
Summing up
Firstly, apologies for the length of this post. I hope however that I have helped to identify the playing field, if not the goalposts. Additions/refutations/comments are of course welcomed.
Sam and smartass say no; oldscratch says yes. Both offer reasoning backing their assertion. I think a problem with the discussion is the different frames of reference being worked in. In captialism of course the labour cost is not the value. This is direct result of the system: the value is set by the market. In socialism however, the value is by definition the labour cost. This is one of its precepts.
Er… I had a point here but I think I dropped it about line 3…
if i buy 100 shares of IBM i instantly turn into a capitalist, if i sell the shares a week later i instantly cease to be a capitalist. HA! comparing some fat suburban couch potatoe to Henry Ford and John D Rockefellar(sp?) is like comparing an obese house cat to a man eating tiger. a corporation seperates ownership from control but we attach the word capitalist to this grossly diluted ownership. a GOOD capitalist stockholder is going to diversify and own a number of different stocks. we’re supposed to believe he could actually run any of the companies. a corporation is a form of COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP, a corporation is a form of COMMUNISM. we should drop nuclear bombs on all corporations where more than 50% ofthe stock is owned by the employees. (that was a joke, in case the to serious can’t figure it out)
technology has given us so much productivity we can saturate any REAL MARKET we want. i’m not supposed to buy a car to be a transportation machine. i’m supposed to buy a status symbol, a sex symbol. some commercial talks about figuring out whose house to drive a new car by 1st. what wolud my reaction to that be?
“honey the idiot next door is driving his new piece of crap buy our house again. should i ask him how much he will loose on depreciation this year?”
“no, he’s a libertarian. Ayn Rand never said anything about depreciation.”
I’ve never heard it that way, but yeah I guess so.
Swear?
Then you are lucky your boss does not fire you.
Um… no really, do you want to play semantic games or not? Desire, value – same thing in this context. If someone desires something more they are willing to give more for it, thus its value is increased. We can do this all day, Smartass.
:eek: Lemur866 is a mutant!! Run away!! He’s using telekenetic powers to pick up apples. Help, help!!!
Well, you have a somewhat interesting point. If I have a dollar to my name and put it into an interest bearing bank account, then I’m a “capitalist” too. The bank lends my dollar out to someone and it is metaphorically “out there making the bank money” for which I get some small share. But it isn’t that there is something wrong with capitalists – it is the nature of the system that it is prone to catastophic failure. I’m sure Marx was at times a bitter poor buy who disliked the rich, but that doesn’t negate his theories.
But, last I checked and IIRC, one percent of people do own 40% of all the companies in the U.S.
Why do you consider my historical and factual examples as attacks while expecting me to simply accept the Marxist theory as a workable alternative to applied capitalism? I am attempting to illustrate the problems with your philosophy through historical evidence while you continue to try to shout me down with theoretical quotes. Now where is the sense in that?
I suppose I could repeat what many poster in this thread have already explained to you. I suppose I could go over each salient point until I’m blue in the face. The fact is, it won’t do any good because you have set yourself up as the staunch defender of communism and you quote from Marx and Engles as rigorously as religious fundamentalist quote from scripture.
The fact is, you have the distict advantage of arguing a phylosophy which you claim has never been correctly applied, leaving many of us to defend a system which, with all it’s faults, seems to have worked out fairly well in places where it was permited to fluorish.
I submit that it’s very easy for you to preach the virtues of communism while never having to answer for it’s many faults (which seem to be obvious to everyone but you and a select few others who think like you). I completely agree with a previous poster who aptly observed that we are discussing these issues from two different metaphysics. We will not agree until we can meet on some sort of common ground. Since that is not very likely, this debate becomes obtuse and pointless.
Finally, I am certainly not ignoring your prior links. Like I said before, I read them and found them to be lacking. You address theories and high sounding moral positions. You never suggest applicable examples of your theories and when you are called on your arguments by other debators, you dazzle them with more verbatim quotes.
Back to the OP then… Yes, capitalism has it’s faults. No intelligent person is going to deny that fact. Unchecked capitalism would be very bad. Any socio-political system ever invented is doomed to failure if applied in it’s strictest and most pure form. Communism is no exception. What you fail to realize or accept is that capitalism of 100 years ago was different from capitalism of 50 years ago and even more different than the capitalism of today. Unlike communism, capitalism is not a static system of economics and rules. It flexes and bends to societal needs and morals as society evolves. Now capitalism may or may not evolve into something completely unrecongnizeable in the next 100 years. But if it does it will do so in order to conform to social priorities. In contrast, communism tends to want to compel and establish a social order in which it’s theories can be successfully applied. This is painfully evident in that you continue to quote theorems of communism which were invented 100 to 150 years ago. Surely, if communism was workable, there would have been significant modifications to it’s statutes along the way. I have not heard of any significant progress in the communist manifesto since it’s inception. Even the US constitution, a document many claim to be immutable, has changed over time to better fit societal needs.
So in closing, you may continue to sit and ponder in your ivory tower the brilliance of this pet political theory of yours, regurgetating quotes of Engles and Marx until you have memorized them by heart. Just don’t get so bogged down in theoretical models that you forget about the real world. And as for you comparisson of Capernicus’ theorems to those of Marx - Capernicus was proven to be quite correct about his observations by many other scientist who came after him and built on his knowledge. I don’t think you can make that claim for Marx. In fact plenty of accomplished sociologist and economist have proven his theorems untennable. Hmmm… Go figure.