Not if you try to think about the argument before reflexively posting what I already acknowledged was the most banal of approaches to criticizing the thought project of Marxism. I would venture to say that no contemporary Marxist thinker argues for anything else than the most radically democractic foundation of any future socialism; and neither did Marx. Even the Communist Manifesto calls for the union of all democratic parties to work towards socialist ideals; and Marx himself meant far more by the word “democracy” than anybody today would be willing to have it encompass: doing away with the principle of representative government and, ultimately, the bourgeois state, replacing it with the free association of equals.
“The excess of the value that labourers embody in commodities relative to the value they require for their own reproduction measures the exploitation of labour in production” (Harvey, Limits to Capital, 23). Capitalism requires wage labor, which, in order so that profits may accrue to their employer, must be paid less than the value of their labor.
A) I *explicitly *said it need not of necessity be oppressive, but that it will become so in the absence of controls. Such controls could, for example, be ethical–that is to say, the free market could be maximally free as a market, but a sense for the need to consider the well-being of others would proclude its becoming oppressive; more radical Marxists than I might disagree, perhaps. (See c).)
B) The explanation about why it will in real life tend to become oppressive is what you’re looking for? Sure thing.
C) From b) follows a more radical and more coherent diagnosis than my charitable a): namely that for capitalism not to become oppressive means that one of the inevitable definitional aspects of it (especially capital accumulation) will need to fall by the wayside: and then it won’t be capitalism anymore.
And here I was expecting you to debate an issue in Great Debates! Color me shocked you already know all truths! Why did you want definitions from me, then? Just to waste my time, or also to keep my Socialist ideals off the street another second or two?
Can you explain to me the Marxist theory of value and explain why it is failure?
What part of the analysis provided in Capital do you take issue with, exactly, in your dismissal of its axiomatic truths (they aren’t, actually, they are deductive truths, but I’ll waive the difference for you). And what can I provide you that will excite you? I’m dying to know.
Debating failed idealogies here is not worth my time.
to see what was behind the assertion.
Can I? I suppose that I can. But it is a waste of time, given it has been done here before to no result. The heterogenity of the inputs, the importance of the non labor factors in the production from the process to the actual organisation, to the ignorance of the demand … the errors of the labor value are long. The idea you can assert exploitation on this simplistic basis is very silly to anyone who has a proper education in actual modern economics.
all of its pretensions to the analysis of the economic value, but then the works of 19e century philosophes I do not care to spend time on, any more than one should use the writing of Darwin for primary biology studies now, as I am not a historian and I already read the economic history in the university.
I find it enough to note that your comment is based on assertions from the marxist analysis, an analysis that has failed many times. Anyone holding these ideas at this point in history, a discussion will not be worth the time.
Ah yes, I knew I remembered a discussion in the past: so yes, it is not useful to have a ‘debate’. Hellestal has more fluent english than I do, so spinning in circles is not interesting.
Then I would much appreciate it if you could stop wasting my time in the future opening discussions you are not willing to follow through on. It is a minor courtesy I am sure you will be able to honor.
““The excess of the value that labourers embody in commodities relative to the value they require for their own reproduction measures the exploitation of labour in production” (Harvey, Limits to Capital, 23). Capitalism requires wage labor, which, in order so that profits may accrue to their employer, must be paid less than the value of their labor.”
Which effectively means that the worker pays the boss’s wages, yet oddly it’s always spoken of as the other way round.
Oh, and: what is it with the need which you and Hellestal apparently share to denigrate my education? It’s not as though I run around suggesting that those who do not agree with me have no schooling, is it? I think we disagree, and that my arguments are better. You seem to think I am wrong because I disagree with what you have been taught, and what you have been taught must be true. Can’t you just say that without resorting to ad hominems about my education?
That is the very definition of this forum, wasting the time.
the pretension otherwise, it is very silly - particularly if one reads that old discussion and see how it went.
I think the linked page and the discussion explains this well enough and if it has not, then there is no method of explaining that will work to pass through the closed ears.
This is one reason why Western systems are superior: the recognition that people like Amy Goodman (bless her heart) don’t actually matter. Having people standing around in the street waving signs doesn’t actually *do *anything. There’s no reason to overreact and shoot them or denounce them as terrorists. That just makes people sympathize with them and wonder if maybe they have a point. Like when these autocrats jail bloggers of all people, you just gotta shake your head.
Is Zizek right? I think that he is, but not in the sense you are suggesting he implies. I think he is right to say that China will not become more democratic because it becomes more capitalistic: this is the post-Cold War fantasy. I think he is right that global capitalism cannot afford global democracy, because global capitalism requires cheap labor (Hellestal’s big triumph in the other thread was his “AND THEN EVERYBODY DIES!!” logical outcome of capitalism uplifting everybody to the same standard of living…). And China’s oligarchy seema, so far, willing to supply that labor. As far as I know anything about China, that is. Russia, I am not sure.
But I don’t think he is necessarily right if you are right to imply he means this may also be a future for the West, simply because it need not be. The West’s capitalist system can afford democracy as long as it has the peripheral states available for cheap labor and cheap resources, for given values of democracy, at least.
Interestingly, I don’t think so. I think that if that discussion hasn’t convinced someone, it’s a failure of my argument. You think that it’s a failure of the person you are trying to convince. We’re in a strange kind of agreement! You think if I am not convinced by you, it’s my fault. I think if you are not convinced by me, it’s my fault, too, at least up to the point were you put your fingers in your ears before moaning about my lack of education.
I think that for a message board this idea is a very silly blown-up pretension. What I see is a discussion where a party has a fixed idea and does not show any desire or maybe ability to learn something different. This is sterile and boring.
So what would it take to convince you that my points have value? Because you have “desire and ability to learn”, am I right? It’s just me who does not?
You would have to show an ability to respond to the critiques in that thread and to show you can go to address the identified lack of understandings as about the issue of the price discrimination or other absolute lack of understanding that was displayed. without a pretension set of complaining about the responses and other hand waviing complaining.
Fair enough. If I provide this, will you give me your understanding of what the labor theory of value entails in Marxist thought, and explain why you think it is wrong, without resorting to “all economists I read say so”? Also, a specific post in that thread for reference would be nice. We can go to a separate thread for that, if our kind host here would rather we don’t derail this one.
Leftist thought has mostly drifted away from Marxism. There’s lots of people who would draw inspiration from Marxism or present themselves as some sort of post-Marixst, but Zizek is one of the few prominent thinkers these days who is close to a traditional Marxist. I think presenting one small aspect of his economic ideas without that context (which didn’t show up until pretty far down the page) makes it really difficult to actually discuss them!
I agree that what happened with the putative Marxist states doesn’t necessarily affect intellectual Marxism. However, I think the bigger problem isn’t just the terror of the “Marxist” states, it’s that every attempt during the 20th century to make something other than a liberal democratic government with a free market economy and some sort of welfare state ended in failure while the standard of living in those democracies kept going up and up. Grandiose ideologies in general are just a hard sell these days.
I do think that the success of those welfare states in creating a stable middle class is something Marx clearly did not anticipate. Sure, these days with globalization the middle class in the developed world seems to be somewhat on the retreat, but it’s growing hugely in the developing world. Everyone loves to bitch about the status quo but I really doubt we’ll see a situation anytime soon in which large numbers of people are dissatisfied enough to roll the dice on anyone’s ideological-based governmental experiments as they were during the 20th century.
(Er, yeah, so jumping around with the quote responses a bit.)
Imperialism isn’t the same thing as liberal democracy though. Admittedly, yes, the development of those Western liberal democracies in the often benefited enormously from the imperialism that came before, but particularly in Europe the final stage of liberal democracy came with the end of imperialism.
And on the democide front, like I said above it’s not just Communism, it’s EVERY movement that cropped up in the 20th century to oppose the liberal democratic capitalist version of modernity led to economic stagnation at best, butchery at worst.
Capitalism requires labor not be too expensive, but there’s no rule that says workers have to be living in abject poverty. It’s true that pure unregulated capitalism tends to move wealth disproportionately towards capital, but western democracies have historically been able to hinder and mitigate that process. In the days before globalization really took off, western countries got along well enough using mostly home-grown labor that enjoyed a relatively high standard of living. Sure, corporations these days prefer to use cheap overseas labor, but capitalism got along just fine without it. Eventually as the standard of living goes up in those countries, that cheap labor is going to go away. That process is already starting in China, as the really bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturing jobs are leaving for other countries.