Happy 200th
May 5, 2018 11:33 AM Subscribe
Happy Birthday Karl Marx, you were right! Why Marx’s original critique of capitalism and description of class struggle are more relevant than ever (NYT Opinion)
Also this seems the appropriate place to relay a little snippet of a conversation I had last week that I'm still chuckling to myself about.
Me: Have you read Capital?
Comrade: God no.
Me: Do I have to read Capital?
Comrade: Mate, you read Capital, you won't do any activism for three years straight. We'll leave that to the academics.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 12:22 PM on May 5, 2018 [14 favorites]
Me: Have you read Capital?
Comrade: God no.
Me: Do I have to read Capital?
Comrade: Mate, you read Capital, you won't do any activism for three years straight. We'll leave that to the academics.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 12:22 PM on May 5, 2018 [14 favorites]
Hahaha post titles like this are what keeps me coming back here :)
posted by litleozy at 12:34 PM on May 5, 2018
posted by litleozy at 12:34 PM on May 5, 2018
Understanding Marx will straighten out your head.
posted by phooky at 12:40 PM on May 5, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by phooky at 12:40 PM on May 5, 2018 [5 favorites]
But supposing one did want to read Capital in English in a good translation, which version should one read? Amazon lists a thousand questionable $0.99 ebooks and a penguin edition which may actually be a different (worse) translation than listed.
posted by Pyry at 12:54 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 12:54 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
A few years ago, I read Volume One of Capital, all the way through except for the long appendix at the end. I wanted to do it so that, when I read the latest dumb philippic about Marx, I would have a real, textual basis for determining just how dumb it was. Nevertheless, I dreaded doing it because I expected the book to be extremely hard. I had worked through some of Marx's early works, written in a Hegelian idiom and with all the syntactical and conceptual convolutions of German idealism. To my surprise, Capital was a remarkably readable book. I could sometimes get through a hundred pages a day, which I can't even come close to with any other book written under the influence of the German philosophical tradition.
Moreover, I was struck by the beauty of the book's construction. I think that this is related to the relative ease of reading it. Both conceptually and structurally, Capital is built on the careful balancing of theory and history. The book's argument depends on the ways that these two modes of thought illuminate each other or become each other's truth. There are, of course, particularly difficult parts, as Marx himself warns, like the section on commodity fetishism. But that is also one of the sections where Marx's rhetorical brilliance shines through as well.
In any event, I'm very glad I did it, and I recommend it to others.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 12:57 PM on May 5, 2018 [31 favorites]
Moreover, I was struck by the beauty of the book's construction. I think that this is related to the relative ease of reading it. Both conceptually and structurally, Capital is built on the careful balancing of theory and history. The book's argument depends on the ways that these two modes of thought illuminate each other or become each other's truth. There are, of course, particularly difficult parts, as Marx himself warns, like the section on commodity fetishism. But that is also one of the sections where Marx's rhetorical brilliance shines through as well.
In any event, I'm very glad I did it, and I recommend it to others.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 12:57 PM on May 5, 2018 [31 favorites]
If you're going to read Capital, David Harvey's lectures are a good accompaniment. The book itself becomes much easier after Chapters 1 & 2, and not just from the intellectual equivalent of bone growth coming from slamming your head into a wall over and over.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 1:15 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 1:15 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
The blog The Charnel-House (previously on MeFi) has a ton of Marx biographies/introductions up today. Other resources currently available online include Marxists.org (a large archive of both primary and secondary sources), Tom Bottomore's A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (great explanations of basic concepts), selections from Bertell Ollman's Alienation (a more general text than it sounds like), Raymond Williams's Marxism and Literature (ditto), and Peter Worsley's Marx and Marxism.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:32 PM on May 5, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:32 PM on May 5, 2018 [6 favorites]
I was a pretty ardent Communist for a while after reading the Manifesto. Now, I'm just an ardent Socialist. That said, even if I don't agree with Marx's proposed alternative to Capitalism, that doesn't mean Marx's critiques of Capitalism are wrong. That's something I really want to drive into people's heads when they think about Marx/Marxism/Communism/Socialism, or anything outside of the bullshit Capitalism framework. Marx made valid criticisms of Capitalism that are worth thinking about and using to try to either fix the system or replace it—even if you don't replace it with Marx's system!
posted by SansPoint at 1:32 PM on May 5, 2018 [43 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 1:32 PM on May 5, 2018 [43 favorites]
Capital is really good. I wish it weren’t treated quite so much like a religious tome but it remains worthy of attention today.
One thing that surprised me about it is that Marx considered himself to be working in the tradition of Adam Smith. His whole analysis rests on the idea that markets are reasonably efficient.
One unfortunate thing is that it deliberately elides issues that have become way more important today. Finance, credit, and fiat money (and their connections) are obviously hugely important and Marx chose to ignore them for his earlier volumes, and then died.
posted by vogon_poet at 1:39 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
One thing that surprised me about it is that Marx considered himself to be working in the tradition of Adam Smith. His whole analysis rests on the idea that markets are reasonably efficient.
One unfortunate thing is that it deliberately elides issues that have become way more important today. Finance, credit, and fiat money (and their connections) are obviously hugely important and Marx chose to ignore them for his earlier volumes, and then died.
posted by vogon_poet at 1:39 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Crises of Capitalism,by Marxist scholar David Harvey, animated.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 1:48 PM on May 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 1:48 PM on May 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
Reading Capital - a lecture series with David Harvey. I think he would describe himself as a scholar of Marx rather than a Marxist scholar, though.
The 17 Contradictions of Capitalism.
Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason
posted by Grangousier at 2:14 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
The 17 Contradictions of Capitalism.
Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason
posted by Grangousier at 2:14 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Something's happening in the world when The Economist of all things publishes a broadly laudatory article about Marx called Rulers of the world: read Karl Marx!
The Economist!
posted by Kattullus at 2:17 PM on May 5, 2018 [12 favorites]
The Economist!
posted by Kattullus at 2:17 PM on May 5, 2018 [12 favorites]
Thank you, everyone, for the links. I had been wanting to learn more about all this. It’s a glaring hole in my education. But somehow, I read every single Shakespearien play. *sigh*
posted by greermahoney at 2:23 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by greermahoney at 2:23 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'm an ardent cynic I guess, I really liked a lot of Capital but I generally cannot stand the people who have read it and have gone all fundamentalisty "its science" , "you don't understand man," dogmatic and doctrinaire and faux tough and blood thirsty. (shudder)
posted by Pembquist at 2:28 PM on May 5, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Pembquist at 2:28 PM on May 5, 2018 [7 favorites]
Something's happening in the world when The Economist of all things publishes a broadly laudatory article about Marx called Rulers of the world: read Karl Marx!Back in college, when I was a bit of a smart-ass, I took to referring to The Economist as "The E-Communist." I once wrote that on a social media site, you know, pour épater la bourgeoisie, and some guy, assuming that I was attacking that venerable organ of the free-traders from the right, launched into a spirited defense of its ideological bona fides. And all I did was jumble up some letters.
The Economist!
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 2:29 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Well it's not that far-fetched to think that Marx's work bears a relationship to modern science, in particular but not limited through a critique of economic theory. The point is that science as practiced by people is attached to ideology and presuppositions, and Marx and the connection to Hegel do have some ideas and arguments to offer in that regard, e.g. in terms of how science is philosophized.
Second, I don't know if Harvey has said whether he considers himself a Marxist, but there are a number of arguments that would qualify him as a Marxist including the best argument being what he's doing is one of the best ways of being a modern Marxist, so that effectively and intelligibly makes him a "Marxist scholar of Marxism". For a Marxist, it is natural to question and deconstruct the objectification/alienation that being an expert in something necessitates being "neutral" or distanced from the subject of study as a coherent position. See, for example, critical theory.
posted by polymodus at 2:40 PM on May 5, 2018
Second, I don't know if Harvey has said whether he considers himself a Marxist, but there are a number of arguments that would qualify him as a Marxist including the best argument being what he's doing is one of the best ways of being a modern Marxist, so that effectively and intelligibly makes him a "Marxist scholar of Marxism". For a Marxist, it is natural to question and deconstruct the objectification/alienation that being an expert in something necessitates being "neutral" or distanced from the subject of study as a coherent position. See, for example, critical theory.
posted by polymodus at 2:40 PM on May 5, 2018
For my birthday, I got a copy of Gareth Stedman Jones' Karl Marx hoping to learn a little more about the intellectual background of Marx, but oh my christ it is hard going! Who knew there were so many revolutions and secret societies and political fights and repressions and...and...everything, in the mid-19th century? It turns out I know literally nothing about that period of European history, so the book is both eye-opening and a little like being hit in the head repeatedly by a hammer. (I don't even know what to read to remedy this lack of knowledge...where is the easy-to-read history that covers the entire continent, preferably with small words and lots of pictures?)
(Also happy birthday Karl!)
posted by mittens at 3:01 PM on May 5, 2018 [8 favorites]
(Also happy birthday Karl!)
posted by mittens at 3:01 PM on May 5, 2018 [8 favorites]
One thing that surprised me about it is that Marx considered himself to be working in the tradition of Adam Smith.
I mean AFAIK Smith is the first to explicitly formulate the labor theory of value, so I think it's fair that say that it's less that he considered himself to be working in the tradition as much as he just was.
posted by PMdixon at 3:02 PM on May 5, 2018 [9 favorites]
I mean AFAIK Smith is the first to explicitly formulate the labor theory of value, so I think it's fair that say that it's less that he considered himself to be working in the tradition as much as he just was.
posted by PMdixon at 3:02 PM on May 5, 2018 [9 favorites]
mittens: where is the easy-to-read history that covers the entire continent, preferably with small words and lots of pictures?
You could do a lot worse than listen to the Revolutions podcast. It starts with the English Civil War, then does the American Revolution, but if you want to jump right into the good stuff, the third revolution is the French Revolution. I'd advise against skipping the Haitian and South American revolutions, but if you want to, after that the podcast focuses on 19th Century Europe. It's a lot of material, but it's good listening while doing other things.
posted by Kattullus at 3:10 PM on May 5, 2018 [11 favorites]
You could do a lot worse than listen to the Revolutions podcast. It starts with the English Civil War, then does the American Revolution, but if you want to jump right into the good stuff, the third revolution is the French Revolution. I'd advise against skipping the Haitian and South American revolutions, but if you want to, after that the podcast focuses on 19th Century Europe. It's a lot of material, but it's good listening while doing other things.
posted by Kattullus at 3:10 PM on May 5, 2018 [11 favorites]
Marx's 200th birthday has been getting a lot more (strangely positive) coverage in mainstream press than I would have expected... Financial Times, Vice, UK Independent, LA Times, UK Guardian, as well as the Economist and NYT pieces linked above...
Of course there's the left press, too, which has been covering it... Left Voice, Socialist Worker UK, Socialist Worker, WSWS, Socialist Alternative, Workers Vanguard... and probably a thousand other publications...
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:14 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Of course there's the left press, too, which has been covering it... Left Voice, Socialist Worker UK, Socialist Worker, WSWS, Socialist Alternative, Workers Vanguard... and probably a thousand other publications...
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:14 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Haitian revolution is key to understanding Bastille day in a Marxian context
posted by polymodus at 3:15 PM on May 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 3:15 PM on May 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
So, is anyone actually taking a day off or having a pot luck (which I presume would be the most equitable way to celebrate)?
posted by FJT at 3:19 PM on May 5, 2018
posted by FJT at 3:19 PM on May 5, 2018
A potluck? the venerable precursor to credit cards, the start of obligation and debt?
posted by fido~depravo at 3:24 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by fido~depravo at 3:24 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
It’s mostly just the start of too much potato salad
posted by The Whelk at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2018 [21 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2018 [21 favorites]
where is the easy-to-read history that covers the entire continent, preferably with small words and lots of pictures?
If it's pictures you're after, try Rius' Marx for Beginners
If you want a comprehensive history of the era, check out Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution (and subsequent Age of *) books
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
If it's pictures you're after, try Rius' Marx for Beginners
If you want a comprehensive history of the era, check out Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution (and subsequent Age of *) books
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
Future video from Berlin, 2045: I Hate You, Karl Marx!
Her Mandarin's quite good, and her message, heartfelt. Previously
posted by Rash at 3:37 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Her Mandarin's quite good, and her message, heartfelt. Previously
posted by Rash at 3:37 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
ah yes, the Workers Vanguard, publication of the Spartacist League, who (seriously) like to hand out flyers that say "BERNIE SANDERS: IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG"
posted by vogon_poet at 3:46 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by vogon_poet at 3:46 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Workers Vanguard, publication of the Spartacist League, who (seriously) like to hand out flyers that say "BERNIE SANDERS: IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG"
I don’t know, I find it somewhat comforting that at any time in history, any place in the world, there’s always some dickheads doing this.
posted by Jimbob at 4:02 PM on May 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
I don’t know, I find it somewhat comforting that at any time in history, any place in the world, there’s always some dickheads doing this.
posted by Jimbob at 4:02 PM on May 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
One unfortunate thing is that it deliberately elides issues that have become way more important today. Finance, credit, and fiat money (and their connections) are obviously hugely important and Marx chose to ignore them for his earlier volumes, and then died.
I highly recommend Disassembly Required: A Guide to Capitalism as it Actually Exists. The core premise is that the Marxist left and globalist econ people are essentially talking past each other because the marxist side hasn't bothered to learn much about how things changed after Marx's death. The goal of the book is to deep dive on the major features of capital as it currently operates, and provide actual arguments against these forms.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:07 PM on May 5, 2018 [17 favorites]
I highly recommend Disassembly Required: A Guide to Capitalism as it Actually Exists. The core premise is that the Marxist left and globalist econ people are essentially talking past each other because the marxist side hasn't bothered to learn much about how things changed after Marx's death. The goal of the book is to deep dive on the major features of capital as it currently operates, and provide actual arguments against these forms.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:07 PM on May 5, 2018 [17 favorites]
A side note to everybody discussing the merits of different English editions:
Any momentary feeling of of readability you might experience is entirely due to translation error.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 4:16 PM on May 5, 2018 [13 favorites]
Any momentary feeling of of readability you might experience is entirely due to translation error.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 4:16 PM on May 5, 2018 [13 favorites]
But supposing one did want to read Capital in English in a good translation, which version should one read?
The Penguin edition is fine.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:37 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Penguin edition is fine.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:37 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Nthing the recommendation of David Harvey as your tour guide through Capital, but his other stuff is also good on its own merits and has a lot for the folks who want more on how capitalism works now, especially from the neoliberal turn in the 1970s onwards.
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:18 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:18 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
I always figured that Marx probably thought of his theories as Science in the Hegelian sense (whatever that even means).....not as comparable to chemistry of physics or other empirical sciences of nature.
posted by thelonius at 8:12 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 8:12 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
-Understanding Karl Marx
-Karl Marx: Right ideas, wrong ideas?
-Karl Marx's core economic idea revisited
-Karl Marx a tool to 'win the future' for China, Xi Jinping says
posted by kliuless at 10:40 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
-Karl Marx: Right ideas, wrong ideas?
-Karl Marx's core economic idea revisited
-Karl Marx a tool to 'win the future' for China, Xi Jinping says
posted by kliuless at 10:40 PM on May 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
I would just like to inform anyone who is in doubt that y'all seem to be wretched revisionists who repudiate the immortal science of Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist-Cliffism for suspect ideologies which eschew class struggle and embrace liberalism. I also think many of y'all will not see a problem with this. Not trying to be aggressive, just trying to gauge what people's politics are.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 11:35 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by AnhydrousLove at 11:35 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Dear Anhydrous, I was going to open a can of whoop-ass on you for disparaging liberalism, but then I saw you are from Australia. Screw Tony Abbott! Gough Whitlam 4-ever! Ragging ragging red red ragging!
More generally, MetaFilter was, is, and always should be politically centered on Generation X guys who hate President Bush. LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING TO ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT YEAR IT IS.
It is also pretty friendly to leftists willing to hang out with (American-style) liberals, because punk rockers always throw the best parties. Australian-style Liberals will find themselves rather uncomfortable. (But since this is a thread celebrating Karl Marx, you probably already figured that last bit out.)
Also I am kind of drunk. But you should still read what I linked up there. And if you disagree you should change your politics. :)
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:06 AM on May 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
More generally, MetaFilter was, is, and always should be politically centered on Generation X guys who hate President Bush. LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING TO ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT YEAR IT IS.
It is also pretty friendly to leftists willing to hang out with (American-style) liberals, because punk rockers always throw the best parties. Australian-style Liberals will find themselves rather uncomfortable. (But since this is a thread celebrating Karl Marx, you probably already figured that last bit out.)
Also I am kind of drunk. But you should still read what I linked up there. And if you disagree you should change your politics. :)
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:06 AM on May 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
Brad DeLong and Deutsche Welle are like, the worst possible sources on Marxist or leftist political economic thought, because one's a self-identified neoliberal (who worked for Lawrence Summers and hates David Harvey) and the other is a propaganda arm of the European Union. Reading those articles was like asking religious people their opinion of atheism and being told the "reasons" why atheists are wrong.
posted by polymodus at 12:08 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by polymodus at 12:08 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
It seems a triumph of branding to me. The books are unreadable, the real-world legacy of Marxist regimes is catastrophic, yet the label ‘Marxist’ is still chic.
posted by Segundus at 1:32 AM on May 6, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 1:32 AM on May 6, 2018 [7 favorites]
From the Jacobin article, Marx the Journalist:
[sobs]
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:38 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
[R]eading through Marx’s Tribune dispatches, you can’t help but see an urgency, an excitement — almost an impatience — in his portrayals of some insurrections and crises in Europe and India. At times he wrote as if this particular rise in corn prices, or this little dust-up with authorities in Greece, was going to be the spark that would ignite revolution.surelythis.gif
[sobs]
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:38 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
yet the label ‘Marxist’ is still chic.
Like I was saying, that's like being told an 'Atheist' is trying to be chic. Really offbase however it's sliced.
posted by polymodus at 2:09 AM on May 6, 2018 [10 favorites]
Like I was saying, that's like being told an 'Atheist' is trying to be chic. Really offbase however it's sliced.
posted by polymodus at 2:09 AM on May 6, 2018 [10 favorites]
the real-world legacy of Marxist regimes is catastrophic
I saw someone post on Twitter, earlier, in “celebration” of the 200th, a map of where all the organised violence/deaths under communism in a certain country were. And I was left wondering what a similar map of deaths of people under capitalism would look like, and if it would be qualitatively different.
That’s the cool thing. Someone dies horribly in a communist system, communism is to blame. Someone dies horribly under a capitalist system, we can blame them being homeless, or uninsured, or they should have gotten themselves a better job, or their family should have helped, they should have tried raising money on GoFundMe, or hey dying of black lung down a coal mine was probably better than dying of starvation right? Shouldn’t have tried organising a union.
posted by Jimbob at 3:34 AM on May 6, 2018 [43 favorites]
I saw someone post on Twitter, earlier, in “celebration” of the 200th, a map of where all the organised violence/deaths under communism in a certain country were. And I was left wondering what a similar map of deaths of people under capitalism would look like, and if it would be qualitatively different.
That’s the cool thing. Someone dies horribly in a communist system, communism is to blame. Someone dies horribly under a capitalist system, we can blame them being homeless, or uninsured, or they should have gotten themselves a better job, or their family should have helped, they should have tried raising money on GoFundMe, or hey dying of black lung down a coal mine was probably better than dying of starvation right? Shouldn’t have tried organising a union.
posted by Jimbob at 3:34 AM on May 6, 2018 [43 favorites]
ah yes, the Workers Vanguard, publication of the Spartacist League, who (seriously) like to hand out flyers that say "BERNIE SANDERS: IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG"
The SL is often obnoxious, but they were right on that one!
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:24 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
The SL is often obnoxious, but they were right on that one!
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:24 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you're like me, the one part of Capital that you'll find really interesting is Part VIII, starting at chapter 26, on primitive accumulation, or, "how did rich people end up with all that money in the first place?"
posted by clawsoon at 5:44 AM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 5:44 AM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
there is also marx's 'fragment on machines' :P
also btw...
-Technology isn't an industry, it's a method of transforming the culture and economics of existing systems and institutions (that about Marx the spot)
-America is obsessed with the virtue of work. What about the virtue of rest?
-The Social Justice left is the only real hope for America's future (chief neoliberal shill!)
-Employment for societal usefulness, not for profit
posted by kliuless at 6:54 AM on May 6, 2018
also btw...
-Technology isn't an industry, it's a method of transforming the culture and economics of existing systems and institutions (that about Marx the spot)
-America is obsessed with the virtue of work. What about the virtue of rest?
-The Social Justice left is the only real hope for America's future (chief neoliberal shill!)
-Employment for societal usefulness, not for profit
posted by kliuless at 6:54 AM on May 6, 2018
Seems to me that Marx's analysis overcomplicates the fundamental reason why capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. The whole appropriation-of-labour-value thing is a red herring, to my way of thinking. The single worst feature of free-market capitalism is that the free market operates with an expectation of a roughly consistent percentage return on investment, regardless of investment size.
So it doesn't really matter whether the return on an investment is derived from appropriating workers' labour or from automation or from anything else; the simple fact remains that if you judiciously invest a relatively enormous amount, you can expect to make a relatively enormous return. This means that investors who already have a huge amount to invest will be the same ones who make most of what the market has to offer; and as long as the average expected return on investment is greater than the prevailing rate of inflation, this must inevitably lead to a concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands over time.
The oft-quoted alleged compensation for this - that investment promotes economic growth, which is good for everybody, so the poor get richer even though a tiny number of rich get richer at astronomically higher rates - doesn't address the downside of the resulting inequality, which is that wealth is inextricably bound up with political power (in fact, a person's wealth can be viewed as exactly a measure of the degree to which society as a whole has granted that person permission to do whatever the fuck they want without interference, which is political power); and power is inherently relative, so that concentration of even relative wealth into fewer and fewer hands must inevitably concentrate political power into those same hands, leading inevitably to an unaccountable oligarchy.
Now, it seems to me that the correct fix for this is to alter the ground rules for participation in trade in such a way that the larger any entity's investment portfolio becomes relative to the median, the higher the proportion of the returns on that portfolio will be appropriated by the State for indiscriminate redistribution across the citizenry. This rule should have just as much force, and be just as widely accepted, as the current ones that define the notion of private property and thereby make trade a thing in the first place. No more trickle-down economics; what I'm after is piss-down-raining economics.
Note that such a rule does not diminish in any way the augmented market's effectiveness as a decentralized mechanism for allocating resources to things that the citizenry as a whole considers important; no additional central planning is involved. But what it does do is act as a countervailing force to the current system's inherent bias toward concentration of political power.
It might cause some reduction in economic activity by way of reducing somewhat the advantages to be gained from economies of scale, but it seems to me that it should also at least compensate for that by increasing the number of small-scale economic players with viable business models.
posted by flabdablet at 7:56 AM on May 6, 2018 [6 favorites]
So it doesn't really matter whether the return on an investment is derived from appropriating workers' labour or from automation or from anything else; the simple fact remains that if you judiciously invest a relatively enormous amount, you can expect to make a relatively enormous return. This means that investors who already have a huge amount to invest will be the same ones who make most of what the market has to offer; and as long as the average expected return on investment is greater than the prevailing rate of inflation, this must inevitably lead to a concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands over time.
The oft-quoted alleged compensation for this - that investment promotes economic growth, which is good for everybody, so the poor get richer even though a tiny number of rich get richer at astronomically higher rates - doesn't address the downside of the resulting inequality, which is that wealth is inextricably bound up with political power (in fact, a person's wealth can be viewed as exactly a measure of the degree to which society as a whole has granted that person permission to do whatever the fuck they want without interference, which is political power); and power is inherently relative, so that concentration of even relative wealth into fewer and fewer hands must inevitably concentrate political power into those same hands, leading inevitably to an unaccountable oligarchy.
Now, it seems to me that the correct fix for this is to alter the ground rules for participation in trade in such a way that the larger any entity's investment portfolio becomes relative to the median, the higher the proportion of the returns on that portfolio will be appropriated by the State for indiscriminate redistribution across the citizenry. This rule should have just as much force, and be just as widely accepted, as the current ones that define the notion of private property and thereby make trade a thing in the first place. No more trickle-down economics; what I'm after is piss-down-raining economics.
Note that such a rule does not diminish in any way the augmented market's effectiveness as a decentralized mechanism for allocating resources to things that the citizenry as a whole considers important; no additional central planning is involved. But what it does do is act as a countervailing force to the current system's inherent bias toward concentration of political power.
It might cause some reduction in economic activity by way of reducing somewhat the advantages to be gained from economies of scale, but it seems to me that it should also at least compensate for that by increasing the number of small-scale economic players with viable business models.
posted by flabdablet at 7:56 AM on May 6, 2018 [6 favorites]
flabdablet: Seems to me that Marx's analysis overcomplicates the fundamental reason why capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. The whole appropriation-of-labour-value thing is a red herring, to my way of thinking. The single worst feature of free-market capitalism is that the free market operates with an expectation of a roughly consistent percentage return on investment, regardless of investment size.
You might be interested in Marx's "C-M-C" vs. "M-C-M" analysis, if you aren't already familiar with it.
posted by clawsoon at 8:05 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
You might be interested in Marx's "C-M-C" vs. "M-C-M" analysis, if you aren't already familiar with it.
posted by clawsoon at 8:05 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
Again, I think this is making distinctions that don't really change the outcome of the analysis. The current system rewards huge investments with huge returns even if no commodity is involved at all; there is a tremendous amount of money made just by investing in various permutations of money.
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
Also, regardless of whether one's worldview is essentially C-M-C or M-C-M, it remains an easily demonstrable fact that investment of anything by anybody - be that time and labour, in the case of the worker, or capital in the case of the capitalist - is expected to yield an economic return roughly proportional to the investment size. If I work for eight hours, I am expected to gain twice the economic return I'd get for working four. If I invest two thousand dollars, I would expect to gain twice the economic return I'd get for investing one thousand.
Concentrating purely on the expected consequences of that one simple principle neatly sidesteps all the morality red herrings about inherent worth of work or the justifiability of the return on investments in outsourcing or automation, and lets one focus on the effect of investment size vs. investment return, which it rapidly becomes clear after a few moments' thought has to be a concentration of wealth under any system where that proportionality does not depend much on investment size.
We can fiddle and fart about with systems of industrial relations between worker and boss and we can argue endlessly about who ought to control the means of production - none of that matters if what we're actually interested in is the economic mechanisms that underpin a tendency toward oligarchy.
posted by flabdablet at 8:21 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
Concentrating purely on the expected consequences of that one simple principle neatly sidesteps all the morality red herrings about inherent worth of work or the justifiability of the return on investments in outsourcing or automation, and lets one focus on the effect of investment size vs. investment return, which it rapidly becomes clear after a few moments' thought has to be a concentration of wealth under any system where that proportionality does not depend much on investment size.
We can fiddle and fart about with systems of industrial relations between worker and boss and we can argue endlessly about who ought to control the means of production - none of that matters if what we're actually interested in is the economic mechanisms that underpin a tendency toward oligarchy.
posted by flabdablet at 8:21 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
It seems a triumph of branding to me.
When you are saying this about a collection of writing that have multiple academic subdisciplines claiming their descent from, maybe it says more about you and your attitude towards any form of evaluation more complicated than surface level aggregation of the "brand" identities that have been presented to you than anything about the world.
Self-aggrandizing anti-intellectualism is not a good look. Marx's analysis of capitalism remains a point of organization for many people for reasons well beyond "branding."
posted by PMdixon at 8:43 AM on May 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
When you are saying this about a collection of writing that have multiple academic subdisciplines claiming their descent from, maybe it says more about you and your attitude towards any form of evaluation more complicated than surface level aggregation of the "brand" identities that have been presented to you than anything about the world.
Self-aggrandizing anti-intellectualism is not a good look. Marx's analysis of capitalism remains a point of organization for many people for reasons well beyond "branding."
posted by PMdixon at 8:43 AM on May 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
it remains an easily demonstrable fact that investment of anything by anybody - be that time and labour, in the case of the worker, or capital in the case of the capitalist - is expected to yield an economic return roughly proportional to the investment size. If I work for eight hours, I am expected to gain twice the economic return I'd get for working four. If I invest two thousand dollars, I would expect to gain twice the economic return I'd get for investing one thousand.
Diminishing returns called, said they had some important news for you.
posted by PMdixon at 8:44 AM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
Diminishing returns called, said they had some important news for you.
posted by PMdixon at 8:44 AM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
Also, regardless of whether one's worldview is essentially C-M-C or M-C-M, it remains an easily demonstrable fact that investment of anything by anybody - be that time and labour, in the case of the worker, or capital in the case of the capitalist - is expected to yield an economic return roughly proportional to the investment size. If I work for eight hours, I am expected to gain twice the economic return I'd get for working four.
There's an interesting take on this in, I think it was, Poor Economics (which happens to be a very pro-business book). The authors argued that most small-scale Third World entrepreneurs who are benefiting from microloans are not making any economic return at all, because after you subtract the wages that they're paying themselves, they're not making a profit. To translate back into Marxian terms - as best as I can, since I'm no scholar of Marx - M' isn't any bigger than M for them, therefore they have not entered the M-C-M cycle, therefore they are not effective capitalists and cannot (according to the authors) make the world a better place.
All that said, I like your ideas, and I've been thinking along similar lines myself for a while. It doesn't just apply to the super-rich, either. At every step of a typical Third World to First World supply chain, everybody's trying to make their X% for their value-add. So the person sewing the clothes makes X%, which is a tiny amount because they're at the start of the chain; then the person transporting the clothes makes X%, which is a bit larger because they're a step further along the chain; then the person marketing the clothes makes X%, which is larger again. By the time it gets to me, I'm making 20 times as much as the person sewing my clothes because I'm way further along the chain and still insist on making my X%.
a person's wealth can be viewed as exactly a measure of the degree to which society as a whole has granted that person permission to do whatever the fuck they want
If money is a form of reputation points, then all great fortunes are the result of gaming the reputation system.
(BTW, I'd disagree slightly with "whatever the fuck they want": Modern states reserve to themselves the right to do violence. There are many examples of the rich taking over states, partly or fully, and having it do their violence for them, but at least Bill Gates and Steve Jobs weren't allowed to fight each other with private armies.)
posted by clawsoon at 8:46 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
There's an interesting take on this in, I think it was, Poor Economics (which happens to be a very pro-business book). The authors argued that most small-scale Third World entrepreneurs who are benefiting from microloans are not making any economic return at all, because after you subtract the wages that they're paying themselves, they're not making a profit. To translate back into Marxian terms - as best as I can, since I'm no scholar of Marx - M' isn't any bigger than M for them, therefore they have not entered the M-C-M cycle, therefore they are not effective capitalists and cannot (according to the authors) make the world a better place.
All that said, I like your ideas, and I've been thinking along similar lines myself for a while. It doesn't just apply to the super-rich, either. At every step of a typical Third World to First World supply chain, everybody's trying to make their X% for their value-add. So the person sewing the clothes makes X%, which is a tiny amount because they're at the start of the chain; then the person transporting the clothes makes X%, which is a bit larger because they're a step further along the chain; then the person marketing the clothes makes X%, which is larger again. By the time it gets to me, I'm making 20 times as much as the person sewing my clothes because I'm way further along the chain and still insist on making my X%.
a person's wealth can be viewed as exactly a measure of the degree to which society as a whole has granted that person permission to do whatever the fuck they want
If money is a form of reputation points, then all great fortunes are the result of gaming the reputation system.
(BTW, I'd disagree slightly with "whatever the fuck they want": Modern states reserve to themselves the right to do violence. There are many examples of the rich taking over states, partly or fully, and having it do their violence for them, but at least Bill Gates and Steve Jobs weren't allowed to fight each other with private armies.)
posted by clawsoon at 8:46 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
PMdixon: Diminishing returns called, said they had some important news for you.
You might find E.A. Wrigley's thoughts on the Industrial Revolution interesting. In Continuity, Chance and Change, he talks about how the impeccable diminishing-returns logic of the classical economists blinded them to the massive increase in production which was already starting to happen as they were putting the finishing touches on their intellectual edifices.
Anyway, to return to (what I believe is) flabdablet's point: I'd suggest that there's roughly an S-curve to returns, but the S goes a lot higher if you're talking about absolute returns (which I believe flabdablet is) instead of relative returns.
At the bottom of both curves, someone who makes barely enough to support themselves is going to make hardly any return in either absolute or relative terms: In absolute terms because they have hardly any money, and in relative terms because they have little political power and the system is stacked against them.
Further up both curves, Warren Buffett isn't making the same relative returns that he was when he was merely a millionaire. However, his absolute returns are still much larger now than they were then.
posted by clawsoon at 9:03 AM on May 6, 2018
You might find E.A. Wrigley's thoughts on the Industrial Revolution interesting. In Continuity, Chance and Change, he talks about how the impeccable diminishing-returns logic of the classical economists blinded them to the massive increase in production which was already starting to happen as they were putting the finishing touches on their intellectual edifices.
Anyway, to return to (what I believe is) flabdablet's point: I'd suggest that there's roughly an S-curve to returns, but the S goes a lot higher if you're talking about absolute returns (which I believe flabdablet is) instead of relative returns.
At the bottom of both curves, someone who makes barely enough to support themselves is going to make hardly any return in either absolute or relative terms: In absolute terms because they have hardly any money, and in relative terms because they have little political power and the system is stacked against them.
Further up both curves, Warren Buffett isn't making the same relative returns that he was when he was merely a millionaire. However, his absolute returns are still much larger now than they were then.
posted by clawsoon at 9:03 AM on May 6, 2018
Yeah possible I'm having professional deformation --- I tend to think the nonlinearities are really really important in any feedback system and it's important not to simplify them away at any step.
posted by PMdixon at 9:07 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by PMdixon at 9:07 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
Marx was concerned with how "return on investment" is even possible at all, though, which 19th century economics didn't exactly have a clear answer for. if markets are efficient, so things more or less sell at prices reflecting their true value, you shouldn't be able to make any money in the long run. you could make money maybe sometimes by entering new markets or getting monopolies, or by acting as a shrewd trader, but competition should very quickly erode profits.
his answer to this is the labor theory of value. i think it counts as an attempt to grapple with exactly this problem of capital->investment->returns (or M-C-M') tending towards oligarchy -- trying to answer what exactly in our economic system exists to make this tendency possible, and therefore what would need to be changed to fix it.
of course, the labor theory of value is pretty troubled nowadays. it's certainly not as self-evident as the very insistent man selling the newspapers will tell you.
posted by vogon_poet at 9:07 AM on May 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
his answer to this is the labor theory of value. i think it counts as an attempt to grapple with exactly this problem of capital->investment->returns (or M-C-M') tending towards oligarchy -- trying to answer what exactly in our economic system exists to make this tendency possible, and therefore what would need to be changed to fix it.
of course, the labor theory of value is pretty troubled nowadays. it's certainly not as self-evident as the very insistent man selling the newspapers will tell you.
posted by vogon_poet at 9:07 AM on May 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
PMdixon: Yeah possible I'm having professional deformation --- I tend to think the nonlinearities are really really important in any feedback system and it's important not to simplify them away at any step.
That sounds interesting, but I have no idea what you mean. Would you indulge me by expanding on it?
posted by clawsoon at 9:09 AM on May 6, 2018
That sounds interesting, but I have no idea what you mean. Would you indulge me by expanding on it?
posted by clawsoon at 9:09 AM on May 6, 2018
Well, staying right on target, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, for example, is exactly a consequence of those nonlinearities as the owners of capital move up those S-curves as control of capital becomes concentrated. No nonlinearities no endogenous crises of capitalism.
posted by PMdixon at 9:12 AM on May 6, 2018
posted by PMdixon at 9:12 AM on May 6, 2018
(Avoiding abuse of the edit window: Rather than speaking of the owners of capital moving up the S-curve it might make more sense for the return on any given piece of capital to move up the S-curve as it becomes part of a more-and-more centrally controlled agglomeration.)
posted by PMdixon at 9:13 AM on May 6, 2018
posted by PMdixon at 9:13 AM on May 6, 2018
vogon_poet: Marx was concerned with how "return on investment" is even possible at all
Would it be fair to say that he was also concerned with the moral implications of return on investment? (My impression is that he thought of it as an immoral way to organize an economy.)
posted by clawsoon at 9:13 AM on May 6, 2018
Would it be fair to say that he was also concerned with the moral implications of return on investment? (My impression is that he thought of it as an immoral way to organize an economy.)
posted by clawsoon at 9:13 AM on May 6, 2018
Yes --- he wanted to explain it exactly because of the moral implications. It's difficult to end a harm if you don't know its cause.
posted by PMdixon at 9:15 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by PMdixon at 9:15 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
I enjoyed this talk by Moishe Postone on Marx in the Age of Trump.
posted by 15L06 at 9:15 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by 15L06 at 9:15 AM on May 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
Would it be fair to say that he was also concerned with the moral implications of return on investment? (My impression is that he thought of it as an immoral way to organize an economy.)
his conclusion was that most returns on capital (and all of net return in the whole system) must come from the exploitation of the workers, so i think so.
of course it's not like he convinced himself into being a communist by writing Capital, he already had very bad opinions of the bourgeoisie. that's part of what makes the book rhetorically fun, is that he is constantly foreshadowing his conclusions even in the early chapters in a very snide manner. particularly when he gets a chance to quote the theories of some of the stupider 19th century economists.
posted by vogon_poet at 9:23 AM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
his conclusion was that most returns on capital (and all of net return in the whole system) must come from the exploitation of the workers, so i think so.
of course it's not like he convinced himself into being a communist by writing Capital, he already had very bad opinions of the bourgeoisie. that's part of what makes the book rhetorically fun, is that he is constantly foreshadowing his conclusions even in the early chapters in a very snide manner. particularly when he gets a chance to quote the theories of some of the stupider 19th century economists.
posted by vogon_poet at 9:23 AM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
Marx was concerned with how "return on investment" is even possible at all, though
I'm rather less worried about where the returns come from than whose hands they end up in, and this can be determined by observation rather than the construction of Just So stories about what "value" actually is.
I'd suggest that there's roughly an S-curve to returns, but the S goes a lot higher if you're talking about absolute returns (which I believe flabdablet is) instead of relative returns.
Central to my point is that it really doesn't matter too much what the exact shape of the ROI curve is, as long as it's monotonically upward when plotted as absolute return vs. absolute investment - which it surely is, diminishing returns notwithstanding.
If we had rules in place that made investments forming parts of a portfolio some (large) multiple of the median portfolio size "leaky" enough that increasing the absolute investment size actually caused a lowering of the absolute expected return after taxes compared to some smaller investment, it would become economically rational to limit the size of one's investment portfolio to amounts below that point; the only way it would then become possible to make more money would be to agitate for public policies that succeeded in increasing the median portfolio size. In other words, self-interest would become better aligned, economically speaking, with the common wealth.
It would also make things harder for straight-up rentiers, most of whom can only make serious money by inserting themselves at scale into existing economic flows.
And there would be less of a need for laws designed to break up monopolists, simply because monopolizing any market segment to the extent of hurting its customers would tend to undermine one's own profitability.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 AM on May 6, 2018
I'm rather less worried about where the returns come from than whose hands they end up in, and this can be determined by observation rather than the construction of Just So stories about what "value" actually is.
I'd suggest that there's roughly an S-curve to returns, but the S goes a lot higher if you're talking about absolute returns (which I believe flabdablet is) instead of relative returns.
Central to my point is that it really doesn't matter too much what the exact shape of the ROI curve is, as long as it's monotonically upward when plotted as absolute return vs. absolute investment - which it surely is, diminishing returns notwithstanding.
If we had rules in place that made investments forming parts of a portfolio some (large) multiple of the median portfolio size "leaky" enough that increasing the absolute investment size actually caused a lowering of the absolute expected return after taxes compared to some smaller investment, it would become economically rational to limit the size of one's investment portfolio to amounts below that point; the only way it would then become possible to make more money would be to agitate for public policies that succeeded in increasing the median portfolio size. In other words, self-interest would become better aligned, economically speaking, with the common wealth.
It would also make things harder for straight-up rentiers, most of whom can only make serious money by inserting themselves at scale into existing economic flows.
And there would be less of a need for laws designed to break up monopolists, simply because monopolizing any market segment to the extent of hurting its customers would tend to undermine one's own profitability.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 AM on May 6, 2018
Central to my point is that it really doesn't matter too much what the exact shape of the ROI curve is, as long as it's monotonically upward when plotted as absolute return vs. absolute investment - which it surely is, diminishing returns notwithstanding.
This is a very strong claim that many of the most powerful figures in history have explicitly rejected. Whatever the method of organization attempted, there has always eventually come a point where the overhead of managing the investment outweighs the return in absolute terms. Cf the debate over whether the British Empire was actually profitably for Britain. (As opposed to those particular people in Britain who sat at the head of the resource streams from the colonized regions.)
posted by PMdixon at 9:42 AM on May 6, 2018
This is a very strong claim that many of the most powerful figures in history have explicitly rejected. Whatever the method of organization attempted, there has always eventually come a point where the overhead of managing the investment outweighs the return in absolute terms. Cf the debate over whether the British Empire was actually profitably for Britain. (As opposed to those particular people in Britain who sat at the head of the resource streams from the colonized regions.)
posted by PMdixon at 9:42 AM on May 6, 2018
It's precisely those people I'm talking about.
posted by flabdablet at 9:50 AM on May 6, 2018
posted by flabdablet at 9:50 AM on May 6, 2018
Those people - if I'm understanding PMdixon correctly - are less concerned with monetary power and more interested in extra-monetary power. That kind of power can be its own reward.
posted by clawsoon at 9:54 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 9:54 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
there has always eventually come a point where the overhead of managing the investment outweighs the return in absolute terms.
THE SYSTEM WORKS, GODDAMMIT
Now all we need to do is design and enforce some rules that make exactly the same effect happen at scales somewhat less extreme than an entire empire.
posted by flabdablet at 10:01 AM on May 6, 2018
THE SYSTEM WORKS, GODDAMMIT
Now all we need to do is design and enforce some rules that make exactly the same effect happen at scales somewhat less extreme than an entire empire.
posted by flabdablet at 10:01 AM on May 6, 2018
(Speaking of extra-monetary power, I recently read The Conquest of the Sahara, in which France spent boatloads of money conquering a region which, as most people in France who were paying attention realized and one of them put it, did less commerce in total than a typical grocery store in a small French city. The author concludes that late-19th-century imperialism had its own logic, separate from that of capitalism.)
posted by clawsoon at 10:09 AM on May 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 10:09 AM on May 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
Now all we need to do is design and enforce some rules that make exactly the same effect happen at scales somewhat less extreme than an entire empire.
one way to do this might be a Piketty-style progressive wealth tax, if I'm understanding your goal correctly?
posted by vogon_poet at 10:37 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
one way to do this might be a Piketty-style progressive wealth tax, if I'm understanding your goal correctly?
posted by vogon_poet at 10:37 AM on May 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
Straight-up taxes on existing wealth I'm not a fan of, because I have no objection to wealth in and of itself. It's the positive feedback between the amount one already has and the rate at which one accumulates more that I see as the main misfeature of capitalism; if we can break that, it seems to me we'd get to keep the good parts without causing anywhere near as much harm as our present arrangements do.
I'd like to see income taxes levied at wealth-dependent rates (where income includes realized capital gains), leading to a situation where given extreme wealth, it takes achieving some quite extraordinary rates of return on investment to achieve a better-than-median after-tax income year on year.
posted by flabdablet at 12:34 PM on May 6, 2018
I'd like to see income taxes levied at wealth-dependent rates (where income includes realized capital gains), leading to a situation where given extreme wealth, it takes achieving some quite extraordinary rates of return on investment to achieve a better-than-median after-tax income year on year.
posted by flabdablet at 12:34 PM on May 6, 2018
There's a medical or computer programming elegance to the idea that capitalism has a main bug and therefore the intervention is clear... But IMO (and I might be out to lunch on this) that's an approach that Marx would have objected to and a deep motivation for writing Capital the way he did.
posted by polymodus at 1:48 PM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 1:48 PM on May 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
ESP since it’s all about a system that is systemically wrong at multiple levers that’s now not just exploiting people or enslaving them for spreading misery and want and pain but also making the planet unfit for human life in the process
posted by The Whelk at 1:54 PM on May 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 1:54 PM on May 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
(In celebration of the rolling anniversary I’m donating ...a few books to my local’s free book shelf)
posted by The Whelk at 7:32 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by The Whelk at 7:32 AM on May 7, 2018
From the famines, purges, and gulags of Soviet Russia to Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge—from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre to the Castro regime’s 2012 murder of Cuban democracy activist Oswaldo Payá—communists have killed more than 100 million people over the past century. Countless more suffered and suffer still.
https://www.victimsofcommunism.org/
That's a lot of people not celebrating their birthdays.
posted by lstanley at 7:55 AM on May 7, 2018
https://www.victimsofcommunism.org/
That's a lot of people not celebrating their birthdays.
posted by lstanley at 7:55 AM on May 7, 2018
communists have killed more than 100 million people over the past century
gosh, you're right! capitalism IS more efficient!
posted by entropicamericana at 11:17 AM on May 7, 2018 [12 favorites]
gosh, you're right! capitalism IS more efficient!
posted by entropicamericana at 11:17 AM on May 7, 2018 [12 favorites]
I kind of enjoyed this article in the National Post last weekend. It must think it's reflecting widespread public attitudes, but comes across as naive propaganda (this is Canada's "business-friendly" news source after all). I'm torn between admiring its fundamental silliness and despairing over how easily people accept revisionist baloney:
Happy Birthday Karl Marx - We Could Have Done Without the Millions Dead
posted by sneebler at 4:46 PM on May 7, 2018
Happy Birthday Karl Marx - We Could Have Done Without the Millions Dead
posted by sneebler at 4:46 PM on May 7, 2018
more on marx's 'fragment on machines'! (from paul 'fuck the vanguard party' mason ;)
Why Marx is more relevant than ever in the age of automation - "Trotsky would be assassinated in 1940, and Sedova would rage against the Soviet machine thereafter. Kahlo would become one of the most formidable female artists of the 20th century. But it is Dunayevskaya who provides the link between classic Marxism and the only form in which it can be relevant today. 'Marxism', she would insist, 'is radical humanism.'"
Why Marx is more relevant than ever in the age of automation - "Trotsky would be assassinated in 1940, and Sedova would rage against the Soviet machine thereafter. Kahlo would become one of the most formidable female artists of the 20th century. But it is Dunayevskaya who provides the link between classic Marxism and the only form in which it can be relevant today. 'Marxism', she would insist, 'is radical humanism.'"
Amid the tobacco smoke, Marx had outlined a simple version of the materialist conception of history. A more complicated version would follow. In his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) Marx explained social change as the result of a clash between two layers of reality created by human beings: the forces of production – technology and the expertise needed to deploy it – and the social relations of production: the economic model required to bring the technology to life.also btw...
Together, said Marx, the technology and the economic model form a “base” on which the “superstructure” of laws, political institutions, cultures and ideologies are founded in any given system. Revolutions happen when the economic system begins to retard technological progress.
After the 1848 revolutions failed, Marx devoted his life to two complementary projects: forming and educating stable working-class parties to defend workers’ interests and prepare them for power; and analysing the dynamics of industrial capitalism.
Only once, in a notebook that lay unpublished for more than a hundred years, did Marx hazard a guess at the form that the techno-economic revolution might take. In the “Fragment on Machines”, written in 1858, he imagined a time when machines do most of the work and in which knowledge becomes “social”, embodied in what he called a “general intellect”. Since capitalism is based on profits generated by workers, it could not survive a level of technological advance that eradicated the need for work. The clash between private property and shared social knowledge, he said, would blow the foundations of capitalism “sky high”. This prophecy, so obviously relevant to our time of robots and networked knowledge, lay in the archives, unread until the 1960s...
If we list the common assumptions of the people in the photograph, they would be: that revolutions usually happen in backward countries; that they involve mobile warfare, peasant land seizures and ruthless repression of the rich; that a Marxist party has to stand aloof from the conservatism of the Western working class and instead defend indigenous peoples and the racially oppressed; and that the working class is the “revolutionary subject” intrinsically at war with capitalism, though misled.
These were self-sacrificing people, prepared to use manipulation and violence for the greater good. But each was, in their own way, struggling to preserve Marxism with a human face: to resist the organised lying, mass murder and suppression of artistic freedom that Stalinism had unleashed.
The tragedy is that none of them understood how thoroughly humanist Marxism had been at its conception – and only Dunayevskaya ever would...
The purpose of human beings, says the Marx of 1844, is to set themselves free. They are enslaved not just by capitalism, nor by any specific form of class society, but by a problem arising from their social nature, which obliges them to work in groups and to collaborate via language, not simply instinct.
When humans make things, or discover a new idea, we tend to embody our concept of “self” in the new object or idea – a process Marx calls self-estrangement or “alienation”. We then allow our products, mental and physical, to exercise power over us, whether in the form of religions or superstitions, or by fetishising consumer goods, or by mindlessly obeying routines and disciplines that we have created for ourselves. To overcome alienation, Marx argued that humanity has to rid itself of all hierarchies and class divisions – which means abolishing both private property and the state.
The 1844 manuscripts contain an idea lost to Marxism: the concept of communism as “radical humanism”. Communism, said Marx, is not simply the abolition of private property but the “appropriation of the human essence by and for man… the complete return of man to himself as a social (ie, human) being”. But, says Marx, communism is not the goal of human history. It is simply the form in which society will emerge after 40,000 years of hierarchical organisation. The real goal of human history is individual freedom and self-realisation.
When they published these notebooks in 1932, Soviet academics treated them as an embarrassing mistake. To do otherwise would be to admit that the whole materialist conception of history – classes, modes of production, technology versus economics – was underpinned by a profound humanism, with moral implications.
Dunayevskaya, who got hold of a Russian version of the Paris Manuscripts in the 1940s, spent nearly a decade hawking her English translation around, before publishing them herself in the mid 1950s.
She understood the Paris Manuscripts were a challenge to all previous interpretations of Marx. For the Soviet bureaucracy, the contrast between Marx’s idea of freedom and their own drab, oppressive reality was obvious. For Western Marxism, which had become obsessed with the study of permanent structures, here was a Marx arguing not for impersonal forces but for a clear and almost Aristotelian concept of human nature, autonomy and well-being. Could it be, Dunayevskaya asked, that all the disasters that had befallen the Marxist left were traceable to the rigid theories propagated by Engels? Could it be that the ruthlessness of the Bolshevik tradition, always justified by the goal of working-class power, was unjustified when compared to the goal of communism outlined by Marx? Could it be that Marxism was not, after all, a break with the philosophical humanism of the Enlightenment, but its most complete expression?
These were the conclusions Dunayevskaya drew. And from them she outlined new practical priorities. All left-wing politics in the future had to be based on the experience of individual human beings and their search for freedom. In 1950s America this meant not only joining the struggle for workers’ control on the factory floor, but also advocating feminism, black civil rights, the rights of indigenous people – and supporting anti-imperialist struggles in the global south. It meant, when the revolts against Stalinism began in Germany (1953) and then Hungary (1956), supporting them without equivocation.
When researchers eventually discovered and published Marx’s “Fragment on Machines” in the late 1960s, Dunayevskaya understood it was the last piece of the puzzle. This was not an account of capitalist economic breakdown due to the falling profit rate, it was a theory of technological liberation. Freed from work by the advance of automation, Marx had foreseen how humanity would use its leisure time: for the “free development of the individual”, not some collectivist utopia...
What’s left of Marxism in our era of techno-euphoria and environmental doom? Not its class narrative: despite the doubling of the global workforce, the workers of the developing world are as encaged in bourgeois society as their white, male, manual counterparts became in the 20th century. Workplace unrest will continue but capitalism has worked out how to quarantine it away from revolution.
That’s only a tragedy if you have never read the Paris Manuscripts. The Marx of 1844 theorised communism first, and the workers’ role in bringing it about second. He saw communism not as the end point of history but, as he once put it poetically, the end of prehistory. And for the Marx of these early writings, the workers’ role in bringing communism lies in their propensity to self-educate and to create co-operative associations – not as blind automata, driven purely by their material interests...
If the Marx of 1844 is correct, the ideal of human liberation and communism can survive the atomisation and dispersal of the class that was supposed to bring it. As the revolts of 2011 showed, large masses of people now possess the capacity for autonomous action, self-education and collaboration that Marx admired in the Parisian working class of the 1840s.
As Dunayevskaya understood, the impulse towards freedom is created by more than just exploitation: it is triggered by alienation, the suppression of desire, the humiliation experienced by people on the receiving end of systemic racism, sexism and homophobia. Everywhere capitalism follows anti-human priorities it stirs revolt – and it’s all around us. In the coming century, just as Marx predicted, it is likely that automation coupled with the socialisation of knowledge will present us with the opportunity to liberate ourselves from work. That, as he said, will blow capitalism “sky high”. The economic system that replaces it will have to be shaped around the goal he outlined in 1844: ending alienation and liberating the individual.
- Book Review: History Of The Fabian Society
- Capitalism is unfolding exactly as Karl Marx predicted
- Living Marxism: the Chinese Communist party reasserts control
- Xi Jinping and the 'Chinese Dream'
- China Is Quietly Setting Global Standards
- "capitalism does this too - by blurring, from the very beginning, the cognitive line between our selves and our property"
The purpose of human beings, says the Marx of 1844, is to set themselves free ... the real goal of human history is individual freedom and self-realisation
says Marx, along with approximately every other utopian thinker that has ever thunk a think.
I have yet to see a utopian thinker deal seriously with the problem of the complete and irredeemable arseholes who comprise about five percent of every human population. This is a shame, because it seems to me to be that pretty much everything that's wrong with every large-scale organizational form tried so far can be traced back to attempts by the rest of us to insulate ourselves to some acceptable extent from these people's activities; general support for some notion of private property is a case in point.
It is true that for much of human history the problems caused by arseholes have also been caused to a greater extent by straight-up economic scarcity, and that history does reflect an overall trend toward dealing more effectively with that issue. But it's demonstrably true that completely irredeemable arseholes are as likely to be filthy rich as not. Scarcity and desperation can certainly cause people to behave in ways indistinguishable from arseholery, but universal removal of scarcity is not going to make everybody join hands and sing kumbaya. There are always going to be people who are indifferent to, or even take pleasure in, the suffering they inflict on others.
Individual freedom and self-realization sounds like a lofty and worthy goal, but I really do think I'm better off living in a society that makes it harder for somebody else's individual freedom and self-realization to involve burning me in my bed. The tricky part is designing organizational forms that make that kind of behaviour directly self-defeating. So far, nobody seems to have managed to make any such form scale.
posted by flabdablet at 3:19 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
says Marx, along with approximately every other utopian thinker that has ever thunk a think.
I have yet to see a utopian thinker deal seriously with the problem of the complete and irredeemable arseholes who comprise about five percent of every human population. This is a shame, because it seems to me to be that pretty much everything that's wrong with every large-scale organizational form tried so far can be traced back to attempts by the rest of us to insulate ourselves to some acceptable extent from these people's activities; general support for some notion of private property is a case in point.
It is true that for much of human history the problems caused by arseholes have also been caused to a greater extent by straight-up economic scarcity, and that history does reflect an overall trend toward dealing more effectively with that issue. But it's demonstrably true that completely irredeemable arseholes are as likely to be filthy rich as not. Scarcity and desperation can certainly cause people to behave in ways indistinguishable from arseholery, but universal removal of scarcity is not going to make everybody join hands and sing kumbaya. There are always going to be people who are indifferent to, or even take pleasure in, the suffering they inflict on others.
Individual freedom and self-realization sounds like a lofty and worthy goal, but I really do think I'm better off living in a society that makes it harder for somebody else's individual freedom and self-realization to involve burning me in my bed. The tricky part is designing organizational forms that make that kind of behaviour directly self-defeating. So far, nobody seems to have managed to make any such form scale.
posted by flabdablet at 3:19 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
flabdablet: I have yet to see a utopian thinker deal seriously with the problem of the complete and irredeemable arseholes who comprise about five percent of every human population.
I'd agree, but I'd narrow it down a little further: What to do with the smaller group of extremely talented, charismatic assholes - your Napoleons and Steve Jobs - is an even bigger problem. When everybody agrees that someone's an asshole, there's at least a chance that they'll band together to do something about it. But when the asshole is able to convince large groups of people that they're actually a hero - a hero worth fighting for - it becomes a next-level problem.
posted by clawsoon at 3:58 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'd agree, but I'd narrow it down a little further: What to do with the smaller group of extremely talented, charismatic assholes - your Napoleons and Steve Jobs - is an even bigger problem. When everybody agrees that someone's an asshole, there's at least a chance that they'll band together to do something about it. But when the asshole is able to convince large groups of people that they're actually a hero - a hero worth fighting for - it becomes a next-level problem.
posted by clawsoon at 3:58 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]
- Eduard Bernstein - "Marx was a democrat in both theory and practice, but lived at a time when that could easily get you killed. Successful establishment of democracy, up to his time, came only via violent revolution (e.g. US). But Marx saw potential for urbanization, improved transportation & communication to create a far larger political community in favor of democracy, and with the capacity (via strikes) to effectively demand it. Bernstein's argument definitely eschewed revolution, but also downplayed all extra-parliamentary action."
- Joan Robinson And Nicholas Kaldor On Antagonism To Keynesian Ideas - "In a 1943 article, Joan Robinson talked of why the establishment wishes to keep a fraction of the population unemployed. It is quoted in Nicholas Kaldor's 1983 article, Keynesian Economics After Fifty Years: 'Unemployment is not a mere accidental blemish in a private-enterprise economy. On the contrary, it is part of the essential mechanism of the system, and has a definitive function to fulfil. The first function of unemployment (which has always existed in open or disguised forms) is that it maintains the authority of masters over men.'"
- Facebook, Social Media & the Social Contract - "For the longest time, we've been controlled by the rules and ideologies of the industrial era, where the world moved at a more human scale. Now we're heading into a world that runs at the speed of the network."
- Jeff Bezos on breaking up and regulating Amazon - "Amazon is now a large corporation and I expect us to be scrutinized. We should be scrutinized. I think all large institutions should be scrutinized and examined. It's reasonable. And one thing to note about is that we have gotten big in absolute terms only very recently. So we've always been growing very fast in percentage terms, but in 2010 just 8 years ago, we had 30,000 employees. So in the last 8 years we've gone from 30,000 employees to 560,000 employees."
-A Letter to My Daughter About the Black Magic of Banking
-Swiss Central Bank Denounces Proposal to Ban Money Creation by Banks[*]
posted by kliuless at 10:04 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
-Swiss Central Bank Denounces Proposal to Ban Money Creation by Banks[*]
posted by kliuless at 10:04 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
When banks abandoned American Samoa, the islands found a solution nobody had used in a century
also btw...
-"OK, just for fun, let's evaluate the demands of The Communist Manifesto in terms of modern economic theory"
-"Welfare economics and non-market goods are really important, and really hard to study with typical econ methods. So we often end up just not thinking about them."
posted by kliuless at 6:30 AM on May 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
also btw...
-"OK, just for fun, let's evaluate the demands of The Communist Manifesto in terms of modern economic theory"
-"Welfare economics and non-market goods are really important, and really hard to study with typical econ methods. So we often end up just not thinking about them."
posted by kliuless at 6:30 AM on May 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
Teen Vogue: Who Is Karl Marx: Meet the Anti-Capitalist Scholar
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 2:15 PM on May 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 2:15 PM on May 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
A most felicitous bicentennial present: C. Wright Mills' The Marxists, fulltext.
posted by No Robots at 7:35 PM on May 10, 2018
posted by No Robots at 7:35 PM on May 10, 2018
ops, link fail; here it is again!
When banks abandoned American Samoa, the islands found a solution nobody had used in a century
and some more :P
-Turn the Post Office Into a Bank? First Check Japan
-Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy?
-Why Marx Was Wrong
posted by kliuless at 6:01 AM on May 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
When banks abandoned American Samoa, the islands found a solution nobody had used in a century
and some more :P
-Turn the Post Office Into a Bank? First Check Japan
-Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy?
-Why Marx Was Wrong
posted by kliuless at 6:01 AM on May 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Das Kapital
BBC Radio 4 drama
200 years since the birth of Karl Marx, this dramatization of his iconic work imagines what he would make of our 21st Century global economy. Sarah Woods updates the book to the present day and weaves its themes into a story.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:25 AM on May 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
BBC Radio 4 drama
200 years since the birth of Karl Marx, this dramatization of his iconic work imagines what he would make of our 21st Century global economy. Sarah Woods updates the book to the present day and weaves its themes into a story.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:25 AM on May 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
Marx, through his use of the concept of Gattungswesen [generic essence], provides the basis for a naturalistic but non-evolutionist biology. This may prove to be his most important contribution.
posted by No Robots at 9:13 AM on May 21, 2018
posted by No Robots at 9:13 AM on May 21, 2018
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posted by AnhydrousLove at 12:19 PM on May 5, 2018 [9 favorites]