05-30-2017, 10:33 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-31-2017, 02:09 AM by FireIceTalon.)
I tend to agree with the The Autonomists that Marxists need not (and should not) worry about the "transformation problem", because it is entirely irrelevant to class struggle and the social arrangements that comprise capitalism. Bourgeois economic theory is highly reductionist in its approach to understanding economics. Exchange is merely one way in which wealth is created, and of course, any exchange conducted today is structured upon capitalist relations of production. Markets are social relations, and therefore can NEVER be neutral as they are predicated upon oppression, hierarchy, power, and exploitation. Workers live and work under better conditions today than in Marx's day? Maybe so, but that is irrelevant to the larger Marxist point that capitalist apologists still have no answer for: workers are STILL exploited by capitalists. Nor does it change the way markets are constructed and how they fundamentally operate.
You accuse the LTV of being wrong because it states that labor is the only thing that effectively creates value (which is the case, at least for the things that MATTER), but yet bourgeois economic theory makes the error of assuming markets are a neutral, abstract concept of nothingness that can only be explained by prices. There is no such thing as "free market". It's pure absurdity, cause this is based on some utopian vision of capitalism where exchanges can be conducted without any burden whatsoever. You already acknowledged that I was right when I stated capitalism operates according to profit and NOT human need, did you not? Who defines what is to be sold and what is to be bought on markets? Definitely not consumers, as they want you to believe, but the dynamics of the market itself. Tautological? Yes, but that’s essentially one of the fundamental contradictions of liberalism: what is sold and bought is NOT what is necessary, and not even what people necessarily desire, but what is profitable.
The problem with non-Marxist theories of economics is that they tend to leave out class struggle and REAL WORLD social forces that DO exist and entirely invalidate their models. Again, they are overly reductionist. The narratives rarely or never match the real world material conditions.
As for all the symptoms I listed, if they were curable under the present social order, they would have been cured long ago. But they are not, because they are intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production. They don't exist in an abstract manner from one another, they in fact exist intersectionally. Things such as racism and sexism can only be conducive to the construction of and existence of a profit system, which is why capitalism and racism/sexism go hand in hand so effectively. You cannot have capitalism without racism. The for-profit prison system, with its systemic mass incarceration of minorities is one example of a near-endless list of examples of this symbiotic relationship.
And even if Marxists are like physicists stuck in a Ptolematic model of planetary motion, at least we are still within the CORRECT realm. Can't say the same for bourgeois economists, who aren't even economists or social scientists at all. They are priests passing themselves off as social scientists; with a utopian, pink-unicorn filled vision of how capitalism works, limited by their reductionist approach that completely ignores the various social forces which comprise markets and their workings.
The China example is anecdotal at best, because Cuba was the exact opposite of your hypothesis: Cuban citizens thrived far more and lived better under Castro than they did under US-backed capitalist dictator Batista, by almost any measure. The literacy rate under Batista, for instance, was roughly 70% (and thats a high end estimation). By 1961, it rose to over 97%. They also went from having a poor health-care system (any decent healthcare that did exist was available only for the rich) to having universal healthcare within a year. The only thing capitalism is worthy of being credited with is that it produced the resources and technological capacity for socialism, and eventually communism, to become materially possible, and that is all I will merit it with. It has far outlived its usefulness, and its desirability.
You accuse the LTV of being wrong because it states that labor is the only thing that effectively creates value (which is the case, at least for the things that MATTER), but yet bourgeois economic theory makes the error of assuming markets are a neutral, abstract concept of nothingness that can only be explained by prices. There is no such thing as "free market". It's pure absurdity, cause this is based on some utopian vision of capitalism where exchanges can be conducted without any burden whatsoever. You already acknowledged that I was right when I stated capitalism operates according to profit and NOT human need, did you not? Who defines what is to be sold and what is to be bought on markets? Definitely not consumers, as they want you to believe, but the dynamics of the market itself. Tautological? Yes, but that’s essentially one of the fundamental contradictions of liberalism: what is sold and bought is NOT what is necessary, and not even what people necessarily desire, but what is profitable.
The problem with non-Marxist theories of economics is that they tend to leave out class struggle and REAL WORLD social forces that DO exist and entirely invalidate their models. Again, they are overly reductionist. The narratives rarely or never match the real world material conditions.
As for all the symptoms I listed, if they were curable under the present social order, they would have been cured long ago. But they are not, because they are intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production. They don't exist in an abstract manner from one another, they in fact exist intersectionally. Things such as racism and sexism can only be conducive to the construction of and existence of a profit system, which is why capitalism and racism/sexism go hand in hand so effectively. You cannot have capitalism without racism. The for-profit prison system, with its systemic mass incarceration of minorities is one example of a near-endless list of examples of this symbiotic relationship.
And even if Marxists are like physicists stuck in a Ptolematic model of planetary motion, at least we are still within the CORRECT realm. Can't say the same for bourgeois economists, who aren't even economists or social scientists at all. They are priests passing themselves off as social scientists; with a utopian, pink-unicorn filled vision of how capitalism works, limited by their reductionist approach that completely ignores the various social forces which comprise markets and their workings.
The China example is anecdotal at best, because Cuba was the exact opposite of your hypothesis: Cuban citizens thrived far more and lived better under Castro than they did under US-backed capitalist dictator Batista, by almost any measure. The literacy rate under Batista, for instance, was roughly 70% (and thats a high end estimation). By 1961, it rose to over 97%. They also went from having a poor health-care system (any decent healthcare that did exist was available only for the rich) to having universal healthcare within a year. The only thing capitalism is worthy of being credited with is that it produced the resources and technological capacity for socialism, and eventually communism, to become materially possible, and that is all I will merit it with. It has far outlived its usefulness, and its desirability.
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"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (on capitalist laws and institutions)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (on capitalist laws and institutions)