How would you respond to this argument against Marx?

[Lokomotive293]

I finally got an answer from this guy on this other forum, who keeps calling Marx a "19th century lazy freeloader", about why he thinks Marx makes no sense. That's it:


Why does Marx make no sense? Marxist neglect to realize that labor does not produce anything without raw materials and/or tools. Who supplies those things? The owner does. Marxists have no idea of start up costs, overhead, and other matters that a business owner has to deal with.

That Marx places need over ability or ambition is just asinine.

Communism is a theory without any basis in reality.

[Sensible Socialist]

Who makes the tools the owner supplies? Who constructed the factory in which goods are made? Hell, who worked to produce the currency the owner uses to maintain his power? Game. Set. Match.

[bcbm]

"start up costs" for the early bourgeoisie came from enclosures, forced proletarianization and the exploitation (usually via slavery) of the "new world"

[RGacky3]

Marxist neglect to realize that labor does not produce anything without raw materials and/or tools. Who supplies those things? The owner does. Marxists have no idea of start up costs, overhead, and other matters that a business owner has to deal with.


Well the earth produces raw materials and the tools are produced by other workers .... This argument is rediculous.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Enjoy your raw materials without labor to extract or transport them.

No basis in reality:rolleyes:

[Lokomotive293]

Thanks for your replies. If that's the only argument he has (he hasn't replied yet), he's really not that bright. He claims to be a High School teacher :(

[Jimmie Higgins]

calling Marx a "19th century lazy freeloader",

Well biographically*, Marx was a bit of a mooch and he did live in the 1800s, so obviously this teacher is an intellectual giant among anti-Marxist know-nothing midgets.:lol:

But unless someone is a lifestyle coach or self-help guru, how does their personal life matter to their work anyway? Marx didn't develop his ideas so he could get himself out of debt or not have to pay rent.

*Don't know about the lazy part though - what kind of lazy person challenges monarchical and capitalist rule and writes a many hundred page multi-volume work on the historical development of Capital?

[Forward Union]

Marxist neglect to realize that labor does not produce anything without raw materials and/or tools. Who supplies those things? The owner does. Marxists have no idea of start up costs, overhead, and other matters that a business owner has to deal with.

"Supplies" in what sense? Digs the resources from the ground? Refines them into a usable form? Drives them from the refinery to the factory? The owner doesn't do any of this, and thus, doesn't "supply anything" The workers could continue the production chain without an owner, but the owner couldn't do it without the workers. The owner simply "owns" this production process, and takes the largest share of the produced wealth from those who created it.


That Marx places need over ability or ambition is just asinine.

Ability to do what? operate factories? Because all the research has shown that, even within capitalism, factories operated without bosses have a higher output and efficiency.

[Forward Union]

His argument boils down to this

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7Se7iswAanA/SKoukoZkKYI/AAAAAAAACLM/2CvpacVlMLA/s1600/capitalism_cartoon.PNG

[#FF0000]

Marxists have no idea of start up costs, overhead, and other matters that a business owner has to deal with.

he should probs glance at this book called "capital"

[Lokomotive293]

His argument boils down to this

That's how he replied to this (I actually showed it to him about two days ago):


Random Guy failed to notice that the machines, the factory, and the worker's original wage were there before the capitalist sold one piece of the product. Funny how you communists seem to ignore start up costs.

* I couldn't post the link on the other forum, so I just posted the dialogue and called the guy asking all the questions "Random Guy".

[Lokomotive293]

he should probs glance at this book called "capital"

He claims to have read it. I don't believe him.

[#FF0000]

He claims to have read it. I don't believe him.

Good call, because he's lying

[Forward Union]

Random Guy failed to notice that the machines, the factory, and the worker's original wage were there before the capitalist sold one piece of the product. Funny how you communists seem to ignore start up costs.

Well I'd be quite interested to know how he thinks these start up costs are covered. He hasn't quite explained how the entrepreneur business owner came to be in possession of the funds to start a business and pay wages in the first place. Because the fact is, that it's normally done by way of loan from the bank. Which has to be paid back, with the profits made by the business. Which means the "start up costs" are eventually covered by the workers anyway. Either that or the Capitalist in question was born rich.

[Zanthorus]

Marxist neglect to realize that labor does not produce anything without raw materials and/or tools.


It would be wrong to say that labour which produces use-values is the only source of the wealth produced by it, that is of material wealth. Since labour is an activity which adapts material for some purpose or other, it needs material as a prerequisite. Different use-values contain very different proportions of labour and natural products, but use-value always comprises a natural element.- A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy


The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter. Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother.- Das Kapital Volume I


Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. the above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.- Critique of the Gotha Programme

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