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Revolution starts with U
18th May 2012, 21:44
I wrote this the other day. Just looking for critiques on why I'm right or wrong, and how I can make it better. Thanks :D


Capitalism is a system wherein a thing produced generates more value in its exchangeability than its use. It is the physical representation of the capitalist class as a ruling class,* regardless of the political mechanizations practiced**. Capitalists claim legitimate control over the things people use to produce things; hammers, saws, factories, etc, in order to exchange things for a profit.
Profit is the functional expression of the capitalists claim of ownership. To make a profit he must hire people to perform labor and generate value. She must pay the laborer the cost of the laborers time (not her labor). Then the capitalist can recoup the costs of labor, maintenance, and overhead; the true cost of the productive effort. As a capitalist his role is to reap income on top of that for nothing more than the claim of ownership.
The process of turning a thing into a commodity is called value. A thing is said to be valuable when its exchangeability exceeds its use, else it would be called useful, and can only exist on a social level, not an individual one. The use for value is in response to some need, some demand, which can be called a things use value. The capitalist cannot profit from all activity and thus focuses his interest on the ability of a thing to be exchanged, or what we can call its exchange value.
This exchange value generates a price within the sphere of trade, called the market. The price of a product is the addition of the costs to hire peoples time, maintain tools, and the costs of the market, plus an additional claim, as said above, for the claim of title.
Thus the interests of the capitalist are in the suppression of the exchangeability of the labor time which capitalism requires in order to create value. To better secure her position the capitalist must drive down wages, atomize laborers, and open new markets. To gain status in his class, the capitalist must not only seek profit, but exponential profit to attract investors.
This need for exponential growth in profits can only come about through the claimant of value. Thus the capitalists, as a class, must grant title to (nearly) all things, oppose unionism, and demand long individual work hours. In creating a situation for profit, so too do they create mass unemployment, over accumulation of stocks, and a smaller generalized purchasing power***.
This is the crisis of capitalism that inevitably leads to its crash. More things are being produced, and no matter if there is a need or want for it, its market exchangeability is missing, and thus profits cannot be made; there is insufficient economic demand.
The laborer, often landless and/or under threat of starvation, tho even if not, is in a situation whereby his productive ability is used against him, the harder he works means the generalized watering down of employment, and so the generalized lowering of real purchasing power. The interests of the laborer are in higher wages (thus lower profits), global solidarity and unionism, universal suffrage, and the superseding of commodity creation (the end of markets).
To rectify her situation the worker can either collectively bargain against their bosses, diminishing the profitability of the capitalist and sowing the seeds of a systemic collapse. Or it could collectivize economically and politically, dismantle the titled property system, institute a system of production based on need, and so end the whole farce.

*It differentiates itself from other systems in that the prevailing interests of its ruling class is in commodification and profit. Primitive interest (for lack of a better term) is equal sharing of food (group survival). Slaver interest is in agriculture and warfare. Feudal interest is in agriculture, warfare, and lineage. (Note that slave and feud system share much in common).
**Whether it be liberal, fascist, monarchy, etc is irrelevant as long as it as a society maintains a prime interest in the commodification of things for the production of profit.
*** Although lack of demand and the diminution of the money supply will be seen along with every crash, they do not, nor cannot fundamentally cause the business cycle. The production of profits itself does the job for them. Lack of demand is an effect of the suppression of wages. Money diminution is a response by the banks to insufficient economic demand (economic demand meaning need + purchasing power).

Railyon
18th May 2012, 21:58
There's quite a bit of stuff I'd rework. I don't really have the time to go through all of it but if the others haven't addressed the stuff I'll try to.

The very first sentence kinda felt odd:

Capitalism is a system wherein a thing produced generates more value in its exchangeability than its use.Things do not generate value. It's true that commodities are exchanged, but they are not because they generate value but because the division of labor and the market have made it necessary to exchange commodities since no one is able to produce all one needs. It is in this process of commodity exchange that value circulates, but it is not generated through it; value is, as Marx defined it, socially necessary labor time (or "marginal labor value" in Hagendorfian terms). Value is generated through labor, and the means of production do transfer part of their value onto the commodity produced (like fixed capital for example) but they are themselves products of human labor; all value is thus attributed to human labor as its source, not the exchange of things.

Revolution starts with U
18th May 2012, 22:13
I thought that too. But couldn't find a better way to word it. What I was getting at was the differentiation between value proper, and value within capitalism; that in capitalism, things are seen to have more value when they can be exchanged for a profit.

It goes on to the third paragraph, where I was talking about value... and I couldn't get any way to word it to show labor as the creation of value, rather than as how value becomes manifest in the material world. So in that sense, value IS the only real "creator" of value. But the creation of it starts with a perceived want or need, ie in the mind.

Thanks tho. Keep'em coming.

Revolution starts with U
24th May 2012, 19:24
Bump. Looking for corrections before I publish this. Thanks ahead of time, good friends. :D