Third-Worldist Economics

[Questionable]

So when it comes to third-worldism, it seems most people are content to shrug them off as an irrelevant sect. They have a point to do this, but I'm interested in a real critique of their theories, that first-world workers are paid above the value of their labor and thus are non-exploited in the Marxist sense.

Here is an illustration of third-worldist economics:

http://weeklybolshevik.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/nikolai-brown-imperialist-rent-diagram1.png

Additionally, they claim to be able to deduce the actual global value of labor in monetary terms. I believe it is by calculating the average of all wages, which comes out to be around 20,000. Thus, anything paid above that is more than what a proletariat should really be making, according to them.

For the economics-savvy people here, what are your thoughts on these theories? And please, serious answers only. It may be true that third-worldists are politically irrelevant, but to not engage opposing views amounts to intellectual laziness.

[tuwix]

It is just theory and I doubt there is any evidence which could confirm or deny it. Firstly, there is difficulty to determinate who is the third world country and who is not. For example, Brasil. Could the great economic power be called a third world country?
Secondly, I don't think there are any stats that count an exploitation. Such stats would be against bourgeoisie, so they are not done.

[Prof. Oblivion]

So when it comes to third-worldism, it seems most people are content to shrug them off as an irrelevant sect. They have a point to do this, but I'm interested in a real critique of their theories, that first-world workers are paid above the value of their labor and thus are non-exploited in the Marxist sense.

Here is an illustration of third-worldist economics:

http://weeklybolshevik.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/nikolai-brown-imperialist-rent-diagram1.png

Additionally, they claim to be able to deduce the actual global value of labor in monetary terms. I believe it is by calculating the average of all wages, which comes out to be around 20,000. Thus, anything paid above that is more than what a proletariat should really be making, according to them.

For the economics-savvy people here, what are your thoughts on these theories? And please, serious answers only. It may be true that third-worldists are politically irrelevant, but to not engage opposing views amounts to intellectual laziness.

Well, I haven't studied any of this, because personally I think it's nutty just at first glance and not worth talking about, but I can respond to the bolded assertion. If you take all of the wages in the world, and average them out, what does that even tell you? Are we converting to a single currency?

Who is included in that average? Everyone? CEO's even? Why are we averaging it, when the average is distorted so heavily by outliers? Why not take the median? Do the unemployed count as receiving a $0 wage or are they excluded from the equation?

And even if all of these problems are resolved the number still tells us nothing. $20,000 isn't a living wage in some parts of the world, while in others it's "bourgeois". Without equating income to cost of living the number has absolutely no meaning.

[Luís Henrique]

So when it comes to third-worldism, it seems most people are content to shrug them off as an irrelevant sect. They have a point to do this, but I'm interested in a real critique of their theories, that first-world workers are paid above the value of their labor and thus are non-exploited in the Marxist sense.

Here is an illustration of third-worldist economics:

http://weeklybolshevik.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/nikolai-brown-imperialist-rent-diagram1.png

Additionally, they claim to be able to deduce the actual global value of labor in monetary terms. I believe it is by calculating the average of all wages, which comes out to be around 20,000. Thus, anything paid above that is more than what a proletariat should really be making, according to them.

For the economics-savvy people here, what are your thoughts on these theories? And please, serious answers only. It may be true that third-worldists are politically irrelevant, but to not engage opposing views amounts to intellectual laziness.

Exploitation doesn't refer to some abstract average. It refers to the actual production.

If in country A 1 million workers are paid 10 dollars to produce 20 dollars value, and in country B 1 million workers are paid 1 dollar to produce 2 dollars value, then workers in both countries are exploited (and indeed at the same surplus-value rate). You can't sum all wages and arrive at an average of 5.5 dollars and then conclude that those who are paid more than that are making more "than what a proletarian should be making" (and indeed such phrasing pretty much reveals the very bourgeois line of thought it is based on: there is some kind of "just" wage, inequality is not between buyers and sellers of labour power, but among workers who earn different wages).

To take such kind of thing in serious necessitates a complete abandonment of any semblance of "Marxism" and any comprehension of LTV. I would say it entails also a complete abandonment of any serious analysis of reality and of scientific standards. But then I am a Marxist, non-Marxists would possibly differ.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

It is just theory and I doubt there is any evidence which could confirm or deny it.

So is evolution, and so is gravitation.


Firstly, there is difficulty to determinate who is the third world country and who is not. For example, Brasil. Could the great economic power be called a third world country?

It is a net importer of capital, so it certainly is.


Secondly, I don't think there are any stats that count an exploitation. Such stats would be against bourgeoisie, so they are not done.

Of course such statistics do exist; the bourgeois rule cannot do without them. They are the GNP and the mass of wages, both of which are usually well known magnitudes for any given country.

Luís Henrique

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

First world workers generally aren't paid $20/hour. In the UK, the minimum wage for those 22 years and above is just over £6, for those 18-21 years old it is something like £5 and for 16 and 17 year olds even lower. They would literally have to be producing 1 unit of shit every 2 months to be earning as high the full value of their labour.

Furthermore, the model is SO, SO simplistic - t assumes that EVERY worker in EVERY developed country is fully employed; it takes no account of long-term unemployment, short-term unemployment frictions and cyclical variations.

Further, how can you really judge the social conditions of a country's working class by a simplistic model that ONLY deals in abstract averages of the wage? I don't quite know how it gets the surplus from just the wage, when there is a huge percentage of developed economies whose businesses derive their profits through financial markets - generally this is at the expense of industrial firms, who then cut costs typically by paying less/working workers harder. Thus the average wage, in terms of the mean, is a terrible approximation of the social conditions of the working class - it is inevitably skewed upwards because it is incredibly difficult to actually draw out the wages/salaries of genuine workers from those of professionals or those who actually do well out of the capitalist system.

In short, the model in the OP is bogus, simplistic, assumes away the world and is a completely irrelevant economic tool for analysing the economy, social conditions in a society, or in fact anything.

[cyu]

the value of their labor
In capitalist economics, "value" is judged by what capitalists are willing to pay for it. Is the Mona Lisa really so precious that its "value" is beyond imagining? Is gold really a "precious" metal?

Fact is, the Mona Lisa is just some paint on some canvas. Gold is just a type of rock. If both the Mona Lisa and all the gold bars in bank vaults vanished tomorrow, how much value has really been lost from the world economy? Everybody can still eat, drink, and pretty do all the normal things they normally do.

The only reason gold and expensive paintings have "value" in a capitalist economy is because the rich will offer you a lot of money for it. But it's not real value, it is only assigned value because the economically powerful have the ability to assign it more value than the things that everyone else wants.

[Prof. Oblivion]

In capitalist economics, "value" is judged by what capitalists are willing to pay for it. Is the Mona Lisa really so precious that its "value" is beyond imagining? Is gold really a "precious" metal?

Fact is, the Mona Lisa is just some paint on some canvas. Gold is just a type of rock. If both the Mona Lisa and all the gold bars in bank vaults vanished tomorrow, how much value has really been lost from the world economy? Everybody can still eat, drink, and pretty do all the normal things they normally do.

The only reason gold and expensive paintings have "value" in a capitalist economy is because the rich will offer you a lot of money for it. But it's not real value, it is only assigned value because the economically powerful have the ability to assign it more value than the things that everyone else wants.

Value is always socially defined, even in Marxian economics.

[Luís Henrique]

But it's not real value, it is only assigned value because the economically powerful have the ability to assign it more value than the things that everyone else wants.

There is no such thing as a metaphysically "real" value. Not even in food or cloth.

Luís Henrique

[cyu]

Value is always socially defined, even in Marxian economics.

No, not always. Social value is what gives paper money its "value" since without other people, both paper money and gold would be pretty worthless. There's also personal value - that is, even if everybody else vanished, somethings still have value since they are of use to you personally - like a hot dog, or a house, or a replicator.

The problem discussed above is that "social value" in a capitalist system is not simply defined by what others want, it's defined by what the rich want. While poor people do have some say in determining social value, the greater the gap between rich and poor, the more the rich get to decide what is valuable, and the less the poor get to decide what is valuable.

The result in a market economy like this is that more and more economic resources are devoted to producing goods and services for the rich, and less and less are left for the poor as the gap between rich and poor increases.

[Karlorax]

I don't really think the graphic is well argued or makes too much sense.


Exploitation doesn't refer to some abstract average.

I have been investigating the "Leading Light Communist" political economy lately. The "Leading Light Communists" use a similar method as you describe in in a couple of articles. The set a bar for exploitation based on using a regulative idea of global equality. They seem to think exploitation should be seen as receiving less than what an equal share (of various important goods, including income) would be. Since most first world people get more than what an equal share would be, they count them as exploiters. This is the article where they depart significantly from Marx's LTV: http://llco.org/equality-and-global-alignments/

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

To be fair, I think this infographic, bizarre attempt at calculating surplus value in terms of global average wages, etc. do a disservice to attempts to analyze the relationship between the working class in the imperial metropole and the periphery. While I don't think it's correct to read the first-world white working class as necessarily "counter-revolutionary", it is apparent that large numbers of first-world white workers enjoy a standard of living that is ecologically unsustainable, and premised on the dispossession of the third-world working class not only of their labour, but also in terms of an ongoing movement of "primitive accumulation" and forced displacement - a movement that, for first world white workers is "over" in terms of the degree of development (in fact, arguably the "first world" and "whiteness" are defined precisely by this stage of development). I don't see why anyone would want to try to calculate this is monetary terms, as it seems this would do more to obfuscate relations than clarify them, in material terms.

[Ace High]

Third worldist economics is ridiculous for a number of reasons.

First of all, there are enough resources to feed every single person on the planet. It has been calculated, PLUS if you factored in the vast amounts of technology that is being hoarded through the mass buying of patents by big business, it would be easy to supply free energy as well. Geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, and wave, to be exact. In fact, geothermal energy ALONE would sustain something like 99 percent of the earth's energy.

My point is, it's not because impoverished workers in say, the US, are getting more than they deserve for their work. It is because of the monetary system which is run by bankers. These bankers are simply buying up resources in the third world and privatizing them. They can do this because of the IMF's debt slavery policies in third world countries that allows the elite to buy up resources for pennies on the dollar.

So, the reality is, the workers in "first world" countries ARE exploited, as most of us know. And the people in the third world are literally being enslaved compared to our exploitation. So it simply comes down to, we are both exploited, they just have it a billion times worse. BUT, if capitalism is abolished, the resources of the third world are now owned by the people occupying those territories. Problem solved. They simply don't own their own resources. Neither do we, but we live in a nation meant to benefit white people, due to the racist nature of the elites. Therefore, we get more, even though our labor is exploited.

[cyu]

As they say, a house slave is still a slave. An obedient slave might be promoted to overseer, but the overseer will never be free until the plantation owner is overthrown.

[Karlorax]

First of all, there are enough resources to feed every single person on the planet. It has been calculated, PLUS if you factored in the vast amounts of technology that is being hoarded through the mass buying of patents by big business, it would be easy to supply free energy as well. Geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, and wave, to be exact. In fact, geothermal energy ALONE would sustain something like 99 percent of the earth's energy.

If that's the case, then why consider anyone a class enemy? After all, according to your reasoning, everyone could have their dreams come true under socialism, which is of course nonsense.

You have to draw the line between class friends and enemies somewhere. There are winners and losers in capitalism and socialism.


As they say, a house slave is still a slave.

I don't feel like either of the previous two posters respond at all to what "Leading Light Communists" are saying. They are not simply saying that most First World wage earners have it better than Third World wage earners. That is obvious. They are saying that most First World wage earners benefit from the exploitation of Third World earners so much so that the First World wage earners tend to align with their own upper strata against the Third World proletariat. I think this article goes good with the previous one I linked: http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation/

[Luís Henrique]

No, not always. Social value is what gives paper money its "value" since without other people, both paper money and gold would be pretty worthless. There's also personal value - that is, even if everybody else vanished, somethings still have value since they are of use to you personally - like a hot dog, or a house, or a replicator.

Of course the word "value" is used, informally, in a dozen different sences that have little bearing to the discussion of whether first world workers are or are not exploited. This includes artistic "value", personal "value", intellectual "value", etc.

The kind of "value" that is of importance to us if we want to discuss the issue of exploitation in the first world, however, is socially defined, and, more, it is defined by the amount of labour embodied into a commodity.


The problem discussed above is that "social value" in a capitalist system is not simply defined by what others want, it's defined by what the rich want.

No. Value, again, is defined by the amount of labour that it takes to produce a commodity. What you are discussin is "use value", which is a different thing, that has little do to with exploitation. Yes, the bourgeoisie has a much bigger say in defining what is "useful" that the other classes. They still cannot decree that potatoes have no use value, just because it is poor people's food.


While poor people do have some say in determining social value, the greater the gap between rich and poor, the more the rich get to decide what is valuable, and the less the poor get to decide what is valuable.

The problem is that, in a market economy, demand can only be expressed by money. No matter how badly I want a new Ferrari, if such wish isn't backed by the correspondent quarter million dollars, it simply doesn't count as a "demand".

Another, different thing, is that what the "rich" demand becomes normative. If they drive Ferraris, then driving a Ferrari becomes what everyone should do (regardless of the fact that if everyone had a Ferrari, Ferraris would be completely useless). This is what socially justifies so much labour being wasted into Ferraris, which is what makes a Ferrari "valuable".


The result in a market economy like this is that more and more economic resources are devoted to producing goods and services for the rich, and less and less are left for the poor as the gap between rich and poor increases.

That is not what we have been seeing. The share of the poor has been constantly diminishing, but the amount of products they are able to consume has been constantly expanding. This is a requirement of the system; if things go otherwise, capitalism places itself in danger, for the reproduction of labour power is damaged, and, consequently, the ability to extract surplus value is challenged.

Luís Henrique

[Questionable]

They are saying that most First World wage earners benefit from the exploitation of Third World earners so much so that the First World wage earners tend to align with their own upper strata against the Third World proletariat.

They're also known for saying shit like this:


That value could be going toward ending starvation in the Third World rather than making sure every First World man has his Viagra and every First World woman has 10 vibrators.

If we're going to speak of third-worldism, let's give them some respect and speak of the people like VMC who at least aren't completely batshit. I've spoken to quite a few third-worldists and the well-educated ones always hate LLCO.

[cyu]

the bourgeoisie has a much bigger say in defining what is "useful" that the other classes. They still cannot decree that potatoes have no use value, just because it is poor people's food.


Yes, what the poor want to consume will always be useful for the poor. The problem with the capitalist market is that it pretends it is producing "useful" things - however, the "usefulness" here is not defined by what people in general want, it is defined by what big spenders want.

It's like saying, well, 99% of the ship's crew is about to be sucked into space, but we're going to spend the next hour fluffing up the captain's pillow, since he has declared having a fluffy pillow to be more useful than fixing the ship's hull.

[Karlorax]

If we're going to speak of third-worldism, let's give them some respect and speak of the people like VMC who at least aren't completely batshit. I've spoken to quite a few third-worldists and the well-educated ones always hate LLCO. I think the LLCO's material is by far the best. I think anyone who has spent anytime seriously researching it will find that out. If people are going to take on the arguments of this type of political economy, they should focus on the best articulation of the theory.

Calling someone "batshit" is not an argument against anything, it only reflects your own lack of ability to intelligently speak on the subject.

LLCO also produces some of the best agitprop, whether you agree with them or not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qabKZlXCXeU

[Questionable]

I think the LLCO's material is by far the best. I think anyone who has spent anytime seriously researching it will find that out. If people are going to take on the arguments of this type of political economy, they should focus on the best articulation of the theory.

Calling someone "batshit" is not an argument against anything, it only reflects your own lack of ability to intelligently speak on the subject.

LLCO also produces some of the best agitprop, whether you agree with them or not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qabKZlXCXeU

I don't agree with any of this, and I obviously don't agree that agitprop that talks about white workers being sent to internment camps to pay for their sins is "the best."

[cyu]

I obviously don't agree that agitprop that talks about white workers being sent to internment camps to pay for their sins is "the best."

The more we can keep poor whites and poor non-whites from working together, the easier it is to control the suckers ;)

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think the LLCO's material is by far the best. I think anyone who has spent anytime seriously researching it will find that out. If people are going to take on the arguments of this type of political economy, they should focus on the best articulation of the theory.

Calling someone "batshit" is not an argument against anything, it only reflects your own lack of ability to intelligently speak on the subject.

LLCO also produces some of the best agitprop, whether you agree with them or not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qabKZlXCXeU

The best material in what sense? In terms of bizarre throw-back "Let's pretend that political economy can be explained by math!"? In terms of black-and-white simplifications that fail to grapple with class struggle (not to mention level of development, race, etc.) as dynamic rather than fixed? In terms of reducing all politics to "first worldist" or "third worldist" as though it is everywhere the definitive contradiction?
Perhaps most importantly, in terms of rejecting the theoretical insights of third world peoples leading organizations? Seriously, on what basis does the LLCO draw its conclusions? Are they leading theorists and cadres within third world communist movements? Hell, are they engaged in communist struggle anywhere? Has the LLCO put their theory into meaningful practice that would allow them to clarify it or rectify their errors?

Jesus christ, pick up something by Butch Lee, or Red Rover, or J. Sakai, or even the theoretical documents of the RAF. There are better, more sound, less reductionist understandings of imperialism out there if you care to spend 30 seconds on google, or like, hit up Kerplebedeb (http://kersplebedeb.com).

[Karlorax]

I don't agree with any of this, and I obviously don't agree that agitprop that talks about white workers being sent to internment camps to pay for their sins is "the best."

Where exactly does it say that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qabKZlXCXeU Or are you just lying? Whether you agree or not with the video, it is very high production value. It actually calls on everyone (white, black, fw, tw, etc.) to build a better future.

[Karlorax]

The best material in what sense? In terms of bizarre throw-back "Let's pretend that political economy can be explained by math!"? In terms of black-and-white simplifications that fail to grapple with class struggle (not to mention level of development, race, etc.) as dynamic rather than fixed? In terms of reducing all politics to "first worldist" or "third worldist" as though it is everywhere the definitive contradiction? In terms of predicting and explaining, drawing the distinction between friends and enemies, LLCO is far more accurate than Butch Lee's gender reductionism or Sakai's reduction to nation (bordering on race at times). RAF? heh. Again, the point I made is pretty self-evident to most people who study the material.

Are they leading theorists and cadres within third world communist movements? Hell, are they engaged in communist struggle anywhere? Has the LLCO put their theory into meaningful practice that would allow them to clarify it or rectify their errors? Even a quick look to their web page shows that LLCO has branches in numerous countries. The two most active pages are the english one http://llco.org/ and the Bangla one http://www.llcobangla.org/ LLCO has only existed for a few years. They are building a global organization. They appear to be very successful. I can't think of a similar communist organization build from the ground-up that has spread so far in recent years. Certainly more successful than the others you mentioned.

[Zulu]

Additionally, they claim to be able to deduce the actual global value of labor in monetary terms.

The problem with that is that modern money isn't actually money at all. It's pure credit/debt bonds, the means of circulation that doesn't contain any value (socially necessary labor time) of its own, and thus cannot really be held as universal equivalent.

But otherwise, the third-worldists are pretty much correct in that the "working class" in the first world has long since ceased to be really proletarian. It's "labor aristocracy" at best... But hey, look, what are all those, for example, passenger cars owned by the blue collars in the West? That's means of production, machines that heavily rely on socially produced fuel and infrastructure to operate. Ever heard of a proletarian who owned machines?

[cyu]

Is the butler of a rich man part of the working class? Is a torturer who works for a military regime part of the working class? Are riot police who beat down their fellow countrymen part of the working class?

Well, they certainly work for a living. If they didn't get that paycheck, they wouldn't be able to survive. They certainly don't live by owning capital.

Just because you're not a capitalist doesn't make you a saint, but it would be silly to expect it anyway. The reason butlers, torturers, and members of the police state are able to make a living at all is due to the political and economic system that has been built up around them.

From http://www.revleft.com/vb/middle-service-class-t179967/index.html

Imagine a king (or a wealthy capitalist, or a guy with a secret money-printing machine) in the middle of a country. This guy has loads of money, so he can buy whatever he likes. His lawyers get rich. His butlers get rich. His bodyguards and torturers get rich. Even the boy who shines his shoes gets a nice Xmas bonus.

So the guy in the middle is like the peak of a giant mountain of money. His hangers-on surround him, slightly down-slope from the peak, but still pretty f**king rich. Those who serve his hangers-on also make a decent living, since his hangers-on can also afford to pay a lot for whatever... and so on down the chain, until at the outskirts of the mountain, you have the dirt poor... who don't have wealthy customers that can drop a year's worth of money on them each day.

In an economy like this, those who are primarily after money try to make their way to the center of the money pile. The closer to the middle they can get, the more money they'll make. However, the closer they get to the middle, it is also more and more likely that their productive efforts are useless, contribute very little to the overall economy, and are merely wasted on the whims of a wealthy few.

In an economy like this, the unscrupulous are rewarded. And those who refuse to sellout live in poverty.

[Sotionov]

The comment that the workers in the central countries are not being exploited is just false, and if it's true that a marxist theory can come to such a conclusion, just another reason for me not be a marxist. Not be exploited is not about exchange-value achieved after production, it is about the production itself. Only the workers that is the owners and managers of the means of production they use, and the owners of the products that they make- are workers that are not exploited.

IDK why, but I've been called a "third-worldist" for oppossing reforms in central countries that benefit the workers because I think that is contradicton with international workers' solidarity. Maybe Rocker was too a "third-worldist".


No doubt some small comforts may sometimes fall to the share of the workers when the bourgeoisie of their country attain some advantage over that of another country; but this always happens at the cost of their own freedom and the economic oppression of other peoples. The worker . . . participates to some extent in the profits which, without effort on their part, fall into the laps of the bourgeoisie of his country from the unrestrained exploitation of colonial peoples; but sooner or later there comes the time when these people too, wake up, and he has to pay all the more dearly for the small advantages he has enjoyed. . . . Small gains arising from increased opportunity of employment and higher wages may accrue to the workers in a successful state from the carving out of new markets at the cost of others; but at the same time their brothers on the other side of the border have to pay for them by unemployment and the lowering of the standards of labour. The result is an ever widening rift in the international labour movement . . . By this rift the liberation of the workers from the yoke of wage-slavery is pushed further and further into the distance. As long as the worker ties up his interests with those of the bourgeoisie of his country instead of with his class, he must logically also take in his stride all the results of that relationship. He must stand ready to fight the wars of the possessing classes for the retention and extension of their markets, and to defend any injustice they may perpetrate on other people . . . Only when the workers in every country shall come to understand clearly that their interests are everywhere the same, and out of this understanding learn to act together, will the effective basis be laid for the international liberation of the working class."

Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 71

[Luís Henrique]

The problem with that is that modern money isn't actually money at all. It's pure credit/debt bonds, the means of circulation that doesn't contain any value (socially necessary labor time) of its own, and thus cannot really be held as universal equivalent.

And yet, it is the universal equivalent.


But otherwise, the third-worldists are pretty much correct in that the "working class" in the first world has long since ceased to be really proletarian. It's "labor aristocracy" at best... But hey, look, what are all those, for example, passenger cars owned by the blue collars in the West? That's means of production, machines that heavily rely on socially produced fuel and infrastructure to operate. Ever heard of a proletarian who owned machines?

Cars for personal use are not means of production, by no stretch of imagination.

Some "Marxists"...

Luís Henrique

[Prof. Oblivion]

Owning machines makes one part of the labor aristocracy now? WTF?

[Sotionov]

Yep, they're called "small capitalists" in marxism, even though they're not capitalists at all.

[Luís Henrique]

Yep, they're called "small capitalists" in marxism, even though they're not capitalists at all.

Nope, that has nothing to do with Marxism.

Luís Henrique

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

1. Neither the claim that workers in the third world are super-exploited, nor the claim that workers in the first world often line up behind neo-/colonialism and imperialism, suggest that workers in the first world are not exploited. The former deals with the experience of colonized subjects, and the second is an historical observation.

2. "Owning machines" doesn't make one petit-bourgeois - owning machines that allow you to avoid wage-labour makes you petit-bourgeois. That's not a value judgement, it's a description of a particular condition. It's also not specific to owning machines - it's simply the condition wherein one is able to support themselves without having to throw oneself into the labour market.

[Sotionov]

"Owning machines" doesn't make one petit-bourgeois - owning machines that allow you to avoid wage-labour makes you petit-bourgeois. Which is what he means by "owning machines"- owning your means of production. I doubt he means a wage laborer having a computer or a car and thus "owning machines".


That's not a value judgement, it's a description of a particular condition.It's exactly the opposite of a description of condition. Owning your means of production doesn't make you a capitalist, big or small, exploiting people makes you a capitalist. If you own your means of production and don't exploit anyone, you're not a capitalist of any size, you're a worker.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Which is what he means by "owning machines"- owning your means of production. I doubt he means a wage laborer having a computer or a car and thus "owning machines".

It's exactly the opposite of a description of condition. Owning your means of production doesn't make you a capitalist, big or small, exploiting people makes you a capitalist. If you own your means of production and don't exploit anyone, you're not a capitalist of any size, you're a worker.

No, you're neither a worker (in the sense of having nothing to sell but your labour power), nor are you a "capitalist" in the sense of living off of others' labours. At the same time, one does have a certain amount of "fixed capital" in terms of whatever you own that frees you from needing to sell your labour. Hence the distinct term, petit-bourgeois.

Of course, this is an aside w/r/t to the actual matter at hand in this thread. Nobody has claimed that first-world workers are petit-bourgeois; only that they represent a part of the global working class that enjoys certain advantages, and has historically behaved in certain ways.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I don't agree with any of this, and I obviously don't agree that agitprop that talks about white workers being sent to internment camps to pay for their sins is "the best."

I am finding it harder and harder to believe that these racist, scapegoat loving moralists have any real understanding of Marxian economics (or any economics for that matter).





But otherwise, the third-worldists are pretty much correct in that the "working class" in the first world has long since ceased to be really proletarian. It's "labor aristocracy" at best... But hey, look, what are all those, for example, passenger cars owned by the blue collars in the West? That's means of production, machines that heavily rely on socially produced fuel and infrastructure to operate. Ever heard of a proletarian who owned machines?


There's so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. A car does not fucking produce commodities for exchange, it is not constant capital - IT IS A COMMODITY.

Please come back when you know what the fuck you're talking about. Thanks.

[Karlorax]

But otherwise, the third-worldists are pretty much correct in that the "working class" in the first world has long since ceased to be really proletarian. It's "labor aristocracy" at best... But hey, look, what are all those, for example, passenger cars owned by the blue collars in the West? That's means of production, machines that heavily rely on socially produced fuel and infrastructure to operate. Ever heard of a proletarian who owned machines? Marx described the proletariat as without property. It seems like many people in the FW have access to quite a bit of money to acquire the lifestyle they have. I'd guess that many workers in the FW have access to more capital than many TW capitalists.

This is a quote from an article that might throw some light on it:



This has been described as the rise of First World mall economies. Many First World economies can be described as a mall writ large. Nothing is produced at the mall. Yet people are employed managing, transporting, distributing, securing, etc. goods that are produced elsewhere but are sold at the mall. It is the influx of goods from outside the mall that keeps the mall afloat. Production is going on outside the mall, in the Third World. These goods are not secured through “fair exchange” since the mall doesn’t produce anything to begin with nor does it exchange services with those who do. The goods that keep the mall economy up and running are secured through imperialism. Obviously, like all abstract models, this is a big oversimplification. However, it makes an important point about global trends and the relationship between the non-productive segments of the First World and the productive segments of the Third World.

The shift in First World employment from productive labor to non-productive labor is noteworthy because Marx saw the paradigmatic case of exploitation as the exploitation of those engaged in productive labor. What Marx considered exploitation no longer is widespread in the First World. First World workers have seen rising incomes, higher standards of living, greater access to and more varied leisure time, greater diversity of life options, greater social mobility, more and more access to capital for much of the past century. This, plus the fact that there has been nothing even close to a First World, socialist revolution, has led Leading Light Communists to rightly conclude that the First World working class is no longer the revolutionary subject that Marx described as having “nothing to lose but its chains.” In fact, the First World lacks a significant, revolutionary subject entirely; there is no First World proletariat.

Homogenization of the population has occurred, but not the way that the social factory theory explains. Instead what has occurred is that First World countries have become relatively homogenized blocks that do not contain antagonistic class contradictions. Instead of the extension of the revolutionary agent in the First World, the size of the revolutionary agent has contracted. Engels referred to this process as the “bourgeoisification” of entire countries. The First World working class is part of the global bourgeoisie. Because antagonistic contradictions have been so reduced within First World countries, and even between First World countries, writers like Francis Fukuyama have declared that the end of history has been reached. Similarly, critics such as Richard Rorty are happy that First World society has reached its current liberal, post-modern, ironic peak. Life options, fantasies, and pursuits once reserved only to the ruling classes have been democratized within the First World. This multi-dimensionality of life thrives as First World peoples have more access to leisure time today than past generations had. Such exists, however, at the expense of the Third World.
from: http://llco.org/some-tentative-thoughts-on-the-social-factory/

If their arguments are to be refuted, best to look at them in the original.

[Karlorax]

I am finding it harder and harder to believe that these racist, scapegoat loving moralists have any real understanding of Marxian economics (or any economics for that matter).

This does not characterize LLCO. It may characterize someone who calls themselves "Third Worldist," but not LLCO. I have noticed LLCO doesn't call itself "Third Worldist," but "Leading Light Communist." Let's look at what LLCO actually writes:


A new world! A New Power! The end of ALL oppression. No exploitation. No rich. No poor. No national oppression. No gender oppression. The liberation of the poor, women, the youth. No more egoism, no more individualistic consumerism, no more me, me, me. Total liberation.


Equality. Collectivism. Altruism. A society organized around human needs and sustainability, not greed and not profit. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Mao said , “Serve the people.” Sustainability. A new way of relating to each other and the earth, our common home. Peace. Justice. Communism. Only the leading light of revolutionary science can truly unite this world. A storm is coming, a storm like no other. The third wave of revolution. A new breakthrough for humanity. We must bring the light to a world cloaked in darkness.


We can’t help where we are from. White. Black. Blue eyes. Brown eyes. First World. Third World. But, we can help where we are going. We need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. We need to create real revolution.

from: http://llco.org/walk-this-road-with-us/

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's exactly the opposite of a description of condition. Owning your means of production doesn't make you a capitalist, big or small, exploiting people makes you a capitalist. If you own your means of production and don't exploit anyone, you're not a capitalist of any size, you're a worker.I agreed with a lot of what you were arguing but I don't think this is quite right. If you own your own means of production, you have a class interest in maintaining that and imporving that ability. The small capitalists lead to big capitalism. Exploitation may define capitalism, but not specifically class interests - what about the rich who make money not through directly exploiting people, but through financial gambling or whatnot - they can make money just off of helping move around the money made by others through exploitation? Aren't they still capitalists?

The p. bourgoise are a fuzzy and ill-defined group, but I think it's a useful generalization that can cover classes which reproduce themselves and have an interest in maintaining the current order even if they are small farmers, shop-owners, professionals, or beurocrats.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'll give some of those arguments a shot:

This has been described as the rise of First World mall economies. Many First World economies can be described as a mall writ large. Nothing is produced at the mall. Yet people are employed managing, transporting, distributing, securing, etc. goods that are produced elsewhere but are sold at the mall. It is the influx of goods from outside the mall that keeps the mall afloat. Production is going on outside the mall, in the Third World. These goods are not secured through “fair exchange” since the mall doesn’t produce anything to begin with nor does it exchange services with those who do. The goods that keep the mall economy up and running are secured through imperialism. This is a strange way to create a barrier in the flow of capital: if things are produced and not sold or shipped... can profits be made? Do people in the third world who work for McDonalds or retail in general stand outside of capitalist exploitation?

Isn't it just a geographic division in the labor process? Doesn't capital just seek labor at the cheapest rates possible? If U.S. production moves from the unionized urban centers of the north to the non-union U.S. South at much cheaper labor costs, does that mean people in Detroit or San Francisco have an imperialist relationship to workers in Houston or Atlanta?


Obviously, like all abstract models, this is a big oversimplification. However, it makes an important point about global trends and the relationship between the non-productive segments of the First World and the productive segments of the Third World.Again, how is a dockworker moving IPods made in China not part of the overall process of turning commodities into profits for the capitalist? If a dockworker makes $30 and hour with good benifits but she's helping to move millions of dollars worth of commodities onto trucks and trains... how is she not being exploited?


The shift in First World employment from productive labor to non-productive labor is noteworthy because Marx saw the paradigmatic case of exploitation as the exploitation of those engaged in productive labor. What Marx considered exploitation no longer is widespread in the First World.So workers in a call-center in the thrid world are not exploited and have an interest in capitalism?


First World workers have seen rising incomes, higher standards of living, greater access to and more varied leisure time, greater diversity of life options, greater social mobility, more and more access to capital for much of the past century.This is a big generalization - it's like saying that New Orleans has seen a boom in construction since a certain hurricane... it's missing an important fact. First World workers have seen increases as a result of struggle, to ignore this is to treat workers as passive objects in society. American imperialism has increased, US productivity has increased and US capitalist profits have increased in the neoliberal era while workers have simultaniously seen a lowering of their wages, social wages, and general standard of living. So the common factor is not the expansion of US imperial dominance which only corresponded to increasing living standards for the two decades after WWII, the factor is actually pre-war struggle and then decline of struggle. This decline was due in part to heavy class war from the ruling class, but also through the labor-peace and giving unions a "seat at the table" in the post-war years. I think that period of labor-peace is where these 3rd worldist ideas originated and it made a kind of sense on the surface from connecting some observations (little struggle, conservativism of US and European and Japanese workers and steadily increasing standards of living). In fact this sense of workers benifiting from imperialism seems to agree with the conclusions of labor beurocrats from this period who saw US imperialism as enabling a "guns and butter" economy, but instead of seeing this as good like Keynsian era liberals, third worldism sees it as bad. I really don't see how anyone could still hold this view today.


This, plus the fact that there has been nothing even close to a First World, socialist revolution, has led Leading Light Communists to rightly conclude that the First World working class is no longer the revolutionary subject that Marx described as having “nothing to lose but its chains.”Again a strange argument which agrees with the right-wing that workers aren't fighting because they have it soooo good under capitalism.


In fact, the First World lacks a significant, revolutionary subject entirely; there is no First World proletariat.Bush and Clinton were right: Amurica is a middle class country!


Life options, fantasies, and pursuits once reserved only to the ruling classes have been democratized within the First World. This multi-dimensionality of life thrives as First World peoples have more access to leisure time today than past generations had. Such exists, however, at the expense of the Third World. Shit I never knew I had it so good. I guess since I enjoy the persuits of the Bourgoise, I'll just fund a university to develop things for me, name a few buildings after me, and do policy research that benifits my views. Then I'll buy the mayorship of NYC for a decade or more after having lunch with Bono where we figure out how to fund efforts to privitize public education.

[Per Levy]

Marx described the proletariat as without property. It seems like many people in the FW have access to quite a bit of money to acquire the lifestyle they have.

who are "they" and what lifestyle do "they" have. or are you conflateing petit-bourgeoisie with the proles?


I'd guess that many workers in the FW have access to more capital than many TW capitalists.

mmh, any chance of backing you guess with actual facts?


This is a quote from an article that might throw some light on it:
This has been described as the rise of First World mall economies. Many First World economies can be described as a mall writ large. Nothing is produced at the mall.

wich is completly and total bullshit, there is a lot of stuff produced in the "first world" but more on that later.


Yet people are employed managing, transporting, distributing, securing, etc. goods that are produced elsewhere but are sold at the mall. It is the influx of goods from outside the mall that keeps the mall afloat. Production is going on outside the mall, in the Third World.

to that bolded part: yes and no of course a lot is produced in the "third world" but at the same time that is true for the "first world" as well(not to mention the second world). that is global capitalism after all.


These goods are not secured through “fair exchange” since the mall doesn’t produce anything to begin with nor does it exchange services with those who do.

"fair exchange" in capitalism, what a joke.


Obviously, like all abstract models, this is a big oversimplification.

you dont say.


However, it makes an important point about global trends and the relationship between the non-productive segments of the First World and the productive segments of the Third World.

and what does it say about the "productive" segments of the first world and the "non-productive" segments of the third world.


What Marx considered exploitation no longer is widespread in the First World.

yes it fucking does you fucking idiots.


First World workers have seen rising incomes, higher standards of living, greater access to and more varied leisure time, greater diversity of life options, greater social mobility, more and more access to capital for much of the past century.

yeah when was that, 40 to 50 years ago? today in the first world, working poor jobs are a norm, jobs from wich you hardly can live and need a second or third one to live. and the good jobs are dieing with every year.


This, plus the fact that there has been nothing even close to a First World, socialist revolution,

depends on how far you want to look back, but hey since they used the "past century" as an example of how good the first world workers are having it, in the past century you had the german, italian, finish hungarian and many more revolutions, some succeded but were sadly crushed. oh and also had the russian revolution, you know russia one of the major capitalist/imperialist powers of its and todays time. but that was before some people invented stupid categories to allign themselfs with chilenian fascists.


has led Leading Light Communists to rightly conclude that the First World working class is no longer the revolutionary subject that Marx described as having “nothing to lose but its chains.” In fact, the First World lacks a significant, revolutionary subject entirely; there is no First World proletariat.

oh thats so cute, also it is interesting since the well most first world "people" do count as workers since they have nothing else to sell than their labour power. and that is actually more true today then it was back in the 70s, with the rise of working poor in every "first world" country. also i love how mostly prevliged, white fuckers think they can just difne away hundreds of millions workers because of semantic games.


Instead what has occurred is that First World countries have become relatively homogenized blocks that do not contain antagonistic class contradictions.

oh thats good to know, i always wondered why there are so many strikes since there arnt "antagonistic class contradictions". but what do i know.


Engels referred to this process as the “bourgeoisification” of entire countries.

yeah, im sure engels and marx as well would love to beat the shit out of llco. they were like that.


The First World working class is part of the global bourgeoisie.

no it isnt, how can someone who doesnt own the means of production be part of the bourgeoisie? anyone?


Because antagonistic contradictions have been so reduced within First World countries, and even between First World countries, writers like Francis Fukuyama have declared that the end of history has been reached.

fukuyama retracted that statement very soon afer he made it, also funny that the llco needs a hardcore neocon for their reasoning because in the end they belive the same thing.


Similarly, critics such as Richard Rorty are happy that First World society has reached its current liberal, post-modern, ironic peak. Life options, fantasies, and pursuits once reserved only to the ruling classes have been democratized within the First World. This multi-dimensionality of life thrives as First World peoples have more access to leisure time today than past generations had. Such exists, however, at the expense of the Third World.

of course, we are all happy people here in the "first world". every door is open for us, money comes from the pipes and all that. except of course if you're working class, cant find a job or only find working poor jobs and still those fantasies in the quoted part are only true for upper petit-bourgeoise and the bourgeoisie, the rest has to live from the remains.

[Karlorax]

who are "they" and what lifestyle do "they" have. or are you conflateing petit-bourgeoisie with the proles?

I am just speaking of many First World people. They have houses, cars, televisions, computers, investments, etc. Many wage earners have these things in the First World. So do many salaried employees. So do many small business owners. All things considered, the similarities in lifestyle between First World lower classes, middle, and upper is, on the whole, greater than the lifestyle between the First World lower and middle and the Third World working class. There are exceptions, in cases of dire poverty in the First World, but LLCO is making a point about the overall situation, not the exceptions.


mmh, any chance of backing you guess with actual facts?

There are dozens of articles on the LLCO website with lots of data on these topics. But most thinking people can imagine such situations where a First World wage earner has more access to capital (in say, the form of bank loans, liquid assets, savings, etc.) than a Third World capitalist. This is not to say every First World worker does, but surely some do. The point shows just how problematic such a dogmatic notion of "proletarian" and "capitalist" is.


yes it fucking does you fucking idiots.

Great argument.

Here your argument is with Marx, not with LLCO or me. Marx saw the proletariat as having nothing to lose but its chains. This is a far cry from many First World peoples, even wage earners.

[Karlorax]

Again, how is a dockworker moving IPods made in China not part of the overall process of turning commodities into profits for the capitalist? If a dockworker makes $30 and hour with good benifits but she's helping to move millions of dollars worth of commodities onto trucks and trains... how is she not being exploited?

I think you are misunderstanding the overall arguments. The mall analogy is simply meant to point out that there seems to be an increasing division in the world, that those who produce commodities, those who are closer to direct production, increasingly are geographically concentrated in the Third World because that is where factories have relocated. I don't think this is controversial. Of course shit work is moved where labor costs and laws are weakest, i.e. the Third World.


If a dockworker makes $30 and hour with good benifits but she's helping to move millions of dollars worth of commodities onto trucks and trains... how is she not being exploited?

This is the real question. Why assume she is exploited? Just because someone is an employee does not automatically make them exploited. Even a CEO is technically hired, is an employee. Marx himself recognized all kinds of distinctions in employees, not all employees create value or surplus value, for example. However, Marx said this or Marx said that doesn't really interest me. Let's look at what LLCO says elsewhere:


The world economy is made up of chains of economic interaction. Each commodity has a point where it was produced. Before a commodity finally leaves circulation it might be exchanged several times. Let’s say a commodity was produced at point A. It was bought by a middleman company and transported and sold again at point C. After being sold at the department store, the commodity leaves circulation. This chain can be represented thus:


A->B->C


At each stage of the commodity’s journey profit may be obtained. Let’s suppose profit is obtained when the commodity is sold from the factory at A to the middleman at B. Profit is obtained when the middleman company B sells it to the retail store C. And profit is also obtained when the retailer C sells the commodity to the consumer. Even though profit is obtained at each point in the circulation chain, surplus value can only be produced by the direct producer. Even though profit is obtained by the middlemen and distributor, this profit is not produced by the workers employed by either the middleman B or the retailer C. This allows Marx to make the point that the merchant does not get rich by cheating his clerks:

“We must make the same distinction between him and the wage-workers directly employed by industrial capital which exists between industrial capital and merchant’s capital, and thus between the industrial capitalist and the merchant. Since the merchant, as mere agent of circulation, produces neither value nor surplus-value.. it follows that the mercantile workers employed by him in these same functions cannot directly create surplus-value for him.. In other words, that he does not enrich himself by cheating his clerks.” (3)
When Marx is at his most consistent he extends this point very broadly. There is no reason we cannot extend Marx’s point about clerks to all of those outside production. Even if Marx isn’t always clear, and sometimes contradictory, one has to make this generalization to be consistent with the Labor Theory of Value. Direct production is the origin of value and the original source of all profit in the Marxist Labor Theory of Value paradigm. Thus, as Eleanor Marx points out, the value that is obtained by all classes has its origin in the direct producers. This is true not just of true of the traditional ruling classes, but also of those who are employed but are not direct producers or part of direct production. These workers may help realize value but they do not produce it as the direct producer does. A bank does not create its profit by squeezing value out of its tellers. A bank obtains its profit by receiving a share of the total social product produced by direct producers. Banks obtain their share through investments and financial manipulations, but the origin of that value lies in direct production. The same is true of supermarkets. It isn’t like they grow the lettuce in the store parking lot. Santa’s elves are not toiling away in the back of the Toys ‘r’ Us. from:http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation/



LLCO's point is that just because someone is employed doesn't make them exploited. Once you admit this, then you have to set a bar for what counts as exploitation and what does not.


So workers in a call-center in the thrid world are not exploited and have an interest in capitalism?

LLCO would say that the worker really doesn't really have an interest in socialism because to support socialism would mean lowering her standard of living. Global socialism would mean reducing the standard of living of most First World peoples. She tries to increase her share with those above her, but she does not seek to overthrow the whole system of capitalism-imperialism. She seeks to better her position within the imperialist system. She may support some form of social-imperialism, social fascism, etc. that pretends to be socialism but she does not support genuine internationalism, genuine socialism.


This is a big generalization - it's like saying that New Orleans has seen a boom in construction since a certain hurricane... it's missing an important fact. First World workers have seen increases as a result of struggle, to ignore this is to treat workers as passive objects in society. American imperialism has increased, US productivity has increased and US capitalist profits have increased in the neoliberal era while workers have simultaniously seen a lowering of their wages, social wages, and general standard of living. So the common factor is not the expansion of US imperial dominance which only corresponded to increasing living standards for the two decades after WWII, the factor is actually pre-war struggle and then decline of struggle. This decline was due in part to heavy class war from the ruling class, but also through the labor-peace and giving unions a "seat at the table" in the post-war years. I think that period of labor-peace is where these 3rd worldist ideas originated and it made a kind of sense on the surface from connecting some observations (little struggle, conservativism of US and European and Japanese workers and steadily increasing standards of living). In fact this sense of workers benifiting from imperialism seems to agree with the conclusions of labor beurocrats from this period who saw US imperialism as enabling a "guns and butter" economy, but instead of seeing this as good like Keynsian era liberals, third worldism sees it as bad. I really don't see how anyone could still hold this view today.

LLCO would point out that every year the doom and gloom left claims that the standard of living has gotten worse for American workers, but the reality is that it is not the case. One wonders if there was a year when the First Worldist left wasn't doing its chicken little routine. Anyone can go check out the data at the Census Bureau, for example, and get a more realistic picture. There you will find that adjusted income has generally gone up for households.


Again a strange argument which agrees with the right-wing that workers aren't fighting because they have it soooo good under capitalism.

I don't see what this has anything to do with anything. Engels made comments about bourgeoisification:


.. the fact that the English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat. In the case of a nation which exploits the entire world this is, of course, justified to some extent. from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_10_07.htm

Lenin made similar points. Does that make Engels and Lenin somehow in cahoots with the right wing? Of course people are going to be less inclined to struggle for radical change if they are relatively comfortable. People look for radical, revolutionary solutions when the system is failing them. This is common sense. LLCO would probably say that First World peoples have raised their standard of living through centuries of successful labor struggle combined with successful imperialism. So, duh. The sky is blue also.


Bush and Clinton were right: Amurica is a middle class country!

And?

Although I wish it were otherwise, the USA is not a country bursting at the seams due to class antagonism. It is not a hotbed of class struggle between First World peoples.

[Sotionov]

No, you're neither a worker (in the sense of having nothing to sell but your labour power),
You can be a worker without being a wage-worker.


I agreed with a lot of what you were arguing but I don't think this is quite right. If you own your own means of production, you have a class interest in maintaining that and imporving that ability. The small capitalists lead to big capitalism.
Owning your means of production doesn't make you a capitalist of any size. A person owning his means of production but not exploition anyone but wants to exploit someone isn't a "small capitalist" wanting to become a big capitalist, he is a worker who wants to become a capitalist. And workers wanting to become capitalists isn't class interest, it's false consciousness.


rich who make money not through directly exploiting people, but through financial gamblingExploitation can be direct (boss alienating labor from the worker) or indirect (unearned incomes- rents on anything considered property). Financial speculators, together with all usurers and rentiers are (indirenct) exploiters and should be abolished.


The p. bourgoise are a fuzzy and ill-defined group, but I think it's a useful generalization that can cover classes which reproduce themselves and have an interest in maintaining the current order even if they are small farmers, shop-ownersI don't see by what logic a worker owning his means of production and not exploiting anyone can have interest in maintaining the current order where he is being put out of business by those that do exploit, and thus turned into wage-worker himself. His interest can only be socialism- the system where all wage-labor would be abolished.

[Fakeblock]

You can be a worker without being a wage-worker.

I think worker is meant to be synonymous with proletarian in this case. Like "the working class" is often used synonymously with the proletariat, because they're are the working class of the capitalist epoch.

[Sotionov]

A name of a group used as a synonym for it's sub-type. Well, that's some intelligible discourse.

[Per Levy]

I am just speaking of many First World people.

and people arnt classes, so when you talk about first world workers and then about first world people who have it so good it gets really confusing.


They have houses, cars, televisions, computers, investments, etc.

its not like you need a car and the ability to drive for many jobs and it is expected of you to have this ready for you job, or else less chance for a job. tvs and computers are really cheap nowadays, so what is the point? scolding proles for haveing a fridge and a washing mashine too? and tbh, i dont know anyone with investments besides savings on a bank account. not to mention that ms proles do not live in houses but apartments, flats and so on.


Many wage earners have these things in the First World.

so do "many wage earners" in second and third world countries.


So do many salaried employees. So do many small business owners.

so? most proles cant afford super 100 inch long plasma tv and will stick with cheap products that they can afford.


All things considered, the similarities in lifestyle between First World lower classes, middle, and upper is, on the whole, greater than the lifestyle between the First World lower and middle and the Third World working class.

you live in north america, can i assume that you are a super previliged, white and probally even middle class? where you ever in a social ghetto? did you actually ever worked in working poor job? and now go to upper class destrict, filled with villas and fortified to protect said districts from the lower classes. and you want to tell me there is a big similarity between a social ghetto and a upper class villa district?


There are exceptions, in cases of dire poverty in the First World, but LLCO is making a point about the overall situation, not the exceptions.

the llco is making exceptions the rule for their idiotic claims, it seems to me.


There are dozens of articles on the LLCO website with lots of data on these topics.

how nice of you to not link me to these "dozens of articles" who would make you guess valid, also other "sources" then llco would be nice too. but that would probally be to hard for you.


But most thinking people can imagine such situations where a First World wage earner has more access to capital (in say, the form of bank loans, liquid assets, savings, etc.) than a Third World capitalist.

oh nice, insults, if i dont see it your way i of course cant be a thinking person. just because you swim in money doesnt mean most proles do.


This is not to say every First World worker does, but surely some do.

how intersting, just above you said that you folks dont talk about exceptations but about the "overall situation". so why are you making generalizations about some workers who might have more money than a crappie cappie from somewhere?


The point shows just how problematic such a dogmatic notion of "proletarian" and "capitalist" is.

no, its only problemaic to people and organizations, like llco, who really are into class colaboration.


Great argument.

i know, but its true and to be fair, arrogant ignorance and idiocity can make me quite angry.


Here your argument is with Marx, not with LLCO or me.

no the argument is with you and llco who use a quote from marx and interprete it in ways that just arnt accaptable.


Marx saw the proletariat as having nothing to lose but its chains. This is a far cry from many First World peoples, even wage earners.

every worker has a lot more to lose than chains, the life, the life of loved ones, the livelihood and so on and so forth, and that is true for all workers everywhere. also while we are at it, when was the last third world revolution? how many decades do i have to go back? seems like the third world proles are just as revolutionary as the first world ones, ie not very much at the moment, but things will change.

[Zulu]

And yet, it is the universal equivalent.

No, it is not. It's just paper with pictures on it at the very best. Most of it is nothing but a sequence of ones and zeroes on some of other bank's computer.

To be an equivalent something must be a commodity with some real value (aka socially necessary labor time) to it, like gold.

So, the "Some "Marxists"..." remark actually goes to you, my friend.





Cars for personal use are not means of production, by no stretch of imagination.
Then they must be some kind of means of subsistence, which is far more preposterous.

But imagination has nothing to do with this. The purpose for which a means of production is utilized doesn't make it a means of production or not a means of production. It's either a means of production or not a means of production by design. All automobiles are means of production, even those that sit around in museums (if they still can go, and those that can't are essentially not automobiles, but props).





2. "Owning machines" doesn't make one petit-bourgeois - owning machines that allow you to avoid wage-labour makes you petit-bourgeois.

Anyone owning an automobile may at any moment become self-employed cab-driver/courier/delivery boy/ whatever. Therefore, if any given car owner still chooses to get employed by a capitalist enterprise, it's a matter of choice (which real proletarians don't have, according to Karl Marx). And why does this kind choice occurs so often in the first world? Because the capitalist enterprises are willing to share enough surplus value extracted from the real proletariat in the third world with enough "workers" to secure a large enough solvent demand on the consumer market, so all their shitty commodities could be actually sold.

[Zulu]

Which is what he means by "owning machines"- owning your means of production. I doubt he means a wage laborer having a computer or a car and thus "owning machines".


But that's exactly what I mean. Cars and computers are machines, therefore, if you own one, you own a machine. Moreover, unlike old times mechanical lathes, computers and cars are useless without externally produced power supply and other infrastructure, such as roads/software and service stations. That essentially makes cars and computers means of social production and part of a commonplace contradiction discussed by Marx a lot: the social character of production vs. private acquisition and ownership of the product.

However, personal computers differ from private cars in that computer owners generally cover all the costs of operating them (that is, pay the full bill for the electric power, and that's it). But car owners pay for only a part of the costs of operating their cars, while significant costs of operating private cars are borne by the society as a whole: road construction and upkeep, traffic control, pollution and other externalities, which makes every private car owner an exploiter in his own right.





A car does not fucking produce commodities for exchange, it is not constant capital - IT IS A COMMODITY.


You say this as if means of production, such as bulldozers, for instance, can't be commodities... Well, guess what, they can, and in the capitalist mode of production they generally are. Therefore a passenger car's being a commodity does not logically preclude it from being a means of production. With that out of the way, let's clear up the other part. The means of production are used to produce products, not commodities. Some products are produced as commodities and some aren't. In communism nothing at all will be produced as commodity. Does that mean there will be no means of production in communism? I suppose not. But even in capitalism many things are not produced as commodities, but directly for use or sharing with others without exchange. Private transportation is just one of those produces.

Also that "constant capital" remark suggests that you think if a car owner is not a proletarian then he must be a capitalist. But there are (still) other classes in the world, you know, such as the petty bourgeoisie.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You can be a worker without being a wage-worker.Yes you can work, cops work, but generally when people say worker in contrast to p. bourgoise, they are talking about prols.


Owning your means of production doesn't make you a capitalist of any size. A person owning his means of production but not exploition anyone but wants to exploit someone isn't a "small capitalist" wanting to become a big capitalist, he is a worker who wants to become a capitalist. And workers wanting to become capitalists isn't class interest, it's false consciousness.It's not false consiousness (though it may be contradictory) because it isn't the IDEA - they are engaging with the market selling the product of labor - maybe their labor, but in that role, their interest is not the same as prols, it's for a better deal on that capitalist market! What would be "liberation" for someone who reproduces themselves in this manner? It would be to have freer market acess and less "unfair" competition or regulation.


I don't see by what logic a worker owning his means of production and not exploiting anyone can have interest in maintaining the current order where he is being put out of business by those that do exploit, and thus turned into wage-worker himself. His interest can only be socialism- the system where all wage-labor would be abolished.This is a possibility - because the position of people like this is not independant, they can either side with more capitalism, or with the prols.

[Jimmie Higgins]

This is the real question. Why assume she is exploited? Just because someone is an employee does not automatically make them exploited. Even a CEO is technically hired, is an employee. Marx himself recognized all kinds of distinctions in employees, not all employees create value or surplus value, for example. However, Marx said this or Marx said that doesn't really interest me.The labor process is broken down into parts, but the whole is the circulation of capital. I assume that the worker is exploited in my example, because when the value of your labor allows billions of dollars worth of commodities to be sold, then her relativly high salery (created through past militant struggles - though now greatly weakened and erroded) still is not equal or greater than the value of their labor to the capital process. That one worker's salary might be high, but they are doing the equivalent work as it took scores of people to do a generation ago - so despite an increase in wages, the rate of exploitation may have actually increased to a greater degree.


Let's look at what LLCO says elsewhere:
Direct production is the origin of value and the original source of all profit in the Marxist Labor Theory of Value paradigm. Thus, as Eleanor Marx points out, the value that is obtained by all classes has its origin in the direct producers.Yes, the point of production is fundamental, but to say that it's the only link in the chain is an absurd abstraction that confuses capitalism as a real world system with economic formulas and generalizations. Again, capitalism is a chain, commodities sitting unloaded on a ship or unshelved can not increase profits and can not be severed from being linked all the way back to the point of production.

The example of comparing supermarkets to banks is incorrect because there is no commodity produced anywhere in commercial banking itself, it plays a different function - never the less, in daily experience and reality, bank tellers still have prolitarian interests. Supermarkets are different and obviously part of a commodity production circuit.


LLCO would say that the worker really doesn't really have an interest in socialism because to support socialism would mean lowering her standard of living.Not even in the first world.


Global socialism would mean reducing the standard of living of most First World peoples.No, abolishing rents, debt and providing housing in places like the US on the first day of the revolution would raise the entire working class's standard of living. Not spending effort maintaining the US military and arms would free up tons of labor and resources to be re-directed towards things that would increase services and infrastructure for popular benifit.


She tries to increase her share with those above her, but she does not seek to overthrow the whole system of capitalism-imperialism.Um, yes, for the most part worker's don't jump to the conclusion of worker's power out of nothing. This is even true of workers in China who are much more militant and have a higher rate of exploitation.


She seeks to better her position within the imperialist system. She may support some form of social-imperialism, social fascism, etc. that pretends to be socialism but she does not support genuine internationalism, genuine socialism. How so? Again, this is a reading of a specific general state of consiousness in the Keynsian guns and butter era that has magically be turned into some fundamental change in the interests of the working class.


LLCO would point out that every year the doom and gloom left claims that the standard of living has gotten worse for American workers, but the reality is that it is not the case.By all accurate measure and every statistic Left or pro-Capitalist I have read this is not the case that the standard of living has increased for workers in the US.


One wonders if there was a year when the First Worldist left wasn't doing its chicken little routine. Anyone can go check out the data at the Census Bureau, for example, and get a more realistic picture. There you will find that adjusted income has generally gone up for households. For what households. So you are including the 1% who have seen a 5 fold increase in houshold wages with working class people who have seen stagnated wages on top of increases in living expenses and the elimination of public institutions and social wages. I just learned also that census data doesn't include college students or prisoners... just households.

This also confuses wages as a measure of wealth - is debt included, is it controlled for additional costs of living?

In addition, I don't think there is such a thing as "first-worldists", if you are talking about people here countering these arguments, then you mean internationalists.



I don't see what this has anything to do with anything. Engels made comments about bourgeoisification:

Lenin made similar points. Does that make Engels and Lenin somehow in cahoots with the right wing? Of course people are going to be less inclined to struggle for radical change if they are relatively comfortable. People look for radical, revolutionary solutions when the system is failing them. This is common sense. LLCO would probably say that First World peoples have raised their standard of living through centuries of successful labor struggle combined with successful imperialism. So, duh. The sky is blue also.
Were they arguing that this was a fundamental change in the nature of class in capitalism? No, this is a totally disengenious argument and an appeal to authority through quotes that aren't really foundational theories for these figures. Why would Lenin have placed all hope in a revolution in Germany if he thought that they were actually bourgois? Those workers had much higher standards of living, many reforms, more stratification and specialization in the working class, and reformist tradditions and organizations. So Lenin was hoping for the worker-bourgoise of Germany to save revolution in Russia?


Although I wish it were otherwise, the USA is not a country bursting at the seams due to class antagonism. It is not a hotbed of class struggle between First World peoples.I think the Communist Manifesto has a line about how class struggle is often hidden and then comes to the surface. That's what this is. History is not a straight line, workers are incredibly numerous and diverse in opinion and underconfident whereas capitalist hegemony is strong and centralized and organized. You are providing descriptions of things - and yes, there hasn't been a worker's revolution in the first or third world - but mistaking the apparent flatness of the ocean for a determined fact and not seeing that the world is round. It's understandable in the post-war era why people might draw these conclusions by mistaking trends for fundamental changes. The post-war era caught the official far-left in Europe and the US off guard because the re-ordering of the imperial order and the massive destruction of capital allowed for new expansion and investment and production. Many capitalist governments wanted to ensure labor peace and prevent conflicts from the 30s from re-emerging and they had some extra economic space because of the boom to increase wages and give into many social demands in Europe or the US. At the same time, the imperial re-ordering allowed for a wave of national liberation movements - many which took up left-wing demands or even held to socialist ideologies.

But this snapshot is a tendency at a particular time due to various circumstances of the world-order and the capitalist system at that time. To extend this as some iron law of history to the present is almost like willfully closing off to the contemporary situation.

[Sotionov]

Yes you can work, cops work, but generally when people say worker in contrast to p. bourgoise, they are talking about prols.
You not only can be a worker without being a wage-worker, you can also be a worker without being a wage-worker or a class traitor, e.g. be an artisan, peasant, or a member of a workers' coop.


What would be "liberation" for someone who reproduces themselves in this manner? It would be to have freer market acess and less "unfair" competition or regulation.
No, it would be the abolition of capitalists and thus the dissapearance of unfair competition, that is- they, who are not exploiting, having to compete with the exploiters.


This is a possibility - because the position of people like this is not independant, they can either side with more capitalism, or with the prols.
I just don't how can it be in the interest of the workers that own their means of production to side with the capitalists, maybe they can fooled into siding with them (which is as I said false consciousness) but that's them acting against their interest.

[Jimmie Higgins]

No, it would be the abolition of capitalists and thus the dissapearance of unfair competition, that is- they, who are not exploiting, having to compete with the exploiters.The dissapearance of unfair competition to achieve what? An easier time selling commodities on a market - therefore they have an interest, if they want to engage in this kind of production, in maintaining privite productive property and trade through the capitalist relations on the market.

If such small producers are going to be won in a practical sense to supporting an independant radical worker's (prol) movement, it is going to be on a broader basis - a better life in general (no war, no mass poverty, etc) - not on the basis of their economic interests which tend to side with capitalist privite property production.

An artisan is not going to be able to produce as well and as quickly and easily as a worker-run industry and so while prols might decide to allow autonomy for these small producers in the aftermath of a revolution (this is debateable and many radicals reject this on principle) it's still these small producers being subbordinate to another larger and more powerful group's interests: prols, not capitalists. Modern society can not primarily run on small production and this is why people argue that this group has not independant class system and has to tie their fortunes either to capitalists or to worker's power (and would probably be split and some drawn into each camp in a revolutionary situation).


I just don't how can it be in the interest of the workers that own their means of production to side with the capitalists, maybe they can fooled into siding with them (which is as I said false consciousness) but that's them acting against their interest.
It's not as though siding with the capitalis mean that they are pro-big business, in fact, most of the time these people are fiercely anti-big-business both from the left and right (fascists). But the question is what basis does someone who makes their living on the market have an interest in maintaining: capialist market relations. This is not false consiousness, because in fact this is how they reproduce themselves, they just don't have much control in the overall market compared to big producers.

[Sotionov]

An easier time selling commodities on a market - therefore they have an interest, if they want to engage in this kind of production, in maintaining privite productive property and trade through the capitalist relations on the market.Their interest is precisely the oppossite, being that the capitalists, because they exploit, are their biggest competition and can easily out-compete them, and it is therefore in their interest to destroy capitalists.


not on the basis of their economic interests which tend to side with capitalist privite property production.They do not. It totally nonsensical to say that their economic interests tend to side with capitalists, their interest are clearly anti-capitalist.


so while prols might decide to allow autonomy for these small producers in the aftermath of a revolution (this is debateable and many radicals reject this on principle)Yep, on the principle of oppression and state-capitalism.


But the question is what basis does someone who makes their living on the market have an interest in maintaining: capialist market relations.It is precisely the opposite, their interests are anti-capitalist, and in favor of workers' ownership (and managment) or production, whether in the market ["simple commodity production"/ anarcho-individualism/ Ricardian socialism] or by cooperating with different enterprises [forming proudhonian agro-industrial federations, bakuninist collectives, or kropotkinist communes].

[Luís Henrique]

No, it is not. It's just paper with pictures on it at the very best. Most of it is nothing but a sequence of ones and zeroes on some of other bank's computer.

And these pictures on paper and sequences of zeroes and ones allow me to purchase bread and computers, gas and books. So they are the general equivalent - the commodity the use value of which is to embody exchange value.

Your argument amounts to saying that a car is not a car, just a ton of steel and plastics.


To be an equivalent something must be a commodity with some real value (aka socially necessary labor time) to it, like gold.

There is no such thing as "real value".


Then they must be some kind of means of subsistence, which is far more preposterous.

Yes, they are means of consumption - so what?

Or do you believe a yacht a millionaire owns for fun is a "means of production"?


But imagination has nothing to do with this. The purpose for which a means of production is utilized doesn't make it a means of production or not a means of production. It's either a means of production or not a means of production by design. All automobiles are means of production, even those that sit around in museums (if they still can go, and those that can't are essentially not automobiles, but props).

A means of production is something that is used to produce other things. An automobile is a means of production if it is a taxi cab, for instance, but if it is used for non-commodified transportation, then no, it is not a means of production. Anything that is in a museum might have been means of production in the past, but once they are no longer used to produce anything, they are no longer means of production.

Seriously, this is basic Marxism, and the line you are following has been extensively criticised by Marx, in his writings against Proudhon.


Anyone owning an automobile may at any moment become self-employed cab-driver/courier/delivery boy/ whatever.

Well, no. To become a cab driver you need a special license, not your mere will. To use a car for other productive activities you need other means of production - including an actual knowledge of the markets, etc.


Therefore, if any given car owner still chooses to get employed by a capitalist enterprise, it's a matter of choice (which real proletarians don't have, according to Karl Marx).

It is a matter of rational choice, which means it is a matter of necessity.

I have a car. If I try to use it as a means of production, I will quickly be put out of market by true capitalist competition. Which means I will be back to my proletarian condition - probably aggravated by the loss of time, experience, contacts, etc., that an adventure as a wannabe bourgeois would entail.


And why does this kind choice occurs so often in the first world? Because the capitalist enterprises are willing to share enough surplus value extracted from the real proletariat in the third world with enough "workers" to secure a large enough solvent demand on the consumer market, so all their shitty commodities could be actually sold.

That, of course, is completely false.

The surplus value produced in the third world is insufficient to keep the capitalist system functioning, much less to be freely distributed to the first world proletariat. The bourgeoisie doesn't distribute money to ensure its commodities can be sold. What an idea.

Luís Henrique

[Jimmie Higgins]

Their interest is precisely the oppossite, being that the capitalists, because they exploit, are their biggest competition and can easily out-compete them, and it is therefore in their interest to destroy capitalists.so they want to destroy capitalists so they have less competition in... capitalism?


They do not. It totally nonsensical to say that their economic interests tend to side with capitalists, their interest are clearly anti-capitalist.i think maybe you don't see capitalism as an economic system, but as a bunch of rich individuals who rule us, maybe that is the source of this difference of opinion. Again, if someone makes jewlery themselves and tries to support themselves through the capitalist market, then within the bounds of supporting themselves in this way, their interests are for a better position within capitalist relations: less regulation, less corporate competition. U.s. libertarians and tea party people want this too... Are they anti capitalists?


Yep, on the principle of oppression and state-capitalism.well really I think it comes from a level of dogmatism and thinking of classes abstractly, rather than as groups of people.


It is precisely the opposite, their interests are anti-capitalist, and in favor of workers' ownership (and managment) or production, whether in the market ["simple commodity production"/ anarcho-individualism/ Ricardian socialism] or by cooperating with different enterprises [forming proudhonian agro-industrial federations, bakuninist collectives, or kropotkinist communes].how can an interest in production for the capitalist market be anti-capitalist?

[cyu]

To be an equivalent something must be a commodity with some real value (aka socially necessary labor time) to it, like gold.


In fact, gold is the opposite of real value. Gold is just another medium of exchange, like paper money. What does have real value (to you) is what you're using that medium of exchange to buy - like food, shelter, or health care.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/gold-prices-collapse-everyone-remembers-just-yellow-metal-150633740.html

If this were mere "volatility"--if gold had some fundamental value that it would likely eventually return to--then the price drop would be no big deal. But there's no solid theoretical way to "value" gold, so its price could do almost anything.

speculating about what gold prices will do is speculating, not investing, and many of the folks who bought gold or gold funds over the past few years have assumed they were "investing."

the primary argument for buying gold--the argument that gold would protect you from the hyper-inflation that would surely follow the government's crazy money-printing--has been flat-out wrong.

The only thing that determines the price of gold is what someone is willing to pay for it.

gold is not some magical perfect investment, but, instead, just yellow metal.

From http://www.revleft.com/vb/should-start-economicsi-t177919/index.html

Interestingly enough, I first got into what I consider "non-theological" economics while reading about archeology. There, the archeologist was explaining the use of gold as money in ancient civilizations. What surprised me most was the explanation that gold had no "intrinsic value" - for a kid that was brought up on role-playing games and video games where it's all about chasing gold, this came as a bit of a shock.

So if gold has no intrinsic value, it got me into thinking why gold was considered valuable at all. I started getting into the development of banking, and the role early goldsmiths played in the development of money. I started looking into things like why paintings like the Mona Lisa were considered so incredibly valuable that they were considered "priceless" - as well as stuff like the tulip bulb mania that nearly crashed an economy.

Anyway, the bottom line is don't take anything they "teach" you for granted. It could very well just be part of the indoctrination they themselves received.

[Zulu]

And these pictures on paper and sequences of zeroes and ones allow me to purchase bread and computers, gas and books. So they are the general equivalent - the commodity the use value of which is to embody exchange value.
Karl Marx cries in his grave over this.



There is no such thing as "real value".
Yes there is, as opposed to the phantom value that you see in those pieces of colored paper. Just because the federal government decrees it to be a "legal tender", it does not magically begin to embody any socially necessary labor time.



Yes, they are means of consumption - so what?
No, they are means of production. They are consumed productively.





Or do you believe a yacht a millionaire owns for fun is a "means of production"?

Naturally, as it's primary purpose is to transport people and cargo from point A to point B, just as that of any other boat. The fact that it is outfitted with all those luxury goods changes nothing. A boat is a boat, and a golden door handle is a golden door handle.





A means of production is something that is used to produce other things. An automobile is a means of production if it is a taxi cab, for instance, but if it is used for non-commodified transportation, then no, it is not a means of production.

And which spell of the voodoo magic does that miraculous transformation exactly? You know, because the same car can be used for both in a span of an hour... And again, in communism, when there will be no commodity production, there will be no means of production, it seems like - from your assertion.



Seriously, this is basic Marxism, and the line you are following has been extensively criticised by Marx, in his writings against Proudhon.

Great! Then you surely will have no trouble in coming up with some quote that would directly support your way of thinking and enlighten me, won't you?

But so far I can only tell that Proudhon has a lot to do with your position on modern "money", since it actually quite resembles the system of "free credit" as a means of circulation and exchange of commodities coming out of thin air, which Proudhon advocated, and which blew Marx's mind.




Well, no. To become a cab driver you need a special license, not your mere will.

No, you don't need a license to become a cab driver. Because an illegal cab driver is still a cab driver.




To use a car for other productive activities you need other means of production - including an actual knowledge of the markets, etc.
What you mean by "productive activities" is, in fact, commodity production, to which productive activities are not limited even in the capitalist society. But even so the fact that you need something else besides a car doesn't change the fact that any operable car is a means of production ready to be committed to commodity production at any given moment. You think you need a cab driver's license? Well, what's the problem? Go get one! Oh, wait.. :confused:

Are you saying a cab driver's license is what turns a car into a means of production? :laugh:




I have a car. If I try to use it as a means of production,
You use it as a means of production every time you fucking drive!




The surplus value produced in the third world is insufficient to keep the capitalist system functioning,
Oh, really? Problem is, with the floating fiat currencies instead of money there even is no reliable instrument to measure value adequately any more. Which comes in quite handy to redistribute the world social product to the first world malls and car dealerships through a system of credit and inequivalent exchange. Welcome to the era of ultra-imperialism.




The bourgeoisie doesn't distribute money to ensure its commodities can be sold.
That's because there is no money out there any more. It has been canceled. But so far as the fiat currency means of circulation is concerned, it is distributed by the bourgeoisie among the petty bourgeoisie.



What an idea.

It's a brilliant idea and it's called "consumer credit". It literally creates that "money" at the moment of purchase out of thin air, so that your first world "proles" could keep their iPhone models up to date and the Apple corporation in business.

[Zulu]

In fact, gold is the opposite of real value. Gold is just another medium of exchange, like paper money. What does have real value (to you) is what you're using that medium of exchange to buy - like food, shelter, or health care.
You've just mixed up value and use-value. Of course, gold is useless to most people most of the time, except if it is used for money, but it takes actual labor to dig it out of the ground and mold it into bullion and coins. Furthermore, due to its chemical qualities it can retain that embodied labor for a very long (practically unlimited) time without loss even in some adverse conditions (except for technological advancements in the gold mining industry which downgrade the value of previously produced gold to the current level of the socially necessary labor time it takes to produce a given amount of gold), which his why it became the most widely recognized money-commodity the first place.

However with the mass of commodities growing exponentially in the 19th and 20th centuries, gold fell too far behind it to function effectively as the means of circulation and then even to function as the basis for other means of circulation such as credit and bank notes. That's the primary reason why gold, and effectively the money system altogether was ditched in the early 1970s in favor of pure fiat finance and credit system. But there is also a side effect to it, which is very convenient for the "1%-ers", but benefits also those the "1%-ers" kindly choose to be credit recipients.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What you mean by "productive activities" is, in fact, commodity production, to which productive activities are not limited even in the capitalist society. But even so the fact that you need something else besides a car doesn't change the fact that any operable car is a means of production ready to be committed to commodity production at any given moment. You think you need a cab driver's license? Well, what's the problem? Go get one! Oh, wait.. :confused:

Are you saying a cab driver's license is what turns a car into a means of production? :laugh:so when workers cook a meal to eat, it's not social reproduction, but a potential start up restaurant enterprise? A needle and thread is a means of production when workers repair their socks?


You use it as a means of production every time you fucking drive!um, what is being produced? Labor arriving at work after you commute. So it's not really production, cars are a way that transportation needed by capitalists (again, social reproduction) has been essentially privatized and pushed onto an expense for workers.

[Zulu]

so when workers cook a meal to eat
It's a little piece of natural economy. Or kitchen slavery for women. And just to remind you: in communism (almost) all meals will be produced communally.



A needle and thread is a means of production when workers repair their socks?
Workers consume socks, not needles.




um, what is being produced?

The "useful effect of the change of location" as Marx put it (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch01.htm).




transportation needed by capitalists (again, social reproduction) has been essentially privatized and pushed onto an expense for workers.
Which makes workers kind of shareholders in the capitalist enterprise, which needs workforce transported in and out of it. Too bad the workers make little profit on their capital here, but that does not help them to be back in the class of proletariat.

[Sotionov]

so they want to destroy capitalists so they have less competition in... capitalism?
If they destroy capitalists, there's no capitalism.


i think maybe you don't see capitalism as an economic system, but as a bunch of rich individuals who rule us, maybe that is the source of this difference of opinion.Capitalism is an economic system where there exist people who exploit other people by wage-labor and usurious practices.


how can an interest in production for the capitalist market be anti-capitalist?I just said that their interest is to have a socialist (exploitationless) economy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Capitalism is an economic system where there exist people who exploit other people by wage-labor and usurious practices.


How can this be true, when both wage-labour and usury were widespread before capitalism came into being as a political system?

They are not the two main characteristics of capitalism. It is, instead, social structure that is historically unique to capitalism - the existence of the worker-capitalist relation, as opposed to the serf-lord relation under feudalism, and the slave-owner relation under slavery.

[Sotionov]

How can this be true, when both wage-labour and usury were widespread before capitalism came into being as a political system?In that case that was a system mixing slavery (slave-labor) or feudalism (serf-labor) with capitalism.


They are not the two main characteristics of capitalism. It is, instead, social structure that is historically unique to capitalism - the existence of the worker-capitalist relation, as opposed to the serf-lord relation under feudalism, and the slave-owner relation under slavery. That social relation that you talk about is preciselly the wage-labor exploitation that I mentioned.

[cyu]

it takes actual labor to dig it out of the ground and mold it


Just because something takes labor, doesn't mean it's valuable. It might take a lot of labor to collect Himilayan yak poop, but unless there's a use for that poop, it's still just poop.

The simple fact is that any economy can function without using gold as a medium of exchange. In contrast, it would be much harder for a human economy to function without food, shelter, farms, factories, etc.

If wealthy capitalists hold part of their wealth in gold, weaning your economy off of it is actually an important step in destroying capitalism. Excerpt from http://everything2.com/title/Demand+is+not+measured+in+units+of+people%252C+it+ is+measured+in+units+of+money

If wealth is concentrated in paper money or gold, then people should just stop accepting that paper money or gold as legal tender, and start using something else as legal tender.

If a rich capitalist holds all his wealth in gold, if the econmy abandons the use of gold as a medium of exchange, it in effect makes that capitalist completely broke.

From http://www.revleft.com/vb/crashing-mediums-exchange-t175288/index2.html

Mediums of exchange (whether paper currency or "precious" metals) only have value so long as the people of an economy conduct their trade in it. If the working people of a country stopped accepting any medium of exchange as payment, then that "money" would become as worthless as any other piece of paper or rock.

Let's say the working people of America stopped accepting dollars as payment for any goods and services. Let's say they started using a new currency "rallods" instead. You might argue there would still be some conversion rate between dollars and rallods - in effect, it would just be like the introduction of a new currency in the foreign exchange market, and the value of the dollar wouldn't crash.

However, if working people only kept their money in "rallods" and immediately converted any holdings of dollars they had into rallods, what would happen? The amount of dollars floating around the market would shoot up - a massive supply increase affecting the ratio of dollars to actual goods and services - leaving the dollar ever more worthless as more people start dumping dollars - with "value" now being held in "rallods". Of course, real value originates from what working people are willing to accept as payment.

[Sotionov]

Just because something takes labor, doesn't mean it's valuable.
Nothing is valuable in itself. If a grass of water or a piece of bread are on table in the middle of the street, and no one wants them, they obviously are worth anything. There is no such thing as intrinsic value.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Which makes workers kind of shareholders in the capitalist enterprise, which needs workforce transported in and out of it. Too bad the workers make little profit on their capital here, but that does not help them to be back in the class of proletariat.So privitization of the costs of maintaining capitalism and pushing that cost onto induvidual workers makes them "shareholders"? I really don't think this follows at all. So when we eat so we can go to work without passing out, that makes us shareholders too?

It is not a means of production for workers in places like the US to have a car - it is necissary, it is transportation in a world designed not around our convinience but on where to build what based on land values, so population is put out in less valuable ex-farmland and industry put near transportation hubs etc. Rather than expand public transportation (which was initially created by industrialists in places like NYC to bring labor to their factories), US cities in the early 20th century decided it was more efficient for them to cut these back and encourage auto manufacturing. Look at job listings in the US for blue collar jobs - a large percentage require a working car... not for the job itself often, they just want to make sure the workers will be reliable!

Again this is an example of capitalism solving the problems of social reproduction through the market and pushing the costs onto workers. To say a car in the modern cotext of the spacial divisions between communities and high job areas is a means of production would also mean that a stove for workers is a potential resturant, a sewing machine is a potential textile factory, etc.

This argument of yours is only logical if you take as a forgone conclusion that workers in the first world are not prols and then bend reality to fit that conclusion.

[Jimmie Higgins]

If they destroy capitalists, there's no capitalism.The USSR would suggest different since they had capitalism run without standard capitalists - Japan also developed captialism not through capitalists but through existing feudal structures and groups.

Capitalism is a specific set of relations or method for society to reproduce what it needs. These social relationships produce the big capitalists through the outcome of market forces and competition, it's not the big capitalists who will capitalism into being. Where did capitalism arise from? Small farm production, artisan production, etc. So to say that small producers for the market have "socialist interests" begs the question: why did market economies dominated by small production lead to big capitalism and not socialism?


Capitalism is an economic system where there exist people who exploit other people by wage-labor and usurious practices.Capitalism is a system where commodities are sold for a profit that is generated through (usually) wage-labor exploitation. Artisan production does the same thing but it's generally the independant craftsman or apprentices who are generating the surplus value... large laboring forces directed by capitalists are much more efficient at producing this surplus labor and that's why aristan small production leads to big capitalism (or is at least helpless in the fact of big capitalism). The only way craftspeople could just work autonomously in a non-capitalist way is to destroy the market and capitalist relations, not just replace or "destroy" induvidual capitalists. Since small producers can only make money through the market currently, in a narrow sense of these people as small productions, they have an interest in making capitalist relations work for them better - not smashing these relations.

However, since small producers as people rub elbows with and live lives similar to prols, it's is more than likely that they will as people, step beyond the confines of their own economic class interests and see that there is more of a benifit for them as people, not as market producers, to support prolitarian revolution and reorganization of society.


I just said that their interest is to have a socialist (exploitationless) economy.Where does the need for exploitation come from? Is it just because capitalists are bastards and control freaks? Or is it that the competition of the market means that exploitation is incentivised because increasing the rate of exploitation means higher surplesses for you compared to your competators which can then be re-invested and so on. So to rid ourselves of exploitation, we need to supress capitalist market relations, not simply the current members of the capitalist ruling class.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In that case that was a system mixing slavery (slave-labor) or feudalism (serf-labor) with capitalism.

So then what is capitalism? I really don't mean to be rude and, as mod of this forum, it's my job to help others satisfy their curiosity, so i'm going to recommend you read a book or two on what feudalism/capitalism actually are, and how they are defined, because it seems at the moment as if you are guessing what they are, what a peasant is, what labour is etc.


That social relation that you talk about is preciselly the wage-labor exploitation that I mentioned.

But, as I said before, wage labour can exist, and has existed, outside of capitalism. Commodity production is all that is needed for wage labour to exist, and this existed as early as the 11th/12th centuries in the Italian City States, and from the late 14th Century in the UK, for example.

There's a good book on all of this called 'The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism'. The Aakar Books re-print in 2006 has a wonderfully interesting introduction from Rodney Hilton, as well as containing the original 1940s-1960s debate between Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezy, it really is an eye-opener and I would personally suggest you read it.

[Sotionov]

The USSR would suggest different since they had capitalism run without standard capitalists
There were capitalists, the nomenklatura were the new capitalists.


Japan also developed captialism not through capitalists but through existing feudal structures and groups.That's just nonsensical, if there were no capitalists, but feudalists, that means that there counldn't have been capitalism at that time, but feudalism.


Where did capitalism arise from? Small farm production, artisan production, etc.And in America? It was the slaveowners that turned capitalists, not artisans.


So to say that small producers for the market have "socialist interests" begs the question: why did market economies dominated by small production lead to big capitalism and not socialism?Because some people oppressed and exploited others enough to have an influence to from a society, which wasn't countered by developing class consciousness of the workers enough to collectively emancipate themselves.


Capitalism is a system where commodities are sold for a profit that is generated through (usually) wage-labor exploitation.That definition is simply not true, being that capitalism can exist without commodity production, as in the case of pure state-capitalism.


Artisan production does the same thing but it's generally the independant craftsman or apprentices who are generating the surplus value...There is no "suprlus value" in free labor (workers owning their means of production), "suprlus value" is the value that the exploiter of the laborer takes.


large laboring forces directed by capitalists are much more efficient at producing this surplus labor and that's why aristan small production leads to big capitalismFirstly, by saying that it leads to "big capitalism" you are suggesting that it itself is small capitalism, which is false, being that if there is no wage-labor and there are no rentiers- it's not capitalism.

Secondly, small artisan production can lead to capitalism, if left unchecked, that is- if the people don't want establish a system without oppression and exploitation, but if they do, then the artisan production existing in such a society cannot lead to capitalism, big or small.


The only way craftspeople could just work autonomously in a non-capitalist way is to destroy the market and capitalist relations, not just replace or "destroy" induvidual capitalists.There is no need for them to destroy the market, being that market by itself is not capitalist, not feudalist, not slaverist, in fact the market can exist in a classless society just fine. And they are not to destroy "individual capitalists" but all capitalists, all oppressors and exploitatiors.


Since small producers can only make money through the market currently, in a narrow sense of these people as small productions, they have an interest in making capitalist relations work for them better - not smashing these relations.Being that they don't exploit anyone, it cannot be in their interest to compete against exploiters, therefore it is precisely their interest to smash all capitalist relations.


Where does the need for exploitation come from?From nowhere. There is no need for exploitation, exploitation is never neccessary, and it should be abolished always and everywhere.


Or is it that the competition of the market means that exploitation is incentivised because increasing the rate of exploitation means higher surplesses for you compared to your competators which can then be re-invested and so on.No it is not the competition of the market. It is the competition of the capitalist market that incentivises (not "forces", being that incentives can be ignored) people to exploit, that is- market existing in a society where exploitation is tolerated. If a market were to exists in a society where exploitation is not tolerated (people tolerating only "simple commodity production") then there would be no incentive to exploit, being that the profit that one could get by manipulating someone into an exploitationary relation would be a far less incentive then the counter-incentive of the society stopping you and punishing you as a thief you are as an exploitator.


So to rid ourselves of exploitation, we need to supress capitalist market relations, not simply the current members of the capitalist ruling class.By riding ourselves of the capitalist class, we by defintion rid ourselves of any capitalist relations, just like when we rid ourselves or slaveowners we by definition rid ourselves of slave relations.


So then what is capitalism?
It's a relation of exploitation (by wage-labor and rentiering). If it is generalized, then the system is capitalist.


I really don't mean to be rude and, as mod of this forum, it's my job to help others satisfy their curiosity, so i'm going to recommend you read a book or two on what feudalism/capitalism actually are, and how they are defined, because it seems at the moment as if you are guessing what they are, what a peasant is, what labour is etc. Actually, I am just giving you the the genuine socialist economic view as espoused by those that who defined socialism- Ricardian socialists, and those that continued to advance socialist economic thought- anarchists (without adjectives).


But, as I said before, wage labour can exist, and has existed, outside of capitalism.Wage-labor is capitalistic, just like slave-labor is slaverist, and serf-labor is feudalist. If a society has general slave-labor, but there are some serfs in it, does that mean that those serf are in slave-owner relations with their boss- of course not, it by definition cannot mean that being they are serf, and not slaves. So, even though that general exploitation of labor in that kind of society is slave-labor, there are some people who are exploited under feudalist relations. Likewise with capitalist relations existing in systems where exploitatory relations are feudalistic.


Commodity production is all that is needed for wage labour to existBeing that commodity production can exist without wage-labor, and also wage-labor can exist without commodity production- there is no fundamental connection between the two.


There's a good book on all of this called 'The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism'. The Aakar Books re-print in 2006 has a wonderfully interesting introduction from Rodney Hilton, as well as containing the original 1940s-1960s debate between Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezy, it really is an eye-opener and I would personally suggest you read it.I'll check it out.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Wage labour cannot exist without commodity production, how could it?

[Per Levy]

@zulu: if we take your line of thinking and be consequent all the way through to the end then we will see a lot of means of production that werent there before:

bike: more primitve then a car but it does transport yourself to where you wish and of coure you can start a business with you bike, as courier as an example.

washing machine: with that you have the potential to start buisness as well, in the way of washing the dirty clothes of other for money.

tools: with tools you can create, or dare i say produce, all kinds of things and sell them, like furniture. ergo tools are means of production.

so with these 3 means of production i have demonstrated that the majority of proles in the world arnt really proles but we havnt been consequent enough in this line of thinking because:

the human body: the human body is a machine, with our hands we can make, create, produce things, thanks to our brains we can sell those things as well. not to mention that thanks to legs we can go whereever we wish, it just takes a bit longer than with a car. and now the fun part, every human beng owns its body, therefore every human being is potentially bourgeois and with that i have proven that there arnt proles anywhere on this planet, if i take your thinking to its logical conclusion.

now of course this is all bogus, commodities no matter how usefull arnt means of production but of course that is not the point you want to make, you just dont want to see proles in the "first world" because it suits you.

ps: arnt third worldists usally restricted to OI? just a question.

[Per Levy]

LLCO would say that the worker really doesn't really have an interest in socialism because to support socialism would mean lowering her standard of living.

i totally missed that, now let me tell you a little story about 2 "first world" workers, one of them is my fiance and the other is me. my fiance lives in the usa, she has no job and she is homeless, you suggest that she wouldnt be supportive of a better system that helps her out of stuff like this but i cant see how much more she could lower her standart of living, tbh.

and now for me, i work in job, that brings me 5,80€ per hour before taxes, or at the end of the month i have 615€ for myself, from this i have to pay my insurences, my living space and all the other stuff and the rest of it i send over to my fiance so she can stay afloat at least a little. now my job does make me ill(3 times this year so far), im a service worker in a hospital after all. not to mention that the job that im doing is also very hard and need a lot of physical labour. and there is the point that i fear that one day, because of that work i'll end up in a wheelchair.

now let me ask you, from your perspetive, my fiance and me have no interest in socialism because we have it to good. and i would tell you that one of the major reasons im a commie is because communism would be totally in our favour and would help us out so much.

really, the llco should rename itsself into "leading light national bourgeosie organisation" that would be more honest and less confusing.

[Sotionov]

Wage labour cannot exist without commodity production, how could it?
Commodity production means something is on the market. Wage-labor can exist in a marketless system, it's then called state-capitalism. Wage-labor can even exist in absence of currency (including labor vauchers) wages being given in natura, like rations.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Commodity production means something is on the market. Wage-labor can exist in a marketless system, it's then called state-capitalism. Wage-labor can even exist in absence of currency (including labor vauchers) wages being given in natura, like rations.

Commodity production is a process of producing something for exchange in a market. You are focusing on the exchange element - but how did the product actually become one that has value? Through labour.

[Sotionov]

I don't see your point, if you'd be kind to elaborate.

[cyu]

Nothing is valuable in itself. If a grass of water or a piece of bread are on table in the middle of the street, and no one wants them, they obviously are worth anything.

While this is technically true, arguments like this are dangerous in that they are wielded by capitalists to dismiss economic judgments made by leftists. It would be like someone claiming that since different cultures have different value systems, who are you to judge that rape is wrong?

Leftists must in fact make economic judgments - and it is in fact vital for leftists to assert that the production of luxury goods and services for a wealthy minority is wrong. The wealthy capitalist might claim, well, there is no real value - who are you to say my mansions shouldn't be built - you should just let the market decide.

Yes, economic value judgments are subjective. However, within a capitalist system, the subjective judgments made by the wealthy count a lot more than the judgments made by the poor. As a result, economic resources are misallocated into producing more and more useless [email protected] for those that least need more [email protected]

[Luís Henrique]

Great! Then you surely will have no trouble in coming up with some quote that would directly support your way of thinking and enlighten me, won't you?

Sure.

You can look, for instance, at Chapter 20 of The Capital, volume II (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch20_01.htm).

Right in the second section, "The Two Departments of Social Production", you will see that Marx divides social production into:


I. Means of Production, commodities having a form in which they must, or at least may, pass into productive consumption.

II. Articles of Consumption, commodities having a form in which they pass into the individual consumption of the capitalist and the working-class.

As you see, means of production, in Karl Marx's opinion, are those commodities that must, or at least may, pass into productive consumption.

On the other hand, according to the same author, articles of consumption (which are not means of production) comprise the commodities that pass into the individual consumption of capitalists and workers.

So, in order to root your idea that an individually owned automobile is a means of production, you must show us that automobiles are designed for productive consumption, not for individual consumption.

But the problem is, it is quite easy to see that the consumption of automobiles is not "productive consumption" at all. The consumption of a lathe results in new products, which can in turn be sold as commodities, and consequently the consumption of a lathe is part and parcel of the productive process; it is productive consumption. A capitalist uses a lathe - or more precisely hires workers to use it - and, at the end of a working day, the use of the lathe results in new products, say screws. A part of the value of the lathe, consequently, passes, through the process of production, to the newly created screws. That is what makes a lathe a means of production.

But the consumption of an automobile does nothing comparable. I drive this machine from my home to my workplace; when I arrive there, I have absolutely nothing new to offer in the market. The value the automobile lost during the travel, due to its wear and tear, does not pass into any new commodities; it merely incorporates into the value of my labour power: if it is socially convened that workers - or more realistically, some categories of workers - should have automobiles, then their wages must comprise the depreciation of an automobile.

Further, in section IV, "Exchange within Department II. - Necessities of Life and Articles of Luxury", Marx distinguishes the production of Department II above (Articles of consumption), as following:


a) Articles of consumption, which enter into the consumption of the working-class, and, to the extent that they are necessities of life — even if frequently different in quality and value from those of the labourers — also form a portion of the consumption of the capitalist class. For our purposes we may call this entire sub-division consumer necessities, regardless of whether such a product as tobacco is really a consumer necessity from the physiological point of view. It suffices that it is habitually such.

b) Articles of luxury, which enter into the consumption of only the capitalist class and can therefore be exchanged only for spent surplus-value, which never falls to the share of the labourer.

So, as we see, for Marx there is an important part of production that refer to things that are not means of production, and yet are only purchased by capitalists, ie, can only be exchanged for surplus-value.

It follows that you are necessarily wrong here. Even if automobiles were not "necessities of life", and even if they were exchanged exclusively for surplus-value, and were not a moment in the reproduction of capital, they would not be means of production, but merely luxuries (like a yacht is, for instance).

But pay attention; Marx is not a third-worldist, so he aptly remembers us that


For our purposes we may call this entire sub-division consumer necessities, regardless of whether such a product as tobacco is really a consumer necessity from the physiological point of view. It suffices that it is habitually such.

Being a "necessity", in economic terms, to Marx, consequently, is a social construct: if it is habitually, ie, socially, considered a necessity, then it is a necessity. Tobacco, evidently, is nothing like a physiological necessity; on the contrary, it is more of a poison than anything else, from that point of view. There is consequently nothing forbiding us to consider other things, such as automobiles, as "necessities of life", if they fulfill the same social role as tobacco.


But so far I can only tell that Proudhon has a lot to do with your position on modern "money", since it actually quite resembles the system of "free credit" as a means of circulation and exchange of commodities coming out of thin air, which Proudhon advocated, and which blew Marx's mind.

Sorry, you are again wrong. You are confusing two very different issues, namely

Fiat money, which is commonplace in capitalist societies, and which was, in Marx's time, denominated in terms of bullion, but in modern times has lost such connection, becoming only related to the political confidence the population has on the State and to the total amount of production within the economic base of a given currency (both of which, of course, are intimately related); and

Proudhon schemes for a currency denominated in terms of labour time, which are not commonplace anywhere, and, on the contrary, are completely impossible within a capitalist society.

Luís Henrique

[Atoadoso]

i totally missed that, now let me tell you a little story about 2 "first world" workers, one of them is my fiance and the other is me. my fiance lives in the usa, she has no job and she is homeless, you suggest that she wouldnt be supportive of a better system that helps her out of stuff like this but i cant see how much more she could lower her standart of living, tbh.

and now for me, i work in job, that brings me 5,80€ per hour before taxes, or at the end of the month i have 615€ for myself, from this i have to pay my insurences, my living space and all the other stuff and the rest of it i send over to my fiance so she can stay afloat at least a little. now my job does make me ill(3 times this year so far), im a service worker in a hospital after all. not to mention that the job that im doing is also very hard and need a lot of physical labour. and there is the point that i fear that one day, because of that work i'll end up in a wheelchair.

now let me ask you, from your perspetive, my fiance and me have no interest in socialism because we have it to good. and i would tell you that one of the major reasons im a commie is because communism would be totally in our favour and would help us out so much.

really, the llco should rename itsself into "leading light national bourgeosie organisation" that would be more honest and less confusing.

I'd like to jump in here from a third-worldist perspective, but not the unscientific sort put forth by all of the "third-worldist" groups that I'm aware of.

The LLCO doesn't take into account that some workers in the first-world are actively making reparations to those who're locked out of the labor aristocracy. This is especially true in minority communities where many people are locked out of the labor aristocracy due to culture or circumstance. Socialism would be in the interests of workers who're actively making reparations, but this group and the ones they're making reparations to that reside in the first-world do not constitute a significant revolutionary force that should even think about marching into a bloodbath that'd be provided to them by the capitalist class and the labor aristocracy if they actively tried to make revolution in the first-world.

It's true that the vast majority of first-world workers are not making and will not make significant reparations and would fight to the death against any movement that was serious about global equality and lifestyles our Earth can sustain. These "workers" have far more shared interests with the capitalist class in seeing imperialism (and the lifestyles it provides) continue than they do with the third-world masses in seeing it end. The only first-world people who you can trust will be on the right side of history are those whose lifestyles demonstrate that they're in solidarity with the third-world masses. As the third-world continues to rise up and toss the imperialists out of their countries this will continue to manifest as an "economic crisis" in the first-world and will give rise to overtly fascist movements. Revolutionaries who're behind enemy lines need to be in the best position we can to aid the effort when the world comes to save us, but anyone who seeks to bring about a revolution towards socialism in the first-world either desires a bloodbath and/or is much closer to a white nationalist than they are anything to do with communism. Anyone who struggles for first-world workers to have even more than what has been stolen for them by imperialism and who believes that we should extend first-world (aka planet-wrecking) lifestyles to more people are clearly not struggling for global equality and they seek to destroy our Earth. They're just as much enemies of humanity as are the capitalist class and their labor aristocracy.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Isn't it fascinating how "third worldists" and international capital's interest coincide? Both of them demand a reduced standard of living for the first world proletariat. Both must be quite happy for example with the recent contracts made with Chrysler and GM that have new workers starting out at $14 an hour. (Reputedly the Obama administration made this binding on the UAW as part of the bail-out deal). At least capitalists have an interest in the domestic economy not totally collapsing, unlike the third worldists.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Good to see that at least Marx got it. There is nothing more annoying than listening to middle-class people going on about how poor people possess cellphones, smartphones etc. "Every other person in the food bank line is talking away on their cellphones." Remember the fraudulent "Obamaphone' flap? Hello if you are looking for work having a cellphone ready for that call asking you to come in is very important. So is having ready access to email and the internet. (Liberals can be just as obsessive when it comes to poor peoples consumer electronics. For them it's the evil TV that we have in our studio apartments.)


Being a "necessity", in economic terms, to Marx, consequently, is a social construct: if it is habitually, ie, socially, considered a necessity, then it is a necessity. Tobacco, evidently, is nothing like a physiological necessity; on the contrary, it is more of a poison than anything else, from that point of view. There is consequently nothing forbiding us to consider other things, such as automobiles, as "necessities of life", if they fulfill the same social role as tobacco.

[Atoadoso]

Isn't it fascinating how "third worldists" and international capital's interest coincide? Both of them demand a reduced standard of living for the first world proletariat. Both must be quite happy for example with the recent contracts made with Chrysler and GM that have new workers starting out at $14 an hour. (Reputedly the Obama administration made this binding on the UAW as part of the bail-out deal). At least capitalists have an interest in the domestic economy not totally collapsing, unlike the third worldists.

Everyone deserves a secure healthy survival and the ability to effectively communicate (thus to learn and teach), but not a penny more in a world that sees an average of 26,000 children die each day from treatable conditions. A worker making $14 an hour is disgustingly rich and owes vast reparations. Their very ability to get a job like that, and the corresponding planet-wrecking lifestyle that almost always comes with it, is only possible because of the looted wealth from the third-world.

For there to be global equality the first-world as we know it must cease to exist. The utopian view that first-world lifestyles can be extended to everyone without destroying our Earth must be combated. First-world lifestyles are only made possible by imperialism and trying to set such goals under a socialist banner will lead to demoralization/back to capitalism.

[Zulu]

S

As you see, means of production, in Karl Marx's opinion, are those commodities that must, or at least may, pass into productive consumption.

Passenger automobiles pass into the same type of productive consumption all day as passenger trains, ships and airplanes, and it is called transportation. The end.

About the fiat/credit currency's being actually labor coupons, although not exactly "denominated", read this (http://www.gonzotimes.com/fiat-currency-no-more-money-than-a-theatre-ticket-is).




the human body: the human body is a machine

Human body is definitely not a machine. Although it can be means of production, if we're talking about slavery. As for the rest of what you mentioned, of course, those are all means of production, so yeah, strictly speaking anybody owning those things is not a "chemically clear" prole. However, since those other things either require only electric power supply to run on or nothing at all, they can be considered truly personal and individual articles and neglected for the insignificance. But the automobiles require serious external infrastructure - fuel, roads, traffic control, which is even not paid for in full by the private owners of the automobiles, which makes said owners essentially parasitic elements of the global society.

Well, anyway, I don't intend to convert anybody to third-worldism here or something, but I really suggest you guys think this stuff over on your own. Because if you get your classes mixed up in Marxism, all you'll ever get will be the new versions of the same good old bourgeois society, instead of overcoming the limitations of the exploitative modes of production.

[Popular Front of Judea]

So who is going to administer these reparations? What if the first world proletariat refuses to make any more concessions to an amorphous "Third World"? Is China still a member? That whole Lin Biao Peoples War thang made some sense in the late '60s. (If you squinted.) Now, not so much.


A worker making $14 an hour is disgustingly rich and owes vast reparations.

[cyu]

A worker making $14 an hour is disgustingly rich and owes vast reparations.


As long as we can make poor white farmers feel like slaves will take their stuff, then we can ensure that plantation owners will always be able to keep their slaves and their plantations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

http://www.sp.nl/include/koppies/121113_Nivellering.jpg

[Jimmie Higgins]

Everyone deserves a secure healthy survival and the ability to effectively communicate (thus to learn and teach), but not a penny more in a world that sees an average of 26,000 children die each day from treatable conditions. A worker making $14 an hour is disgustingly rich and owes vast reparations. Their very ability to get a job like that, and the corresponding planet-wrecking lifestyle that almost always comes with it, is only possible because of the looted wealth from the third-world.1) Working class lifestyles do not create the destruction of the environment in the abstract, capitalist production with accumulation for the sake of accumulation plays a much bigger role. Workers don't decide production; consumer choice is litterally the last step in the process of selling commodities and even that is constrained by how much money consumers have.

2) People making $14 an hour, hell $20 an hour do not cause people to starve. Capitalism produces a global surplus - even the UN agrees that the problem of starvation is not in scarsity, but in "distribution" - but even that's not it, it's how things are distriubuted and for what reason that's the problem (profits). So with modern production, not even improving it through better methods, there's no objective reason that anyone would have to go hungry... it's the subjective reason of who and for what reason production happens in capitalist society.

3) Wages are not some abstract level. $14 an hour means nothing by itself and to understand what's going on you have to look at wages in relation to capitalist profits and wealth. So that a fast food worker in 1970 made probably around $15-16 an hour in today's terms but now they make $8-9 an hour and must work faster and have less flexibility due to advancements in production techniques (which means fast-food assembly line systems in capitalist terms). But even beyond inflation and the cost and availaility of commodities, in relation to capitalist profits, surplus value has greatly increaed at the expense of labor (even if on the surface the hourly rate has increased).



An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.

But wages are not at all determined merely by the sum of commodities for which they may be exchanged. Other factors enter into the problem. What the workers directly receive for their labour-power is a certain sum of money. Are wages determined merely by this money price?
...
Wages are determined above all by their relations to the gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages are a proportionate, relative quantity.

Real wages express the price of labour-power in relation to the price of commodities; relative wages, on the other hand, express the share of immediate labour in the value newly created by it, in relation to the share of it which falls to accumulated labour, to capital.



For there to be global equality the first-world as we know it must cease to exist. The utopian view that first-world lifestyles can be extended to everyone without destroying our Earth must be combated. First-world lifestyles are only made possible by imperialism and trying to set such goals under a socialist banner will lead to demoralization/back to capitalism.Well yes, the first world must cease to exist as we know it to have global equality - the third world must cease to exist as we know it as well. This should go without saying.

But to say that this means a necissary worsening of conditions for workers in the first world is just absurd. First, despite the images on TV and the propaganda of public officials, there is a quite a bit of poverty in places like the US. Second, wages have decreased even as production and profits in the US have soared - so what we are really talking about is workers taking back all that surplus and even divided over the entire world, this would mean the international working class would have much more wealth than contemporary people in countries like the US where 40% of the population hold .2% of the wealth and essentially have no meaningful money other than just paying to survive (and in reality probably means tons of are in debt).

Would we produce and consume things as we do now? Definately not, but that doesn't mean that lifestyles would necissarily become more austiere. For one thing, just giving everyone a home in the US, giving people medical coverage, and eliminating debts and rent would greatly increase living standards by itself. After that, reorganizing production around working class needs and wants would mean all the people currently doing labor that really only increases profits, but doesn't proide extra use-value would be using their labor power for things that benifit the entire working class. Rather than using means to amass profits as quickly and cheaply as possible, as in capitalism, productive efforts which were easier and more sustainable and more automatic would be incentivised. Just as one example, why come out with a new IPhone every year, new lines of practically identical cars (in fact why not just free public transportation which would save labor and material costs to a huge degree and eliminate parking lots and open up city streets which are currently lined with hunks of metal and machinery that sit idol 95% of the day aside from commutes)? Taking less labor on our part, requireing less materials, public transportation or consumer items which are flexible and long-lasting would be able to improve lives and people's access to luxuries - but this is not possible under the profit-system.

[Luís Henrique]

Passenger automobiles pass into the same type of productive consumption all day as passenger trains, ships and airplanes, and it is called transportation. The end.

Is it? Let's again pay attention to what that obscure German socialist of the 19th century, Karl Marx, has to say (in The Capital, Vol I, Chapter Sixteen: Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch16.htm)):


Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value.

It should be easy to realise that when I take a bus to my workplace, and that bus is owned by a capitalist company, the driver is producing surplus value. There is value in the transportation of my person and that of other workers, more value than it is necessary to provide to subsistence of the driver. Consequently, the driver is exploited by the bus owners, who are capitalists. But, evidently, the passengers, while they may be exploited elsewhere by other capitalists, are not exploited in a capitalist way by the bus proprietor, for they do not produce surplus value while they are being driven to their respective workplaces. The bus in this case is a means of production, but the only worker using it to produce is the driver; to the shoemaker, the engineer, or the housemaid who are being driven to their workplaces or back home, it is a means of consumption.

If I take a bus to my workplace that is owned by the company I work for, which is not a bus company, consequently, I am not being exploited by being driven there, I am not producing surplus value. It is of course a different issue whether the driver of such a bus is being exploited by the company; but the passengers, qua passengers, are certainly not.

Now if I drive my car to my workplace, am I producing surplus value? And if so, for whom, for myself or for my employer?

I fear that, far from "The End", you are really at the beggining, and confusing things. While transportation can be a productive process, passengers are certainly not the producers of this process.


About the fiat/credit currency's being actually labor coupons, although not exactly "denominated", read this (http://www.gonzotimes.com/fiat-currency-no-more-money-than-a-theatre-ticket-is).

Hm, I feel I am being cheated. I gave you a link to Karl Marx, and in exchange you give me a link to someone who doesn't understand the basics? Had the author of this piece read Marx, he would understand the difference between a general equivalent, as a dollar bill - that is accepted by any economic agent within an economy where dollars are legal tender - and a voucher, such a bus or theatre ticket, that is only valid between a given company and its customers:


The bank (any bank) issues the time-chits. A commodity, A = the exchange value x, i.e. = x hours of labour time, is exchanged for a quantity of money representing x labour time. The bank would at the same time have to purchase the commodity, i.e. exchange it for its representative in monetary form, just as e.g. the Bank of England today has to give notes for gold. The commodity, the substantial and therefore accidental existence of exchange value, is exchanged for the symbolic existence of exchange value as exchange value. There is then no difficulty in transposing it from the form of the commodity into the form of money. The labour time contained in it only needs to be authentically verified (which, by the way, is not as easy as assaying the purity and weight of gold and silver) and thereby immediately creates its counter-value, its monetary existence. No matter how we may turn and twist the matter, in the last instance it amounts to this: the bank which issues the time-chits buys commodities at their costs of production, buys all commodities, and moreover this purchase costs the bank nothing more than the production of snippets of paper, and the bank gives the seller, in place of the exchange value which he possesses in a definite and substantial form, the symbolic exchange value of the commodity, in other words a draft on all other commodities to the amount of the same exchange value. Exchange value as such can of course exist only symbolically, although in order for it to be employed as a thing and not merely as a formal notion, this symbol must possess an objective existence; it is not merely an ideal notion, but is actually presented to the mind in an objective mode. (A measure can be held in the hand; exchange value measures, but it exchanges only when the measure passes from one hand to the other.) So the bank gives money for the commodity; money which is an exact draft on the exchange value of the commodity, i.e. of all commodities of the same value; the bank buys. The bank is the general buyer, the buyer of not only this or that commodity, but all commodities. For its purpose is to bring about the transposition of every commodity into its symbolic existence as exchange value. But if it is the general buyer, then it also has to be the general seller; not only the dock where all wares are deposited, not only the general warehouse, but also the owner of the commodities, in the same sense as every merchant. I have exchanged my commodity A for the time-chit B, which represents the commodity’s exchange value; but I have done this only so that I can then further metamorphose this B into any real commodity C, D, E etc., as it suits me. Now, can this money circulate outside the bank? Can it take any other route than that between the owner of the chit and the bank? How is the convertibility of this chit secured? Only two cases are possible. Either all owners of commodities (be these products or labour) desire to sell their commodities at their exchange value, or some want to and some do not. If they all want to sell at their exchange value, then they will not await the chance arrival or non-arrival of a buyer, but go immediately to the bank, unload their commodities on to it, and obtain their exchange value symbol, money, for them: they redeem them for its money. In this case the bank is simultaneously the general buyer and the general seller in one person. Or the opposite takes place. In this case, the bank chit is mere paper which claims to be the generally recognized symbol of exchange value, but has in fact no value. For this symbol has to have the property of not merely representing, but being, exchange value in actual exchange. In the latter case the bank chit would not be money, or it would be money only by convention between the bank and its clients, but not on the open market. It would be the same as a meal ticket good for a dozen meals which I obtain from a restaurant, or a theatre pass good for a dozen evenings, both of which represent money, but only in this particular restaurant or this particular theatre.

(From Grundrisse, The Chapter on Money (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm))

But perhaps here is the problem. Third worldists seem to believe that fiat currency is nothing more than Proudhon's labour vouchers. But Proudhon vouchers are impossible in a capitalist society. So modern capitalist societies must not be... capitalist. Which is confirmed by the idea that first world workers aren't exploited. A society were workers aren't exploited must not be... capitalist. So, in essence, what third worldists seem to think is that first world societies are already socialist, the only problem being that their socialism relies in the exploitation of other societies, namely the third world.

That such view substitutes foreign affairs for class analysis, and is consequently at direct odds with Marxism, seems obvious.

Luís Henrique

[cyu]

just giving everyone a home in the US

Reminded me of this... :grin:

http://alyoung.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Ominous-Octopus-Omnibus-500x294.jpg

...and from the Wall Street Journal no less: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/

Ajay Kapur, global strategist at Citigroup, and his research team came up with the term “Plutonomy” to describe a country that is defined by massive income and wealth inequality. According to their definition, the U.S. is a Plutonomy, along with the U.K., Canada and Australia.

There is no “average” consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich “and everyone else.” The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for “surprisingly small bites of the national pie.” Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20% may have been responsible for 60% of total spending.

Now think of the things the rich spend on. What if those economic resources were devoted to producing goods and services for everyone else instead?

Remember how much money was spent (by the mega-rich) on influencing public opinion during the last election? What if that economic effort was spent on producing goods for the general public?

[Atoadoso]

So who is going to administer these reparations? What if the first world proletariat refuses to make any more concessions to an amorphous "Third World"?

It is amazing to me that anyone who considers themselves a leftist of any sort would need to ask this question. If it wasn't for your pig buddies then you'd see who'd administer reparations every time you tried to walk through a neighborhood of oppressed people. If it wasn't for your buddies in the military then we'd just give everyone on Earth a copy of this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country - and let them decide who owes who.

---


1) Working class lifestyles do not create the destruction of the environment in the abstract, capitalist production with accumulation for the sake of accumulation plays a much bigger role. Workers don't decide production; consumer choice is litterally the last step in the process of selling commodities and even that is constrained by how much money consumers have.

2) People making $14 an hour, hell $20 an hour do not cause people to starve. Capitalism produces a global surplus - even the UN agrees that the problem of starvation is not in scarsity, but in "distribution" - but even that's not it, it's how things are distriubuted and for what reason that's the problem (profits). So with modern production, not even improving it through better methods, there's no objective reason that anyone would have to go hungry... it's the subjective reason of who and for what reason production happens in capitalist society.

3) Wages are not some abstract level. $14 an hour means nothing by itself and to understand what's going on you have to look at wages in relation to capitalist profits and wealth. So that a fast food worker in 1970 made probably around $15-16 an hour in today's terms but now they make $8-9 an hour and must work faster and have less flexibility due to advancements in production techniques (which means fast-food assembly line systems in capitalist terms). But even beyond inflation and the cost and availaility of commodities, in relation to capitalist profits, surplus value has greatly increaed at the expense of labor (even if on the surface the hourly rate has increased).


Well yes, the first world must cease to exist as we know it to have global equality - the third world must cease to exist as we know it as well. This should go without saying.

But to say that this means a necissary worsening of conditions for workers in the first world is just absurd. First, despite the images on TV and the propaganda of public officials, there is a quite a bit of poverty in places like the US. Second, wages have decreased even as production and profits in the US have soared - so what we are really talking about is workers taking back all that surplus and even divided over the entire world, this would mean the international working class would have much more wealth than contemporary people in countries like the US where 40% of the population hold .2% of the wealth and essentially have no meaningful money other than just paying to survive (and in reality probably means tons of are in debt).

Would we produce and consume things as we do now? Definately not, but that doesn't mean that lifestyles would necissarily become more austiere. For one thing, just giving everyone a home in the US, giving people medical coverage, and eliminating debts and rent would greatly increase living standards by itself. After that, reorganizing production around working class needs and wants would mean all the people currently doing labor that really only increases profits, but doesn't proide extra use-value would be using their labor power for things that benifit the entire working class. Rather than using means to amass profits as quickly and cheaply as possible, as in capitalism, productive efforts which were easier and more sustainable and more automatic would be incentivised. Just as one example, why come out with a new IPhone every year, new lines of practically identical cars (in fact why not just free public transportation which would save labor and material costs to a huge degree and eliminate parking lots and open up city streets which are currently lined with hunks of metal and machinery that sit idol 95% of the day aside from commutes)? Taking less labor on our part, requireing less materials, public transportation or consumer items which are flexible and long-lasting would be able to improve lives and people's access to luxuries - but this is not possible under the profit-system.


You have done some insane mental gymnastics here to attempt to apologize for planet-wrecking lifestyles. Of course capitalism and capitalist culture is what creates the desire to consume like you were an I$O member/typical amerikan who's used to feasting on the blood of the third-world, but at some point during socialism you'll have to go to these labor aristocrats such as yourself and tell them that we're not going to keep plundering and pillaging the third-world to supply you with your luxurious lifestyle (hundreds and hundreds of pounds of stuff, car$ even though you live in cities with public transit, jewelry, more money spent on pets than some entire families can afford for food, on and on...) and that we're going to take some of your stuff and give it to third-world people, and maybe there's going to be a guy named Jose from Honduras that's going to be moving in with you, etc.. and you're going to be all fucky about that.

There is no such thing as a "working class" in amerika. Even your gods Marx and Engels said so in your holy books when they described a labor aristocracy that has grown to be far more disgusting than they had imagined back then. Lenin said so too, usually that's enough for those who believe there is a doctrine to making revolution rather than it being a science. I'm not concerned with what they said at all myself for the same reason that I'm not now concerned with what Darwin had to say about evolution.

Speaking as someone without a family and who spent a great deal of my youth homeless I can say that the homeless in amerika have it FAR better than the vast majority of humanity. You could hardly starve to death in this country even if you tried. You can walk into any church and they'll be happy to serve you up some food that was paid for with the blood of the third-world. There are homeless shelters in every city. There are food pantries that give you a bunch of food for free. There are food stamps. There is no significant poverty in amerika. There are oppressed people who get locked out of the labor aristocracy, but even we have it far better than the majority of humanity.

Yes, people making $14 an hour, even $7 an hour cause people to starve. Even mere charity work is preferable to living a typical amerikan lifestyle in a world that sees an average of 26,000 children die each day from treatable conditions. Of course building revolutionary organization with leadership with proper vision is what is needed, but what are these labor aristocrats foremost worried about? What they're banging with and where they want to bang it, pet food prices, rims for their cars, the new video game, going to the movies, fancy this, fancy that, etc... The okkupy movement wasn't in the streets demanding to give back all that has been stolen for them by imperialism, but actually saying that they deserve even more! The richest people in the world in the streets begging for more, and so-called socialists and communists in the streets, not in protest, but actually on their side! What a total joke the first-world "left" is.

Of course I understand how capitalism works and that $14 can mean different things at different times. I'm talking about the $14 of right now and how an amerikan "worker" can simply work two months out of a year and sign up for food stamps and have a secure healthy survival, living a far, far, far better life than the vast majority of humanity. The reason for this is because the capitalist class in the first-world gives up part of their profits to produce social peace in their front yards so that they can be enabled to do what they do around the world. They don't have safety nets and pay such high wages in the first-world because they have a heart, they do so to prevent uprisings and to be able to go around the world and say "see, you're just not working hard enough. In amerika no one dies on the streets, now just work harder for this $2 a day I'm giving you and your country can be like amerika too." The flip side of that is that amerikans will never be content to live like "those people", the victims of imperialism (a word that you clearly don't understand).

Again there is no real poverty in amerika. I've been to 41 states, lived in 9. I grew up in Appalachia and I currently live in what is supposed to be the 6th poorest city in the United Snakes, but what is considered poverty here would be laughed at by the majority of humanity. There are supposed people living in "poverty" here who own thousands of pounds of stuff and who drive cars around in cities with public transit. The vast majority of humanity will never have a car or thousands of pounds of stuff, and our Earth is all the better for it.

There are problems in amerika. You mentioned medical coverage. The biggest problem with health care in amerika isn't a lack of medical coverage, but it's people from oppressed communities and others who these disgustingly rich doktors are forced to care for against their will and for prices less than what their better paying customers pay. They have many legal means at their disposal to kill and injure us and they do so on a regular basis. If you force them to see more of us then the murders will simply increase. If you're locked out of the labor aristocracy, or even if you're in the lower strata of it, then it's best you live a very healthy lifestyle and avoid doktors at all costs or go to the third-world for medical care so that you can pay them what they want to make for the job at least.

You mentioned better public transit. I've lived in cities with excellent public transit and still the vast majority of the rich/"middle class" won't use it because they have to be around "those people". They will never accept being like "those people" and will fight any efforts you try to make them mingle with us. Typical amerikans are the enemies of humanity. Their culture is rotten to the core and they'll never peacefully accept the measures that will be -->required<-- to bring about global equality and lifestyles our Earth can sustain. The idea that you can extend typical first-world lifestyles/rates of consumption to more people without destroying our Earth is completely unscientific. First-world people will have to learn to live with less, not more. You'd best start making reparations now.

[Red HalfGuard]

Atoa, as someone who's heavily influenced by J Sakai, I'd normally be on your side about this. But you're just repeating right wing arguments about how THE POOR IN AMERICA HAVE COLOR TEEVEES and suchlike. You're completely ignoring cost of living as if it's a non-factor. Hell, even LLCO disagrees with you: http://llco.org/will-first-worlders-benefit-from-socialism/ (to which I'd add an end to unemployment and homelessness)

There are internal third worlds here in the USA, the colonized peoples of the Black nation, Indigenous nations, Chicana/o nation and Puerto Rico. Their standard of living is closer to that of the rest of the third world than the first and they suffer from colonial-settler-racist oppression. Are you writing them off as first worlders too?

[Luís Henrique]

let them decide who owes who.

Ohhhh good grief. Even your language is that of courts and markets. It is not a matter of building a new society, it is a matter of settling accounts. Who owes what to whom, who are the debtors and who are the creditors. What kind of Marxism is this? Civil code Marxism? Bookkeeper Marxism?

Luís Henrique

[Popular Front of Judea]

Given how divisive and over the top the rhetoric of 'third-worldism' is one is drawn to the conclusion that if it didn't exist the right-wing noise machine would have to create it.

Hmmm...

[Atoadoso]

Atoa, as someone who's heavily influenced by J Sakai, I'd normally be on your side about this. But you're just repeating right wing arguments about how THE POOR IN AMERICA HAVE COLOR TEEVEES and suchlike. You're completely ignoring cost of living as if it's a non-factor. Hell, even LLCO disagrees with you: http://llco.org/will-first-worlders-benefit-from-socialism/ (to which I'd add an end to unemployment and homelessness)

There are internal third worlds here in the USA, the colonized peoples of the Black nation, Indigenous nations, Chicana/o nation and Puerto Rico. Their standard of living is closer to that of the rest of the third world than the first and they suffer from colonial-settler-racist oppression. Are you writing them off as first worlders too?

I live in majority Latino public housing in what is supposed to be the poorest part of the 6th "poorest" city in amerika. I can tell you for certain that the people here have far, far more shared interests with the capitalist class in seeing imperialism continue than they do with the third-world masses in seeing it end. When talking about the very real oppression that Latinos (I'm half-Latino myself) and other oppressed communities face in this country my message that revolution is the solution is met with nothing but hostility. When I was talking with a Vietnamese woman on a Greyhound bus about the crimes that amerika has done to, and continues to do to her people, it wasn't whites, but Latinos who were quick to jump to amerika's defense and tell me that if I didn't like it here I should leave. It wasn't a mob of whites, but rather a majority Latino mob of border patrol pigs that stop the Greyhound buses and search everything while ordering me not to film them. Latinos with amerikan flags are everywhere and the vast majority seek to be far "better" amerikans than even some white people. The vast majority didn't come here to work for global equality and lifestyles our Earth can sustain, quite the opposite, they came to live amerikan lifestyles and to turn their backs on their people. I grew up largely in a majority African community in Tennessee and there too you see the vast majority happily and disgustingly taking up the culture of their oppressors. While there is a much higher concentration within these groups who're agreeable to a revolutionary message, the numbers are so small and we're up against such cultural forces that it makes a revolutionary movement impossible to brew from within this country. We saw what happened when Africans rose up in a revolutionary manner in the 60's. They faced not only the armed forces under command of the capitalist class, but also the labor aristocracy as well. Attempting to lead these few forces into a real revolutionary movement is simply to invite a bloodbath and a ticket to unleash overt fascism in a shituation were we cannot adequately defend ourselves. There are effective ways to organize the very few people in this country who've demonstrated through their lifestyles that they're in true solidarity with the third-world masses, so as we can be in the best position to aid anti-imperialist/anti-first-world movements in the third-world which will pull the plug on all of these safety nets and high wages and spell the death of amerika as we know it and some reproletarianization will occur and along with the help of the world we will be able to defeat the fascist monster that will be unleashed and will seek to drag amerika back to its roots in chattel slavery and genocide.

I know that the LLCO disagrees with me. If people who uphold first-world lifestyles while taking money from the third-world agree with me then something is clearly wrong. Just like other first-world based groups, one can't tell if the LLCO is truly phony and laughing all the way to the bank or they're just genuinely deluded.

There are not internal third-worlds here. That is completely absurd. Of course there are people who seem poor relative to the immense wealth that surrounds them, but sinseriously it is next to impossible to die in this country from starvation and one can work a minimum wage job for just 6 weeks a year, or get on welfare, or join a church and afford to live far more comfortably than the vast majority of humanity. But instead you see porn women and other prostitutes who gladly sell themselves and women who present themselves as property in general rather than having to live like "those people." Well, I'm one of "those people" and I say fuck you, I'm fine, you're the one that can't be satisfied just knowing that you have the basic necessities in life met in a world where the majority of humanity lives on less than 3$ a day and life is a daily struggle just to make it to the next day.

I'm not ignoring anything. The stats I linked are adjusted for cost of living. Amerikans who own hundreds and hundreds of pounds of stuff and who claim to be poor are thoroughly deluded and stand upon a pedestal that blinds them from the reality faced by the majority of humanity. The only cost of living I'm referring to is the cost of living an amerikan lifestyle that even the "poor" people here expect, a planet-wrecking life of luxury that is only made possible because of imperialism. The vast majority of "poor" people here will not be content with just having a life where their basic necessities are met. Unless they can live like what the TV has taught them is "normal" they'll fight for it and seek to drag the country back to the "golden" days.

"Real revolutionaries are ready to die for the people, that's why we're ready to live for the people." - comrade in India

[blake 3:17]

Nothing is valuable in itself. If a grass of water or a piece of bread are on table in the middle of the street, and no one wants them, they obviously are worth anything. There is no such thing as intrinsic value.

Who put the table in the middle of the street?

[blake 3:17]

I make $15 an hour. If I get paid. Which has pretty much always happened, just for the unpaid overtime. And about a third goes back in student debt.

Many of the women I work with are economic migrants, and families back home hear about their wages and expect big returns, but living expenses are very high.

It's strange. A few of us gave money years back to a group in Asia we were embarrassed about how small it was... In currency exchanges it was much more useful than we thought it'd be.

The world is fucked up.

[Atoadoso]

Ohhhh good grief. Even your language is that of courts and markets. It is not a matter of building a new society, it is a matter of settling accounts. Who owes what to whom, who are the debtors and who are the creditors. What kind of Marxism is this? Civil code Marxism? Bookkeeper Marxism?

Luís Henrique

Sorry that I didn't type you the book here that would be needed to fully explain my point. Of course I understand that leadership with proper vision is needed to guide a revolutionary movement if we're ever to achieve communism. Even without that leadership oppressed people grok who owes who. Africans in the ghettos of the U$ don't need to read Marx to know that as hard as their ancestors worked to build this empire they're still not on par with the white families who've benefited from their enslavement and if it wasn't for the pigs they'd already have taken all of what's owed to them. If the border was opened and a billion third-world people showed up here tomorrow, no one would need to read Marx in order for the realities of imperialism to guide actions. When confronted with the reality that the goods they've produced for 3$ a day are brought here and sold by some fat guy who makes 8$ an hour, it doesn't take Marxism to guide them about what should be done. Of course it'd be wrong to have one group just bash the other over the head and become the new oppressors themselves, but the question of reparations and who owes them at this time in history doesn't require someone to know the first thing about Marxism, but Marxism, even when taken as a doctrine, does indeed inform us that labor aristocracies are in the pockets of the capitalists and will always side with them over the interests of the third-world masses.

[Per Levy]

When confronted with the reality that the goods they've produced for 3$ a day are brought here and sold by some fat guy who makes 8$ an hour, it doesn't take Marxism to guide them about what should be done.

8$ an hour is just a few cents above minimum wage, and judging by the living costs, that are a reality in the usa, they are miserably poor and could only be poorer if they were job and homeless. i remember my fiance worked 3 jobs at a time and had still a super hard time to pay bills and buy everything necessary to live. but priviliged third worldists dont care about that.

and what should be done i wonder. reading your posts it seems the "third world" workers should kill the "first world" workers, that would probally get you very excited. funny though throughout this thread the third worldists only attacked the workers in the "first world" no attack on the bourgeoisie and they even defended the "third world" bourgeoisie.

wich brings me to the point that third worldists are in the end nothing else than class colaborators and bourgeois nationalists. and dare i even say, racists at well. not against white people but against people of colour that they love to lump together and stereotype the shit out of them in order for them to idolize the sterotype. no class analyzis only stereotypes and talk of "people". so why arnt the 3 or 4 outspoken third worldists restricted to OI?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

While ignoring the discrimination towards non-Europeans and plundering of the African continent by European powers is illogical, going the economically-void route of romanticist third-worldists through their historically inaccurate claims and lack of knowledge in regards to the functions of capitalism always ends up with the same old scapegoats of first-world workers being in antagonism with third-world workers. They completely ignore the role capital and the market have to do in the equation, and rely on liberal examples of inequality such as wage difference - throwing the LTV out the window - to exacerbate an antagonism beneficial to rightists worldwide. And that's not even considering their weird bourgeois orientalist romanticism they spurt.

Also, I've yet to see any 'third-worldist' organisations in what is commonly considered the third-world. In fact, I'd be damn sure that they'd be ousted by the local leftist groups for the reactionary shits they really are. Go to Iran and call the government in power a 'success story of national liberation'; every socialist in the country will put you on their hit-list.

Shit I'm tired and that was incoherent.

[cyu]

Even your language is that of courts and markets. It is not a matter of building a new society, it is a matter of settling accounts. Who owes what to whom, who are the debtors and who are the creditors. What kind of Marxism is this? Civil code Marxism? Bookkeeper Marxism?



Exactly - it's not Marxism at all. Those are the words of a liberal.

There is no such thing as reparations or repaying debts in communist society. Why? You don't have reparations or debts when there is no property. There are only reparations if the "revolution" has been co-opted by liberals.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Lol, so Americans on food stamps are living off the blood of the 3rd world? what reactionary crap, I hope you are just trolling and don't actually believe that. A bizzaro negation of Marxism which causes supposed socialists to mimic the demonization of American workers and how lazy and entitled they are.

Can someone please restrict atoadoso? Someone who thinks that immigrants and the homeless have it too good in the us is just a reactionary nut.

[Jimmie Higgins]

wich brings me to the point that third worldists are in the end nothing else than class colaborators and bourgeois nationalists. and dare i even say, racists at well. not against white people but against people of colour that they love to lump together and stereotype the shit out of them in order for them to idolize the sterotype. no class analyzis only stereotypes and talk of "people". so why arnt the 3 or 4 outspoken third worldists restricted to OI?

I think the support of bourgeois nationals regimes gets at the heart of a lot of what makes third-worldism tic. Wishing away class differences inside first world countries is the flip side of the logic of papering over the same divisions in the third world. Looking at incomes and national GDP (as if that was shared equally among people of each nation) rather than rates of exploitation is also part of this. National liberations, while progressive and can lead to better developments and so on, only create a new regime of exploitation, but a more fair, more social democratic version if the liberation movement was left or progressive in terms of the politics of the coalition and supporting social forces.

But capitalism as a system, the market as a global market, and workers as a class can not be divided up and seen in isolation from each other. First world workers can not liberate themselves without the third world workers (and there would need to be a massive transfer of wealth and infrastructure after a revolution... both within the first world and from the first to third, but i wouldn't exactly call it reparations because it wouldn't be workers paying back other workers, it would be workers expropriating from the ruling class and using that wealth for our own mutual purposes). Just the fact of imperialism means that workers in the us or china need to organize independently enough to create internal opposition to their rulers militaries if revolutions in africa or parts of asia can have a chance to survive and not just be bombed as an object lesson from the capitalists to the world working class.

When us union leaders blame Chinese workers for declines in u.s. wages, when the government tells workers that they can only hold onto the little rights they have through u.s. military dominance, when Fox News says there are no poor people in the u.s. it's all lies superficial bullshit at best that is totally ignorant of daily realities for regular workers and a absurd misrepresentation of how capitalism actually functions. 3rd worldism takes the same views and mearly inverts the moral indignation.

[Zulu]

Let's again pay attention to what that obscure German socialist of the 19th century, Karl Marx, has to say

First of all, Marx wasn't a socialist, he was a communist. Re-read the "Communist Manifesto", part 3. on this subject.



Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital.
I could try and prove at length, that driving a car "individually" is indeed part of social production in its capitalist mode, and results in extraction of surplus value from the sweat and blood of the world proletariat, concentrated in the third world countries, which, if "individual" driving somehow magically stopped, simply could not occur (as lots big capitalist enterprises would go bankrupt, to the point of deep global economic depression). But that's something I still have to think on myself.

But for now it suffices to say (which means you can ignore other parts of this here comment, before you seriously get this one through you head), that even if private driving is not capitalist production, it doesn't mean it isn't production at all. Can't you see the difference here? Capitalist production, and Production. Like, in general - production in general. This is pretty much what follows directly from your own quote of Marx, and if you didn't lack comprehension skills completely, you wouldn't even put it here. Because it directly supports what I'm saying. Marx explicitly says: there is production and some of it is capitalist; let's have a good look on this particular sort of production, while disregarding others for the moment... And then goes on to what is productive labor from the specific point of view of the capital. Well, let's not disregard the non-capitalist production, is all I'm saying.

A car owner produces the good of transportation for himself. Which doesn't make him capitalist, of course. But he is definitely not a proletarian, because proletarians have to buy that good as commodity on the capitalist market just like everything else, because they don't own means of production and cannot produce for themselves. So we have to look for another class designation for car owners. Not proletarians. Not capitalists (well, some are, but for other reasons). So I call it petty bourgeoisie. A class, which, according to Marx, had no place in pure theoretically abstract capitalism, but in reality has found a very cozy place of the prime consumer, a sink for the surplus value extracted by the capitalists from the proletarian labor (hint: a Luxemburgist would know immediately what this is about).

And that's pretty much what the third-worldists say, basically: in the global imperialist world the first world countries are the lands of petty bourgeoisie, predominantly populated by it, rather than by proletariat or peasantry, and that's where all the surplus value goes to be consumed, realized, and accumulated as capital.





It should be easy to realise that when I take a bus to my workplace, and that bus is owned by a capitalist company, the driver is producing surplus value.
And yet more often than not it's not the case. Historically, the task of organizing the public transit tended to fall on the bourgeois state (or municipalities, which is the same thing), simply because it's not a profitable business, and if it's made "public sector" it could be happily subsidized by all the taxpayers together, regardless of class and branch of production. Even where public transit is (or was) outsourced to private companies, it still needs heavy subsidies. That is, those companies draw profit not so much from ticket sales (would bankrupt, if they relied solely on selling the commodity of transportation to individual consumers), as from what the bourgeois state pays them by contract (in fiat credit un-money these days, remember, so guess where the actual surplus value to finance all this really comes from), and from some other contracts (advertisement, etc.).

Which is kinda same thing as with private driving - it's being a part of capitalist production, simply outsourced to millions of single self-employed persons' private enterprises. (Sorry, can't resist it!) Also, if you think of it, traffic jams in big cities are nothing but classical crises of overproduction, occurring on a daily basis. Too much transportation and logistical services are produced in the conditions of pure anarchy of production: millions of producers get together on a couple of dozens of square miles of road network, knowing little to nothing of each other's intentions...



I feel I am being cheated.
I suppose, it's because you feel entitled all the time, which is unsurprising, knowing which social class you belong to...


I gave you a link to Karl Marx, and in exchange you give me a link to someone who doesn't understand the basics?
Look, I could give you links to Karl Marx too, to where he equated money with gold, and even said credit could never ever get free of its connection to gold. At the end of the day, the first is a matter of definition, so modern dollars and euros aren't money by definition (from a Marxist PoV, at least). The second, however, was sort of a prognosis, and it proved wrong, which must be, of course, somewhat of a downer to the "priests of the Marxist parish", but only a reason for more study and research for real Marxists, which that guy on my link, quite unlike you, in the very least tries to be. However, since you don't even understand the meaning of the word "equivalent", let alone the basics of Marxism, you don't qualify in the former category either.

Actually, it's again right there in your own quote of Marx, which you again seem to ignore the literal meaning of, in favor of some figments of your petty bourgeois mentality:


bank chit would not be money, or it would be money only by convention between the bank and its clients, but not on the open market.What the fuck else do you need?



But perhaps here is the problem. Third worldists seem to believe that fiat currency is nothing more than Proudhon's labour vouchers. But Proudhon vouchers are impossible in a capitalist society. So modern capitalist societies must not be... capitalist. Which is confirmed by the idea that first world workers aren't exploited. A society were workers aren't exploited must not be... capitalist. So, in essence, what third worldists seem to think is that first world societies are already socialist, the only problem being that their socialism relies in the exploitation of other societies, namely the third world.
The problem is that modern capitalism has evolved past the stage of classical capitalism that Karl Marx worked on to the stage of imperialism and indeed ultra-imperialsm. And the productive forces have developed to the point where genuine socialism (AKA the first phase of communism) is possible, and only await the bloody revolution to show their full potential. Meanwhile, (just as should be expected) some of the features of the communist mode of production manifest themselves already within the capitalist mode of production (abolition of money comes to mind first here), although in a distorted and/or limited form. The other feature of communism, namely the abundance of consumer goods, manifests itself very limited - to the first world countries, and very distorted: as the petty bourgeois consumers can't measure their real needs adequately, and, falling for all the ads on the TV, more often than not go into overconsumption.

Of course, it wouldn't be a capitalist society, but the "first world societies" aren't societies at all, that is, they are no longer isolated in any way, but, on the contrary, are completely integrated together with the "third world societies" into one global society - the only society that really exists, and it is still capitalist. But again, it's not classical capitalist, but ultra-imperialist, so in this society there is no universal equivalent (which would only hamper transfer and redistribution of the surplus value at this point), and the role of the means of circulation and exchange is served by something of a mix between the labor vouchers and Proudhon's free credit. So it's not any of the two exactly as they were envisaged in the 19th century, but a thing that's got the features of both and lacks some other features of both. So, for the labor voucher part, obviously, they are not "denominated" in the exact amounts of working hours, and are not redeemable, which basically makes every single dollar a voucher for an unlimited amount of working hours, which looks quite cool in its mathematical impossibility: zero own value for infinite SNLT... And for the free credit part, it's free from the supply of any particular commodity (such as gold), but still dependent on the overall mass of commodities (including all the fictitious "financial instruments" commodities, which are limited only by the amount of trust between the highly concentrated financial capital entities). And the credit becomes more and more free, the more of it you get. That is, after a while, when your "net worth" gets high enough ("too big too fail"), you're not even supposed to pay it back, you have just to be on board with the cash-printers, who vest so much trust in you. But if you're some very average petty bourgeois element from the street who can't really be trusted that much, you usually can get some reasonably sized credit in a bank any time of the day. So, "to each according to his credit!" - such is the principle of distribution in the modern capitalist society.

Of course, the "open market" has been made history by the transnational corporate cartels too, so, drawing upon that quote of Marx, you could probably make the case for the dollar's being money by the virtue of the absence of the open market and the de facto convention between the Fed and the planetfull of its "clients", which is kept in place, if all else fails, by the Pentagon. Good luck with that, especially, since the logical conclusion of it will indeed be that the society you live in is "not capitalist", after which there is little but non-zero chance that you might begin to see some light...




That such view substitutes foreign affairs for class analysis, and is consequently at direct odds with Marxism, seems obvious.

But the case is exactly the opposite! It's for you social chauvinist guys, who deny the third world the "honor" of being "modern capitalist societies", the predicaments of the world proletariat seem like "foreign affairs". But the third-worldists say: the classes are global, and the boundaries of the bourgeois nation states don't mean shit. There are zones of high concentration of the proletariat, and zones of low concentration of the proletariat, and the latter are not going to go red first, and are unlikely to go red voluntarily at all even when the former go red (in which case certain class elements will be required to be swept and cleared there, if the world commie revolution is to succeed).

And on that optimistic note, I'm officially done here.



.

[Red HalfGuard]

This thread will forever be remembered as the one where Atoa said that ethnic groups/colonized nations in the USA that are imprisoned at three six times the rate of white USians in the concentration camps of the USian prison-industrial complex (which are the largest in the world by a big margin even with population differences accounted for) do not constitute a proletariat because...buses and foodstamps.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Kudos on slipping in the Austrian crankery about use of 'fiat' currency. "a mix between the labor vouchers and Proudhon's free credit". Damn who would have guessed Nixon's nefarious plan when he took America off the gold standard!




...

And yet more often than not it's not the case. Historically, the task of organizing the public transit tended to fall on the bourgeois state (or municipalities, which is the same thing), simply because it's not a profitable business, and if it's made "public sector" it could be happily subsidized by all the taxpayers together, regardless of class and branch of production. Even where public transit is (or was) outsourced to private companies, it still needs heavy subsidies. That is, those companies draw profit not so much from ticket sales (would bankrupt, if they relied solely on selling the commodity of transportation to individual consumers), as from what the bourgeois state pays them by contract (in fiat credit un-money these days, remember, so guess where the actual surplus value to finance all this really comes from), and from some other contracts (advertisement, etc.).

Which is kinda same thing as with private driving - it's being a part of capitalist production, simply outsourced to millions of single self-employed persons' private enterprises. (Sorry, can't resist it!) Also, if you think of it, traffic jams in big cities are nothing but classical crises of overproduction, occurring on a daily basis. Too much transportation and logistical services are produced in the conditions of pure anarchy of production: millions of producers get together on a couple of dozens of square miles of road network, knowing little to nothing of each other's intentions...

I suppose, it's because you feel entitled all the time, which is unsurprising, knowing which social class you belong to...

Look, I could give you links to Karl Marx too, to where he equated money with gold, and even said credit could never ever get free of its connection to gold. At the end of the day, the first is a matter of definition, so modern dollars and euros aren't money by definition (from a Marxist PoV, at least). The second, however, was sort of a prognosis, and it proved wrong, which must be, of course, somewhat of a downer to the "priests of the Marxist parish", but only a reason for more study and research for real Marxists, which that guy on my link, quite unlike you, in the very least tries to be. However, since you don't even understand the meaning of the word "equivalent", let alone the basics of Marxism, you don't qualify in the former category either.

Actually, it's again right there in your own quote of Marx, which you again seem to ignore the literal meaning of, in favor of some figments of your petty bourgeois mentality:

What the fuck else do you need?


The problem is that modern capitalism has evolved past the stage of classical capitalism that Karl Marx worked on to the stage of imperialism and indeed ultra-imperialsm. And the productive forces have developed to the point where genuine socialism (AKA the first phase of communism) is possible, and only await the bloody revolution to show their full potential. Meanwhile, (just as should be expected) some of the features of the communist mode of production manifest themselves already within the capitalist mode of production (abolition of money comes to mind first here), although in a distorted and/or limited form. The other feature of communism, namely the abundance of consumer goods, manifests itself very limited - to the first world countries, and very distorted: as the petty bourgeois consumers can't measure their real needs adequately, and, falling for all the ads on the TV, more often than not go into overconsumption.

Of course, it wouldn't be a capitalist society, but the "first world societies" aren't societies at all, that is, they are no longer isolated in any way, but, on the contrary, are completely integrated together with the "third world societies" into one global society - the only society that really exists, and it is still capitalist. But again, it's not classical capitalist, but ultra-imperialist, so in this society there is no universal equivalent (which would only hamper transfer and redistribution of the surplus value at this point), and the role of the means of circulation and exchange is served by something of a mix between the labor vouchers and Proudhon's free credit. So it's not any of the two exactly as they were envisaged in the 19th century, but a thing that's got the features of both and lacks some other features of both. So, for the labor voucher part, obviously, they are not "denominated" in the exact amounts of working hours, and are not redeemable, which basically makes every single dollar a voucher for an unlimited amount of working hours, which looks quite cool in its mathematical impossibility: zero own value for infinite SNLT... And for the free credit part, it's free from the supply of any particular commodity (such as gold)[, but still dependent on the overall mass of commodities (including all the fictitious "financial instruments" commodities, which are limited only by the amount of trust between the highly concentrated financial capital entities). And the credit becomes more and more free, the more of it you get. That is, after a while, when your "net worth" gets high enough ("too big too fail"), you're not even supposed to pay it back, you have just to be on board with the cash-printers, who vest so much trust you so much. But if you're some very average petty bourgeois element from the street who can't really be trusted that much, you usually can get some reasonably sized credit in a bank any time of the day. So, "to each according to his credit!" - such is the principle of distribution in the modern capitalist society.

Of course, the "open market" has been made history by the transnational corporate cartels too, so, drawing upon that quote of Marx, you could probably make the case for the dollar's being money by the virtue of the absence of the open market and the de facto convention between the Fed and the planetfull of its "clients", which is kept in place, if all else fails, by the Pentagon. Good luck with that, especially, since the logical conclusion of it will indeed be that the society you live in is not capitalist...

...

[Zulu]

Kudos on slipping in the Austrian crankery about use of 'fiat' currency.

Sooooo... Karl Marx was so great that he time-travelled to the 20th century to become an adept of the Austrian school on that one. What you gonna do about it? :cool:

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Re: Zulu
A car is not in-and-of-itself a means of production. If you want to stretch definitions to this absurd extreme then it follows that every third-world "proletarian" who owns a fucking shovel, or a broom, is in fact part of the global petit bourgeoisie. The matter at hand, in terms of understanding class, is capitalist production, not owning-anything-that-could-produce-any-use-value.
Further, it distracts from the goddamn reality of the situation. The first world working class (which, yes, does goddamn exist unless wage labour has disappeared without anybody noticing) isn't incapable of constituting itself as a proletarian revolutionary force because it's petit bourgeois - it's because it dominated by the labour aristocracy. Seriously yo, I can't believe you need a goddamn anarchist to explain Lenin to you.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Just to note that Marx worked out his labor theory of value in the reading room of the 19th century London Library. I have no doubt if was alive now he would come to terms with 21st century fiat currency.


Sooooo... Karl Marx was so great that he time-travelled to the 20th century to become an adept of the Austrian school on that one. What you gonna do about it? :cool:

[Luís Henrique]

First of all, Marx wasn't a socialist, he was a communist. Re-read the "Communist Manifesto", part 3. on this subject.

Ooops, my bad. That changes the issue completely.[/sarcasm]


I could try and prove at length, that driving a car "individually" is indeed part of social production in its capitalist mode, and results in extraction of surplus value from the sweat and blood of the world proletariat, concentrated in the third world countries, which, if "individual" driving somehow magically stopped, simply could not occur (as lots big capitalist enterprises would go bankrupt, to the point of deep global economic depression). But that's something I still have to think on myself.

Well, take your time.


But for now it suffices to say (which means you can ignore other parts of this here comment, before you seriously get this one through you head), that even if private driving is not capitalist production, it doesn't mean it isn't production at all. Can't you see the difference here? Capitalist production, and Production.

Of course. There is a difference. That is, indeed, the point. Even in a capitalist society, there is capitalist production, and non-capitalist production (such as that of the artisan, or the peasant, etc.) But non-capitalist production fails to extort surplus value from anyone; only capitalist production creates and extracts surplus value. That being the reason that your distinction between "Capitalist Production" and "Production" still fails to make your point, that someone driving his private car from home to office and back again is exploiting the proletariat abroad. If it is production, it is either non-exploitative, or the person driving the car is the one being exploited. If it somehow is exploitative, it is an exploitative form of consumption (meaning, after all, that the commodity being used for transportation is the result of capitalist, and consequently, exploitative production), more or less like we would say that a millionaire sailing his private yacht for leisure and fun is an exploiter, for he derives his leisure and fun from the exploitation of many others. But then, this is merely ordinary language usage, in which we call all sorts of things "exploitation". In accurate Marxist usage, exploitation can only happen in production or circulation, not in private consumption. And, of course, if we are going now to decry any consumption of commodities produced under capitalist consumption as "exploitative", then there is little that is not exploitative in the world. Even a third world proletarian, when he takes his bus from home to factory, is consuming a commodity that was produced through capitalist exploitation - is he exploiting the bus driver? Even a third world peasant, if he uses a sickle that he bought in the market, manufactured by a capitalist steel mill, is using a commodity that was produced through capitalist exploitation. Is she an exploiter?


Like, in general - production in general.

Yeah, I get it. Really do. Production in general, sub specie aeternitatis, not historically determinated, not socially determinated, production as an abstraction. Do I need to point out the several ways this can lead to a complete deviation - nay, revision - of Marxism?


This is pretty much what follows directly from your own quote of Marx, and if you didn't lack comprehension skills completely, you wouldn't even put it here. Because it directly supports what I'm saying. Marx explicitly says: there is production and some of it is capitalist; let's have a good look on this particular sort of production, while disregarding others for the moment... And then goes on to what is productive labor from the specific point of view of the capital. Well, let's not disregard the non-capitalist production, is all I'm saying.

No, let's not disregard non-capitalist production. But let us consider it concretely, socially, historically, materially, not as an abstraction that opportunistically allows us to circumvent the difficulties of our analysis. If it is non-capitalist production, it simply cannot be the basis of capitalist exploitation. The capitalist mode of production is not a mode of circulation or a mode of consumption, it is a mode of production. Which means, if we agree that the world is basically a capitalist world now, we believe that most production is capitalist, and that the bulk of the ongoing exploitation is capitalist exploitation through capitalist production - not exploitation of non-capitalist producers by non-capitalist exploiters, neither exploitation of non-capitalist producers by non-productive capitalists (such as merchants or bankers) in the realm of circulation. That mistake - to believe that capitalist exploitation takes place in circulation, that the labourer is "robbed" by hucksters or peddlers, rather than extorted from his surplus labour directly in the factory - was sternly criticised by Marx, usually by lambasting Proudhon and his followers.


A car owner produces the good of transportation for himself. Which doesn't make him capitalist, of course. But he is definitely not a proletarian, because proletarians have to buy that good as commodity on the capitalist market just like everything else, because they don't own means of production and cannot produce for themselves.

So what you are saying is that the car owner produces the trip, voyage, ride, the unit of transport, so to say, but not in a capitalist way. Let's provisorily accept that, for the sake of the argument. As you admit, it doesn't make him a capitalist. What you argue is that this makes him no longer a proletarian, because a proletarian would have to buy the unit of transportation at the market, because he doesn't own means of production. That may seem logical to you, but the practical consequences are quite problematic. In your idealised third world, where supposedly all exploitation takes place, it is very common for proletarian women to work at home, be it full time as hosewives, be it part time in what we would call a second labour journey. See, what do they do in that case? Cook, wash the dishes, wash the clothes, wipe the floor, for instance. But, according to you, this is production - even though not capitalist production. They produce meals, and clean dishes, clothes, and floors. Which, according to you, a true proletarian would have to buy at the market, because he doesn't own means of production. So it would seem that those proletarian women who cook their own meals are not actually proletarian, or that their proletarian husbands are not proletarian. That would indeed lead to the craziest conclusions. The most impoverished people, who cannot afford to buy a meal at a fast food franchise, but must cook for themselves, are not more, but less proletarians for that reason!


So we have to look for another class designation for car owners. Not proletarians. Not capitalists (well, some are, but for other reasons). So I call it petty bourgeoisie. A class, which, according to Marx, had no place in pure theoretically abstract capitalism, but in reality has found a very cozy place of the prime consumer, a sink for the surplus value extracted by the capitalists from the proletarian labor (hint: a Luxemburgist would know immediately what this is about).

Mkay. So car owners are petty bourgeois for they own "means of production", ie, cars, that produce transportation units for them. Accordingly, people who wipe their own floors, and for that end own their own brooms, should be considered "petty bourgeois" too? They have found a cozy place as consumers of the surplus extracted by capitalist from proletarian labour, as materialised in the form of brooms? Or what is the difference?


And that's pretty much what the third-worldists say, basically: in the global imperialist world the first world countries are the lands of petty bourgeoisie, predominantly populated by it, rather than by proletariat or peasantry, and that's where all the surplus value goes to be consumed, realized, and accumulated as capital.

So the surplus value is produced in the third world, and then travels to the first world to be consumed. But how does it make such a journey? What is the mechanism through which it is moved from the factories and plantations in the third world to the households of the first world? Because the car (and I would guess even the brooms) that are consumed in the first world don't have the looks of having been produced in the third world. And while we have agreed, for the sake of argument, to temporarily misconsider driving a car from home to office as "production", we had, to make that arguable, to agree to consider it "non-capitalist production", and, as such, unable to generate any surplus value. Certainly the car owner doesn't make money to buy his cars by driving it to his job. So you are again at trouble: you can't explain our first world petty bourgeois privileges, his supposedly "undeserved" consumption, through his condition as a non-capitalist producer; on the contrary, it seems that it is his surplus consumption that generates his position of a "non-capitalist producer".


And yet more often than not it's not the case. Historically, the task of organizing the public transit tended to fall on the bourgeois state (or municipalities, which is the same thing), simply because it's not a profitable business, and if it's made "public sector" it could be happily subsidized by all the taxpayers together, regardless of class and branch of production. Even where public transit is (or was) outsourced to private companies, it still needs heavy subsidies. That is, those companies draw profit not so much from ticket sales (would bankrupt, if they relied solely on selling the commodity of transportation to individual consumers), as from what the bourgeois state pays them by contract (in fiat credit un-money these days, remember, so guess where the actual surplus value to finance all this really comes from), and from some other contracts (advertisement, etc.).

Interesting, but it certainly isn't the case of third world countries. Here, bus companies derive their profits - which aren't small - from the sale of bus tickets. True, the general taxpayer subsidises this system by paying taxes that make possible a net of paved streets, etc. But a Brazilian bus companies makes profits by exploiting bus drivers (ie, by paying them the value of their labour power, and selling bus tickets for the value of bus tickets), not by somehow importing surplus value from Bangladesh or Haiti.


Which is kinda same thing as with private driving - it's being a part of capitalist production, simply outsourced to millions of single self-employed persons' private enterprises. (Sorry, can't resist it!) Also, if you think of it, traffic jams in big cities are nothing but classical crises of overproduction, occurring on a daily basis.

Well, no. A crisis of "overproduction" is the inability to sell all the products that are produced. A traffic jam involves no market glut. It is merely a result of the inadequacy between private ownership of automobiles and public transportation infrastructure.


I suppose, it's because you feel entitled all the time, which is unsurprising, knowing which social class you belong to...

Well, I am a third worlder, which I suppose makes me part of the "global proletariat". Somehow the surplus value that I am not producing while driving my car is getting transported to the United States, where it is used by American petty bourgeois to buy cars produced in the United States, or Japan, by other petty bourgeois people, using the surplus value produced by agricultural labourers in Uganda or Thailand?


Look, I could give you links to Karl Marx too, to where he equated money with gold

So please do.

Listen, Marx lived in the 19th century. At his times, the credit system was by no means as developed as in the 21st. But if he believed that fiat currency was an impossibility under capitalist conditions - which is what he clearly said of Proudhon's schemes - then he was evidently wrong, because all modern capitalist societies evidently function on the basis of fiat currency, without collapsing (anymore than older capitalist societies based on metallic currency, that is) or becoming socialist because of that.

***************************

The rest, later.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

(hint: a Luxemburgist would know immediately what this is about).

I don't believe in the existence of "Luxemburguism", and I am certainly no priest of the cult of Goddess Rosa. But while she evidently believed that capitalist societies needed to find markets for their surplus production outside capitalism, her vision was completely the opposite of yours: for her, the excess value produced in the "first world" (though of course she didn't use such terminology, which is much more recent) was consumed in the "third world", not the other way round.


Look, I could give you links to Karl Marx too, to where he equated money with gold, and even said credit could never ever get free of its connection to gold. At the end of the day, the first is a matter of definition, so modern dollars and euros aren't money by definition (from a Marxist PoV, at least). The second, however, was sort of a prognosis, and it proved wrong, which must be, of course, somewhat of a downer to the "priests of the Marxist parish", but only a reason for more study and research for real Marxists, which that guy on my link, quite unlike you, in the very least tries to be. However, since you don't even understand the meaning of the word "equivalent", let alone the basics of Marxism, you don't qualify in the former category either.

So let's see the "Marxist definition" of money. According to you, it must be a general equivalent, and it must be gold or silver, or at least directly related to gold (or silver). But to anyone looking at what is happening in the 21st century, it is obvious that the general equivalent is something that is not gold or silver, neither directly related to gold or silver. So what you conclude is, modern capitalist societies are... moneyless societies. More a reason to deem them socialist... But the reasonable conclusion is much different: that if Marx indeed defined money in such a way, his definition is wrong, because modern fiat currency is money though it is not directly related to gold or silver.


Actually, it's again right there in your own quote of Marx, which you again seem to ignore the literal meaning of, in favor of some figments of your petty bourgeois mentality:

What the fuck else do you need?

You would need something admitting that bank chits can function as generally accepted currency. Marx's criticism is that Proudhon's labour vouchers are either the general equivalent, but then they need the Proudhonian bank to have a monopoly on all commerce, or that they won't work as a general equivalent. That, of course, is because Proudhonian vouchers would be denominated in labour time, which, as Marx points out, is a problem because while gold's value varies in time, it doesn't vary in terms of gold itself (two pieces of gold may value ten tons of iron, or only five; but they will always value twice as one piece of gold), labour time varies in its own terms (two hours of labour today may value the same as three hours of labour yesterday). Which confusion, of course, Proudhon couldn't see because he reasoned upon an absolute value of labour time, biologically set, not socially determinated. More or less like third worldists do today, with their belief in an abstract average wage as the "true" value of labour. And so, Marx's critique of Proudhon's vouchers, again, is that they would not be able to function as money. But modern fiat currency functions as money, so either it is not the same as Proudhon's vouchers, or Marx was wrong, and Proudhon correct.


The problem is that modern capitalism has evolved past the stage of classical capitalism that Karl Marx worked on to the stage of imperialism and indeed ultra-imperialsm.

That Kautskian foolery?


And the productive forces have developed to the point where genuine socialism (AKA the first phase of communism) is possible, and only await the bloody revolution to show their full potential. Meanwhile, (just as should be expected) some of the features of the communist mode of production manifest themselves already within the capitalist mode of production (abolition of money comes to mind first here), although in a distorted and/or limited form. The other feature of communism, namely the abundance of consumer goods, manifests itself very limited - to the first world countries, and very distorted: as the petty bourgeois consumers can't measure their real needs adequately, and, falling for all the ads on the TV, more often than not go into overconsumption.

To which the response of third worldism, of course, is to restore the proper conditions of capitalist production, ie, restore underconsumption...


Of course, it wouldn't be a capitalist society, but the "first world societies" aren't societies at all, that is, they are no longer isolated in any way, but, on the contrary, are completely integrated together with the "third world societies" into one global society - the only society that really exists, and it is still capitalist.

Ah, no, it isn't since, the "third world" isn't exploited through wage labour.


But again, it's not classical capitalist, but ultra-imperialist, so in this society there is no universal equivalent

So it is a capitalist society without a general equivalent, which means a capitalist society in which markets can no longer function. And yet, that's how such "ultra-imperialist" circulates wealth: through market.


and the role of the means of circulation and exchange is served by something of a mix between the labor vouchers and Proudhon's free credit.

Nope, that isn't true. The role of the means of circulation and exchange is served by fiat currency within the boundaries of any given country, and either by internationally accepted fiat currency (in the case, the dollar), or by abstract accounting between different countries (meaning imports and exports aren't actually "paid" but only generate obligations of future imports and imports between countries. And in any case fiat currency isn't Proudhonian because it isn't denominated in labour time; in its Keynesian avatar, money is not denominated, but actually anchored into total production.


So it's not any of the two exactly as they were envisaged in the 19th century, but a thing that's got the features of both and lacks some other features of both.

But that has all the features of a general equivalent.


So, for the labor voucher part, obviously, they are not "denominated" in the exact amounts of working hours, and are not redeemable, which basically makes every single dollar a voucher for an unlimited amount of working hours, which looks quite cool in its mathematical impossibility: zero own value for infinite SNLT...

Which is what makes it able to function as money, unlike labour vouchers.


And for the free credit part, it's free from the supply of any particular commodity (such as gold), but still dependent on the overall mass of commodities (including all the fictitious "financial instruments" commodities, which are limited only by the amount of trust between the highly concentrated financial capital entities).

It is dependent on the overall mass of commodities, which certainly does not include fictitious commodities such as derivatives; indeed, whenever such mistake is made, the system immediately enters a crisis, for more money will be minted than what is warranted by the actual wealth of society.


And the credit becomes more and more free, the more of it you get.

What do you mean by "free", credit that is not bound or credit that is not paid for? Because if it is the later, this is certainly untrue; credit is cheaper or dearer as any other commodity, but free loans are not a characteristic of the system, by no means. And if it is the former, yes, controls on paying abilities tend to get lax in times of expansion - but whenever production contracts, or even only sales are uneasy, credit becomes again difficult, causing the external symptoms of what we call a crisis.


That is, after a while, when your "net worth" gets high enough ("too big too fail"), you're not even supposed to pay it back, you have just to be on board with the cash-printers, who vest so much trust in you.

And in such case a crisis is in the making; of course the State can (and frequently will) pay the bill, then socialising the losses through taxes or inflation, but at some point you will have to either pay the bills or file for bankrupcy.


But if you're some very average petty bourgeois element from the street who can't really be trusted that much, you usually can get some reasonably sized credit in a bank any time of the day. So, "to each according to his credit!" - such is the principle of distribution in the modern capitalist society.

Yeah, if you have real guarantees - meaning a house, or a car, or a wage that can be directly deviated to the banks. But this of course doesn't solve problems except in the very short term. If one debtor doesn't pay, you take your home from him, and you will eventually sell it at the markets. If too many debtors don't pay, you are overloaded with thousands of houses that become unsaleable, so your bank collapses, and perhaps, if the phenomenon is widespread enough, the whole system. In which case, of course, "ultra-imperialism" gives way back to the old methods of dear, slow, difficult credit.


Of course, the "open market" has been made history by the transnational corporate cartels too, so, drawing upon that quote of Marx, you could probably make the case for the dollar's being money by the virtue of the absence of the open market and the de facto convention between the Fed and the planetfull of its "clients", which is kept in place, if all else fails, by the Pentagon. Good luck with that, especially, since the logical conclusion of it will indeed be that the society you live in is "not capitalist", after which there is little but non-zero chance that you might begin to see some light...

Well, you are the one suggesting that it is moneyless and that it doesn't need to exploit workers to achieve profits, so you are the one pointing to it being not capitalist.


But the case is exactly the opposite! It's for you social chauvinist guys, who deny the third world the "honor" of being "modern capitalist societies", the predicaments of the world proletariat seem like "foreign affairs".

And so, if the third world is modern capitalism, production takes place here like elsewhere: by the exploitation of workers through wage slavery. But in that case, the total value produced here is to be measured like elsewhere, too: in terms of labour time. And of course, what distinguishes the third world from the first is its low productivity. What takes on hour of labour to be produced in Finland takes ten hours to be produced in Kenya. Which means that the total production of value is bigger in the first world than in the third. Which means that you cannot measure the wages of Finnish workers on the base of Kenyan wages: you must measure it in terms of the total wealth produced in Finland.


But the third-worldists say: the classes are global, and the boundaries of the bourgeois nation states don't mean shit.

The classes are global, and the boundaries between the bourgeois nation States do mean a lot of shit. They are strictly functional to the maximisation of profits in both sides of each boundary.


There are zones of high concentration of the proletariat, and zones of low concentration of the proletariat, and the latter are not going to go red first, and are unlikely to go red voluntarily at all even when the former go red (in which case certain class elements will be required to be swept and cleared there, if the world commie revolution is to succeed).

There are zones of low concentration of the proletariat, and most of them are in the third world, in places where the peasantry is still numerically significant. But they are rare and interspersed, and do produce quite little in terms of wealth.

Luís Henrique

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

First of all, Marx wasn't a socialist, he was a communist. Re-read the "Communist Manifesto", part 3. on this subject.
Given that Marx used the terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably in his writings on the subject as a whole, I find this to be a rather silly claim.

[Zulu]

Somebody has asked me to elaborate on something I typed here earlier, so here comes my elaboration in the form of reply:


... production as an abstraction. Do I need to point out the several ways this can lead to a complete deviation - nay, revision - of Marxism?
Anything can lead to a deviation, if you don't have brain. Or stomach, for that matter. So far the deviationists and revisionists have been produced mostly by a direct application of the oversimplified version of Marx's abstraction. Like, oh, we live in capitalism, therefore all production is capitalistic, and you're either a Bad capital guy, or a Good labor guy! But, unfortunately, it's not quite so simple as that. In reality, it's more like "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", so to say. And if you really want to hope to change the world, let alone understand it, you have to look at the Ugly (AKA the petty bourgeois) and there is not very much about him in "Das Kapital".



That mistake - to believe that capitalist exploitation takes place in circulation, that the labourer is "robbed" by hucksters or peddlers, rather than extorted from his surplus labour directly in the factory - was sternly criticised by Marx

So the surplus value is produced in the third world, and then travels to the first world to be consumed. But how does it make such a journey? What is the mechanism through which it is moved from the factories and plantations in the third world to the households of the first world?
That surplus value isn't created in circulation, doesn't mean the "hucksters or peddlers" don't rob the laborer. In fact, they do, as the surplus value is shared with them by the "productive capitalists" (if only for the reason the latter can't realize any of the surplus value without the help of the former). So, once more, the "hucksters and peddlers" do rob the laborer - the abstract socially necessary laborer, because sometimes "hucksters and peddlers" work "real hard" too, and might even get quite frustrated, if somebody calls them faux frais. It actually takes a lot of "labor" in the field of "huckstery" to organize a modern "racket", by making the decisions of where, when, how and how much to rob the proletarian of surplus value, and this decision making is done separately from the actual "robbery" - by the "hucksters"... Thus, they partake in exploitation, even if indirectly.

Of course, you could quite hypocritically insist that they don't, as they only engage in bona fide commerce and exchange commodity equivalents, while the "dishonest" exploitative commodity exchange takes place only "at the factory", where workers get their commodity of labor power exchanged for money unequally. So it's only "the productive capitalists" who must be expropriated, and everything will be fine in a very short time. (The funny thing is, that such a line of thinking is precisely the caricature of Marxism made by those who loved to call themselves "socialists", which, among else, allowed certain "national-socialists" to portray Marxism in general as some kind of a conspiracy to benefit the... uh..., international banking community.)

But there are two major problems with such a "localization" of capitalist exploitation, both of which have been on the constant rise ever since the publication of "Das Kapital". So these days they are quite in your face. But nobody seems to notice or care, so I guess it's "elephant in the room" type of thing.

First of all, today, with all the joint stock capital and the bourgeois state's "public sector", there is no such distinct group as "productive capitalists". The capitalists are all in this together, like a "team", and share the surplus value according to their, well, shares, but also to other means of distribution based on credit. Now there is no money, but pure credit has taken its place, which makes it a lot more easier for the "hucksters and peddlers" to get their piece of the pie, and get it bigger.

And that's the second problem, of course, that with the money gone, the very notion of trade and commerce becomes quite dubious. The modern means of circulation isn't a universal equivalent. Or, to put it catchy, it's "universal inequivalent". Universal, but not equivalent... Commodity exchange obviously remains, but it isn't an exchange of equivalents anymore! It could be somewhat roughly that, if actual barter was taking place, but it's not! The exchange of any commodity for all others is mediated by the worthless tokens, which technically are pure credit. This credit can act as a commodity as well, as capital, and all the other functions of good old money, except just one: it can't function as a measure of value, because it embodies zero socially necessary labor time (although this also somewhat impairs the function of the unit of account). Naturally, the laws of supply and demand apply in this modern moneyless market also, but it's quite obvious that the monopoly that is the sole creator of the commodity misleadingly called "money", has all the edge it needs to manipulate the market. The bourgeois economists themselves admit that monopoly is bad even if it deals in real goods, because it may tag an "unfair" price to them. Then what can be said from the PoV of Marxism about a pure ideal of monopoly, which deals in a commodity, no price for which can be "fair", but which is as indispensable as the air it is created out of?

Two conclusions follow from this: 1) Everybody exploits everybody these days every time a purchase is made on the market; 2) the primary beneficiary of all this exploitative unequal exchange, towards which all the surplus value in the world gravitates, is that bunch of shady figures called the "financial oligarchy", which is behind the operations of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and a few other issue centers of "strong", "reserve" currencies (all other currencies being "pegged" to them in one way or another). These imperialist institutions enjoy the so called "seniorage", AKA the "inflation tax" which, although it doesn't transfer value directly, does prompt its flow by the shift of the purchasing power. After an issue of a new sum of this pure credit said institutions immediately begin dispensation of it by lending it to bourgeois state governments and/or largest banks. Both are run by the personal buddies and trusties of said financial oligarchy, of course. In the economic sense - and the "normal", juridical sense is not applicable here, because these people are not simply above the law, they are above those who are above the law - this financial oligarchy quite literally owns the world now. And no, this isn't some sinister conspiracy the deliver humanity to El Diablo, this is simply a result of the process of concentration of capital, and one to have been quite expected, at that.

Anyway, those who get credited the first distribute this credit further down the line and after a few such "legs" of direct distribution the total amount of issued credit gets divided into enough and small enough parts to facilitate market exchange between multiple parties. Which, however, is the same dispensation of credit, only in exchange for real goods now. These "multiple parties" introducing the divided credit to the market are still purely capitalist entities, but, as I've said, some of them are better off than the others depending on their socio-economic proximity to the issue centers. The more "legs" there is between a capitalist and the fiat currency issue center, the more losses (relative ones, of course, in the form of unrealized gain, compared to the luckier capitalists) he suffers from the unequal exchange, the more, yes, exploited he is. The closer a capitalist is to the issue center the more surplus value he is able appropriate on the same amount of credit-as-capital, if only because he gets his hands on the increased "money supply" earlier, maybe even earlier than inflation sets in after each particular busy day at the "printing-press". Note that this profit from the early access to the "money supply" is another mechanism of surplus value transfer, which is distinct from the "inflation tax" proper... Of course, the actual situation is more complicated than that, with all the "fractional reserve banking" and whatnot, but that's the principle.

At the very bottom of this are the proles, nothing too unusual. They do not have anything to sell but their labor power, and they are so far down the line from the imperialist core that the credit they can get for it on the market is really miniscule. (Notice, that $3/day is not a "fair price" or "global value" for it - my point of entry in this here thread - as there is no less value in $3, than there is in $1'000'000.) Sometimes they don't even get the wage in the form of credit at all, and are paid in kind, which, ironically, immediately gives them more value than is embodied in the modern medium of circulation.

But how do you call the class of people who tend to "work for a living", that is, get credit by exchanging (selling) their labor power for a "wage", but can get additional credit on the market by selling something else, apart from their labor power? That is, they happen to own some private property, like a house, a car, some other "consumer" machines? Even without selling that stuff, they can use it as security to get more credit in a bank, and even though they might need to pay it back in the end (which is not that certain with all those peculiar "settlement" options that occur in practice), the interest rate is sometimes lower than the inflation rate, so they are actually in the gain with the credit. Thus any consumer credit recipient, if he is smart enough, can get part of the "inflation tax", provided there are low interest loans on the market, which is something that most often happens rather close to the imperialist core. Not to say that consumer credit allows this class of people to use the use-values before they are actually produced!!! I mean - if it were about the old school value for value exchange out there, as some "Marxists" here think... But it's not, and the empirical fact of the consumer debt in certain "national economies" only piling up and up proves that. Finally, as I've explained earlier, being owners of means of production, they can always give up their oh so exploitative job and try out the luck as petty commodity producers; they do not do so very often simply because they decide to hold on to their profits coming in the form of "wage"... So this class has characteristics of both the proletariat and the capitalists, so it must be some "middle class" that wasn't mentioned in Marx's abstraction, presumably in order to keep it as clear-cut as possible, although he did mention that petty commodity producers had it both and got kind of exploited by themselves. So I am in favor of calling this ambivalent middle class "the petty bourgeoisie". If you think it sounds bad, I'm open to other suggestions though, regarding the name. What I'm not open to, is the flabbergasting notion that there is no qualitative difference between that and what Marx&Engels called "the proletariat" or "the working class". Admittedly, it used to be synonyms. However, even more so than in the case of the "communism/socialism" mistakenly alleged synonymy, it has become completely misleading to call somebody a "worker", as in "the working class", because for the weaker minds, which can't be bothered with clearing up all the semantics, it creates an illusion that everybody who works a job is a prole. Which is obviously incorrect.

And so the third-worldists say: surplus value is not created in the process on the world trade, but in said process the world proletariat is "huckstered and peddled" of it by the world bourgeoisie, which shares it with the world petty bourgeoisie, often in the form of "wage", which is not a wage but the "imperial rent". The world trade’s effect over time on the proletarians employed directly by the section of the bourgeoisie which dominates said world trade was perfectly understood by Marx&Engels already. See, for instance, this letter by Engels to Bebel (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/letters/83_08_30.htm). Only now we have ultra-imperialism outdoors, so the monopoly of the bourgeoisie of the imperialist core can't be challenged by some rival bourgeoisie, so the "political nullity" of the 1st world workers is final - which means that they (most of them anyway) ceased to be the class they used to be and became (part of) another class.

Here, this official third-worldist book may be more accessible for understanding of the surplus value transfer from the 3rd world to the 1st, as the notion that the abolition of money has actually been already accomplished is apparently lacking there, and apparently no challenge is made to the "right" of the 1st world hired employees to be called "the working class":

http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1894946413/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1
http://weeklybolshevik.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/evidence-for-the-global-value-transfer/

Bear in mind that commodities originating in the OECD and imported to the 3rd world, even if it's not some totally fictitious "services", usually come overpriced (compared to what they cost on the "home" market), so the trade deficit of the OECD, if expressed in real value, is even bigger, than can be inferred on the assumption that "dollar is equivalent".

As for me, while from the very example of you here I can see, why it may be regarded as inexpedient to hold the pedal to the metal about the whole "dollar is no longer money" thing, if you're trying to get the more important message of the third-worldism across to an average westerner, who is thoroughly entangled in the cobwebs of the bourgeois economics' cliches, I still assert that it's exactly the "bullshit money" that has become the prime facilitator of the global transfer of surplus value to the net exploiters concentrated in the "first world", and that real money would have gotten in the way of that. It doesn't mean that the return of the golden standard is desirable. Even though it would have the Ron Paul idiots lose more than they hope to gain, it would have also been a historic step back and probably result in retardation of productive forces worldwide. What I suggest to be done, is wrestling the political-economic system "as is" from its present "maintainers" in a revolutionary manner, and using it to the proletarian ends of bringing the relations of production and the superstructure into conformity with the productive forces.



In your idealised third world, where supposedly all exploitation takes place, it is very common for proletarian women to work at home, be it full time as hosewives, be it part time in what we would call a second labour journey. See, what do they do in that case? Cook, wash the dishes, wash the clothes, wipe the floor, for instance. But, according to you, this is production - even though not capitalist production. They produce meals, and clean dishes, clothes, and floors. Which, according to you, a true proletarian would have to buy at the market
...
So car owners are petty bourgeois for they own "means of production", ie, cars, that produce transportation units for them. Accordingly, people who wipe their own floors, and for that end own their own brooms, should be considered "petty bourgeois" too? They have found a cozy place as consumers of the surplus extracted by capitalist from proletarian labour, as materialised in the form of brooms? Or what is the difference?

the car (and I would guess even the brooms) that are consumed in the first world don't have the looks of having been produced in the third world.

Yeah, if you have real guarantees - meaning a house, or a car,
This is actually the first counterargument from you that I consider legitimate, because instead of coming from utter ignorance and comprehension failure it shows that some thinking has been put in it. So, cheers.

First of all, let's say that an ideal abstract clear-cut "chemically clean" proletarian indeed can't own even a broom, must have his meals only at the factory canteen with the price of them being deduced from his wage, and the watch he’d wear on his wrist to know when it's his turn to get those meals should be issued to him from the factory's inventory and remain the property of the enterprise. However, all sciences allow for the negligible figures to be disregarded completely. For example, when Factor X has been detected in the sample but the zero is statistically within the "margin of error", that Factor X may be treated as if it was zero. So I can't think of a reason, why some negligible amount of means of production being the property of somebody should not be regarded as non-existent. So yeah, let 'em have their brooms. After all, Joe Stalin authorized the division of means of production into "decisive ones" and the rest of them, when he insisted that the machine-tractor stations must under no circumstances be transferred into the collective farm property... So the question is: why the passenger automobile is that mark where the qualitative difference is and the "decisive" means of production begin? There is a number of reasons why that is so.

1. As I've already mentioned, automobiles require extensive external infrastructure to operate: fuel and all the industry and infrastructure to distribute it, spare parts and servicing infrastructure, road network, traffic control, etc. Without all this an automobile is or shortly becomes a useless piece of junk. Which means that automobile is not a finished product by itself, but an element of the public good, known as the transport system. In any case, a private car owner normally does not own anything of that to be able to put his car to use, and research shows that never and nowhere all those other elements are paid in full by the car owners alone. All those infrastructure elements and externalia are paid for by the society as a whole, which means the carless proletarians also pay for your convenience of driving a private car. That's the transfer of surplus value by the act of private driving for you. Brooms, kettles, even electric and computerized home appliances are not like that. Unlike cars, they are paid in full and their supporting infrastructure is usually paid in full by their private operators.

2. The car industry has been and remains the main vehicle of the imperialist economic "development". Between Henry Ford’s business interests playing a role in precipitating and waging the WW2, Eisenhower's Interstate Plan, the Soviet revisionists’ decision to provide as many happy Soviet citizens with "personal" cars as they could right about the time as they restored state capitalism in the USSR by the Kosygin-Liberman reform, and the bailouts of Chrysler and JMC in 2008, it's kind of obvious, that the automotive industry is a sort of nexus of the capitalist production in its current imperialist phase. And the cars "don't have the looks of having been produced in the third world" because they are assembled in the 1st world. But may you guess where the raw materials and some of the parts, especially those top-notch electronics they install in cars these days originate from? If not, I can provide you with a hint (http://www.outsourcing.com/china_trends/pdf/Outsourcing_Automotive_Parts_China.pdf)... "China is also making great efforts to develop its auto industry into a pillar industry by 2010." - Ooough! Priceless!!!
And, oh yeah, Popular Front of Judea, who obviously doesn't buy all this 3rd-worldist stuff, still has been kind enough to provide a fresh article (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2013/09/overdrive-how-americas-amazing-car-recovery-explains-the-us-economy/279413) marvelously confirming this particular point of mine here. On to the next one though...

3. Private car is the "consumer good", the ownership and operation of which begins getting registered and licensed by the bourgeois state. Which means that the bourgeois state, the big expert in the questions relating to private property it is, itself recognizes the qualitative difference between the automobile and all those brooms, home appliances and small gadgets. Also, if somebody steals your broom or a video camera, that is considered "smalltime" by the bourgeois police and they most likely won't be bothered to look for the thief. Cars, however, are a whole different story, and car thefts get usually investigated, if only because car thieves get organized into rings, which alone is quite telling. Then, the banks, just as you admit yourself, take cars as collaterals for secured loans; but they don't consider brooms and gadgets enough. And it is also a commonplace among "personal financial advisors", to consider loans taken for the purpose of buying a car an investment, rather than consumer debt, indicating that home appliances don't register as means of production among this smarter bunch of bourgeois scum, but cars do! "Capital goods", they call it. And there are other instances, when cars get exempted from the multitude of "consumer goods". In short, the brooms and gadgets are not quite officially recognized as private property and/or means of production by the bourgeois society, unlike cars.

4. And in any case you cannot consider the same article of produce "sometimes" a means of production and "sometimes" a consumer good, "depending on the purpose it is used for". That’s borderline solipsism. Because all goods are produced either by the "Department I", or the "Department II". The car manufacturing industry is either "Department I", or "Department II". Therefore, all cars in the world are either consumer goods or means of production. So make up your mind already!



A traffic jam involves no market glut. It is merely a result of the inadequacy between private ownership of automobiles and public transportation infrastructure.
But that just happens to be the definition of market glut! It is a result of the inadequacy (contradiction) between the private ownership of the means of production and the social character of production. So traffic jams are sort of market glut. The glut of the ton-kilometer commodity on the market, where there are millions of producers, and not enough solvent consumers who are able and willing to pay the price of production of the ton-kilometers produced by those millions of petty private producers. That's why they are stuck with consuming those ton-kilometers themselves, and boy, that's a huge excess of ton-kilometers, no wonder it takes some time every day to consume them all!



I am a third worlder, which I suppose makes me part of the "global proletariat".
Of course, not. 3rd world is where there is more proletariat than petty bourgeoisie, but it doesn't mean any citizen of a 3rd world country can be counted a prole. And you own a car, as you say, so that makes you petty bourgeoisie. Which wouldn't be a problem for you, if you were a commie, since most famous commies were petty bourgeois, or even capitalists. And Felix Dzerzhinsky was born a noble landlord with a family coat-of-arms! But apparently, you are not a commie, but some kind of a "socialist" and think that only being a "worker" would make you a good guy?



she evidently believed that capitalist societies needed to find markets for their surplus production outside capitalism, her vision was completely the opposite of yours
I mentioned Luxemburg only as a shortcut to the problem of the realization of the surplus value. But since you made an issue out of it, let’s go deeper into that too.

I think she correctly identified the problem, but gave an incorrect answer. Although even in her answer it is said that capitalists sell the surplus value not only on the foreign market but also on the home market - to the "non-capitalist strata" which includes the petty bourgeoisie (even as mom’n’pop shops and other small businesses get eliminated and all that).

But she counted the "third persons", "clingers-on to the capitalist class", IIRC, as part of the capitalist class. And it included not only capitalists' personal lackeys and bodyguards, but all civil servants and military, and the so called "liberal professions" (the specific expression of the time), meaning doctors, artists, prostitutes, etc. So, if anything, even the "proletarized" members of these professions are part of the capitalist class, according to Luxemburg. Which I also don't agree with, but which makes her position closer to mine, than to yours, because a large part of the 1st world "working class" nowadays belongs to these "liberal professions", expanded into entire industries so that these "workers" consume each others’ services, without producing any substantial use-values in the course of performing their assigned "jobs".


it seems that it is his surplus consumption that generates his position of a "non-capitalist producer".
Well, naturally, because what they consume are means of production! They consume their cars productively. When millions of car owners drive their cars to their workplaces or grocery stores, let alone give a lift to some other people like friends or family members, or, so called god forbid, to complete strangers for the pay, they engage in the social production of the public good, called transport! The only case driving is not a productive activity is when it is done as a recreational activity itself (but not if you drive from your home to the beach - then the recreational activity on the beach is the goal, and driving there is production). But let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, all driving is like recreational activity (in which case it may be argued that it’s a luxury, but that's beside the point here). Even then all that vast consumption works as a class-defining feature of the petty bourgeoisie. Because, just as Luxemburg argued, capitalism needs somebody to buy much of the surplus value from the capitalists to facilitate extended reproduction.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if you consider the petty bourgeoisie a "capitalist class" or "not a capitalist class". Like I said, it is indispensable for capitalism in its role of a sink for the surplus value, and this makes it a social class in itself, not part of the social class of capitalists, even though "petty bourgeoisie" does sound so similar to "[simply] bourgeoisie" and clings on to it and is granted part of the surplus value for free by it.

Now, you can stubbornly assume the standpoint of those, whom Luxemburg criticized (Tugan Baranovsky) (http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/ch25.htm), and who criticized her (Bukharin, on behalf of the Bolsheviks), and say that the capitalists can realize all the surplus value within their circle buying and selling means of production to and from one another. But even the critics admitted the problem of disproportionality, which haunts the process of the capitalist extended reproduction, and the expansion of the "Department I" in particular. Capital tends to rush into the most profitable branches of industry and vacate the least profitable ones, so without some baseline demand for the end product (consumer goods, AKA means of subsistence + luxury goods, "Department II") the market would be glutted with some type of machines, or some raw material and experience shortage of complementary machines and/or raw materials, etc. Expanding production would be a sure way to precipitate an immediate crisis.

As long as the demand for the Dept. II produce (all the foreign markets in non-capitalist countries included) was able to serve as such a baseline for the entire process of reproduction, proportionality was not violated more often than once a decade, which made it possible for the capitalist system to chug on. But Dept. I is bound to expand at a faster pace than Dept. II. Therefore, Department II (including even luxury goods for the capitalists and feudal aristocracy or whomever...) at some point became inadequate as such a baseline, making disproportionalities in the expansion of Dept. I inevitable, which could only result in a permanent crisis. That inadequacy of the Dept. II was ushered in by the imperialism in the beginning of the 20th century. To make things even more complicated, the "non-capitalist" markets shrunk. At this point the imperialists tried out Tugan Baranovsky's "merry-go-round" of production for the sake of production, as Luxemburg put it. But that only exacerbated the problem of disproportionality. And to tackle it, all purchases, deals, contracts and other business arrangements needed to be agreed upon by the capitalists before respective cycles of production even started. So they extended the credit system and began little by little to substitute it for the outdated money. But it makes not quite enough sense from the PoV of the capitalists, as it's kind of difficult to squeeze any profit from the system which requires all of them to be indebted to one another, and especially industrialists to the banks, because all capital accumulated must be arranged for expenditure in advance of the very operations as a result of which said capital can be accumulated.

The solution to all problems - of insufficient demand of Dept. II (dismissed out of hand by Luxemburg’s critics), of disproportionality (admitted by Luxemburg's critics, and on which the Bolsheviks specifically banked their strategy in the 1920s), and of profitability - was found when the so called "labor aristocracy" and the "clingers-on" began buying into the commodities produced in the Department I. These strata enjoyed the benefits of the imperial rent even in the times of real money, which provided them with the ability to buy commodities more valuable than the mere means of proletarian subsistence, and that includes both the items of luxury and the means of production. And the consumer credit and the complete abolition of money in the 1970s allowed even the underprivileged until then wage workers in the 1st world to benefit from it. Even the proletariat now buys means of production, such as watches, cell phones, laptops, home appliances and associated services. But cars here have been the decisive commodity, because of it's relatively high value-capacity and the ability, as a result of that, to serve as that baseline for the simultaneous proportional expansion of multiple branches of capitalistic industry (see Point #2 above). Thus it is the car owners who have in essence served as Luxemburg's "non-capitalist strata", as the consumers of the surplus value. Of course, there might be some exceptions like some, IDK, free-lancing IT specialist in Singapore, who earns his petty bourgeois living by doing jobs on some very high-end computer hardware he owns, but doesn't own a car - because Singapore is such a futuristic city, but overall such exceptions don't change the global picture.

So, bottom line, the proletariat produces surplus value, the bourgeoisie appropriates it and generally commands the entire process, and the petty bourgeoisie consumes it, facilitating the continuation of the circulation of capital.

And the truly right answer to Luxemburg's question was given by Otto Bauer: the realization of the surplus value and accumulation of capital is ultimately assured by the expansion of the total world population, which provides both fresh proletarian blood to suck and allows for a larger number of nonproductive (in the capitalist sense - not surplus value producing) persons to be supported. Say, every 9 million of new proletarians allows another 2 million of wage workers to get on imperial rent and become net consumers of the aggregate surplus value (in the physical form of small means of production) and thus join the motley ranks of the petty bourgeoisie. It’s kind of silly she dismissed Bauer's assertion, because ultimately it’s quite in line with her own conclusion, that capitalism must collapse "naturally" when it reaches a certain limit of expansion. Only the limiting factor is not geographic but demographic. Of course, capitalism will have another option then - militarism and world war, which not only helps establish another baseline for the "production for the sake of production" and a black hole for the surplus value, but also gives an option to destroy part of the already accumulated capital which may in theory lower the organic composition of it and thus reinvigorate capitalism. In any case, if there was one thing the Bolsheviks were wrong about, it's their assertion that capitalism would fall as a result of the crises of disproportionality. The 20th century has demonstrated that the imperialists can perfectly control the damage and run the extended reproduction with Proudhonian free credit instead of money.



if Marx indeed defined money in such a way, his definition is wrong, because modern fiat currency is money though it is not directly related to gold or silver.
So you are ready to dump Marx's definition of money which is rooted in the cornerstone of Marxism, namely, the labor theory of value, to keep not only calling modern day dollars money, but asserting it somehow is a general equivalent, disregarding the fact that its "equivalence" is completely nonsensical in terms of said theory - all to gain some "Marxist" ground to deny the Proudhonian reality we live in, because that was not supposed to happen. Just like I said: Marx's prognosis (that Proudhon's system couldn't work) proved not entirely correct, so you change the Marxist definition (of money) to be able to ignore this fact and return as fast as possible to comfort of the simplest "capital vs. labor" mantras. And then you call me a dirty revisionist here??? That's a little bit too hypocritical to my taste, frankly.

You may argue that Marx subscribed to the quantity theory of money, which makes him buddies with any modern subscriber to said theory (and there are a lot), who also believes dollar is still money. But that's the point: the modern day quantity theory of money is at odds with the labor theory of value. It is in bed with the bourgeois marginal utility theory, which in turn is nothing but a nonsensical scarcity theory of value. In other words, you cannot dump the Marxist definition of money and remain in the field of the Marxist political economy. Marx subscribed to the quantitative theory of money only to the extent that it explained how market conditions defined the amount of money in circulation, but not to the idea that the amount of money in circulation defined the market conditions. He analyzed how money appeared as a measure of value historically out of barter economies (and only later assumed the role of the means of circulation) and concluded, that there had almost always been some surplus of money commodity in existence. So the necessary amount, defined by the sum of market prices and the velocity of circulation, went into it, while the rest got hoarded as treasure or consumed as its original use-value of raw material for luxury goods. With the advent of capitalism, however, shortages of money became common due to the large mass of commodities in circulation, which was the sole reason for the prediction of the eventual abolition of money: a time will come, Marx said, when the productivity of labor becomes so high, that the mass of commodities circulating will become so large, that there simply won't be enough gold to serve as a means of circulation, even with all the credit arrangements. Then there will be time for communism. Well, it happened just like that: the mass of commodities grew so big, that gold became not enough. But since communism actually takes a conscious act by the masses to be brought about, and the masses refused to act decisively enough, apparently because that act seemed to involve too much blood and gore, we still have the near-corpse of capitalism around on the life support of the Proudhonian free credit. Which isn't going to work in the long run, but the capitalists and their "social democratic" lackeys strived hard enough to make it work, so it works for now.

BTW, some Proudhon's fans concur (http://72.52.202.216/~fenderse/General.htm#_ftnref37) that modern currency is sort of the "credit money" Proudhon advocated.



You would need something admitting that bank chits can function as generally accepted currency.
Modern dollar is such a bank chit, and it is not money. It is not denominated in labor time but it implies that an unspecified amount of labor must be performed as a universal natural form of payment for the debt each dollar incurs by entering circulation. The amount is unspecified because there technically is no limit to the number of dollars or to the time each dollar remains in circulation. So for all intents and purposes each dollar incurs infinite debt that somebody has to pay for with infinite amount of labor. You may say the US government should pay it all, since it was it, that gave the FRS its bonds for those dollars as they entered circulation, but who are you kidding? It's meant to keep a couple of billion of people working for mere food forever.



What do you mean by "free", credit that is not bound or credit that is not paid for?
Both, actually. Since it’s "free" of gold, or any other real commodity, the initial source of credit is free to extend it without limit. And if somebody doesn’t pay him back, he loses no value at all, just something called "confidence" and here we are all of a sudden out of the materialist realm of Marxist political economy and deep in the fantasy realm of the bourgeois economics, aren’t we? And the sole reason why people are more often than not forced to find ways to earn those stupid credit tokens to pay for their fictitious debts is that the initial source of credit has got a lot of bludgeons, assault rifles and nuclear bombs at his disposal. As well as the power not to extend credit anymore to those who draw his wrath by violating the "confidence". Which is far more scary than nuclear bombs, because it puts you on the level with those sweatshop schmucks who practically never get any credit, and even their $3’s "worth" of daily wage is sometimes paid to them in kind.



labour time varies in its own terms (two hours of labour today may value the same as three hours of labour yesterday)

what distinguishes the third world from the first is its low productivity. What takes on hour of labour to be produced in Finland takes ten hours to be produced in Kenya. Which means that the total production of value is bigger in the first world than in the third.
Ha, revising Marxism's 101 right here in the open! How about higher productivity of labor meaning lower value added (newly created, as opposed to the old value, or the "dead labor" transferred) in the same amount (physical shapes and forms) of commodities?


Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of production consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and mass of the means of production set in motion by a given quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes more productive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to its products only the same sum of new value, still the old capital value, transmitted by the labour to the products, increases with the growing productivity of labour.
An English and a Chinese spinner, e.g., may work the same number of hours with the same intensity; then they will both in a week create equal values. But in spite of this equality, an immense difference will obtain between the value of the week’s product of the Englishman, who works with a mighty automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning-wheel. In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of cotton, the Englishman spins several hundreds of pounds. A sum, many hundred times as great, of old values swells the value of his product, in which those re-appear in a new, useful form, and can thus function anew as capital.http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm#S4

Only living labor creates new value, so the more living labor there is, the more new value is created, only from which the surplus value may be drawn. Upkeep of the constant capital, and of high organic composition of the total capital is required to maintain high productivity of labor. So this simple rule is yet another confirmation that all those private cars the 1st world workers spend their high "wages" on, earned due to high productivity of labor, are in fact part of the constant capital, which in turn is transferred to the new social product, is replaced, etc., while the actual amount of labor per hour remains the same, and thus the value added in the 1st world actually diminishes both in proportion to the transferred value (as the capital is accumulated), and absolutely, as the working hours shorten and more people get employed in low labor-intensity or even totally unproductive service industries.

That is the reason why capital runs for lower productivity environments, in the first place. Only free market competition could compel individual capitalists to go for higher productivity, but in these days of ultra-monopoly capitalism free market competition is a joke so we have to rule out the possibility that capitalists are still interested in high productivity.

So even in your imaginary world, where dollar is still money, and the imperial rent is the variable capital, and combustion engines with attached wheels are means of reproduction of labor power, and petty bourgeoisie does not exist, the question arises: where do the capitalists get their profits from, if in the 1st world they have to divide all revenue into constant and variable capital?

But, again, it's not even correct to compare Finland and Kenya as some kind of isolated economies. Finland and Kenya are now parts of one and the same economy. Like different sections of the same assembly line. Never heard of the "international division of labor"? Well, that's what has almost reached its apogee in the time of ultra-imperialism. And the ignorance of this fact by those who call themselves "Marxists" is quite pathetic. Because -

In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the whole world as one nation, and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of industry.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm

But no! The "Marxists" will keep desperately cling to the old 18th century style nation-focused cretinism, while the real world has gotten ever closer to Marx's abstract model of a single unified capitalist world economy, even if with a few Proudhon's touches to it...



That Kautskian foolery?
FYI, it isn't true that Lenin's criticism was leveled against Kautsky's theory of ultra-imperialism as a whole. Lenin's criticism was leveled against Kautsky's conclusions that the proletariat should have sat on their collective butt and waited the advent of the world trust, which would somehow bring about socialism in a peaceful, non-violent, reformist manner. Those conclusions were wishful thinking at best, Lenin said, and now we in the 21st century can testify he was right. But he actually agreed with Kautsky on that the tendency towards the world trust was there. Just as Lenin predicted, violent revolutionary and world war conflagrations occurred before the stage of ultra-imperialism was reached, and who knows what would have happened if Kautsky and a bunch of other left-wing bourgeois "socialists" did not sacrifice the cause of the world proletariat to their home first world countries' "working classes" benefits. Anyway, the Russian and the Chinese revolutions have ultimately failed to bring about the end of capitalism, so it continued to evolve and has advanced past the stage when the imperialist "great powers" could or even wished they could go to open war against one another to "reshape the world". Instead, they now all cooperate within the frameworks of the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, etc... So, fool is now the one who denies the ultra-imperialism is here.

Also, since the damn renegade got mentioned here, let me bring up an article by Kautsky, in which he actually defends the Marxist concept of money against Hilferding's revisionist views. It's all the more interesting, as it was written at the time when the gradual transition from the real money to this Proudhonian credit currency we have now was only beginning. Kautsky quotes Hilferding extensively in it, so it's patently obvious that the modern monetarist theories had their "Marxist" proponents already a hundred years ago. Maybe this could provide some insight as to how the "socialists" contribute to the life support of capitalism:

http://marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1912/xx/gpcc.htm



the response of third worldism, of course, is to restore the proper conditions of capitalist production, ie, restore underconsumption
Underconsumption plagues our society without the need to "restore" it. What the thirdworldists propose is to equalize consumption bringing it to a reasonable level. In any case, in the long run, as the crises of capitalism worsen (and they will worsen, if only due to the fact that the global population growth rate began to lose pace - sometime around 2008, BTW...) the petty bourgeoisie in the 1st world will be put through "austerity" and mostly proletarized anyway. And the sooner, the better.




Marx used the terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably in his writings on the subject as a whole
Actually, no. Engels was more lax about the interchangeability of these terms, but that's not the reason to uphold this confusion, which only leads to smuggling of enormous amount of reactionary, bourgeois-reformist and/or utopian stuff into Marxism. The stuff that was dealt with in the 3rd chapert of the "Manifesto".


.

[Popular Front of Judea]

We might as well get this economic "just so story" straight from 'Jehus' mouth -- or blog. I really doubt anyone else is aboard this unholy mix of Marx and Murray Rothbard.

http://therealmovement.wordpress.com/?s=fascist

[Zulu]

I really doubt anyone else is aboard this unholy mix of Marx and Murray Rothbard.

And that's too bad, because, I don't know or give a damn about who Murray Rothbard is, but this Jehu guy appears to be a very smart guy. I say his analysis is the best out there. Next to 3rd-worldism, of course.:thumbup1:

[cyu]

I don't know or give a damn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. In the words of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "There would be no anarcho-capitalist movement to speak of without Rothbard."

he attended Birch Wathen, a private school on the Upper East Side. Rothbard later stated that he much preferred Birch Wathen to the "debasing and egalitarian public school system". Like Rothbard, his father was a rightist. he recalled that "all socialism seemed to [him] monstrously coercive and abhorrent." Rothbard later stated that all of his fellow students there were extreme leftists and that he was one of only two Republicans on the Columbia campus.

Rothbard attracted the attention of the William Volker Fund, a group that provided financial backing to promote various "right-wing" ideologies in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Volker Fund paid Rothbard to write a textbook which could be used to introduce college undergraduates to Mises' views. Mises praised Rothbard's work effusively.

In 1954, Rothbard, along with several other students of Ludwig von Mises, associated with novelist Ayn Rand. He soon parted from her, writing that her ideas were not as original as she proclaimed. after the publication of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, Rothbard wrote a "fan letter" to Rand, calling her book "an infinite treasure house," and "not merely the greatest novel ever written, it is one of the very greatest books ever written, fiction or nonfiction." He rejoined her circle for a few months, but soon broke with Rand. Later, Rothbard lampooned Rand's circle in his play Mozart Was a Red and essay, "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult."

Rothbard villified Adam Smith, calling him a "shameless plagiarist" who set economics off-track, ultimately leading to the rise of Marxism.

He suggested parents have the right to sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation. the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children. Gene Callahan, formerly at the Mises Institute, criticizes the absolutism of Rothbard's system, arguing that Rothbard has "taken a valid concern in political reflection, that of property rights, and treated it as if it were the only valid concern".

Rothbard urged the police to crackdown on "street criminals", writing that "cops must be unleashed" and "and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error". He also advocated that the police "clear the streets of bums and vagrants", and quipped "Who cares?" in response to the question of where these people would go after being removed from public property. police may be permitted to beat and torture a suspected criminal in order to gain information, provided that the suspect is subsequently found guilty of the crime. In the event that the suspect is not found guilty Rothbard states that the police would then be guilty of criminal assault of an innocent person. Callahan goes on to state that Rothbard's scheme gives the police a strong motive to frame the suspect, after having tortured her.

He was one of the founders of the Cato Institute, and "came up with the idea of naming this libertarian think tank after Cato’s Letters." Rothbard and [Cato Institute president] Crane became bitter rivals after disputes emerging from the 1980 LP presidential campaign.

Rothbard aligned himself with Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul. Rothbard worked closely with Lew Rockwell in nurturing the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and The Rothbard-Rockwell Report; which after Rothbard’s death evolved into LewRockwell.com.

He supported the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1992, and wrote that "with Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall break the clock of social democracy." In 1992 Rothbard argued that white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke had won a majority of the white vote in Louisiana by running as a "right-wing populist", an ideology Rothbard embraced. Rothbard advocated right-wing populism in part because he was frustrated that mainstream thinkers were not adopting the libertarian view and suggested that Duke and Joseph McCarthy were models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks"

Rothbard shifted his interest and support to Ross Perot. Rothbard ultimately supported George Bush over Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.