Refuting a anti-Marx article.

[(A)]

My boss had me look over this article while waiting for wax to dry and I could use some help tearing this apart. I am not anywhere near understanding capital and my Marxism is weak.

Not that anything I say actually perces his thick skull but hey; I need to try.

Here is the link in case you are interested.

http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/karl-marx-the-almost-capitalist/

Warning the writer can come off as an ass hat.

[motion denied]

The author is an ass hat. And a dishonest one.



His adoption of the labor theory of value which had previously been advanced by David Ricardo.


Thus did Marx substitute for objective analysis the dogma he had borrowed from Ricardo.

Marx was not a Ricardian, albeit he recognized Ricardo's importance to political economy (his labor theory of value).


Ricardo starts out from the determination of the relative va1ues(or exchangeable values) of commodities by 'the quantity of labour' [...] Their magnitude varies, according to whether they contain more or less of this substance. [...] But Ricardo does not examine the form—the peculiar characteristic of labour that creates exchange-value or manifests itself in exchange-values—the nature of this labour. Hence lie does not grasp the connection of this labour with money or that it must assume the form of money. Hence he completely fails to grasp the connection between the determination of the exchange-value of the commodity by labour-time and the fact that the development of commodities necessarily leads to the formation of money. [bold mine]


he [Ricardo] does not even examine the form of value—the particular form which labour assumes as the substance of value. He only examines the magnitudes of value, the quantities of this abstract, general and, in this form social, labour which engender differences in the magnitudes of value of commodities

Amongst many other crucial criticism (and refutations) that I'm not wise enough to expand on.


The labor theory of value—the idea that labor is the only agency capable of creating wealth, i.e., adding “value” to raw materials and performing services–must have been approximately correct in primitive times and, to a lesser degree, in pre-industrial economies.

First of all, value does not equal wealth. The latter, as the author rightly puts it, has been created (by men and by nature) since there are men and nature; the former is the form it assumes under capitalism.


The fact that all economic value was not created by labor, but rather by labor and capital together, was obscured by the fact that, in the early stages of machine production, machines were usually “operated” by their owners. As a result, the services of the machine were indistinguishably commingled with those of the machine-owner and so there was yet no occasion for recognizing the separate economic functions of each.

The means of production do not create value, but transfer their embed value (you guessed it, created by labour in its production) to the commodity.


The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of his labour by expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no matter what the specific character and utility of that labour may be. On the other hand, the values of the means of production used up in the process are preserved, and present themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the product; the values of the cotton and the spindle, for instance, re-appear again in the value of the yarn. The value of the means of production is therefore preserved, by being transferred to the product. This transfer takes place during the conversion of those means into a product, or in other words, during the labour-process.


The value of a product, he said, is determined by the amount of labor time it contains.

Amount of socially necessary labour time.

[motion denied]

After a few technological generations of producing machines primarily by machines, what could be said of the machine which, although it contained almost no “value” in terms of man-hours and required very little assistance from labor in the form of an operator’s man-hours, turned out a vast quantity of products, all of which sold for very good prices?

Having said that the means of production transfer their value; that value is measured by socially necessary labour time expended; that price is not the same as value; his argument is rendered worthless, a good ol' straw-man. The prices float around the value, being identical in rare circumstances. Did he even bother to read Marx?

The author could have forwarded a very interesting discussion: whether or not, with the increasing robotisation of production, labour is still a measure (I'm thinking here about Kurz et al) or if full automation is possible under capitalism... But no, he preferred, as a vile apologist, to say wild common sense against an author he doesn't bother to read.

[helot]

Did he even bother to read Marx?



Obviously not otherwise he wouldn't constantly be conflating use-value and value. It's funny, the more i understand Capital the more i realise its critics haven't even read it.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

With respect to property in land, we need merely note that the acquisition of an original title to land from a sovereign is a political act, and not the result of operations of the economy. If the original distribution of land unduly favors any group or type or persons, it is a political defect and not a defect in the operation of the economy as such.
This is a separation of politics and economics that just doesn't exist in real life.


Had Marx seen that the socialization of capital (i.e., its ownership by the state) would of necessity place the control of capital in the hands of those currently wielding political power, thereby unifying economic and political power, the two basic sources of social power, we can assume that Marx would not have advocated the destruction of private property in capital instruments.
'We' assume wrong. To quote Engels: "But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with".

I wanted to respond to some more but the author just doesn't know anything about Marx. He's probably not even read the Manifesto. He keeps rabbiting on about how Marx makes an 'emotional' appeal against capitalism or that Marx failed to recognise the political significance of private property; two frankly ridiculous claims considering Marx's scientific analysis of the significance of private property.

[(A)]

Thank you for some points I can bring up.
I knew when I read the article it was bull but I don't have enough Marx-fu to tear it apart.

[Loony Le Fist]

I'm not an expert at Marx-fu by any means. Not even considering Marx I see two problems:


The author fails to justify the appropriation of the products of labor that involved not only involved capital, but the application of that workers brains and muscle to achieve. How does being involved in the capital part entitle you to the complete output? The value of those capital instruments is reliant on labor power.
The author assumes that the same persons who are currently wielding political power are the same as those that will be wielding it post-revolution.