It is not just a question of each doing his or her own thing in grand isolation from others. That would not even be possible. The other must become the ground of one's own self-realization, at the same time as he or she provides the condition for one's own. At the interpersonal level, this is known as love. At the political level, it is known as socialism. Socialism for Marx would be simply whatever set of institutions would allow this reciprocity to happen to the greatest possible extent. Think of the difference between a capitalist company, in which the majority work for the benefit of the few, and a socialist cooperative, in which my own participation in the project augments the welfare of all the others, and vice versa. This is not a question of some saintly self-sacrifice. The process is built into the structure of the institution.Love... and leisure...
Marx's goal is leisure, not labor. The best reason for being a socialist, apart from annoying people you happen to dislike, is that you detest having to work....
April 12, 2011
"[T]o achieve true self-fulfillment, human beings for Marx must find it in and through one another."
Writes Terry Eagleton in his essay "In Praise of Marx":
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One must be extremely educated to write such stupidity.
Love = realizing yourself through another? No, that's vampirism, which come to think of it is what communism boils down to.
Socialism for Marx would be simply whatever set of institutions would allow this reciprocity to happen to the greatest possible extent.
So socialism for Marx is capitalism?
Leisure! That's the ticket. He voices the inate words my teenage son is unable to articulate. All the author needs now is a leisure suit and he'll be good to go...Wait asec! I found one in my attic. I can brush it up and send it on...
There are a finite number of resources on this planet. Only innovation and invention will make the best use of those resources. Only competition between different innovations and inventions will make sure the best is used to exploit those resources to the maximum potential. Socialism strangles innovation and invention. Thus, socialism dooms us not only to this same ball of mud careening through space, but makes sure the existence of those remaining will be solitary, nasty, brutish and short.
Oh, and its failed everywhere it's been tried.
Here's another analogy I heard recently that seems to work well. In capitalism, if I invent a new, highly desired widget, capitalism ensures that I've got to make it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible before someone else learns how to do so. Socialism would take my widget, tax those with income to make sure everyone can have a widget, thereby slashing the desire for a cheaper/better product to compete and driving up the price by the mere presence of government subsidy.
"The best reason for being a socialist, apart from annoying people you happen to dislike, is that you detest having to work...."
Well, at least they're admitting it now.
Love...and leisure..
Works for me..
Think of the difference between a capitalist company, in which the majority work for the benefit of the few...
No. Everyone in a capitalist company works for the benefit of themselves. If anyone there believes that working somewhere else would provide them greater benefit, they are welcome to leave.
On a larger scale, It's very telling that the communist countries are the ones that had to prevent people from leaving.
Yep, let all those other suckers work. We just confiscate all the wealth from those dirty capitalists. What could go wrong?
Ah, the eternal contradiction.
It sounds so good.
But in practice it leads to slavery, concentration camps, poverty, genocide and the stamping out of individual liberty.
But, it sounds so good!
Genesis 2:15 - Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
Genesis 3:19 - By the sweat of your face you will eat bread...
Marx's goal is leisure, not labor. The best reason for being a socialist, apart from annoying people you happen to dislike, is that you detest having to work
Only confirms that Marxism at is fundamental is a rebellion against God and his order.
So Marx read and loved Adam Smith then. Got it.
And Obama and Pelosi are for tax cuts and less government.
My God! What a glorious time to be alive!
Humans do not function in a society or in a family without known boundaries. Marxists seduce fools into surrendering their boundary rights to a collective...they redistribute them. But 100% of the time a social system is recreated with the Marxists as slave owners of the workers ...that way the Marxist bosses can quit all of their work,except for periodically murdering the competition.
The other must become the ground of one's own self-realization, at the same time as he or she provides the condition for one's own.
This is the teenage girl's idea of love. It puts the burden on the beloved. Thus are sown the seeds of disappointment and resentment.
If Marx had such an adolescent idea of love, it is hardly surprising he had an adolescent idea of work.
For most people, work is fulfilling. Leisure is deadly.
This essay is an eloquent argument for closing down the humanities departments at our universities.
I especially liked this quote from the article:
"This is not to suggest for a moment that Marx considered capitalism as simply a Bad Thing, like admiring Sarah Palin or blowing tobacco smoke in your children's faces."
What's with all the Marx hagiography that's been popping up recently?
Marx was the original Mensa loser, people. Nothing more.
This is a man who spent several thousand pages -- never even finishing a book -- trying to get his head around the simple concept of marginality in economics.
Totally a genius. Totally.
"and a socialist cooperative, in which my own participation in the project augments the welfare of all the others, and vice versa."
Horseshit. I've been roped into those group projects in college. There was no vice versa.
The largest continuing successful socialist enterprise is a kibbutz. You have to be a believer to join and have to be qualified for the collective to accept you. Its a mutual voluntary choice. Anything larger and the mutual choice fails and coercion has to be imposed. That is the difference between a communist collective farm and a Israeli farming kibbutz. That is why socialism has never worked on a large scale and never will work on a large and attempts to impose it inevitable require force to impose and will always fail.
BTW, AAA, you're very right, but Orwell anticipated you by some 60 years..one of the great quotes of all time when commenting in Parliament on the rantings of some left-wing Labour MPs who were quoting some even more extreme lefty French academic "intellectuals.":
"Only an intellectual could POSSIBLY believe in such things; no ordinary person could ever BE such a fool."
"And the political movement which his work set in motion has done more to help small nations throw off their imperialist masters than any other political current."
Here he is, trying to absolve Marx from the crimes of Marxism, and using a concept--Imperialism--that was 'added' to Marxism by Lenin because Marxism wasn't coming true.
There's credible evidence, plainly shown in a couple of diaries at the time, that Marx was gay. He let Engels sleep in his nightshirt on many occasions.
The stupidity of this is beyond belief.
Which system has really given humans more leisure, more goods and greater concern for the public good?
Obviously, the capitalist system.
One of the most incredible examples I can give you of this is the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, my alma mater.
The Beckman Institute is one of the great centers for materials research, artificial intelligence, 3D virtual environments. It exists because of a huge gift from Arnold Beckman. Beckman made his fortune by inventing a simple instrument that tested citrus fruit to determine whether it was ready to be harvested.
The Beckman Institute created a working Holodeck over a decade ago. One day, you'll have a Holodeck in your house. You'll be able to walk into a total immersion 3D environment and travel anywhere in the world, or to any world you can imagine.
Courtesy of that capitalist pig, Arnold Beckman.
Cubanbob: The largest continuing successful socialist enterprise is a kibbutz.[...]
Until the first-generation children grow up....
Ah Marxists, what dreamers! Captialism works because it has a realistic view of people as selfishly motivated. Marxism is a joke because it is based on the belief that people are intrinsically good.
Trey
This is exactly backwards.
In a capitalist company, each worker works for his own benefit, which he derives from his own pay. Otherwise, why would he work?
It is in the socialist cooperative where the worker is compelled to work against his will, and his own benefit is no longer tied to his own labor.
Capitalism is not a theory, people. It's merely economics as it happens freely.
Socialism and communism need a host and a lot of money to survive.
Socialism and communism end up killing the host.
At least this socialist admits the truth about what socialists really want -- they want someone else to do the heavy lifting while they sit back and relax.
He let Engels sleep in his nightshirt on many occasions.
Was it large enough to accommodate all the beards?
Marxism is a joke because it is based on the belief that people are intrinsically good.
People are basically good. What Marxism screws up is assuming people are basically altruistic...which they're not.
Socialism cannot exist without extreme amounts of MONEY.
Now that we have a marxist president, I guess the apologists for Marx had to start coming out sooner or later.
Pure evil.
They took the Love Boat of Marx up the Volga and docked at the Gulag of Leisure.
There's very odd thing about Eagleton's essay. It's missing the word "market".
What Eagleton is doing, to rehabilitate socialism, is to define it as the market. Which it isn't.
"We must try socialism one more time. It hasn't been done right yet. We will get it right this time!"
-- The collective leisure seeking left.
(hang on to your wallet - the socialists need it.)
(hang on to your wallet - the socialists need it.)
Axiomatic.
RuyDiaz said...
Cubanbob: The largest continuing successful socialist enterprise is a kibbutz.[...]
Until the first-generation children grow up....
4/12/11 8:29 AM
Absolutely correct sir!. Then they go to work in some high tech company or if the stay in farming join a moshav.
Terry Eagleton's essay exemplifies why conservatives are so often irritated by leftists:
Both capitalism and communism provide incentives to provide for each other. Capitalism provides the incentive of profit in exchange for producing something customers will prefer over other options. Communism gives the incentive of avoiding the gulag. To most people, the more humane choice is obvious.
Surfed said...
Leisure! That's the ticket. He voices the inate words my teenage son is unable to articulate.
Surfed also captures the essence of why the 1960s was so hippy-dippy & pro-Marxist, man. There was too much leisure.
Another gem:
"The selectiveness of political memory takes some curious forms. Take, for example, 9/11. I mean the first 9/11, not the second. I am referring to the 9/11 that took place exactly 30 years before the fall of the World Trade Center, when the United States helped to violently overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende of Chile[...]"
Considering that Salvador Allende was elected with some 36% of the vote; he was violating the Chilean Constitution; and both the Chilean Congress and Supreme Court urged the military to act to defend the Constitution, then, hell yes, the selectiveness of political memory takes many curious forms.
In this moron's offhand insult of Sarah Palin, I see the die cast.
Palin will be president.
Like Reagan, the morons will howl that she is naive and idiotic. And when she is gone, they will lecture us that she was the true "moderate Republican" and that we should be wary of the next Reagan/Palin who emerges in our midst.
Think of the difference between a capitalist company, in which the majority work for the benefit of the few, and a socialist cooperative, in which my own participation in the project augments the welfare of all the others, and vice versa.
I'm thinking and not coming up with that much. There are plenty of employee-owned cooperatives; some do well and some don't, mostly in accordance with the business acumen of their hired management.
People are intrinsically good?
You have evidently never watched Springer. 8)
Seriously, good people would be altruistic.
Trey
Love and leisure for all! Utopia! What could possibly go wrong?
shoutingthomas said...
This essay is an eloquent argument for closing down the humanities departments at our universities.
4/12/11 8:18 AM
Very well put. The real question is why universities persist with this (Marxist) nonsense but would never continence an alternative geography course by the flat earth society. An interesting study perhaps for psychiatrists in willful stupidity.
"[T]o achieve true self-fulfillment, human beings for Marx must find it in and through one another."
Fox News and birth certificates be dammed ;)
I think people are intrinsically good, but also intrinsically selfish. That is to say, their primary motivation to do things is their own self-interest; at the same time the vast majority of people will seek to avoid evil even at some personal cost (everything has a price of course.)
That joke was WAY too long and seemed to be missing the punchline.
Here's a better one:
A communist, a socialist and a fascist walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says "Get the hell outa here."
Will someone please hand that man a gun and, because he'll surely need it, help him find his mouth?
So, in conclusion.... what a remarkable piece of trash. The author twists and omits relevant facts, indulges in questionable assumptions in every paragraph, not to mention the dripping snobbery. Jesus.
"This is not to suggest for a moment that Marx considered capitalism as simply a Bad Thing, like admiring Sarah Palin or blowing tobacco smoke in your children's faces."
Important pointt. Marx isn't arguing for the "moral superiority" of socialism, per se. He's arguing from a historical POV: capitalist exploitation will in the long run implode, more or less, according to KM, and the workers will take over the means of production, and the management/owner class will be...purged or liquidated, or tossed out of Trump towers, what have you.
Whether one agrees or not, the historical aspect of Marx's system must be kept in mind (then Yokeli Americanus understands historical process about as much as it understands the New Testament--which is to say, Nyet).
I'll give him this, it takes something to cram that much stupid into so few words.
Yiiii.
Yoo gott dat raht, bruttthrrrr.
Miss Galthouse, when does the AA IQ filter go into effect? Triple digits only to post. Thin the herd, so to speak,and keep the dirty south out.
The other must be the ground of one's own self realization.."
So Marx steals his best idea from Jesus Christ and gets praised for it as a genius.
But the one part Marx left behind is critical to "true self-fulfillment" and the society being able to maintain its common brotherhood, because Christ also provided a framework and a way to solve and move on from the injuries between people that come of human fallibility.
Triple digits only to post. Thin the herd, so to speak,and keep the dirty south out.
Pray she never makes coherence a requirement, "J".
Apologies if this has already been pointed out. The author misstates the conditions of capitalism. In a capitalist state, the majority do not work to benefit the few, but all work primarily for their own benefit, by providing value to others.
If you can't be trusted to honestly state the opposition's views, you can't be trusted to honestly state your own.
Free markets will be killed by external forces, exploited by government and ruined like Detroit. Rinse and repeat.
9:36. that's your prayer Scott Trash--coherence would keep okies such as yrself offline.
Asking the AA IHOP to offer their thoughts on Marxism is hardly different than asking their opinion on integral calculus. They don't know f**k about either, but will belch away like they do.
this is too f-ing eazy
this is too f-ing eazy
Apparently not when you have to delete an entire comment just to put that little screed at the end of it.
Why all the hate, J? And before you sputter something about not having any, the dubious length and breadth of your comments contain mountains of examples to the contrary.
So Marx steals his best idea from Jesus Christ and gets praised for it as a genius.
Bertrand Russell -- atheist extraordinaire -- long ago pointed out that communism is a sorry, sorry imitation of Christianity in every single respect.
Christianity is superior, of course, because it doesn't automatically lead to societies where people are killed by the score and everybody is poor and unhappy.
J -- Tell us about communism.
This will be excellent.
If socialists (your bureaucratic betters) could arrest Trump, throw him in jail, and take his stuff, they would. Eventually the stuff would run out and the socialists would need to moveOn to another Trump.
Call it charity; sweet loving left-wing charity.
Socialists are basic thieves. Axiomatic, sure, but it should be re-stated at every turn.
Yes, I too, am eagerly awaiting further instruction from our resident crack addict, J, on the wonders of communism.
Better yet, J, how about a video?
Asking the AA IHOP to offer their thoughts on Marxism is hardly different than asking their opinion on integral calculus...
You have a question about integral calculus? You should go ahead and ask it. You might be surprised.
You spoke truth, though you hardly knew it.
Call me a Harpo Marxist.
OK, so, if the object of socialism is leisure, is that supposed to justify why so many people who believe in it are fat slobs?
Not to mention the fact that, if leisure is the object, who's supposed to do the work to keep society going?
Soemhow, this sounds like another Bernie Madoff pyramid scam.
PS J wants to explain Marx with his HBO Latin.
Cute.
It is not just a question of each doing his or her own thing in grand isolation from others. That would not even be possible. The other must become the ground of one's own self-realization, at the same time as he or she provides the condition for one's own.
Kim Jong Il said it better:
I'm So Ronery
I'm so ronery
So ronery
So ronery and sadry arone
There's no one
Just me onry
Sitting on my rittle throne
I work very hard and make up great prans
But nobody ristens, no one understands
Seems that no one takes me serirousry
You have a question about integral calculus? You should go ahead and ask it. You might be surprised.
You spoke truth, though you hardly knew it.
I second that. Any questions J? Shoot.
So, it's really not about the dignity of labor, it's all about the dignity of goofing off?
Jeez, who knew?
10:09.
Time to lie, eh TomTom--yr the tweeker here. The standard perps' fare at AA's house of...spamcakes.
Marx...fue pinche aleman, Educita
You have a question about integral calculus? You should go ahead and ask it. You might be surprised.
I was an applied math major from a top engineering school. My integral calculus is very rusty, but I could probably work out most questions, as long as it's an open-internet test.
J -- Tell us about communism and calculus.
We're waiting.
"So, it's really not about the dignity of labor, it's all about the dignity of goofing off?
Jeez, who knew?"
Not even that. Once the evil capitalist pigs stop exploiting us, we'll all be so rich, we'll be able to goof off to our hearts' contents. Hard work, like marriage, is an evil Capitalist construct.
One day, you'll have a Holodeck in your house. You'll be able to walk into a total immersion 3D environment and travel anywhere in the world, or to any world you can imagine.
Can it happen like NOW?
You ask me the questions, frat boys
But "shoot's" sort of apropo. You got some kevlar handy, biz major trash?
You got a job, J?
Next to his HBO Latin and Twitter grammar, and syntax, the most entertaining part of J is his Spanish - right out of old John Wayne Westerns.
You ask me the questions, frat boys
But "shoot's" sort of apropo. You got some kevlar handy, biz major trash?
Yap, yap, yap. Still waiting for the questions. Notice, however, that you've managed to irk me a little, so I'll be expecting the questions to be properly formulated.
Waiting.
10: 55
No, you tell me, frat trash.
We're gonna shut you down pronto, and yr lil TP enabler Miss A-house won't stop us, klan boys
Boy has he got capitalism and socialism wrong. He says capitalism is the many working for the benefit of the few.
Wrong. Capitalism is each working for the benefit of themselves, or choosing to voluntarily work for the benefit of others.
Socialism is the shrinking productive fraction mandatorily working for the benefit of the "leisure-loving" (to put it politely) many.
Wrong login, J?
My question for the Marxist true believers like Eagleton is: do you think Marxism is a science?
It's funny to watch Marxists dance around this topic.
Marx himself was a product of the reaction against the "excesses" of Hegelian philosophy in mid-19th century Germany. He saw himself as proposes an empirically based science of how the economic sphere determines the social world. Philosophy, especially German Idealism, was "mental masturbation".
Only a few die hard 20th century Marxists like Althusser had the balls to stand behind Marxism as science.
For the rest of them, it rests somewhere uncomfortably on the line between bad economics and "mental masturbation", with Poppa Karl's positivist pretensions something best glossed over in silence.
11:01. You got an attorney, macho faggot? best to call one. Or maybe yr mafia boyfriends
It's a trap. Scott. He's got us right where he wants us.
Marx himself was a product of the reaction against the "excesses" of Hegelian philosophy
"Bruce here teaches Hegelian philosophy and is also in charge of the sheep dip."
"Eeeeemanual Kant was a real pissant.."
I named my second son Bruce because of that...
Is Hegelian dialectic science, Young Hegelian, or history itself, or economics?? Is capitalism scientific?
Anyone using Hegel in their name probably shouldn't ask such questions. Socialism is....a historical-economic model, and it has ...empirical aspects (ie Marx/Engel compiled much econ/historical data--thats not to say one always agrees with their interpretations).
Via Popper's reductionism ...3/4's of most university classes would be closed--including history (can you provide a necessarily true argument that Napoleon existed? nyet)
@Scott
From the Tuebingen stift straight to the U of Wallamaloo!
The dialectics of marmite....
Why isn't one prime?
It is depressing beyond words that at this point in time such an article can even be written. Point of order: He writes that thirty million died as a result of Mao's transgressions. Jung Chang (who was there) puts the figure at seventy million. Thirty million dead, and that's the low ball figure!....I'll make a guess and say that Eagleton opposes nuclear energy because of its inherent risks. Given all the famines and mass murders that Marxist states have been responsible for, shouldn't we say that they are too inherently unstable for continued experimentation?
Socialism is....a historical-economic model, and it has ...empirical aspects
Well, that answers a lot of questions. J is actually James Tiberius Kirk. Makes sense, really.
Pause dramatically much?
@J
No, J, you're spouting the standard line of marxist revisionism.
Read Das Kapital again, asshole. It's a positivistic science for Marx.
It's the later revisionists who water down the claim to science because it's untenable.
And, of course, rather than give up their cherished lefty illusions they continue to build air castles on this bastard mixture of scientific pretension, a philosophy that hates philosophy, and economics that explains nothing.
Boy has he got capitalism and socialism wrong. He says capitalism is the many working for the benefit of the few.[..]
I'm even uncomfortable with the name Capitalism. It assumes that the more-or-less free economies are governed by capital, when in truth the choices made by consumers matter more than anything else. Thomas Sowell would change the name to cConsumerism, but the name is taken.
The name Capitalism was coined by Saint-Simon (or Auguste Compte). It is usually a bad idea to have your opponents name your 'ideology'.
So (ignoring the frat boys--), you didn't ask the correct question, Young Heg.--which should be, does Marx's labor theory of value hold-- always, sometimes, never? It's quite obvious that it does hold at times---probably more often than not (ie, in brief, workers are not paid their actual worth, mainly because owners/management take in a greater share of profits than workers--exploitation exists. So it's a bit too complicated for the AA biz majors. Maybe stick to ... think and grow rich, and the Rush archives).
Henry said...
What Eagleton is doing, to rehabilitate socialism, is to define it as the market. Which it isn't.
4/12/11 8:48 AM
That seems to be in keeping with the left's other favored definition of socialism as any form of collective action, especially when a government agency is involved.
It sounds so wonderful, but the energy is lacking (motivation-wise) in the socialist economy that it can't stand up on it's own and needs to be propped up with threats, various methods of oppressing natural self-seeking behaviours and, eventually, outright violence.
The bottom line is always, "We just have to get rid of the people who refuse to think like us." (Then we can have utopia.)
That we can assimilate so many so successfully is what really makes (made?) America's capitalist society as great as it is.
The danger we face now is people taking the dynamic that made us great for granted and thinking that, NOW we can institute socialism and everything will be sweet!
Not. We can always improve in various ways, but striving for a fantastical ideal of smooth-running perfection is poison, and the fountains of Kool-aid are everywhere.
you need to read Marx's critique-- in Capital-- of Smith, again, asshole. And as I just wrote, Marx offered much economic-historical data (not to say one always agrees with his analysis).
A semi-educated person (or sunday schooler perhaps) might can call that "positivistic" . But it isn't--certainly not in Popperian terms. There are still Hegelian aspects (class struggle itself). Got that asshole
A semi-educated person (or sunday schooler perhaps) might can call that "positivistic" . But it isn't--certainly not in Popperian terms. There are still Hegelian aspects (class struggle itself). Got that asshole
Jesus, J, you can fit Hegelian and asshole into the same paragraph.
You must be taking a day off from the crack pipe. You are an inspiration to us all!
Now, take the dildo out of your ass. Just for a few seconds. It will improve your disposition.
J wrote: So (ignoring the frat boys--)[...]
So, you cannot answer 'why isn't one prime'. Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah....
P.S. Apologies to Seven Machos for thinking he had asked an overly simple question. I managed to overestimate J. My bad.
Eagleton is an academic is he not? Now there is a system where the many work for the benefit of the few.
Maybe that's why he's confused. He's feeling guilty about the post-docs.
and the horrors of fascism, a regime to which capitalism tends to resort when its back is to the wall. Without the self-sacrifice of the Soviet Union, among other nations, the Nazi regime might still be in place.
Yes, lets not include the National Socialist German Worker's Party in the collective body of socialism... It is clearly some kind of small government, lightly regulated libertarian state.
Without the self-sacrifice of the Soviet Union, among other nations, the Nazi regime might still be in place.
The first question that comes to mind is, "is it really self-sacrifice" when you have no other choice?
Secondly, "did the USSR have to suffer such severe casualties? The strategy and tactics forced on the Russian generals by Stalin didn't allow for much more than spending mens' lives like cheap poker chips. It's not so much a grand strategy as it is turning a fire hose on a birthday cake.
'I managed to overestimate J. My bad.'
Over estimating J is easy. Underestimating him is difficult.
J, you make no more sense here than on Grice. One would think you'd learn.
does Marx's labor theory of value hold-- always, sometimes, never? It's quite obvious that it does hold at times---probably more often than not (ie, in brief, workers are not paid their actual worth, mainly because owners/management take in a greater share of profits than workers--exploitation exists.
Could you give an example of where Marx's labor theory of value holds without resorting to some circular arguement that defines the value of the labor related to the value of what was produced?
If two equally skilled chefs created meals from the same set of ingredients, and spent the same amount of time, but one worked in a modern kitchen, and the other had nothing but a flat rock to work on, do you believe that the meals they created would be of equal value?
How an elephant got in my pajamas, I'll never know.
What, wrong Marx?
WV: unrize - what J does to the occasion.
not exactly, B the stupid fuck. Like most biz major you just don't care for any economic or philosophical system which might be...bad for bidness.
Which is to say, with their predictable, boring attack on what they take to "socialism", Sigma Epsilon A-house boys are protecting their own class interests.
( I never claimed to defend Grice either, chump . Some Grice, Log. and Con., I find interesting, but he's most pettifogging [and if you read any of my comments GC, stalker boy, yd have noted my criticism, from a logical POV]. But it's fairly obvious you don't know Gricean maxims from yr mama's a**)
Ruy, lets see your proof of why one is not prime, puto. In fact most mathematics works with one as prime, and that was the traditional view.
But that was not the issue was it,perp. The issue was...like provide a disproof of Marx's labor theory of value, instead of your barking along with the A-house gals. Then most of the Ahouse gang never heard of the LTV until like googling it a few minutes ago.
"We would no longer tolerate a situation in which the minority had leisure because the majority had labor."
But we do tolerate it. In fact, we encourage it. The underclass sits on its ass while the "majority" is enslaved by the government's unquenchable demand for more. Do you think you have more "leisure" than our underclass? Think again. Marx has triumphed in that regard, the underclass have been unyoked for decades.
not exactly, B
So enlighten me. What does Marx's labor theory of value say in such a case?
Can you give examples where the labor theory of value gives a value that is useful for anything other than claims of exploitation?
P.S. I'm neither a business major nor a frat boy.
At the interpersonal level, this is known as love.
At the political level, this is known as rape.
I enjoy blogs devoted to philosophy because every now and then some critical thinker can make some insightful associations.
Sorting through the dreck from an authority on everything like yourself though, that's just tiresome.
Stalk? No, I just recognized your signature style of writing. I liken it to a 12 year old texting her BFFL. (BTW: I'm a professional engineer)
J wrote: Ruy, lets see your proof of why one is not prime, puto. In fact most mathematics works with one as prime, and that was the traditional view.
So, J, how long did it take you to find that half-assed answer on the internet? Half an hour? A whole hour? Let me remind you, it was you who began the taunting on this thread with--let me quote:
Asking the AA IHOP to offer their thoughts on Marxism is hardly different than asking their opinion on integral calculus. They don't know f**k about either, but will belch away like they do.
As it turns out, you don't even know the first thing about prime numbers, let alone integral calculus.
Seven Machos asked "Why isn't one prime." That is a tricky question.
A prime is a Natural number whose only divisors are one and itself. Since one is divisible by one and itself (one), one is a prime number.
But that's not the whole answer. Since one's primeness is contained in the very definition of a prime number, the information is irrelevant. Therefore we say that one is prime, but trivial.
And that, you conceited fool, is your mathematics lesson for the day.
"One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is the definite integral of the mortality rate M evaluated from t=0 to t=T." -- Josef Stalin
Wow. Ad hominems from Sigma Epsilon A-house gang. Shocking
Those who can't argue, debate, reason can always..... brainfart. The SEA motto
hasta, mierda
Eagleton misunderstands the goal of the capitalist company where he says "the majority work for the benefit of the few, and a socialist cooperative, in which my own participation in the project augments the welfare of all the others." Hasn't he ever heard of stock options or RSU's? My husband's good labor enhances the value of the stock so that we personally benefit from the growth of the company. Plus, of course, you can always go work somewhere else if you're not getting what you want.
Wow. Ad hominems from Sigma Epsilon A-house gang. Shocking
What's shocking is that the reigning queen of ad hominem attacks would bitch about it when it's turned back on her.
Wonders never cease.
STFU, Ruy. Capichay, hijo de puta? The topic here is marxism. Pro and con. Not yr cheesy little real analysis notes you barely recall from community college, Yr not the professor here, scum.
Now, Eagleton is broadly right in what he actually says.
Marx was not ill-intentioned in the broadest sense, and did indeed "want" the things Eagleton says (and further would have, again as accurately reported, not supported the Russian Revolution as a means to Socialism, since Russia was pre-Industrial).
On the other hand, Marx was completely wrong; his understanding of human motivations and power dynamics is completely incorrect.
His ideas of the creation of value and of "exploitation" are at best merely inapplicable past 1850 or so.
And following him now means only destruction.
yr the queen of fallacies here, Scotty the klan grrl.
Must have touched a nerve with like logic--logic tends to freak out white trash cowards (and their mafia cronies).
Step in a ring, frat boys. 818 side anytime. POP
Ann, why are you quoting this person? Just to remind us that academia contains a lot of fools? Got it.
"Capitalism is not a theory, people. It's merely economics as it happens freely."
Yup. Condemning the "market" is akin to condemning gravity. It is not a theory, it is not a deliberate social construct, it just is. It can be free or it can be regulated, but it can never be defeated or even ignored for very long.
STFU, Ruy. Capichay, hijo de puta? The topic here is marxism. Pro and con. Not yr cheesy little real analysis notes you barely recall from community college, Yr not the professor here, scum.
No, no, no--don't try revisionist history in the same thread where you made a fool of yourself. You began the taunting, and some of us called you on it. Now you resort to--gasp!--crude insults from the safety of your keyboard.
It was unwise of you to taunt people with mathematics. That's the most democratic of disciplines; you either can do it, or you can not. To answer Seven Machos' trickery, you only needed to recall the definition of a prime number (including the proper domain) and the concept of triviality. You couldn't. And now your pride is hurt.
I called you a conceited fool, and I stand by the description. It fits you very well.
"Now that we have a marxist president, I guess the apologists for Marx had to start coming out sooner or later."
This might actually be a benefit of having a marxist for President. We finally push people into admitting it and owning it instead of trying to pretend that they'd *never* believe that and don't.
Until someone is willing to say "No, really, communism works," there is no way to argue against it.
The third world is going from one sort of exploitation to another and calling it an improvement, only it never is. But telling people lies is a good way to get them to throw off the old tyrants. It's too bad no one takes responsibility for ushering in the new tyrants.
Those pushing for economic freedom as an alternative to economic oppression, instead of simply exchanging one oppressor for a new oppressor are generally considered neo-liberal in the world.
Liberal in the old sense that meant having the freedom to live, make choices, and better your life as an individual, without having what you work for stolen or your rights taken away. Freedom to speak, think, worship, and to own property, build a business, participate in the market.
People point to the old oppression and say, "that was capitalism", or "that was what the market gives you", but it's not.
And neither is the very regulated "market" in the US that sets up a barrier to entrance into the market but hampers the mega-corps not-at-all.
a disproof of Marx's labor theory of value
The labor theory of value is marginal profit, dude. I can explain it 10 minutes. But if you are Mensa quality, you can spend 83,000 pages on it.
But, J: Three people are eating at a restaurant. The waiter gives them the bill, which totals up to $30. The three people decide to share the expense equally ($10 each), rather than figure out how much each really owes. The waiter gives the bill and the $30 to the manager, who sees that they have been overcharged. The real amount should be $25. He gives the waiter five $1 bills to return to the customers, with the restaurant's apologies. But, the waiter is a dishonest man. He puts $2 in his pocket, and returns $3 to the customers. Now, each of the three customers has paid $9, for a total of $27. Add the $2 that the waiter has stolen, and you get $29. But, the original bill was $30. What happened to the missing dollar?
"If two equally skilled chefs created meals from the same set of ingredients, and spent the same amount of time, but one worked in a modern kitchen, and the other had nothing but a flat rock to work on, do you believe that the meals they created would be of equal value?"
Well, yes. Because a meal has value to the person who consumes it equal to the value of the food, not the labor.
I just managed to totally ruin my pizza dough. The labor involved isn't worth anything.
That doesn't mean that labor is never worth anything. It's just easier to measure the labor sometimes and productivity other times.
Honestly, I have kids. It's amazing how much someone can *work* while accomplishing nothing. It would be nice if we all got an A for effort. But we don't.
BTW, J, on the new avatar.
Which on the figures do you identify with? Marty Feldman or an aging Malcolm McDowell?
I would have hazarded McDowell yesterday, though when he was young his edginess was real, not a masquerade. Today I think Feldman is closer to the mark. He excelled at playing the comedic foil.
@ Seven Machos: Now you are just being cruel.
"...owners/management take in a greater share of profit than workers..."
And the point is, J?
My wife the RN and I didn't start our Med-Temps business, work 80-hr weeks, mortgage the house, take regrettable but necessary time away from our young son --risk EVERYTHING--our financial, psychic and physical health--just to take home the same pay as our handsomely paid employees. No, we took those risks and made those sacrifices in order to make the proverbial financial killing so as to retire at 50. And along the way providing a much-need highly professional and ethical service to hospitals who desperately needed our services.
Our "workers" risked NOTHING--as they were mainly already
full-time RN employees of other hospitals who were moonlighting for extra money, while our ENTIRE lively-hood and our childs future rested upon our business and keeping both the hospitals and THEM (the RNs) satisfied--as neither necessarily had to utilize our services.
J OBVIOUSLY knows NOTHING about EITHER economics OR human psychology and what motivates people..
(Which is why it was said to be a shame that Marx wrote before Freud)
The value of labor depends on how much capital labor can work with.
Compare three ditch diggers: One has no tools, one a shovel and one has an excavator.
They may all work equally hard, but the guy with a shovel will accomplish ten times what the empty-handed man will and the lady operating the excavator will complete 100 times as much as the other two.
They guys with minimal tools could keep the full value of what they create through their work, but if the operator of the excavator gets to keep 10% of the job value, she is still better off than the guys who did not have capital to help with their work.
Marx was so utterly wrong that only an academic, or some similar "genius" could still believe his crap.
Das Kapital is to leftists as Finnegan's Wake is to English majors: the great, unread classic....Some scholar actually read it critically. Marx took a lot of his data from English blue books. It turns out that when the data did not fit the theory, Marx simply fudged the data. The whole thing was a fraud right from the start.....Does anyone know a single person who has actually read Das Kapital?
That is why socialism has never worked on a large scale and never will work on a large and attempts to impose it inevitable require force to impose and will always fail.
This is exactly right. If we were already in a state of collective ownership, communism would be easy.
But people own stuff, we like owning stuff, and taking it away will require a massive application of force.
It always kills me when some college communist lectures me that the Soviets got it wrong but that true communism can still work. As if hundreds of millions of people can just be talked into it. The gulags and mass murder were no accident-- unlike capitalism, communism can't work if there are dissenters.
(you can build a communist enclave here--our capitalist society won't give a shit; but try building a capitalist enclave in a communist country-- NKVD and Stasi will be there soon)
Whenever the terms self-fulfillment or self-actualization come up I quit paying attention.
'What happened to the missing dollar?'
I doubt very much that J. will be back. His MO is that when the captive audience inevitably dismisses him, he lapses into the bad boy routine, calls them out, then disappears.
I'll answer the question in the simplest terms, and let J. try to figure out the rest.
There is no missing dollar. Each diner paid $9 out of pocket for a total of $27. The restaurant received $25. The waiter stole the other $2.
Marx was a drunken, unemployable lout with delusions of his own importance who thought that others owed him a living, because he viewed himself as super-smart and work was beneath him.
Most of the people I have met who are Marxists or redistributionists have the same attitude and character flaws.
1: 12. you made a fool yrself, Ruy trash. This isn't about yr little Euclid proof, stupid fuck. It was about Marxism, pro or con. But you're simply too stupid to realize it.
wrong again, B trash.
I visit the AA 'bout every day, with the spirit of Kant as a guide.
Humiliating frat boys, klansmen, mafiosi, gangstas, and other assorted liars and perps--that's phun with a capital Ph.
J: The meanest man in the 818. Not the smartest and certainly not the best Spanish speaker but definitely a mean mean dude out there in the Valley, the San Fernando Valley. Hipster philosopher loser dude. Tattoos too? Kant would abhor you.
If you can't be trusted to honestly state the opposition's views, you can't be trusted to honestly state your own.
This is collectivisms problem to in a nutshell. It is fundamentally dishonest.
Old Soviet Union joke:
They pretend to pay us. We pretend to work.
The Valley skinheads would eat this guy in a second. And then the Mexican gangs, just for his poor Spanish alone.
Oh and reading what J posts verifies my observation.
Sorry, it may be stupid and contradictory, but it doesn't even sound good. It sounds like something a bald guy would say before he ask you to put on the Nikes and drink the koolaid. The spaceship is coming, hurry!
"Marx was a drunken, unemployable lout with delusions of his own importance who thought that others owed him a living, because he viewed himself as super-smart and work was beneath him."
Sounds like J to a T. [I don't know that he's a drunk, but the posts frequently sound like the stuff I hear from drunks in a bar.]
@William, I actually read all of Das Kapital [in English, my only real language]. It really wasn't as painful as reading all of Moby Dick, but maybe only because it was shorter. I found it totally unconvincing, if apparently correct on some points.
And, oddly enough, many of us have heard of the LTV, perhaps even before J was born, since he sounds like your average angry ignorant but arrogant 14-year-old who *thinks* he knows everything of importance.
I don't remember my integral calculus [haven't used it in over 30 years] and I never really used differential equations, but I'll go toe-to-to with J on set theory, symbolic logic, or statistics if he's up for it.
I have a set theory question for J: "Can God put everything there is in his basement?"
"...unlike capitalism, communism can't work if there are dissenters."
This is actually the ONLY relevant point in any of it. No amount of argument about labor or workers or economics or money or fairness or exploitation is even marginally relevant.
The ONLY relevant point is that communism can not tolerate anything but 100% participation.
After well over a hundred years of people trying Marx, when will they realise that the duck is never going to drop down and give them $100.00?
But as Gilson points out, Marx fails to follow out the consequences of a purely materialistic concept of dialectic, which, once shed of the spiritual component of the Hegelian Idea, has no necessity of ending in a socialist utopia. If the synthesis of Hegel's Germany was to be but another thesis to be opposed by a further antithesis because there is no telos in a purely materialistic dialectical progression, then the synthesis of the socialist ideal will, according to the same laws, end up as a thesis itself to be opposed and destroyed in a further synthesis.
The socialist who claims it's benefits lie in nit loving work fails to notice that this state, according to her own principles, cannot last.
Poor lazy bugger.
This would be a good occasion to direct readers to Josef Pieper's excellent book "Liesure the Basis of Culture"
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