Marx… is convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid)
I’m sorry, what? Have you ever actually tried to read Capital? Most of Marx’s works are dense and academic, drawing intellectual traditions that are often unfamiliar to modern readers (classical economics, Hegel, etc). Marx’s way of argumentation isn’t really geared toward the lowest common denominator.
It’s kinda funny how you can’t even keep your criticism straight through a single comment. In one sentence, reading Marx is a “chore” that nobody would want to slog through, in the very next one, Marx is so persuasive, his honeyed words easily swaying the minds of any who stumble across them, like the Sirens calling ships to their rocks.
As for “no good goal exists anymore” or “it’s hard to see what good goal tankies ever had” maybe we just like it when this sort of thing happens:
lemmy.ml/…/86eca1ab-0d3d-4d7e-99fa-a7a3ddb4c3dd.j…
The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.
When you figure out a better way to do that, get back to me.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
This is nonsense, the only part you got correct is that those who read through Capital generally have an interest in a better world. Neither Marx nor Lenin advocated “doing the opposite” to get to communism, both argued for the establishment of a worker state to gradually collectivize all of the means of production and distribution. Historically, this method has been enormously beneficial for the working classes, while breing quite scary for landlords, capitalists, slavers, and fascists.
I’m also not at all understanding what you mean by Marx being “convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid).” What would an intelligent person, by your estimation, take fault with in Marx?
Lehmuusa@nord.pub 3 weeks ago
The dictatorship of the proletariat was a horribly bad idea. It’s a dictatorship. And brings the consequences of a dictatorship with it. I would dare to blame Lenin and also Marx for that crap.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a democratic state for the proletariat, and dictatorship against capitalists, fascists, landlords, and slavers. It’s the socialist equivalent to liberal democracy, which de facto is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
timdrake@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Capital rests on the argument ~that the fact qualitatively different (in terms of use values) commodities are exchanged for each other in different quantities requires a quality they share in common which only differs in quantity from one commodity to the next, and Marx posits that the only quality this could be is being products of labor. Yet this is very clearly not something that all commodities have in common, and that a thing’s status as a commodity and its ability to be exchanged for other commodities has nothing to do with its being a product of labor. The only way Marx’s argument can be accepted is if you start with the presupposition that commodities are valued by the labor required to produce them.
How this happens that commodities are exchanged at their “value” is a complete mystery by the way, since Marx says it has nothing to do with the conscious considerations of either the buyer or the seller.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
This is not clear at all. Elaborate, please.
Why not? Are you saying that the utility of a commodity to someone does not change whether or not it was made with labor? This doesn’t really matter, though, the point of the Law of Value is that commodities are socially produced, and socially distributed, which normalizes their price around their values. Arguments like the “mud pie” don’t apply, because mud pies are neither useful nor difficult to make.
Incorrect, the exchange-value that price fluctuates around is representative of the value in a commodity. Another way to look at it is that the value of a commodity is the sum of its inputs, which can be reduced to labor and natural resources.
Marx is correct, though this is no mystery. Commodities are social products, and are socially exchanged. What’s universal to goods bought and sold is that they require natural resources and human labor to create them, thus capitalism in being a social process acts as a price-finder for commodities, all based on inputs and outputs.
timdrake@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
All you need for commodity exchange is for people to accept something is yours and be willing to exchange something they own which you desire in return for it. That thing being a product of labor is not necessary. You can own land based on agreement without taking any trouble to cultivate or defend it, and exchange it for other things based on agreement. You can exchange naturally occurring things without rendering them ~crystallizations of social labor.
Marx’s argument is invalid in another way because there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor.
Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.
The argument only doesn’t apply for the first reason. There’s no necessity even for Marx that commodities be arbitrarily “difficult” to produce.
How is this a response to what I said?
This is both incorrect (for Marx, value is entirely determined by socially necessary labor time) and doesn’t mean anything (this is like multiplying 3 apples by 7 pears, what does it mean that the value of a commodity can be reduced to labor and natural resources?; with value being determined by labor time you can reduce things to a certain quantity, but then you just add on a qualitatively different thing and you return to the original problem of needing a third equivalent, or a value to unite the components of value).
You forgot to explain how this actually occurs. You just say that capitalism does it.
You can sell ideas.