I don't understand why videos like these have dislikes, even if you don't agree with the theory it's suppose to be teaching you what Marx was trying to say
Wadankeena. What is liberty? Is liberty the right of put your interest above all else, without the least regard to other people? Nobody lives alone. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Marx was completely correct. What this gentleman does not mention is that these problems can be exported to other countries. The illusion that capitalism works has come to an end. A mode of production can and does put its expansion problems onto the older modes of productions in poorer countries. Marx was going to add 2 more volumes to Capital. One on them was going to be focused on global capitalism. Marx would have saved millions of lives if he had written this volume. His genius would have extended our understanding from the capitalist/proletariat scenario to the empire/periphery scenario. He would have shown the inequality of exchange between 2 countries with different forces of production .
The illusion it worked was destroyed in 1929 when the great depression happened. It took the biggest war in history and the effective blood sacrifice of untold millions of lives to get it back on it's feet, and even this was just a way to increase input on a grand scale. The falling rate of profit is apparently inexorable. This is the tendency of this mode of organised labour.
Vou are right. Paul Cockshot has explained it with the immigration. And Germany could stop this fall of profit also with a mass immigratiom since 2015.
First, there are such enterprises. Secondly, it's because people are not aware of this kind of option, it's considered inappropriate to question capitalist business structure. People are propagandized to believe that capitalism is the best possible system humanity has come up with.
@@wonkygustav4457 Were that true, then we should be living closer to a communistic society, given that our hunter-gatherer forebears had no concept of capital/profits. A sense of community predates our desire for profits, not the vice-versa.
I have been studying Economics in the view of orthodox Economists. I ever thought Marx's view was just completely wrong, and he just used some outdated concepts given up by orthodox Economists years ago. Today, I looked back in history and reviewed Marx's idea on the operation of capital system, I found a new power in Marx's theory. Today's orthodox economics in fact covers deep conflicts, and they individually fail to solve certain problems. However, Marx saw deeply behind the scene, discovering the forces driving the economy. He might not provide new good solution, but he pinpointed the right problems.
The socio-political arrangements Marx described actually referred not to truly competitive market conditions but conditions where monopoly privilege prevails. Individuals who produce capital goods (or provide the financial reserves to pay others to produce such goods) are owners of legitimately acquired private property. Use of these capital goods in the production of other goods may or may not yield a return for the trouble. The market (i.e., demand) determines whether the owner of capital goods will receive a return and how significant that return might be. History reveals that owners of capital goods do make serious mistakes by producing goods few want or are willing pay a price for that covers the full cost of production. A key to understanding Marx, I submit, is to understand the distinction made by John Locke between behavior that falls within the realm of liberty and behavior that falls within the realm of licence. With settlement in one place there arose the need for rules to allocate access to locations in the villages (that became towns that became cities) and to natural resources. Over time, all societies succumb to the domination by hierarchical rentier elites (i.e., those who by virtue of their potential to oppress others claims what others produce). The system they create is not capitalism, if by capitalism one expects that the majority of members derive a significant portion of income by the ownership of capital goods. Rather, the system is one that evolves from agrarian landlordism, into agrarian and commercial landlordism, into agrarian, commercial, industrial and financial landlordism. Note, the sophistication in production and trade are merely added onto the base of landlordism. Over time all ownership of property -- and income -- becomes increasingly concentrated. One must look to the third volume of Capital before Marx/Engels focus attention on this historical relationship. Edward J. Dodson, M.L.A.DirectorSchool of Cooperative Individualismwww.cooperative-individualism.org
Holmes Gerald "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which >>abolishes
ejsvifq mabmip Value from constant and variable capital do not correspond to use-value. The conflation of such is the nature of commodity fetishism, an all-too-common experience for all us. Even if the two forms of value WERE to be regarded in the same light, the profit of the capitalist is completely disregarded in that argument even though they are involved in consumption just like their workers.
For the time available this was an exemplary presentation by someone who obviously has understood the essence of the problem. And I particularly liked the inclusion of the impact of countervailing tendencies and the observation that there is a difference between monetary phenomena and value trends.
Here is a more useful way of explaining it. 1) ANY kind of free market, INEVITABLY leads to extreme levels of Wealth concentration. 2) If we aggregate all employees into one human and all businesses into one business, then, I discovered, a human as an employee makes the products and later the same human must go to a market place as a customer and must purchase the products he/she made including paying for all the materials, his own wage and a fee known as 'Profit' to transfer the ownership of the product from the business employing the human to the human. Exploitation. It is the essence of exploitation of the employee i.e. the aggregated human-employee gets poorer and suffers while the aggregated business gets wealthier.
@@reasonerenlightened2456 A perfectly free market with no restrictive trade practices will never lead to extreme levels of wealth concentration. The only source of wealth would then be the relative productivities of each input into production.
@@TH-camr-ls1uj ANY free market, no matter how 'regulated' or 'non-regulated' it is, ALWAYS results in Extreme Levels of Wealth Concentration. I, discovered that most transactions, between any two participants, exchange unequal 'Value' between the two participants i.e. one side benefits a bit more from a transaction than the other side. Such asymmetry inevitably results in extreme levels of Wealth concentration , even if the participant who benefits a bit more is selected completely randomly in each transaction. As long as the transactions keep happening the inevitable result over time is always Extreme levels of Wealth Concentration. (The velocity of the transactions and the size of a transaction affect the rate of Concentration of Wealth.) .... and that is an inherent problem of the free market caused by the tiny asymmetry of the exchanged 'Value' in each transaction. Now you can revise your comprehension of the nature of the free market!
I'm not seeing an argument against this part of Marx's theory he presented. I'm reading a lot of people equivicating on terms and merely asserting what they think capitalism "actually" is.
This is just a fact of the economy. No matter your opinion the rate of profit inevitably falls, the question is what do we do after? Once companies can't get their profits unless they engage essentially in what is slavery (which has it's own contradictions) how will the world evolve? Marw was focused about changing the world, not only analysing it.
One simple solution you can take from Marx is to let the workers collectively own and manage the enterprises, and let them collect and distribute the surpluses and not the private owners like it's done today.
I've shared this many times. Very lucid and concise, no more simplistic than it has to be in the time. And explained by a credible practical capitalist source. Marx would have benefited from having Cliff Bowman as his editor!
To criticise problematic aspects of Marx's theory is one thing. But to call him "discredited" is absolutely dishonest. Marx predicted that Capitalism is characterized by inherent crises with business cycles and it's exploitative nature, the immiseration that would be caused to the working class, Centralisation of capital, increased automation of the workforce etc. He is far from being discredited. He is one of the greatest and most influential economists of all time whose work is still extremely relevant to modern society.
+MrFrotier Whether or not he worked in his entire life has nothing to do with anything. It's an attack on the man, not on the theories. It's a distraction.
Never worked? So writing thousands of pages on most of the social sciences does not count as work? He has never had a permanent wage employment - that's true. He had occasional paid employment jobs, e.g. when writing articles for the New York Tribune. Also, it is difficult to work under constant threat of censorship and Europe-wide police control. In any case he did have direct experience of the kind of miserable living conditions of the average British factory worker in his early London period. Not an economist? By the mid-XIX century - perhaps you ignore this - economics was just about turning into an independent discipline. Economists were "political economists", usually had an academic background in law, history and philosophy, and Marx was archetypal of that. As others remarked, had your claims been true they would have still been inconsequential and ad hominem. But they are also false. What a mess.
I'd say in the field of sociology, Marx's ideas actually enriched the conflict theory, which is still useful for sociologists when they analyze the social phenomenons. And Marx indeed studied main theories in his time, including those of Adam Smith and many others, making thousands of references, which made his work serious and professional.
I want to write about this in an essay, does anyone know how I could reference it? Does Bowman talk about this in a particular publication or is there a specific book by Marx he is referring to? Thanks
@@considrew @live, use the TRANSCRIP function and cite th-cam.com/video/-e8rt8RGjCM/w-d-xo.html: Search in video 0:09 cliff there was an article on the BBC 0:11 website yesterday 0:13 asure of Marx's Das Kapital have sold 0:16 this year to date 10 times more copies 0:19 than they did last year 0:20 I thought Marx was a dead theorist and 0:23 totally discredited you know tell me why 0:25 are people interested... [...]
Here is a more useful way of explaining Marx (it allows for better solutions). 1) ANY kind of free market, INEVITABLY leads to extreme levels of Wealth concentration. 2) If we aggregate all employees into one human and all businesses into one business, then, I discovered, a human as an employee makes the products and later the same human must go to a market place as a customer and must purchase the products he/she made including paying for all the materials, his own wage and a fee known as 'Profit' to transfer the ownership of the product from the business employing the human to the human. Exploitation. It is the essence of exploitation of the employee i.e. the aggregated human-employee gets poorer and suffers while the aggregated business gets wealthier.
@@Christian___ The Employee makes the product then sells the product to himself and then pays a fee called Profit to a 'owner' for the permission to own the same product he himself made and sold to himself. The Owner is a Parasite or a predator if you like. Many people struggle to separate the element of doing 'Labor for a business' from the element of 'Owning a business'. There is added labor value associated with starting and growing a business but no added value in Owning a business. Ownership of business is different than Labor for a business. Many people struggle to understand that businesses are just property and should be treated as such by the laws. And you are correct to point out that the only way to resolve the Exploitation of the Employee is for the Employee to be the owner ( a self employed individual without any employees, or partnerships without any Employees, etc.).
@@reasonerenlightened2456 Sorry, I think I misread your original setup to be that there was only one person in the economy, as opposed to only one employee as you said. So my question would be, is the distinction between the owners and the workers arbitrary? If the shareholder has done labour elsewhere to be able to afford to invest in a share of their neighbour's business, would they not be legitimately entitled to their share of the profit--why should the workers be entitled to the profit when they have already aggreed to sell their labour at a fixed wage rate?
Hey, this is quite good, funny in some ways (suits), but clear and to the point (the system falls down, unless credit and unemployment/reserve army are extended, and some capitals go bust, some tech is mothballed). Would have liked him to add the rest of the world, colonialism-imperialism and world market, but hey. Also, this is presented as reason to read Das Kapital, and for increased sales of the book in Germany, but really it requires reading of volume three as well. Still, useful.
Yes but he does not explain that when the wages stay stagnant or gets lower, the power of purchasing is also decreasing and this refers to another crisis that Marx explains through his theory of misery.
Crisis before misery sounds about right. It is believable for the higher ups to wait out the storm and hope that no one begs for a penny more in their paycheck. Such an imbalance in the power dynamic is unacceptable!
I believe I understand this presentation. But I feel like something has been left out. Let's grant the theory that S will tend to fall and c/v will tend to rise, resulting in falling profits. So yes, in numerical terms profits will fall. BUT SO WHAT?? As the theory states, c/v will tend to rise i.e., the productivity of capital of the economy as a whole tends to rise. This means more value is created for the amount of money that is in circulation. So your profits might be lower in numerical (money) terms, but the increased productivity of the economy means that you can by more with less. The capitalists, the workers, and the firm are all better off, so there is no crises, nor is there inevitable pressure to consolidate!
alotan2acs I agree with you completely, however, this will not convince the die-hard Marxists.. because they are not interested in improving the quality of life for everyone in absolute terms. They are interested in this concept of a lack of "fairness", relatively speaking. This is why they use terms like "relative poverty". If they were forced to measure the decrease in poverty in absolute terms over the years, they would have to concede that Capitalism has been a resounding success. That decrease in poverty has to do with exactly what you are saying. The abundance of things increases with that increase of productivity which makes the prices fall for everything. Marxists only look at these things in numerical terms. They are ignoring an entire part of economic theory which makes everything they say pretty much irrelevant.
***** You're noticing the part about workers making less, but you're not noticing the part about productivity going up. Yes your tellers and stuff are making less, but now you get your money any where there's an atm machine at your convenience. You don't have to go to a teller anymore. The broad economy is better off.
Efficiency is the reason why you don`t have to get up at dawn and take half your village to go hunting with you only so your people can survive. Efficiency means achieving something with a smarter use of resources. Today, people can work in tons of different sectors in a economy because the basic goods can be generated by a small percentage of society due to innovation in agriculture and manufacturing, and this is happening in the tertiary sector aswell..
USSR, PRC and others who call themselves communist or socialist are not. In a real communist society there would not be a government. Communism is not about economic growth. Socialism is true democracy; Its not about the government its about the people.
Ignorant fuck, like me. Venezuela is another one. Socialism like Norway. I like that. What your country has is military dictatorship or something. Again you talk like socialism is bad. What your country does is not democratic, other countries use the same words communism, and socialism when in fact they are not ture to those words. Then people like you and others can go around and say socialism is horrible, because you called what you live in or heard about socialism. Then law makers in the US and around the world are just as dumb will distance them selfs from anything labeled socialist/socialism.
This is a very clear and helpful explanation. It has prompted me to read more around thd subject. A couple of observations: firstly, it is undoubtedly true that the sub prime crisis of 2008 to 2009 has led to a revival of interest in Marx and his theories. That said, I am still not sure what that crisis has to do with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, per se. The 2008/9 crsis was surely just an old fashioned bubble whereby assets became mispriced. The problem of course was that this was on a massive scale and fed back into the financial system. I'm struggling to see what relevance this has to Marx's theory as outlined in this video. Secondly, I recently read Duncan Wheldon's excellent book Muddling Through: an economic history of Britain. He points out that in the last fifty years the UK has experienced six recessions; in the first fifty years of the 1800s it experienced fourteen. This fits with my own reading of economic history in the US. There is certainly evidene that financial crises are speeding up since the Reagan/ Thatcher era, but recessions as such are now less frequent and less severe in view of central bank and government intervention. Again, I am not sure how this fits with the TRPTF. Any thoughts?
The entire debt economy is because of the capitalism basic contradictions. Your income is always lower than the price due to exploitation. That is why debt economy happens in the first place.
In common with many other similar explanations this fails to include the whole of the Big Picture. When the competitive effect of land is included the situation becomes different. We really need to simulate the full situation to better understand it and to use a complete model of the kind that I continue to emphasize. This model may be seen in SSRN 2865571, which describes the reasons for its construction and in SSRN 2600103 which describes how it can be used for teaching purposes. Marx was not wrong but his work was missing the one essential fact about rent being most of the surplus.
To understand my argument, consider a doubling of machinery (within the framework of a fixed money supply). As a consequence output would double, while the prices halve. Now it depends on what approach you take. In nominal terms, wages v, surplus s and capital c all remain constant (because money supply and therefore demand by definition has not changed). c remains constant because the new machinery costs double the resources of which the price has halved.
@herminzissou Part of the labour theory of value is also "use value" and "exchange value", I do not know enough of the LTV but I am told that the Subjective Theory of Value is in fact encompassed in the LTV. So this would explain the issue you raised.
At 7:50, one may mothball the means of production (constant capital - machineries, tools, land) which would lead to unemployment. But how does consolidation lead to constant-capital being taken out of the system?.
redundant technologies getting reduced or eliminated. Consolidation of departments (HR, IT, etc) and their capital requirements to function. That's my guess. I'm certain there's writings on this done by marxist economists.
no, he is saying that a capitalist must improve to stay competitive, but to stop the tendency of the rate of profit, a person must basically, look outside the box to come up with a way to increase the surplus and stabalize the ratio
It is just very important first to know the terminology - what is stock, what is price and what is value, what is money and what is capital, to what the capital is divided and so long (I am not sure that I use this terms correctly in English, but never mind : ) )
It's hard to try been fully pragmatic and analitical with all this politics and struggler for power between different sides of the political compass, it's sure a delicate frontier between science and the power it comes from it which people seek to harness to further the goals whatever those might be
These are great points. However, in modern American Capitalism we are finding that these same trends are developing. My speculation is that most American companies try to secure monopolies and oligopolies in order to reduce the effects of eroding profits, and as a result become large unwieldy bureaucracies. I also wonder if a Syndicalist business, where risk is spread amongst all workers would be more of a motivator than developing an elite class of businessmen who take all of the risk.
+josh darko Services are treated just like products in these theories !!, it does not have to be a tangible product, a doctor's product is his knowledge and skills, same for the barber its his knowledge, skills and experience etc..
This video doesn't really explain how the rate of profit falls, just that it does. It just uses a mathematical expression to show that it happens but it doesn't really connect the dots as to why decreased variable capital reduces profits. That's the part I'm having trouble understanding. If a business had nothing but machines producing the goods, machines which only required the bare minimum of maintenance, why would the capitalist's profit go down? I understand that with mass unemployment, obviously the rate of profit would go down, but in the case of one business, I don't see why labor has to be the only source of value.
So in our current capitalist system Labor value essentially actually backs up all money. If I give you a dollar, you will give me some product that labor was spent on or actual labor. This is why Labor can be considered the most important value (though it is not the only value). Capitalists only provide the role of ownership and do minimal labor for the absurd Surplus value they gain from our Variable value. We can actually completely seize the means of production (Constant Value) and resdistribute it to all laborers and nothing would change since the capitalist role is only one of ownership. The Anarchist revolution in Spain is a good example of workers continuing to produce cookies and other factory goods without the need to have their labor time owned by a capitalist. That said, it is entirely possible for variable value (labor) to become obsolete and capitalists to own all means of production (constant value). In this world, workers would be kept around as play things for capitalists and provided with a neoliberal UBi.
@LudicrousBarchart Why do you think that even in such prolonged environment of significant competition ... the rate has yet to converge to zero? I would love to hear your reason why this hasnt happened yet.....
@Sm3rti When you say the price is halved, do you mean the value of the product of the labor is now worth half as much as it used to because the production capability has doubled? Or do you mean that the price the business pays for raw materials and other resources to produce goods has halved. I don't think this is necessarily true either way. Please clear that up.
It means that the productivity has increased, which leads to the lessening in socially necessary labour time required to produce that commodity, which lessens (in this example, halves) the value of the commodity.
In fact, the speaker uses two different approaches within the same framework. Look at the chart. Regarding the bar (v | s) he takes an nominal terms approach, whereas in the next line ( s/(c+v) ) he suddenly switches to a real terms approach. But to be honest with the audience he has to stick to one of both approaches.
securities are a form of fictitious capital, a means to artificially expand monetary wealth. But if the underlying creation of value does not correspond, if there's not enough profitability from the "real economy", a crisis will still occur, but first at a higher economic level. Marx also wrote a bit on how speculative bubbles can mask all sorts of fraudulent activity in Capital Vol III.
The only long term solution is drop the profit motivation for production of goods and services and replace it with filling needs. 1) clean air, 2) clean water, 3) nutritious food, 4) functional housing, 5) quality education, 6) quality healthcare, 7) meaningful work, 8) satisfying leisure, 9) human rights, 10) stability. Without profit motivation, the above is possible for every person on this earth - those who can provide for themselves, use their resources develop the same capacity for others
@AndrewD22242224 In Namibia, foreign organisations started a basic income guarantee project, as part of development aid programme. As a result, childrens starvation decreased from 23% to 17%, employment rate increased from 36% to 48%, school drop outs decreased by 1/3, crime decreased 60%. In a year, malnourishment rate dropped to 10%, school drop out level became zero (0) and entrepeneuing level increased by 10%. It would cost Namibia only 2% from their GPD to expand this to the whole country.
I understand what you are talking about but because I have read first and second book of Das Kapital. It is very hard for understanding in such a short explanation. The explanation is good but if someone really want to want to know whats going on, he must read all Capital from beginning. Regards!
@R2rGangstaFC The long run is the condition of full flexibility. This is demonstrated by the long run super-neutrality of money. This is in contrast to the short run which is plagued by pre-asymptotic conditions such as excess capacity (due to inferior predictions causing mis-allocation), a non-dissolution of barriers etc. This is the reasons for non-neutral effects of expansionary monetary policy. Thus, the distinction is non-trivial
The value of V = How long a person/company has to work to break even. I think your talking about (s/v) / (c/v)+1. This equation is not being divided by V. It is divided by sum of (C/V)+1, so this is saying what is (S divided by V) than divided that answer by (C divided by V) + 1
What is efficient is determined by ones goals and values. Something can be efficient from the point of view of big corporations, but inefficient from the point of view of the larger public. A good example is the US healthcare system which is very profitable for the major medical business but is very costly and poorly working for the majority of population. The problem with capitalism is that 'efficiency' is defined by corporate interests, not by what the public at large needs.
Actually, its your metaphor of the worker banging a hammer that is lunacy. If you look at what Marx writes, it is about socially useful labor, labor that can be used in the market or by society. Useless labor does not contribute value, only useful labor does. Also the labor theory of value was proposed by Smith, and if you think of it everything must have at least some human activity applied to it to make "stuff" useful, consumable, marketable, etc. It is a good theory and very useful.
I agree with you, but the government can do only so much about the wages and social conditions in the current system. Especially today when it's easy for business to shift jobs to poor countries, very little can be done, except only if either the government or the workers themselves will take the initiative and create enterprises which are not aimed at maximizing investors profits but at people's needs.Education is not enough especially with austerity that imposed by big business to avoid taxes.
@cogar488 I never claimed subjective preferences could be directly quantified. I agree, they can't be. All I said is that subjective preferences determine prices, which are an objective proxy for people's relative preferences in relation to the goods/services available. Maybe now you could actually answer my criticisms of the labour theory and explain why I don't know what I'm talking about, instead of assuming I haven't read Marx.
-the money value of the product of labor remains the same, because a worker now produces double the amount of a good of which the money price has halved -the money prices for raw materials and other (non-human) input resources have halved (input costs remain constant, because the amount of input resources needed has doubled) All what has happened is, that workers real income has doubled, because with the same money income as before, and prices halved, they can buy double the amount of goods
@Vict0r1984 'Taxation is theft' is just a very brief and simplified summary of one aspect of the libertarian point of view, which is, like it or not, part of the economic debate.
Sure, this is USE value, which allegedly is compatible with labour value. But since labour value isn't in principle required to at least partially account for all use value at some point in any given object's material history, then it is utterly redundant as an explanatory concept. It is merely an ad hoc distinction incorporated to account for profit. However, profit can be explained cogently in another way, namely by applying the austrian school's theory of value, prices and interest.
Question for marxists who studied the subject; If capitalists buy the mashines i order to make the work more productive, then how come the surplass value is reduced by replacing workers with mashinery? In that case, S/C+V would be always increasing, as S would rise and V would fall right?
once only workers create value by reducing the work force they reduce the value in each commodity. So they now need to sell more of them to make the same profite, but they can't 'cos workers are unemployed hence unable to buy many thing. Profits go down.
@arzoyan scarcity isn't pre history. Food inventories are the lowest they've been in decadeds, oil production has peaked. This crisis is caused fundamentally by an economic paradigm of infinite growth because the monetary system requires it to sustain itself, and the disappearence of cheap oil. It requires a constant expansion of debt. If you want to learn more check out the documentaries Money as debt 1 and 2, and collapse (2009) - you'll get a more accurate picture.
Look, Comrade Voldemort, I did not say that governments should be abolished, merely that they have a bad history of creating economic havoc. The proximate cause of recessions, depressions and economic downturns is usually central government. It is not enough to protect workers, the ruling "elite" should also protect the nation's economy, enacting whatever levels of tariffs needed to protect the value of it's country's goods at home. Then businesses stay open, people work and pay taxes...
I am a bit confused, isn't the point of investing in C to decrease V, increase S, and as such make more profit? If buying capital has no effect on productivity (doesn't directly increase S), then why spend money on it? If you assume that smart and successful entrepreneurs buy C if and only if they know that it's depreciation and upfront price will not outway the increase in S, then this argument completely breaks down and only works if capitalists overvalue the capital or make bad investments in it.
see wiki page on HENRYK GROSSMANN. He provides a formula that clearly shows that if C grows faster than V, (if capitalists keep investing in machines instead of people, as they do in practice) profits eventually collapse, even if they were rising at first. They always collapse faster than they were rising. For more detail, you can read his book.
c is "constant" for a reason. there's only so much of it in an economy. when you run out of possibilities to reinvest, you either have to wait for your competitors to go bankrupt, or create new markets.
@LudicrousBarchart Amen. Preach it, man. EVERYBODY is soooo quick to point fingers and NOBODY wants to take a freaking legitimate look at his works. And I actually didn't realize the irony of "Preach it" on a video of Marxist Economic Theory. LOL.
Besides of what Danny said,it kills innovation that would achieve greater efficiency.There`s no incentive for innovations in enterprises that are "owned by everyone".Who will hire professionals?Who will fire bad employees?Who will take risks? And if you tell me that the workers would "elect" the leaders in these enterprises like we elect our politicians,the ones elected would be those that take the more "popular" decisions instead of the ones which leads to more efficiency. (cont)
I don't understand why videos like these have dislikes, even if you don't agree with the theory it's suppose to be teaching you what Marx was trying to say
Christopher Robinson. Because Capitalism is just like any religion, must deny and demonize everything that doesn't fit into its ideology.
Wadankeena. What is liberty? Is liberty the right of put your interest above all else, without the least regard to other people? Nobody lives alone. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Not even 100 dislikes. This comment is pointless.
@@nathanneiman if Marxism is wrong mathematically then it doesn't require any religion to debunk it.
@@liamconverse8950Economy is not an exact science. Try engineering.
Marx was completely correct. What this gentleman does not mention is that these problems can be exported to other countries. The illusion that capitalism works has come to an end. A mode of production can and does put its expansion problems onto the older modes of productions in poorer countries.
Marx was going to add 2 more volumes to Capital. One on them was going to be focused on global capitalism. Marx would have saved millions of lives if he had written this volume. His genius would have extended our understanding from the capitalist/proletariat scenario to the empire/periphery scenario. He would have shown the inequality of exchange between 2 countries with different forces of production .
The illusion it worked was destroyed in 1929 when the great depression happened. It took the biggest war in history and the effective blood sacrifice of untold millions of lives to get it back on it's feet, and even this was just a way to increase input on a grand scale. The falling rate of profit is apparently inexorable. This is the tendency of this mode of organised labour.
Vou are right. Paul Cockshot has explained it with the immigration. And Germany could stop this fall of profit also with a mass immigratiom since 2015.
@Karl Quetzacoatl you ever read it?
@Karl Quetzacoatl I have read alot of it (I have read everything I get my hands on, but I only started das kapital vol 1 last week)
@Karl Quetzacoatl should I read 'the wealth of Nations to? I think I should
First, there are such enterprises. Secondly, it's because people are not aware of this kind of option, it's considered inappropriate to question capitalist business structure. People are propagandized to believe that capitalism is the best possible system humanity has come up with.
My man was spitting 8 years ago
It is the best suited to humans given the fact that they’re still very primitive
@John Doe care to enlighten me then?
Thatcher was very much for keeping people from even imagining that society could be run any other way.
@@wonkygustav4457 Were that true, then we should be living closer to a communistic society, given that our hunter-gatherer forebears had no concept of capital/profits. A sense of community predates our desire for profits, not the vice-versa.
I have been studying Economics in the view of orthodox Economists. I ever thought Marx's view was just completely wrong, and he just used some outdated concepts given up by orthodox Economists years ago. Today, I looked back in history and reviewed Marx's idea on the operation of capital system, I found a new power in Marx's theory. Today's orthodox economics in fact covers deep conflicts, and they individually fail to solve certain problems. However, Marx saw deeply behind the scene, discovering the forces driving the economy. He might not provide new good solution, but he pinpointed the right problems.
The socio-political arrangements Marx described actually referred not to truly competitive market conditions but conditions where monopoly privilege prevails. Individuals who produce capital goods (or provide the financial reserves to pay others to produce such goods) are owners of legitimately acquired private property. Use of these capital goods in the production of other goods may or may not yield a return for the trouble. The market (i.e., demand) determines whether the owner of capital goods will receive a return and how significant that return might be. History reveals that owners of capital goods do make serious mistakes by producing goods few want or are willing pay a price for that covers the full cost of production.
A key to understanding Marx, I submit, is to understand the distinction made by John Locke between behavior that falls within the realm of liberty and behavior that falls within the realm of licence. With settlement in one place there arose the need for rules to allocate access to locations in the villages (that became towns that became cities) and to natural resources. Over time, all societies succumb to the domination by hierarchical rentier elites (i.e., those who by virtue of their potential to oppress others claims what others produce). The system they create is not capitalism, if by capitalism one expects that the majority of members derive a significant portion of income by the ownership of capital goods. Rather, the system is one that evolves from agrarian landlordism, into agrarian and commercial landlordism, into agrarian, commercial, industrial and financial landlordism. Note, the sophistication in production and trade are merely added onto the base of landlordism. Over time all ownership of property -- and income -- becomes increasingly concentrated. One must look to the third volume of Capital before Marx/Engels focus attention on this historical relationship.
Edward J. Dodson, M.L.A.DirectorSchool of Cooperative Individualismwww.cooperative-individualism.org
Edward Dodson. Cognitive dissonance.
Holmes Gerald "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which >>abolishes
Marx was correct!
ejsvifq mabmip Value from constant and variable capital do not correspond to use-value. The conflation of such is the nature of commodity fetishism, an all-too-common experience for all us. Even if the two forms of value WERE to be regarded in the same light, the profit of the capitalist is completely disregarded in that argument even though they are involved in consumption just like their workers.
marx 4 life
For the time available this was an exemplary presentation by someone who obviously has understood the essence of the problem.
And I particularly liked the inclusion of the impact of countervailing tendencies and the observation that there is a difference between monetary phenomena and value trends.
Here is a more useful way of explaining it.
1) ANY kind of free market, INEVITABLY leads to extreme levels of Wealth concentration.
2) If we aggregate all employees into one human and all businesses into one business, then, I discovered, a human as an employee makes the products and later the same human must go to a market place as a customer and must purchase the products he/she made including paying for all the materials, his own wage and a fee known as 'Profit' to transfer the ownership of the product from the business employing the human to the human.
Exploitation.
It is the essence of exploitation of the employee i.e. the aggregated human-employee gets poorer and suffers while the aggregated business gets wealthier.
@@reasonerenlightened2456 A perfectly free market with no restrictive trade practices will never lead to extreme levels of wealth concentration. The only source of wealth would then be the relative productivities of each input into production.
@@TH-camr-ls1uj
ANY free market, no matter how 'regulated' or 'non-regulated' it is, ALWAYS results in Extreme Levels of Wealth Concentration.
I, discovered that most transactions, between any two participants, exchange unequal 'Value' between the two participants i.e. one side benefits a bit more from a transaction than the other side. Such asymmetry inevitably results in extreme levels of Wealth concentration , even if the participant who benefits a bit more is selected completely randomly in each transaction. As long as the transactions keep happening the inevitable result over time is always Extreme levels of Wealth Concentration.
(The velocity of the transactions and the size of a transaction affect the rate of Concentration of Wealth.)
.... and that is an inherent problem of the free market caused by the tiny asymmetry of the exchanged 'Value' in each transaction.
Now you can revise your comprehension of the nature of the free market!
@@TH-camr-ls1uj that is a fascinating conclusion, what evidence do you have to support it?
@@TH-camr-ls1ujproblem is that there is no thing such as a free market. What we call "free" is simply unregulated by most of the people.
What!? An old british man with proper ideas of Marx!?
I'm not seeing an argument against this part of Marx's theory he presented.
I'm reading a lot of people equivicating on terms and merely asserting what they think capitalism "actually" is.
There is no arguments against this, Marx was right.
This is just a fact of the economy. No matter your opinion the rate of profit inevitably falls, the question is what do we do after? Once companies can't get their profits unless they engage essentially in what is slavery (which has it's own contradictions) how will the world evolve?
Marw was focused about changing the world, not only analysing it.
Although the professor simplifies the crisis theory of Marx which is more complex he tried to explain in the easiest way possible.
"well, if you stand over there, I'll tell you all about it..." lol
One simple solution you can take from Marx is to let the workers collectively own and manage the enterprises, and let them collect and distribute the surpluses and not the private owners like it's done today.
Well the workers have all the means to do so and yet they don't do it
@@joseastiz1775 and you know why that doesnt happen. the state exists to protect private property
@@joseastiz1775”the workers have all the mean to” that’s implying the workers have control of the means of production… they don’t
I've shared this many times. Very lucid and concise, no more simplistic than it has to be in the time. And explained by a credible practical capitalist source. Marx would have benefited from having Cliff Bowman as his editor!
When the system incentivises greed - the greedy rise!
To criticise problematic aspects of Marx's theory is one thing. But to call him "discredited" is absolutely dishonest. Marx predicted that Capitalism is characterized by inherent crises with business cycles and it's exploitative nature, the immiseration that would be caused to the working class, Centralisation of capital, increased automation of the workforce etc. He is far from being discredited. He is one of the greatest and most influential economists of all time whose work is still extremely relevant to modern society.
Even cut the wages of workers even though your profit is increasing
"as the ranks of army of the unemployed thickens, their arms become even thinner"
KM
Though Marx was wrong about certain things , he is still a very good philosopher and economist who deserves some study and acclamation .
+MrFrotier
Whether or not he worked in his entire life has nothing to do with anything. It's an attack on the man, not on the theories. It's a distraction.
Never worked? So writing thousands of pages on most of the social sciences does not count as work? He has never had a permanent wage employment - that's true. He had occasional paid employment jobs, e.g. when writing articles for the New York Tribune. Also, it is difficult to work under constant threat of censorship and Europe-wide police control. In any case he did have direct experience of the kind of miserable living conditions of the average British factory worker in his early London period.
Not an economist? By the mid-XIX century - perhaps you ignore this - economics was just about turning into an independent discipline. Economists were "political economists", usually had an academic background in law, history and philosophy, and Marx was archetypal of that.
As others remarked, had your claims been true they would have still been inconsequential and ad hominem. But they are also false. What a mess.
I'd say in the field of sociology, Marx's ideas actually enriched the conflict theory, which is still useful for sociologists when they analyze the social phenomenons. And Marx indeed studied main theories in his time, including those of Adam Smith and many others, making thousands of references, which made his work serious and professional.
I want to write about this in an essay, does anyone know how I could reference it? Does Bowman talk about this in a particular publication or is there a specific book by Marx he is referring to? Thanks
Das Kapital, as stated in the video. You could also reference and cite the video in your paper.
@@considrew @live, use the TRANSCRIP function and cite th-cam.com/video/-e8rt8RGjCM/w-d-xo.html:
Search in video
0:09
cliff there was an article on the BBC
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website yesterday
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asure of Marx's Das Kapital have sold
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this year to date 10 times more copies
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than they did last year
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I thought Marx was a dead theorist and
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totally discredited you know tell me why
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are people interested...
[...]
Not a labour theory of value, Marx never once used the term self-descriptively, referring only sparsely to a “theory of value.”
Wonderful explanation
Encouraged to understand Marxist view in proper way...!
read capital !
Here is a more useful way of explaining Marx (it allows for better solutions).
1) ANY kind of free market, INEVITABLY leads to extreme levels of Wealth concentration.
2) If we aggregate all employees into one human and all businesses into one business, then, I discovered, a human as an employee makes the products and later the same human must go to a market place as a customer and must purchase the products he/she made including paying for all the materials, his own wage and a fee known as 'Profit' to transfer the ownership of the product from the business employing the human to the human.
Exploitation.
It is the essence of exploitation of the employee i.e. the aggregated human-employee gets poorer and suffers while the aggregated business gets wealthier.
@@reasonerenlightened2456 But wouldn't the same human also own the business and therefore receive the profit attributable to capital?
@@Christian___
The Employee makes the product then sells the product to himself and then pays a fee called Profit to a 'owner' for the permission to own the same product he himself made and sold to himself. The Owner is a Parasite or a predator if you like.
Many people struggle to separate the element of doing 'Labor for a business' from the element of 'Owning a business'.
There is added labor value associated with starting and growing a business but no added value in Owning a business.
Ownership of business is different than Labor for a business.
Many people struggle to understand that businesses are just property and should be treated as such by the laws.
And you are correct to point out that the only way to resolve the Exploitation of the Employee is for the Employee to be the owner ( a self employed individual without any employees, or partnerships without any Employees, etc.).
@@reasonerenlightened2456 Sorry, I think I misread your original setup to be that there was only one person in the economy, as opposed to only one employee as you said. So my question would be, is the distinction between the owners and the workers arbitrary? If the shareholder has done labour elsewhere to be able to afford to invest in a share of their neighbour's business, would they not be legitimately entitled to their share of the profit--why should the workers be entitled to the profit when they have already aggreed to sell their labour at a fixed wage rate?
Hey, this is quite good, funny in some ways (suits), but clear and to the point (the system falls down, unless credit and unemployment/reserve army are extended, and some capitals go bust, some tech is mothballed). Would have liked him to add the rest of the world, colonialism-imperialism and world market, but hey. Also, this is presented as reason to read Das Kapital, and for increased sales of the book in Germany, but really it requires reading of volume three as well. Still, useful.
John Hutnyk
Interesting theory. Thanks for the upload.
I speak spanish and I wish to generate subtitles in my language for this video... how can I do it? 'cause it doesn't give you the option to :c
I would say about 5% of American's know exactly what this man is talking about.
You are too optimistic. Maybe the percentage of those who get it is 1.0 or less.
Yes but he does not explain that when the wages stay stagnant or gets lower, the power of purchasing is also decreasing and this refers to another crisis that Marx explains through his theory of misery.
Crisis before misery sounds about right. It is believable for the higher ups to wait out the storm and hope that no one begs for a penny more in their paycheck. Such an imbalance in the power dynamic is unacceptable!
A very good one !
@axe863 arent systematic fluctuations caused by the constant competition?
DISLIKED! when this guys said Marx has been "discredited "
I believe he meant that Marx has been given a bad reputation instead of being debunked.
I believe I understand this presentation. But I feel like something has been left out. Let's grant the theory that S will tend to fall and c/v will tend to rise, resulting in falling profits. So yes, in numerical terms profits will fall.
BUT SO WHAT?? As the theory states, c/v will tend to rise i.e., the productivity of capital of the economy as a whole tends to rise. This means more value is created for the amount of money that is in circulation. So your profits might be lower in numerical (money) terms, but the increased productivity of the economy means that you can by more with less. The capitalists, the workers, and the firm are all better off, so there is no crises, nor is there inevitable pressure to consolidate!
alotan2acs I agree with you completely, however, this will not convince the die-hard Marxists.. because they are not interested in improving the quality of life for everyone in absolute terms. They are interested in this concept of a lack of "fairness", relatively speaking. This is why they use terms like "relative poverty". If they were forced to measure the decrease in poverty in absolute terms over the years, they would have to concede that Capitalism has been a resounding success. That decrease in poverty has to do with exactly what you are saying. The abundance of things increases with that increase of productivity which makes the prices fall for everything. Marxists only look at these things in numerical terms. They are ignoring an entire part of economic theory which makes everything they say pretty much irrelevant.
***** You're noticing the part about workers making less, but you're not noticing the part about productivity going up. Yes your tellers and stuff are making less, but now you get your money any where there's an atm machine at your convenience. You don't have to go to a teller anymore. The broad economy is better off.
***** Doesn't that invalidate your point?
So you don't think america is better now than in the 1960s. That seems a difficult decision to defend.
Marx and Ricardo both believed in Labor theory of value which is used as the basis of Marxism. It has been proven wrong.
Efficiency is the reason why you don`t have to get up at dawn and take half your village to go hunting with you only so your people can survive. Efficiency means achieving something with a smarter use of resources.
Today, people can work in tons of different sectors in a economy because the basic goods can be generated by a small percentage of society due to innovation in agriculture and manufacturing, and this is happening in the tertiary sector aswell..
Explaining imperialism in a formula. RIP a most genius human Karl Marx
USSR, PRC and others who call themselves communist or socialist are not. In a real communist society there would not be a government. Communism is not about economic growth. Socialism is true democracy; Its not about the government its about the people.
Just shut up.
Fuck you you ignorant bitch, study some economics. Quit going by what other people tells you or what you think you know.
I live in Venezuela and my country is getting destroyed thanks to people like you.
Ignorant fuck, like me. Venezuela is another one. Socialism like Norway. I like that. What your country has is military dictatorship or something. Again you talk like socialism is bad. What your country does is not democratic, other countries use the same words communism, and socialism when in fact they are not ture to those words. Then people like you and others can go around and say socialism is horrible, because you called what you live in or heard about socialism. Then law makers in the US and around the world are just as dumb will distance them selfs from anything labeled socialist/socialism.
Levi Harper fuck you.
Thank you.
i think its worded in the page on wikipedia were karl said"it begins in a change of heart"
This is a very clear and helpful explanation. It has prompted me to read more around thd subject. A couple of observations: firstly, it is undoubtedly true that the sub prime crisis of 2008 to 2009 has led to a revival of interest in Marx and his theories. That said, I am still not sure what that crisis has to do with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, per se. The 2008/9 crsis was surely just an old fashioned bubble whereby assets became mispriced. The problem of course was that this was on a massive scale and fed back into the financial system. I'm struggling to see what relevance this has to Marx's theory as outlined in this video. Secondly, I recently read Duncan Wheldon's excellent book Muddling Through: an economic history of Britain. He points out that in the last fifty years the UK has experienced six recessions; in the first fifty years of the 1800s it experienced fourteen. This fits with my own reading of economic history in the US. There is certainly evidene that financial crises are speeding up since the Reagan/ Thatcher era, but recessions as such are now less frequent and less severe in view of central bank and government intervention. Again, I am not sure how this fits with the TRPTF. Any thoughts?
The entire debt economy is because of the capitalism basic contradictions. Your income is always lower than the price due to exploitation. That is why debt economy happens in the first place.
In common with many other similar explanations this fails to include the whole of the Big Picture. When the competitive effect of land is included the situation becomes different. We really need to simulate the full situation to better understand it and to use a complete model of the kind that I continue to emphasize. This model may be seen in SSRN 2865571, which describes the reasons for its construction and in SSRN 2600103 which describes how it can be used for teaching purposes. Marx was not wrong but his work was missing the one essential fact about rent being most of the surplus.
Bad boy video. Do one on the Minsky Moment yo. Namaste
To understand my argument, consider a doubling of machinery (within the framework of a fixed money supply). As a consequence output would double, while the prices halve. Now it depends on what approach you take. In nominal terms, wages v, surplus s and capital c all remain constant (because money supply and therefore demand by definition has not changed). c remains constant because the new machinery costs double the resources of which the price has halved.
excellent !!!
@herminzissou
Part of the labour theory of value is also "use value" and "exchange value", I do not know enough of the LTV but I am told that the Subjective Theory of Value is in fact encompassed in the LTV. So this would explain the issue you raised.
At 7:50, one may mothball the means of production (constant capital - machineries, tools, land) which would lead to unemployment. But how does consolidation lead to constant-capital being taken out of the system?.
redundant technologies getting reduced or eliminated. Consolidation of departments (HR, IT, etc) and their capital requirements to function.
That's my guess. I'm certain there's writings on this done by marxist economists.
This is cool video. thanks
Good job.
so nicely explained. thank you!!
Heavy good.
no, he is saying that a capitalist must improve to stay competitive, but to stop the tendency of the rate of profit, a person must basically, look outside the box to come up with a way to increase the surplus and stabalize the ratio
sorry, can somebody please explain how does credit crisis relates to the equation again? I do not quite get it yet.
How would the value generated by the movement of water through a hydroelectric dam be categorised?
I'd say it would also be categorized as part of the constant capital *c* , but *c* having the value of 0$...
It is just very important first to know the terminology - what is stock, what is price and what is value, what is money and what is capital, to what the capital is divided and so long (I am not sure that I use this terms correctly in English, but never mind : ) )
Relevant now.
It's hard to try been fully pragmatic and analitical with all this politics and struggler for power between different sides of the political compass, it's sure a delicate frontier between science and the power it comes from it which people seek to harness to further the goals whatever those might be
Every time i revisit this video, things seem to degrade further. How much further can we delay crisis?
These are great points. However, in modern American Capitalism we are finding that these same trends are developing. My speculation is that most American companies try to secure monopolies and oligopolies in order to reduce the effects of eroding profits, and as a result become large unwieldy bureaucracies. I also wonder if a Syndicalist business, where risk is spread amongst all workers would be more of a motivator than developing an elite class of businessmen who take all of the risk.
The thing is that we don't "produce" anything. Everything is fiat, and the service sector is the most pervasive.
+josh darko Services are treated just like products in these theories !!, it does not have to be a tangible product, a doctor's product is his knowledge and skills, same for the barber its his knowledge, skills and experience etc..
+TheKen2942 or *her/
This video doesn't really explain how the rate of profit falls, just that it does. It just uses a mathematical expression to show that it happens but it doesn't really connect the dots as to why decreased variable capital reduces profits. That's the part I'm having trouble understanding. If a business had nothing but machines producing the goods, machines which only required the bare minimum of maintenance, why would the capitalist's profit go down? I understand that with mass unemployment, obviously the rate of profit would go down, but in the case of one business, I don't see why labor has to be the only source of value.
So in our current capitalist system Labor value essentially actually backs up all money. If I give you a dollar, you will give me some product that labor was spent on or actual labor. This is why Labor can be considered the most important value (though it is not the only value). Capitalists only provide the role of ownership and do minimal labor for the absurd Surplus value they gain from our Variable value. We can actually completely seize the means of production (Constant Value) and resdistribute it to all laborers and nothing would change since the capitalist role is only one of ownership. The Anarchist revolution in Spain is a good example of workers continuing to produce cookies and other factory goods without the need to have their labor time owned by a capitalist. That said, it is entirely possible for variable value (labor) to become obsolete and capitalists to own all means of production (constant value). In this world, workers would be kept around as play things for capitalists and provided with a neoliberal UBi.
because you can't extract surplus value (and then profit) from a machine. only from a worker, who is the variable capital.
@LudicrousBarchart Why do you think that even in such prolonged environment of significant competition ... the rate has yet to converge to zero? I would love to hear your reason why this hasnt happened yet.....
excelent
Wow... that was amazing! So that means I don't need to read Capital anymore?
You can't own anything
@Sm3rti When you say the price is halved, do you mean the value of the product of the labor is now worth half as much as it used to because the production capability has doubled? Or do you mean that the price the business pays for raw materials and other resources to produce goods has halved. I don't think this is necessarily true either way. Please clear that up.
It means that the productivity has increased, which leads to the lessening in socially necessary labour time required to produce that commodity, which lessens (in this example, halves) the value of the commodity.
thanks
In fact, the speaker uses two different approaches within the same framework. Look at the chart. Regarding the bar (v | s) he takes an nominal terms approach, whereas in the next line ( s/(c+v) ) he suddenly switches to a real terms approach. But to be honest with the audience he has to stick to one of both approaches.
That is one fancy way to describe deflation.
securities are a form of fictitious capital, a means to artificially expand monetary wealth. But if the underlying creation of value does not correspond, if there's not enough profitability from the "real economy", a crisis will still occur, but first at a higher economic level. Marx also wrote a bit on how speculative bubbles can mask all sorts of fraudulent activity in Capital Vol III.
The only long term solution is drop the profit motivation for production of goods and services and replace it with filling needs. 1) clean air, 2) clean water, 3) nutritious food, 4) functional housing, 5) quality education, 6) quality healthcare, 7) meaningful work, 8) satisfying leisure, 9) human rights, 10) stability.
Without profit motivation, the above is possible for every person on this earth - those who can provide for themselves, use their resources develop the same capacity for others
It can also comes from corporations lobbying government law to give them tax exemptions
That would increase the rop
@Tougemaster06 I knew I could get you to agree.
So, we have your support?
The OCC!
only one video? :-(
@AndrewD22242224 In Namibia, foreign organisations started a basic income guarantee project, as part of development aid programme. As a result, childrens starvation decreased from 23% to 17%, employment rate increased from 36% to 48%, school drop outs decreased by 1/3, crime decreased 60%. In a year, malnourishment rate dropped to 10%, school drop out level became zero (0) and entrepeneuing level increased by 10%. It would cost Namibia only 2% from their GPD to expand this to the whole country.
I understand what you are talking about but because I have read first and second book of Das Kapital. It is very hard for understanding in such a short explanation. The explanation is good but if someone really want to want to know whats going on, he must read all Capital from beginning. Regards!
That destroys the incentive of individuals to start businesses if the workers will be distributing the surplus/revenue.
The labor theory of value predates both Smith and Ricardo; it makes its appearance in Locke.
@R2rGangstaFC The long run is the condition of full flexibility. This is demonstrated by the long run super-neutrality of money. This is in contrast to the short run which is plagued by pre-asymptotic conditions such as excess capacity (due to inferior predictions causing mis-allocation), a non-dissolution of barriers etc. This is the reasons for non-neutral effects of expansionary monetary policy.
Thus, the distinction is non-trivial
I don't really understand what he's doing when he divides the entire equation by v. Can anyone clarify this for me?
The value of V = How long a person/company has to work to break even. I think your talking about (s/v) / (c/v)+1. This equation is not being divided by V. It is divided by sum of (C/V)+1, so this is saying what is (S divided by V) than divided that answer by (C divided by V) + 1
He's just changing the equation to something equivalent in order to explain it with a different perspective (think about 2/4 = 1/2)
he means you have s/c+v, now assume we are taking all variables PER V. that is s/v and c/v and v/v you will get this equation.
I'm a Marxist so overall I have a few quibbles (this is obviously a quick rundown) but this i s overall a helpful explanation.
@cogar488 Sure, but it can be valued before labour is applied to it.
What is efficient is determined by ones goals and values. Something can be efficient from the point of view of big corporations, but inefficient from the point of view of the larger public. A good example is the US healthcare system which is very profitable for the major medical business but is very costly and poorly working for the majority of population. The problem with capitalism is that 'efficiency' is defined by corporate interests, not by what the public at large needs.
Actually, its your metaphor of the worker banging a hammer that is lunacy. If you look at what Marx writes, it is about socially useful labor, labor that can be used in the market or by society. Useless labor does not contribute value, only useful labor does. Also the labor theory of value was proposed by Smith, and if you think of it everything must have at least some human activity applied to it to make "stuff" useful, consumable, marketable, etc. It is a good theory and very useful.
@No2BHO: I will, but I was really busy the last 2 weeks. I'll email you Saturday or Sunday when I'll have some free time. Good day to you!
I agree with you, but the government can do only so much about the wages and social conditions in the current system. Especially today when it's easy for business to shift jobs to poor countries, very little can be done, except only if either the government or the workers themselves will take the initiative and create enterprises which are not aimed at maximizing investors profits but at people's needs.Education is not enough especially with austerity that imposed by big business to avoid taxes.
@redarrowhead2 You can search for Dan Pink about motivation (on TH-cam). If you haven't seen that, it might surprise you.
@cogar488 I never claimed subjective preferences could be directly quantified. I agree, they can't be. All I said is that subjective preferences determine prices, which are an objective proxy for people's relative preferences in relation to the goods/services available.
Maybe now you could actually answer my criticisms of the labour theory and explain why I don't know what I'm talking about, instead of assuming I haven't read Marx.
Umm HugoNewman please explain how something has a use-value if it is not in use by humans. How did von Mises successfully refute this?
-the money value of the product of labor remains the same, because a worker now produces double the amount of a good of which the money price has halved
-the money prices for raw materials and other (non-human) input resources have halved
(input costs remain constant, because the amount of input resources needed has doubled)
All what has happened is, that workers real income has doubled, because with the same money income as before, and prices halved, they can buy double the amount of goods
@Vict0r1984 'Taxation is theft' is just a very brief and simplified summary of one aspect of the libertarian point of view, which is, like it or not, part of the economic debate.
More accurately thats how technological innovation works, a massive % of which is traceable to the state funded sector
Sure, this is USE value, which allegedly is compatible with labour value. But since labour value isn't in principle required to at least partially account for all use value at some point in any given object's material history, then it is utterly redundant as an explanatory concept. It is merely an ad hoc distinction incorporated to account for profit. However, profit can be explained cogently in another way, namely by applying the austrian school's theory of value, prices and interest.
@TheCommunard I think i just peed myself laughing so hard. Keep em coming.
Question for marxists who studied the subject;
If capitalists buy the mashines i order to make the work more productive, then how come the surplass value is reduced by replacing workers with mashinery?
In that case, S/C+V would be always increasing, as S would rise and V would fall right?
once only workers create value by reducing the work force they reduce the value in each commodity. So they now need to sell more of them to make the same profite, but they can't 'cos workers are unemployed hence unable to buy many thing. Profits go down.
@arzoyan scarcity isn't pre history. Food inventories are the lowest they've been in decadeds, oil production has peaked. This crisis is caused fundamentally by an economic paradigm of infinite growth because the monetary system requires it to sustain itself, and the disappearence of cheap oil. It requires a constant expansion of debt. If you want to learn more check out the documentaries Money as debt 1 and 2, and collapse (2009) - you'll get a more accurate picture.
Look, Comrade Voldemort, I did not say that governments should be abolished, merely that they have a bad history of creating economic havoc. The proximate cause of recessions, depressions and economic downturns is usually central government. It is not enough to protect workers, the ruling "elite" should also protect the nation's economy, enacting whatever levels of tariffs needed to protect the value of it's country's goods at home. Then businesses stay open, people work and pay taxes...
You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Workers of the world unite!
@Warzoooooo Easy Mr.Fürer!
I am a bit confused, isn't the point of investing in C to decrease V, increase S, and as such make more profit? If buying capital has no effect on productivity (doesn't directly increase S), then why spend money on it? If you assume that smart and successful entrepreneurs buy C if and only if they know that it's depreciation and upfront price will not outway the increase in S, then this argument completely breaks down and only works if capitalists overvalue the capital or make bad investments in it.
see wiki page on HENRYK GROSSMANN. He provides a formula that clearly shows that if C grows faster than V, (if capitalists keep investing in machines instead of people, as they do in practice) profits eventually collapse, even if they were rising at first. They always collapse faster than they were rising.
For more detail, you can read his book.
c is "constant" for a reason. there's only so much of it in an economy. when you run out of possibilities to reinvest, you either have to wait for your competitors to go bankrupt, or create new markets.
@LudicrousBarchart Amen. Preach it, man. EVERYBODY is soooo quick to point fingers and NOBODY wants to take a freaking legitimate look at his works.
And I actually didn't realize the irony of "Preach it" on a video of Marxist Economic Theory. LOL.
Good explanation . But Marx never considered fraud, manipulation, derivatives and global warming to effect increase costs to existing business's.
arguments!
Besides of what Danny said,it kills innovation that would achieve greater efficiency.There`s no incentive for innovations in enterprises that are "owned by everyone".Who will hire professionals?Who will fire bad employees?Who will take risks? And if you tell me that the workers would "elect" the leaders in these enterprises like we elect our politicians,the ones elected would be those that take the more "popular" decisions instead of the ones which leads to more efficiency. (cont)
In what way have they followed Marx's theory?