36:00 Here is the crux of the disagreement you have with the marxists on your server. A misunderstanding happens right here. You are partially right and partially wrong here. You are right in saying that Marx's Capital TAKEN BY ITSELF wouldn't constitute a proper hegelian development and that, if the starting point is "the commodity" as being "the stuff that exchanges", then the idea that it must be "made of labor" would be extrinsic, and therefore out of place in the conceptual development. If Marx was indeed doing that (which he would appear to be doing, if we only take Capital by itself), then you would be correct. However, this is NOT what Marx is doing. Marx is to be blamed for your mistake here, because he is at fault for not writting more clearly and not having given a clear direction and what must be read BEFORE Capital. In fact, the conceptual unfolding isn't starting from the Commodity (exchange), but instead from Labor (production). Basically, to keep it simple: reading the first 4~5 chapters of Smith's Wealth of Nation should be the equivalent of the missing "Capital Chapter 0". The reason why it seems weird that he says that all commodities are products of labor in Chapter 1 (which would be false, as you point out) is because you have the wrong starting point. In the proper order of what he is trying to do, the conceptual development starts with labor (production of use-values, to satisfy human needs), and only then elaborates up to the point when one of the form the "product of labor" can take ends up being "the commodity". Looked at in this order, it's clear that the "commodities" discussed in chapter 1 aren't ALL the commodities, but instead are only "the products of labors that take the commodity-form". And when you have that in mind, all the issue you raise here with chapter 1 disappear. It is absolutely true that "products of labor in commodity-form" are all "made of labor", and that therefore when two of them exchange, two amounts of concret labor are being put in an abstract qualitative equality. The "non-labor commodity" such as "the land up to the horizon in the West" (your example) are not taken into account at this point, because the conceptual development hasn't reached that far yet (because we only deal with the products of labor at this point, so raising the issue of non-labor commodities would be extrinsic).
@KamKamKamKam Your response is something I can accept, and to be taken as heading towards a different project than one would get for economy as understood to be centered around the rules of commodities in the broader sense.
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy So what you are saying is that Marx's project (if understood under the lense I propose) is not a critique of economics, but instead a critique of some other system (production maybe?). Is that right?
@@KamKamKamKam It *is* a critique of economics insofar as Marx believed he was showing the ultimate falsehood of both the theory of said system in concept, and actuality of such a system in practice from his standpoint of what the real object is (material production). You're following through on this being a simple continuation of the original outline he sketches of the materialist theory of history, which grounds society in relations and forces of production. That such a project could work out overall is still open, but yes, I will admit that what I critiqued here misses the point insofar as this work is couched in a prior elaborated justification for certain assumptions. You're quite the rare Marxist for maintaining that line, because almost no Marxists do.
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy I get what you mean, but don't you think that on principle, out of interpretative charity, when in doubt about whether an author means X or Y, one should stealman the position they critique by picking the interpretation that is the most interally (and common-sensically) coherent? You point out repeatedly that under the interpretation of "starting from the concept of the commodity", Marx keeps making absolutely absurd claims, such as "all commodities are congealed labor" or whatever. Those claims are so absurd and happen again and again, under this interpretation. And yourself you repeatedly joke about it even "How could Marx believe such a thing, it's so obviously wrong". And yet, you decide that you will make a critique of this self-contradictory interpretation of Marx, rather than one of the much more internally coherent one (at least potentially, as you said here), which is that the starting concept is "production" (materialist theory of history). Don't you think it would be more interesting (especially, as a hegelian) to investigate the more internally coherent of the two interpretations, and see where it leads logically? You might be right that it's a minority interpretation, but every interpretation suffers from that. Nobody seem to agree on what the stuff means, because it's not well written enough (just like people disagree a lot for Hegel as well, maybe for different reasons). The truth isn't the result of a popularity contest. I think we could make more progress by actually elaborating on the most coherent theory we can find (assuming we don't want to rebuild a theory from the ground up ourselves), rather than attacking interpretations that are obviouslyi incoherent in the first place.
I've talked to Haz once before. A year and a half ago I reached out to him to have a livestream chat on Chinese philosophy. He said sure, but never responded further. I really have nothing to talk to him about. I neither have questions for him, nor does he have questions for me, and I'm not interested in 'perspectives'.
1:08:40 With regards to money and currency in this dollar example, Marx discusses the development of money, but for Marx, money exclusively exists as a commodity (at least as far as I understand). In other words, inconvertible fiat currency is explicitly not money any more as it cannot represent value, I.E. labor-power is not imbued into it such that it as a commodity can have exchange value expressed via the comparisons made in exchange. Gold worked as money; the value of gold was the value of what you exchanged the gold for as realized at the moment of exchange, and this was mediated by that "third thing" being the human labor imbued in the gold and in the commodity exchanged for the gold. So for me as a Marxist, at least with my reading, I'd argue that money was abolished in 1973 when the Bretton Woods system ended and lost its convertibility to gold, wherein what we refer to colloquially as "money" now no longer represents any commodity. Thus, fiat currency becomes similar to what Marx critiques in the first footnote of chapter three; dollars are no different than tickets to the theater.
What you said about fiat money is true in that the termination of the gold standard effectively "demonetized" commodity money and has thereby precluded the possibility of any other commodity taking its place. However, this gradual shift to managed currency has not terminated commodification, but has instead spurred the disintegration or retrogression of interest-bearing capital into that of loan capital. The current historical development is one of dispossession without accumulation. Capital has made its retreat into the interstices of the world and has commanding production into segregated enclaves of “special economic zones" and exporting wealth out of circulation into offshore tax havens and shadow banks, ensuring the powerlessness and destitution of the direct producer.
Capital is only meaningful when reading the first with the third. "the anatomy of man provides the key to the anatomy of a monkey" To arrive at the truth of value, you must gradually abstract.
The fundamental question addressed in the first volume of Capital is that of surplus-value. How is it possible that an amount of money can be thrown into the economy, more money taken out than was thrown in, and all this on the basis of the exchange of equivalents? Insofar as you merely criticize and provide no positive explanation of how such an apparently absurd and self-contradictory phenomenon is possible, your criticism is even less noteworthy than the most vulgar economists, who in all cases at least attempt a solution.
1) Merchant capital moves value around and concentrates in individuals without expanding the economy. Arbitrage provides the explanation of an individual's expansion of value. 2) Finance capital also simply moves value without requiring an expansion of the economy as such. 2) Industrial capital does not require the purchase of labor power, only the engagement of labor over its own self-reproducing needs. The petty bourgeois's capacity does not rest on exploitation of others, but on the taking of the powers of nature under the direction of one's labor. There is nothing absurd in it at all. We engage plants to grow, but we do not engage labor to fully produce plants, they produce themselves when we engage their process of life. The labor it takes to engage nature to produce is far less than the labor it would take to fully produce such natures as a whole. None of these require the LTV in any form.
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy Merchant capital relies on arbitrage, it is a simple shuffling of value -- agreed. Finance capital -- Is this in Lenin's definition, i.e. the merger of bank and industrial capital? In that case, sure, it does merely shuffle value around, since it is itself reliant on industrial capital which is the actual bearer of surplus value. Hence what really matters here is: Industrial capital. You say it does not require the purchase of labor power, only the production of more than a laborer requires to survive. Therefore, to say that one is laboring more than what is necessary for survival is to say that they are producing goods, the price of which is greater than the price of the goods they need to obtain. (I use price here instead of value, because it is unclear to me what value is to you, as you deny the LTV). Your argument is that a person can purchase some materials for x price, create a commodity out of them, sell it, and obtain a greater quantity of money than they began with. That is essentially industrial capital, in your understanding. Thus profit over and above the cost of production is achieved by labour (as in Marx), and the petty bourgeoisie does not exploit others (as in Marx). So far, your argument on merchant, finance, and industrial capital is in line with Marx, with the exception that he would not call the increased price of the product of the individual laborer over his cost of raw materials a form of "industrial capital." Further, your argument that engaging natural processes is more labor efficient than synthesizing everything in labor is true, and not in contradiction with Marx. Thus, you, I, and Marx are all in agreement, aside from some terminology. The issue is that you have not explained how a capitalist derives profit. I take it that you agree that capital exploits labor, then? Marx's argument from this is that the proletariat has an objective economic interest in the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. I also take it that you agree with this as well? In that case, your disagreement is along moral lines: Marx regards this as a desirable outcome, whereas you regard this as an undesirable outcome. Of course, the Marxist position is that the question of what one desires is determined by material conditions. One regards something as desirable due to their conditions, another regards something else as desirable due to different conditions. The question is then one of which class one serves, which set of interests they place themselves alongside. I take it, then, that you support worker cooperatives, or something similar which is in your class interest as an American worker?
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy Surely, even if I am on the wrong road, my comment deserves some response, as it takes the argument in the best faith I was capable of.
Empyrean Trail discord server
discord.com/invite/fG4f4zEe7j
36:00
Here is the crux of the disagreement you have with the marxists on your server. A misunderstanding happens right here. You are partially right and partially wrong here.
You are right in saying that Marx's Capital TAKEN BY ITSELF wouldn't constitute a proper hegelian development and that, if the starting point is "the commodity" as being "the stuff that exchanges", then the idea that it must be "made of labor" would be extrinsic, and therefore out of place in the conceptual development. If Marx was indeed doing that (which he would appear to be doing, if we only take Capital by itself), then you would be correct.
However, this is NOT what Marx is doing. Marx is to be blamed for your mistake here, because he is at fault for not writting more clearly and not having given a clear direction and what must be read BEFORE Capital.
In fact, the conceptual unfolding isn't starting from the Commodity (exchange), but instead from Labor (production). Basically, to keep it simple: reading the first 4~5 chapters of Smith's Wealth of Nation should be the equivalent of the missing "Capital Chapter 0".
The reason why it seems weird that he says that all commodities are products of labor in Chapter 1 (which would be false, as you point out) is because you have the wrong starting point. In the proper order of what he is trying to do, the conceptual development starts with labor (production of use-values, to satisfy human needs), and only then elaborates up to the point when one of the form the "product of labor" can take ends up being "the commodity".
Looked at in this order, it's clear that the "commodities" discussed in chapter 1 aren't ALL the commodities, but instead are only "the products of labors that take the commodity-form". And when you have that in mind, all the issue you raise here with chapter 1 disappear. It is absolutely true that "products of labor in commodity-form" are all "made of labor", and that therefore when two of them exchange, two amounts of concret labor are being put in an abstract qualitative equality.
The "non-labor commodity" such as "the land up to the horizon in the West" (your example) are not taken into account at this point, because the conceptual development hasn't reached that far yet (because we only deal with the products of labor at this point, so raising the issue of non-labor commodities would be extrinsic).
@KamKamKamKam Your response is something I can accept, and to be taken as heading towards a different project than one would get for economy as understood to be centered around the rules of commodities in the broader sense.
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy
So what you are saying is that Marx's project (if understood under the lense I propose) is not a critique of economics, but instead a critique of some other system (production maybe?). Is that right?
@@KamKamKamKam It *is* a critique of economics insofar as Marx believed he was showing the ultimate falsehood of both the theory of said system in concept, and actuality of such a system in practice from his standpoint of what the real object is (material production). You're following through on this being a simple continuation of the original outline he sketches of the materialist theory of history, which grounds society in relations and forces of production. That such a project could work out overall is still open, but yes, I will admit that what I critiqued here misses the point insofar as this work is couched in a prior elaborated justification for certain assumptions.
You're quite the rare Marxist for maintaining that line, because almost no Marxists do.
This is interesting! Can you tell me where these ideas are developed in marx / secondary literature?
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy I get what you mean, but don't you think that on principle, out of interpretative charity, when in doubt about whether an author means X or Y, one should stealman the position they critique by picking the interpretation that is the most interally (and common-sensically) coherent?
You point out repeatedly that under the interpretation of "starting from the concept of the commodity", Marx keeps making absolutely absurd claims, such as "all commodities are congealed labor" or whatever. Those claims are so absurd and happen again and again, under this interpretation. And yourself you repeatedly joke about it even "How could Marx believe such a thing, it's so obviously wrong".
And yet, you decide that you will make a critique of this self-contradictory interpretation of Marx, rather than one of the much more internally coherent one (at least potentially, as you said here), which is that the starting concept is "production" (materialist theory of history).
Don't you think it would be more interesting (especially, as a hegelian) to investigate the more internally coherent of the two interpretations, and see where it leads logically?
You might be right that it's a minority interpretation, but every interpretation suffers from that. Nobody seem to agree on what the stuff means, because it's not well written enough (just like people disagree a lot for Hegel as well, maybe for different reasons). The truth isn't the result of a popularity contest. I think we could make more progress by actually elaborating on the most coherent theory we can find (assuming we don't want to rebuild a theory from the ground up ourselves), rather than attacking interpretations that are obviouslyi incoherent in the first place.
Have you read the first few chapters of Smiths' Wealth of Nations?
Have you ever talked to a Haz from Infrared? He is no longer a debate bro and if both of you are in good faith it would be an interesting conversation
Nazbol he is
I've talked to Haz once before. A year and a half ago I reached out to him to have a livestream chat on Chinese philosophy. He said sure, but never responded further. I really have nothing to talk to him about. I neither have questions for him, nor does he have questions for me, and I'm not interested in 'perspectives'.
He was on an old video of Haz. A.W. was teaching Haz a bit of Hegel, but I think that video is gone now.
1:08:40
With regards to money and currency in this dollar example, Marx discusses the development of money, but for Marx, money exclusively exists as a commodity (at least as far as I understand). In other words, inconvertible fiat currency is explicitly not money any more as it cannot represent value, I.E. labor-power is not imbued into it such that it as a commodity can have exchange value expressed via the comparisons made in exchange. Gold worked as money; the value of gold was the value of what you exchanged the gold for as realized at the moment of exchange, and this was mediated by that "third thing" being the human labor imbued in the gold and in the commodity exchanged for the gold.
So for me as a Marxist, at least with my reading, I'd argue that money was abolished in 1973 when the Bretton Woods system ended and lost its convertibility to gold, wherein what we refer to colloquially as "money" now no longer represents any commodity. Thus, fiat currency becomes similar to what Marx critiques in the first footnote of chapter three; dollars are no different than tickets to the theater.
What you said about fiat money is true in that the termination of the gold standard effectively "demonetized" commodity money and has thereby precluded the possibility of any other commodity taking its place. However, this gradual shift to managed currency has not terminated commodification, but has instead spurred the disintegration or retrogression of interest-bearing capital into that of loan capital. The current historical development is one of dispossession without accumulation. Capital has made its retreat into the interstices of the world and has commanding production into segregated enclaves of “special economic zones" and exporting wealth out of circulation into offshore tax havens and shadow banks, ensuring the powerlessness and destitution of the direct producer.
Capital is only meaningful when reading the first with the third.
"the anatomy of man provides the key to the anatomy of a monkey"
To arrive at the truth of value, you must gradually abstract.
Didn’t expect this. Actually cool
If you haven't read volume 3 you've wasted your time
@@seedee3d If you heard the two hours and this is your response, *you* wasted your time.
USD/EUR?!
The fundamental question addressed in the first volume of Capital is that of surplus-value. How is it possible that an amount of money can be thrown into the economy, more money taken out than was thrown in, and all this on the basis of the exchange of equivalents?
Insofar as you merely criticize and provide no positive explanation of how such an apparently absurd and self-contradictory phenomenon is possible, your criticism is even less noteworthy than the most vulgar economists, who in all cases at least attempt a solution.
1) Merchant capital moves value around and concentrates in individuals without expanding the economy. Arbitrage provides the explanation of an individual's expansion of value.
2) Finance capital also simply moves value without requiring an expansion of the economy as such.
2) Industrial capital does not require the purchase of labor power, only the engagement of labor over its own self-reproducing needs. The petty bourgeois's capacity does not rest on exploitation of others, but on the taking of the powers of nature under the direction of one's labor. There is nothing absurd in it at all. We engage plants to grow, but we do not engage labor to fully produce plants, they produce themselves when we engage their process of life. The labor it takes to engage nature to produce is far less than the labor it would take to fully produce such natures as a whole.
None of these require the LTV in any form.
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy
Merchant capital relies on arbitrage, it is a simple shuffling of value -- agreed.
Finance capital -- Is this in Lenin's definition, i.e. the merger of bank and industrial capital? In that case, sure, it does merely shuffle value around, since it is itself reliant on industrial capital which is the actual bearer of surplus value. Hence what really matters here is:
Industrial capital. You say it does not require the purchase of labor power, only the production of more than a laborer requires to survive. Therefore, to say that one is laboring more than what is necessary for survival is to say that they are producing goods, the price of which is greater than the price of the goods they need to obtain. (I use price here instead of value, because it is unclear to me what value is to you, as you deny the LTV).
Your argument is that a person can purchase some materials for x price, create a commodity out of them, sell it, and obtain a greater quantity of money than they began with. That is essentially industrial capital, in your understanding. Thus profit over and above the cost of production is achieved by labour (as in Marx), and the petty bourgeoisie does not exploit others (as in Marx). So far, your argument on merchant, finance, and industrial capital is in line with Marx, with the exception that he would not call the increased price of the product of the individual laborer over his cost of raw materials a form of "industrial capital."
Further, your argument that engaging natural processes is more labor efficient than synthesizing everything in labor is true, and not in contradiction with Marx. Thus, you, I, and Marx are all in agreement, aside from some terminology.
The issue is that you have not explained how a capitalist derives profit. I take it that you agree that capital exploits labor, then? Marx's argument from this is that the proletariat has an objective economic interest in the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. I also take it that you agree with this as well? In that case, your disagreement is along moral lines: Marx regards this as a desirable outcome, whereas you regard this as an undesirable outcome.
Of course, the Marxist position is that the question of what one desires is determined by material conditions. One regards something as desirable due to their conditions, another regards something else as desirable due to different conditions. The question is then one of which class one serves, which set of interests they place themselves alongside. I take it, then, that you support worker cooperatives, or something similar which is in your class interest as an American worker?
@@AntonioWolfphilosophy Surely, even if I am on the wrong road, my comment deserves some response, as it takes the argument in the best faith I was capable of.