Republicans can’t seem to accurately define what socialism is

[danielpalos]

We've seen the movie, it never ends well.

You've got to read the book. They always butcher the movie.

Here Marx attempts to correct the storyline before the release of the movie.

Critique of the Gotha Programme

Idiots like the op have long existed. It's the reason Marx proclaimed that he wasn't a Marxist.

Billy000 is not a democratic socialist, he is a stooge for the capitalist state.

Are this much of a moron to believe Marxism is the same as social democratic principles?

You don't claim to be a social democrat. You claim to be a democratic socialist. Do you understand the difference?

There is no difference depending on the source but yes there are minor differences. I really wouldn’t expect you to understand that because you think it’s the same as Marxism.

Most socialists use Marxist arguments to justify their Utopia.

We have our own social Contract, it is the federal doctrine.

 

[danielpalos]

Lol, I don't believe workers are being exploited by the market, stupid.

Then you aren't a marxist.

How would you know?

Marxists all believe that capitalism exploits the worker because they aren't paid for the "intrinsic value" of their work.

What has that to do with the market?

Capitalism is the market. Do you imagine there is a market under socialism?

Only if we have to quibble.

 

[Tehon]

Neither one you dumb shit.

Then why did you say I thought "it" is the same as Marxism?

Say what you mean.

Actually, I don't really care.

There is a distinct difference between a social democrat and a democratic socialist.

You are a social democrat. You believe in redistribution of wealth by means of the state. You believe this because you believe in the capitalist system but wish to offset the worst of its abuses.

As opposed to a democratic socialist. One who believes in Marxist principles relating to the social means of production but believes it will be brought about through democracy rather than social revolution.

Democratic socialists oppose marxist-leninist socialism, or stalinism, because the soviet style implementations were non-democratic.

Now you will have to demonstrate where Marx advocated for the soviet approach to a socialist state. I won't hold my breath, I know you can't.

Since Karl Marx died 46 years prior to the soviet implementation of his ideas, you're just putting the cart before the horse.
However, you can see in a letter written in 1881 to Vera Zasulich, where Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village of mir.

Marxism did promote democracy, which is nothing like the soviet approach.

My apologies, I think I misconstrued your original response to me.

 

[dblack]

What we're all still wondering, Tehon, is what does Marx want to do with this definite value?

You failed utterly to demonstrate that the term "intrinsic value" means anything.

It's the accumulated labor hours required to produce a commodity. Surely you can agree that it takes time and labor to improve upon nature. That is something all commodities have in common irrespective of cost.

I can agree to that. As long as you don't try to equivocate and compare that measure to the market value. Apples and oranges.

I don't believe I have.

Ok, you quoted Marx a while back - something about "capitalists extracting 'surplus value' from the workers". Isn't he comparing the socially necessary labor value to the market price, and decrying the difference as exploitation?

 

[dblack]

The thing I could never get past with Marx was his treatment of labor as a commodity. Labor is people working. People. Intelligent agents. Individuals. Not commodities.

 

[Tehon]

What we're all still wondering, Tehon, is what does Marx want to do with this definite value?

He wants you to understand that it is a quality that is common to all commodities.

Ok, you quoted Marx a while back - something about "capitalists extracting 'surplus value' from the workers". Isn't he comparing the socially necessary labor value to the market price, and decrying the difference as exploitation?

Marx doesn't concern himself with the market here. The market obscures the definite value contained in a commodity, as has been plainly demonstrated in this thread. He looks at commodities as exchange values, how they compare quantitatively one to another.

I want keep this post as brief as possible. Let me provide an example of how labor is exploited. One that I've already used.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

The thing I could never get past with Marx was his treatment of labor as a commodity. Labor is people working. People. Intelligent agents. Individuals. Not commodities.

It's a commodity because like when we improve upon nature with the intent to sell something in the market, we improve upon our selves with the intent of selling our skills in the market.

Just like a commodity we enter the market and our skills become subject to it.

 

[Tehon]

Anyone who thinks this is pure Marxist fantasy would do well to examine Adam Smith's thoughts on it, or better still, David Ricardo.

 

[bripat9643]

Anyone who thinks this is pure Marxist fantasy would do well to examine Adam Smith's thoughts on it, or better still, David Ricardo.

The advancement of economics didn't stop with Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

 

[bripat9643]

What we're all still wondering, Tehon, is what does Marx want to do with this definite value?

He wants you to understand that it is a quality that is common to all commodities.

Ok, you quoted Marx a while back - something about "capitalists extracting 'surplus value' from the workers". Isn't he comparing the socially necessary labor value to the market price, and decrying the difference as exploitation?

Marx doesn't concern himself with the market here. The market obscures the definite value contained in a commodity, as has been plainly demonstrated in this thread. He looks at commodities as exchange values, how they compare quantitatively one to another.

I want keep this post as brief as possible. Let me provide an example of how labor is exploited. One that I've already used.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

The thing I could never get past with Marx was his treatment of labor as a commodity. Labor is people working. People. Intelligent agents. Individuals. Not commodities.

It's a commodity because like when we improve upon nature with the intent to sell something in the market, we improve upon our selves with the intent of selling our skills in the market.

Just like a commodity we enter the market and our skills become subject to it.

Your example is absurd and would never happen in the real world.

 

[Tehon]

My example is fundamental and fundamentally nothing has changed since the time of Smith and Ricardo.

 

[bripat9643]

My example is fundamental and fundamentally nothing has changed since the time of Smith and Ricardo.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

As for Smith and Ricardo, apparently you never heard of the marginal revolution.

You know nothing about the subject of economics that isn't 200 years old.

 

[Tehon]

My example is fundamental and fundamentally nothing has changed since the time of Smith and Ricardo.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

As for Smith and Ricardo, apparently you never heard of the marginal revolution.

You know nothing about the subject of economics that isn't 200 years old.

You have got to be the dumbest person on this forum.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

My analogy is exactly what happens in a capitalist system, fundamentally speaking.

The surplus value is not a markup, stupid. It is the value that naturally accrued in the process of improving nature by means of labor.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

The capitalist is unnecessary to the process of producing a commodity. The only two requirements are nature and labor. The capitalist increases the cost to society in the process of producing the means of our existence. The trade off is that we have developed the techniques of production and increased our wealth at a more rapid pace.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

The truth of the matter is that it is a very broad term. It’s something that’s always been apart of the framework of this country yet Repubs like to pretend it is the antithesis of the Founding Father’s philosophy. Republicans have a hard time even defining the term in their OWN WORDS. That alone tells you they lack a basic understanding of the word.

Citation needed. It looks to me like you're considering infrastructure as Socialist, despite that being totally false, and debunked by me the last time we discussed it.

There’s really no need to cite anything. Any program funded by tax payers is socialism. You will figure that out if you look up the actual definition. Our defense budget, for example, is the biggest socialist institution in the world. Lol and of course our infrastructure is socialist. It’s funded by tax payers.

Just looked up the actual definition.

so·cial·ism
ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/
noun
noun: socialism

1. a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
   synonyms: leftism, welfarism; More
   radicalism, progressivism, social democracy;
   communism, Marxism, labor movement
   "my appreciation for certain aspects of socialism does not mean I'm a socialist"
   • policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
     synonyms: leftism, welfarism; More
     radicalism, progressivism, social democracy;
     communism, Marxism, labor movement
     "my appreciation for certain aspects of socialism does not mean I'm a socialist"
   • (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

So -any- tax funded program is socialist? Not unless it actually takes control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange and puts them in the hands of the "community as a whole" (government). Or if it's based on the theory that all means of production should be under such control.

Seems that YOU can't seem to accurately define socialism, either.

This all reminds me of the bible. Something about a speck in my neighbor's eye and a plank in mine.

 

[bripat9643]

My example is fundamental and fundamentally nothing has changed since the time of Smith and Ricardo.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

As for Smith and Ricardo, apparently you never heard of the marginal revolution.

You know nothing about the subject of economics that isn't 200 years old.

You have got to be the dumbest person on this forum.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

My analogy is exactly what happens in a capitalist system, fundamentally speaking.

The surplus value is not a markup, stupid. It is the value that naturally accrued in the process of improving nature by means of labor.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

The capitalist is unnecessary to the process of producing a commodity. The only two requirements are nature and labor. The capitalist increases the cost to society in the process of producing the means of our existence. The trade off is that we have developed the techniques of production and increased our wealth at a more rapid pace.

Really? Show my the brute dumb labor that can build a car or assemble a cell phone by himself. In a couple of decades, no labor at all will be involved in the production of cars and cell phones. Robots will do it all. Then what will be the relevance of your labor theory of value?

Furthermore, you haven't ever shown that the "value" of a product is equal to the cost of the labor. You simply assume it.

 

[Tehon]

My example is fundamental and fundamentally nothing has changed since the time of Smith and Ricardo.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

As for Smith and Ricardo, apparently you never heard of the marginal revolution.

You know nothing about the subject of economics that isn't 200 years old.

You have got to be the dumbest person on this forum.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

My analogy is exactly what happens in a capitalist system, fundamentally speaking.

The surplus value is not a markup, stupid. It is the value that naturally accrued in the process of improving nature by means of labor.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

The capitalist is unnecessary to the process of producing a commodity. The only two requirements are nature and labor. The capitalist increases the cost to society in the process of producing the means of our existence. The trade off is that we have developed the techniques of production and increased our wealth at a more rapid pace.

Really? Show my the brute dumb labor that can build a car or assemble a cell phone by himself. In a couple of decades, no labor at all will be involved in the production of cars and cell phones. Robots will do it all. Then what will be the relevance of your labor theory of value?

Furthermore, you haven't ever shown that the "value" of a product is equal to the cost of the labor. You simply assume it.

Yes, exactly. The production of commodities is a social relationship. You would make Marx proud.

And you have inadvertently stumbled into the the capitalist problem of economic singularity.

 

[bripat9643]

My example is fundamental and fundamentally nothing has changed since the time of Smith and Ricardo.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

As for Smith and Ricardo, apparently you never heard of the marginal revolution.

You know nothing about the subject of economics that isn't 200 years old.

You have got to be the dumbest person on this forum.

It's fundamentally absurd. No one would produce furniture for a man who took it and immediately sold it for an impressive markup. The worker would simply manufacture it for himself and sell it.

My analogy is exactly what happens in a capitalist system, fundamentally speaking.

The surplus value is not a markup, stupid. It is the value that naturally accrued in the process of improving nature by means of labor.

What a capitalist does is identify a market, pruchase some land, build a factory, purchase tools and equipment, hire numerous people and pay them for weeks and months before a single product is sold. The capitalists invests huge sums before he gets a single dollar for his troubles.

The capitalist is unnecessary to the process of producing a commodity. The only two requirements are nature and labor. The capitalist increases the cost to society in the process of producing the means of our existence. The trade off is that we have developed the techniques of production and increased our wealth at a more rapid pace.

Really? Show my the brute dumb labor that can build a car or assemble a cell phone by himself. In a couple of decades, no labor at all will be involved in the production of cars and cell phones. Robots will do it all. Then what will be the relevance of your labor theory of value?

Furthermore, you haven't ever shown that the "value" of a product is equal to the cost of the labor. You simply assume it.

Yes, exactly. The production of commodities is a social relationship. You would make Marx proud.

You were just trying to tell me that the carpenter could do it all by himself, that the capitalist isn't necessary.

And you have inadvertently stumbled into the the capitalist problem of economic singularity.

You still haven't explained what that means. Certainly, it isn't a term that economists use.

 

[dblack]

Marx doesn't concern himself with the market here. The market obscures the definite value contained in a commodity, as has been plainly demonstrated in this thread. He looks at commodities as exchange values, how they compare quantitatively one to another.

I want keep this post as brief as possible. Let me provide an example of how labor is exploited. One that I've already used.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

Your example does exactly what I claimed Marx is doing all along - it conflates market value with your "socially necessary labor value". When you say that a capitalist gives "the worker less than the value that he created through his labor" you're mixing values. The amount the worker is paid is the market value of their labor and, as you've acknowledged repeatedly, has nothing to do with the "socially necessary labor value" of the products they create - they are two different measurements of two different things. It's like comparing inches and pounds. It makes no sense.

 

[Tehon]

Marx doesn't concern himself with the market here. The market obscures the definite value contained in a commodity, as has been plainly demonstrated in this thread. He looks at commodities as exchange values, how they compare quantitatively one to another.

I want keep this post as brief as possible. Let me provide an example of how labor is exploited. One that I've already used.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

Your example does exactly what I claimed Marx is doing all along - it conflates market value with your "socially necessary labor value". When you say that a capitalist gives "the worker less than the value that he created through his labor" you're mixing values. The amount the worker is paid is the market value of their labor and, as you've acknowledged repeatedly, has nothing to do with the "socially necessary labor value" of the products they create - they are two different measurements of two different things. It's like comparing inches and pounds. It makes no sense.

You didn't answer the question that was posed.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

Nothing is being conflated.

 

[dblack]

The capitalist is unnecessary to the process of producing a commodity. The only two requirements are nature and labor. The capitalist increases the cost to society in the process of producing the means of our existence. The trade off is that we have developed the techniques of production and increased our wealth at a more rapid pace.

I'm always impressed the ability of Marxists to blind themselves to the function of capitalists in a free market economy. They entertain a cartoonish stereotype, but never give it much though beyond that.

In the early nineties, I had a formative discussion with a former economic planner for the Soviet Union. He was insistent that the most important lesson of the USSR experiment was the intractable difficulty of managing a command economy. From his perspective, that's what really sunk them - not the Cold War, not corruption - but the impossibility of equitably commanding production of goods and services from a centralized authority. He said, that in later years, they conceded that the planning needed to be more localized and distributed - but even with that improvement, the local agents had very little incentive to efficiently distribute the capital entrusted to them, ie no skin in the game.

The point is, getting rid of capitalists doesn't do away with the need to distribute capital. Someone still has to decide which projects go forward and which do not. Someone still has to organize people and resources in a way that produces real value - use value, not Marx's abstractions.

 

[dblack]

Marx doesn't concern himself with the market here. The market obscures the definite value contained in a commodity, as has been plainly demonstrated in this thread. He looks at commodities as exchange values, how they compare quantitatively one to another.

I want keep this post as brief as possible. Let me provide an example of how labor is exploited. One that I've already used.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

Your example does exactly what I claimed Marx is doing all along - it conflates market value with your "socially necessary labor value". When you say that a capitalist gives "the worker less than the value that he created through his labor" you're mixing values. The amount the worker is paid is the market value of their labor and, as you've acknowledged repeatedly, has nothing to do with the "socially necessary labor value" of the products they create - they are two different measurements of two different things. It's like comparing inches and pounds. It makes no sense.

You didn't answer the question that was posed.

Because the question makes no sense. It compares two different unrelated measures and pretends it's a meaningful comparison.

If I hired someone to chop down a tree in my yard, mill the wood and create a piece of furniture that I intended to exchange for something of equal value with the intent of building capital, how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?

Nothing is being conflated.

Ostrich much? Explain "giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor". How can the amount you pay the worker - the market value of their work - be less than the "socially necessary labor hours". How can you compare hours and dollars?