I appear to be a Marxist

[Bored Of Education]

I have never particularly called myself anything "-ist". I don't know whether it is a wish not to pigeonhole myslef or just not having idealogical willpower to ascribe to any dogma fully

I realise it would be contrary not to admit to broadly being a socialist but that is as far as I have gone.

Recently, however, I have been doing a sociology course and have found that whenever I agree with something, it turns out to be a Marxist viewpoint.

My mission for you is to find a tenet of Marxism that I couldn't possibly agree with so as to return to my previously wishy washy ways

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

We don't know what you couldn't possibly agree with, that's the trouble.

[The Contented Penguin]

I appear to be a Marxist

Bored of All the Beasts wrote:

I have never particularly called myself anything "-ist". I don't know whether it is a wish not to pigeonhole myslef or just not having idealogical willpower to ascribe to any dogma fully

I realise it would be contrary not to admit to broadly being a socialist but that is as far as I have gone.

Recently, however, I have been doing a sociology course and have found that whenever I agree with something, it turns out to be a Marxist viewpoint.

My mission for you is to find a tenet of Marxism that I couldn't possibly agree with so as to return to my previously wishy washy ways

I came to define myself as Marxist for almost exactly the same reason (minus the sociology course) - I just came to realise I agreed with all the fundamentals of Marx's theory - the division of labour/capital, Marxist interpretation of history, the labour theory of value.

One tenet of Marxism I don't agree with - not because I disagree but because I'm not sure I understand so therefore can't agree with - is dialectic materialism. I mean, I think I understand, but I always have a nagging doubt that I don't. I'm pretty embarassed about this because it is basically the starting point of Marxist thought.

Can anybody explain it to me in a way that I can understand (ie very very simply)? Hundreds have failed...

[G-Man]

I appear to be a Marxist

The are so many brands of Marxism in the social sciences that you can't be just a Marxist. Marx is like the Bible, prone to wildly different interpretations which their adherents will dogmatically defend to (academic) death.

[Guest]

I appear to be a Marxist

Bored why not embrace it, you should be proud.

I have spent the last few days arguing with people on the internets, when will I ever learn about 50% tax brackets and have basically taken the position "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

[Bored Of Education]

I appear to be a Marxist

Bored why not embrace it, you should be proud.

Oh, I probably will. It is a bit like being diagnosed with ADHD or something. The labelling doesn't make you one, it just comes up with a name.

I am just surprised as, having never studies a lot about Marx and Marxism, I never thought I would fall into it accidentally.

For instance, I am the same as this

One tenet of Marxism I don't agree with - not because I disagree but because I'm not sure I understand so therefore can't agree with - is dialectic materialism..

I have never heard of dialetic materialism but now I am not sure whether to look it up to see whether I agree with it or not

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

That's where I start parting company with it. Which is, as people have said, kind of at the beginning.

I don't buy the labour theory of value either, really. Or at least, I don't think it's quite kosher as a use of language. By "value" we don't normally mean what Marx says "value" means; we mean, in some sense, what a good is "worth". Marx is free to argue that in practice it's labour that creates this worth, and further that this happens in a strictly proportional way. I think in practice these claims aren't quite true, but they may very well do as rules of thumb. What he can't legitimately do is define value to mean "amount of labour", and then use this definition as the basis for what's essentially a disguised piece of moralising about who deserves what.

One reason I think this is a pity is that I reckon the moralising can survive undisguised. The central moral claim of socialism is correct. It doesn't need smuggling in dressed as economic science.

[The Contented Penguin]

I appear to be a Marxist

Maybe I'm missing something, but if profit and supply and demand are removed from the equation then how else would the value of something be quantified other than material cost and labour?

[Banana Banana]

I appear to be a Marxist

The two sticky points for me:

1. Most actual living Marxists are Leninists. Whilst Leninism with all its secrecy and cadres and vanguardism was pretty important in the run up to the Russian revolution, it is ultimately dangerous and sows many of the problems that erstwhile socialist states have faced: e.g. secrecy leading to corruption, vanguardism leading to autocracy. There are of course many good and noble Marxist-Leninists out there. However the secrecy and centralism also attracts dangeous autocrats like Mengistu of Ehtiopia and Burnham of Guyana.

2. Marxism was so very right to identify wealth as a key driver in historical and political situation past and present. However I think Marxism as currently expressed becomes very reductionist and tries to batter all aspects of human behaviour into this model(I can hear the howls of protest as I speak). Thus squeezing other even more basic needs like love and procreation into the wealth prism. Whereas, maybe in reality, wealth is used as a means to procreate successfully.

[G-Man]

I appear to be a Marxist

I think it is necessary to distinguish between Marxism as understood in political discourse, and the way Marxism and its various Judaean Liberation Front type strands is applied in sociology (which is how Bored discovered the inner Marxist).

As I said before, Marxist theory in the study of the social "sciences" is a useful reference point, but has become so fucking confused in conflicting variations as to be helpful as a label.

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

The Contented Penguin wrote:

Maybe I'm missing something, but if profit and supply and demand are removed from the equation then how else would the value of something be quantified other than material cost and labour?

Well, for a start, that's a big if, particularly the supply and demand bit. But more basically, I'm not sure Marx is any more justified in reifying "value" as an objective property of goods than are the "price discovery" free market evangelists on the right. I'm not sure it's possible, in any non-arbitrary way, to assign a "value" to something separate from what I, and you, and the bloke on the Dar es Salaam omnibus, are prepared to give up in exchange for it, which is something the three of us probably have different answers for.

I think the cracks in the concept show up most starkly in the exceptions, for which Marx is obliged to invoke separate explanations. One of those exceptions is money. A worker at the Royal Mint would, if we naively applied Marxian reasoning, be the most exploited worker in the country, because never in a million years will his income approach the "value" of what he happens to produce. (Omar Khayyam made a similar point about winemakers, but then he was a big pisshead.) Now, no-one does apply Marxian reasoning that naively, because clearly money is a special case, whose "value" is purely conventional, and based on a kind of collective pretence. It doesn't count as a good.

But I think it's only special in degree. There are other things, generally thought of as goods, whose exchange value has a large element of the conventional. And the Marxist notion of commodity fetishism doesn't quite cover them, I think, because I reckon conventional value is genuinely a form of value. When you buy a diamond ring, you're not participating in some sort of mass delusion, you're buying style and cachet and investment value and all sorts of things you can, as it were, actually cut glass with.

[MsD]

I appear to be a Marxist

I was the class Marxist at uni and was once accused angrily by a fellow student of "sitting in the easychair of dialectic materialism", which puzzled me somewhat, and which you'd think might be a contender for "best insult" had you not heard some of the things I've been called.

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

I was the class Marxist...

Is there any other kind?

[MsD]

I appear to be a Marxist

classy Marxist, sorry

[The Contented Penguin]

I appear to be a Marxist

Why on Earth... wrote:

The Contented Penguin wrote:

Maybe I'm missing something, but if profit and supply and demand are removed from the equation then how else would the value of something be quantified other than material cost and labour?

Well, for a start, that's a big if, particularly the supply and demand bit

But isn't that the point of a planned economy? To eradicate market-driven profiteering, which is what supply and demand is.

[/quote]But more basically, I'm not sure Marx is any more justified in reifying "value" as an objective property of goods than are the "price discovery" free market evangelists on the right. I'm not sure it's possible, in any non-arbitrary way, to assign a "value" to something separate from what I, and you, and the bloke on the Dar es Salaam omnibus, are prepared to give up in exchange for it, which is something the three of us probably have different answers for.

I think the cracks in the concept show up most starkly in the exceptions, for which Marx is obliged to invoke separate explanations. One of those exceptions is money. A worker at the Royal Mint would, if we naively applied Marxian reasoning, be the most exploited worker in the country, because never in a million years will his income approach the "value" of what he happens to produce. (Omar Khayyam made a similar point about winemakers, but then he was a big pisshead.) Now, no-one does apply Marxian reasoning that naively, because clearly money is a special case, whose "value" is purely conventional, and based on a kind of collective pretence. It doesn't count as a good.

But I think it's only special in degree. There are other things, generally thought of as goods, whose exchange value has a large element of the conventional. And the Marxist notion of commodity fetishism doesn't quite cover them, I think, because I reckon conventional value is genuinely a form of value. When you buy a diamond ring, you're not participating in some sort of mass delusion, you're buying style and cachet and investment value and all sorts of things you can, as it were, actually cut glass with.[/quote]
I agree. Clearly, the value of a Monet is going to be calculated in a different manner than a cheap bath plug. Nonetheless, when applied to 'non-creative' industry, or in other words when applied to production (manufacture, agriculture) the theory stands up. Given Marx & Engels perceived their theory to be the next 'great leveller' (slavery/feudalism/capitalism/socialism/communism) of society, and that those who were poorest were likely to work in production, and taking into account the predominant theories prior to Marx, it still strikes me as a good foundation on which to base understanding.

The Royal Mint thing is an interesting one though.

[Brandenburger Toro]

I appear to be a Marxist

Great stuff here by Wyatt.

At one extreme, "Marxism" is deeply silly; warmed-over left Hegelianism with asinine metaphysics, and a century and a half of psychic trauma inflicted by dogmatism, apologetics, and Bad Craziness. At the other, we are basically all Marxists now.

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

But isn't that the point of a planned economy? To eradicate market-driven profiteering, which is what supply and demand is.

That's begging the question, isn't it? Arguing in a circle, I mean. You seem to be justifying the labour theory of value by using a definition of "profiteering" that depends on it.

Again, let's explore the exceptions. I'f you've seen Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, you'll know that a source of water has an exchange value in Provence (one that will add to the price of land) that it doesn't have in the UK. Who's profiteering there, sauf le bon Dieu?

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

Fascinating link from toro there.

[MsD]

I appear to be a Marxist

To be very brief and simplistic about it as I have a glamorous lunch appointment and am not properly awake yet ... isn't the basis of Marxism, without getting into Marxiology, the fact that economics are the bottom line? I did my Masters in the 90s when it was post-this and post-that, and much of it seemed intellectual conceit, wanking in the wind when people are dying from poverty, childbirth and preventable diseases as well as conflict.

The politics of identity is useful in analysing a lot of new conflicts that are based on ethnic/tribal/religious divisions, but I'd always look at vested economic interests and competition over resources as a factor ... follow the money first, I would say.

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

This is the kind of project for which dialectical materialism descends into comedy.

[The Contented Penguin]

I appear to be a Marxist

Why on Earth... wrote:

But isn't that the point of a planned economy? To eradicate market-driven profiteering, which is what supply and demand is.

That's begging the question, isn't it? Arguing in a circle, I mean. You seem to be justifying the labour theory of value by using a definition of "profiteering" that depends on it.

Again, let's explore the exceptions. I'f you've seen Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, you'll know that a source of water has an exchange value in Provence (one that will add to the price of land) that it doesn't have in the UK. Who's profiteering there, sauf le bon Dieu?

I wouldn't have thought it contentious to use the term profiteering - to extract a profit without labour should be referred to as what exactly?

I want to make quite clear I'm not holding myself up as an expert - I've read a lot on the subject but have this awful habit of only taking in about 5%.

The Labour theory of value was/is intended to refer to production and the means of production, which doesn't apply in the example you've given. In relation to production, I would again ask that, once capital profit is removed, how else would you attribute a value to an object other than a) cost of raw materials and b) labour?

I'm genuinely open to opposing theories (I find all this stuff interesting) but I don't see how else a value would be calculated? I also don't see how I've argued in a circle, but I probably have.

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

MsD wrote:

To be very brief and simplistic about it as I have a glamorous lunch appointment and am not properly awake yet ... isn't the basis of Marxism, without getting into Marxiology, the fact that economics are the bottom line?

Yeah, arguably. And I don't buy that either. Mao was actually closer to the truth, I think, with his "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". But over and above that, economic "reality" has to be built on quite a complex foundation of ideas, I think. Without a culture, there is no economy.

That's aside from questions of "human nature", to which modern Marxists (unlike the dude himself) are apt to be (wrongly, in my view) hostile.

Look: clearly traditional historiography was woefully at fault, when discussing things like the Crusades, in neglecting economic factors. But anyone who thinks the Crusades can be explained withour assigning an autonomous role to culture and ideas is committing, I think, the opposite error.

MsD wrote:

I did my Masters in the 90s when it was post-this and post-that, and much of it seemed intellectual conceit, wanking in the wind when people are dying from poverty, childbirth and preventable diseases as well as conflict.

No argument from me there. But you can't identify the whole of culture with "post-this and post-that".

[EIM]

I appear to be a Marxist

Hmmmmm.... wanking in the wind.

[Wyatt Earp]

I appear to be a Marxist

I may well be misreading you, but:

1. You're defending a notion of value that defines it as the quantity of labour that goes into creating a good.

2. I responded by pointing out that this doesn't seem to correspond to value in the sense of worth.

3. You then say that that's OK because any cost in excess of the labour value comes from profiteering, and therefore in some sense isn't real. (This is the bit where I'm least sure I'm following you.)

4. But by "profiteering" you seem simply to mean "selling for a price in excess of the labour cost", which makes part 3 a tautology.

5. So we're no closer to a defence of the claim that each good possesses an objective "value".

[Gangster Octopus]

I appear to be a Marxist

You're misreading him. He was talking about wanking...