On Economic Crisis

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:23 pm

anaxarchos
11-06-2009, 10:42 PM
That transporting commodities adds value confused merchant capital at its infancy. They thought that they bought cheap and sold expensive, without putting their finger on the obvious fact that it was always cheap there and expensive here. If a commodity made in China can be transported halfway around the world and still be cheaper, it is a testimony to either the underlying advantage in cost of production or to the efficiency of transport.

Costs of circulation are those associated with turning commodities into money and then back into commodities ("changes in the forms of commodities"). It includes many of the elements of what is called "cost of sales" today, plus accountants, security guards, a big part of "management" and a good deal of the "unproductive labor" employed by corporations. All of these are deductions from surplus-value.

Look forward a couple of paragraphs from your quote:


Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible alteration of their natural qualities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is rather an unavoidable evil. But the use-value of things is materialised only in their consumption, and their consumption may necessitate a change of location of these things, hence may require an additional process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by adding value through the labour performed in transport. This last-named increment of value consists, as it does in all capitalist production, of a replacement of wages and of surplus-value.

Within each process of production, a great role is played by the change of location of the subject of labour and the required instruments of labour and labour-power — such as cotton trucked from the carding to the spinning room or coal hoisted from the shaft to the surface. The transition of the finished product as finished goods from one independent place of production to another located at a distance shows the same phenomenon, only on a larger scale. The transport of products from one productive establishment to another is furthermore followed by the passage of the finished products from the sphere of production to that of consumption. The product is not ready for consumption until it has completed these movements.

As was shown above, the general law of commodity production holds: The productivity of labour is inversely proportional to the value created by it. This is true of the transport industry as well as of any other. The smaller the amount of dead and living labour required for the transportation of commodities over a certain distance, the greater the productive power of labour, and vice versa.[18]

The absolute magnitude of the value which transportation adds to the commodities stands in inverse proportion to the productive power of the transport industry and in direct proportion to the distance traveled, other conditions remaining the same.

chlamor
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Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:24 pm

anaxarchos
11-06-2009, 11:18 PM
...in our reading because:

1) Marx is much easier to read solo once we get past the early sections, and they are by far the most important. Once understood, you can get the rest while reading on the can... if that should be your interest. The opposite is nearly impossible - screaming past the early stuff in the hope of "getting it" later. In truth, most of the 6 volumes (3 of Capital and 3 of ToSV) are a concrete elaboration of the initial theoretical section.

2) I have read too much of the old fart, for too long, not to pick up his disdain for "definitions". Almost everything worked out before he died depends on "derivations", which are defeated by jumping forward.

One of the reasons I like this segment out of ToSV is that the basics don't depend on much more than what we have covered already, "line-by-line". Certainly, the calculus depends on the changing organic composition of Capital and much more than that. Truthfully, many things have evolved since Marx's time, notably state intervention and a primitive global reserve bank. Yet, the basics are identical to 150 years ago with all of the rest appearing as mere variations on a theme.

Still, this is more caution than disagreement.

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:24 pm

anaxarchos
11-06-2009, 11:27 PM
...let me know if there are any holes in what we have covered that we can help fill.

I get your circumstances. I laugh to myself every time someone talks about "really doing something". I'm wondering about how to do a whole lot less "something".

Still, as you pointed out, I haven't quite seen this sort of thing (Capital) on the web before, it is kinda workin', and it potentially matters.

Keep touch as you can, brother.

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:24 pm

anaxarchos
11-06-2009, 11:44 PM
..."vanguardist" and "vanguard versus mass party" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and all that, sometime (but not soon), in the same way we talked about Populists, Nihilists, and "Mensheviks" (that is, in context). All of that jive derives from a time when they were accusing V.I. Lenin, of all people, of being a loosey-goosey Anarcho-Narodnik. ...quite the irony for the ultra democratic anarcho-youngins of today.

'Course, the whole world looks different depending on whether one has the secret police living in ones socks or whether one is discussing "social alternatives" over a cabernet.

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:24 pm

anaxarchos
11-07-2009, 12:04 AM
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.


You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:25 pm

blindpig
11-07-2009, 06:10 AM
[div class="excerpt"]
The absolute magnitude of the value which transportation adds to the commodities stands in inverse proportion to the productive power of the transport industry and in direct proportion to the distance traveled, other conditions remaining the same.
[/quote]

in the time of he Silk Road, when the productive power of transport was low, commodities gained enormous value traveling from Asia to Europe. Today, with our tremendously improved transportation(within the strictures of capitalist economics, 'externals' and all that) a boatload of socket sets has virtually no value added.

Inexpensive steel products, transported half way across the world, have long been a source of puzzlement to me. Given the cost of raw material and in manufacturing labor and then add on transport cost it seems crazy. Even if the cost of manufacturing labor is near zero, how can they sell that stuff so cheap? Guess I just got my answer.

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:25 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
11-07-2009, 06:38 AM
and without all of the background laid out for context, I do think that "dictatorship of the proletariat" is kind of overblown by the fact that "dictatorship" is such a staple in the liberal Litany of Evil.

The thing that has always struck me (and check out the article by Joe B Mike posted in the articles section as it relates) is that we ALREADY live under the most onerous, oppressive, Molochian dictatorship possible -- that of Capital, that of things.

Given that the system rests entirely on unmitigated violence and violation, how else can it be overturned

As an anarcho-friend of mine is fond of saying "Violence works in mysterious ways"

Indeed

chlamor
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Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:26 pm

blindpig
11-07-2009, 07:25 AM
Violence is action, only a non-materialist could deny it. The commodification of the earth, of human lives, even thought, of box turtles and obscure rain forest plants necessitates action as a matter of survival. Life strives to survive, and that's that.

chlamor
Posts: 520
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:26 pm

anaxarchos
11-07-2009, 11:47 PM
...about "tools" versus "belief systems". In fact, all the Socialistas are famous from the beginning for NOT believing anything. That is one of the first counts in the indictment against us.

"Nihilists" - Those who believe in nothing. It would be a point of pride if such a thing were actually possible.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... isarev.jpg

chlamor
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Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: On Economic Crisis

Post by chlamor » Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:26 pm

blindpig
11-09-2009, 11:29 AM
Seems to me that the current cycle, which seems to be coming to a head like a nasty pimple, started at the end of WWII. The one before, I'm not sure. Waterloo surely marked a break, with Britain in a similar position to the US in 1945. Yet there was plenty of boom & bust going on in between. Would the 'Roaring Twenties' be considered a cycle in itself, crashing in 1929? Seems more like a bounce preceding the final catastrophe of WWII. The 1870's-1880's saw a lot of financial turmoil, the rise of the trusts and the modern corporation, perhaps a better choice.

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