I think I'm just lost at a certain point, and don't know what else to say. These are conceptual distinctions rather than reasons why the secular is somehow immune. All are vulnerable whether we are secular, non-secular, "modern", or "primitive" -- each has a fear, an anger, a love that can be invoked or evoked. Are the emotions the self which spells work upon? Do they evoke the emotions within a self to change the self, or to re-direct it? Or is the self a spell of the secular put inside me that someone else can see better than myself?

It's this latter that seems odd to me. If we are magic, and there be magicians, then it seems quite possible that I am under a spell of some sorts. In fact it would be odd if I weren't. But then, what is magic if it's just what I am? Am I the synthesis of Daddy-Mommy-Me that the secular magician can pick apart, move, and change who I am?

What I think I'd like to say is that such spells can re-direct us, but there's always the possibility of waking up from the spell. After all, we are magic -- not just the magicians. And I have a hard time understanding what a power even is if it doesn't act on something, even if that something is itself a magic power.

I can claim to be unenlightened at least, but I have to live in a post enlightenment world, being no angel. — unenlightened

I wouldn't question your namesake. Only you get to talk about that, at least in my philosophy. (A rule or a spell?)

But for me, for us, for the world, the enlightenment has a way of living on as a magic of sorts.

I think we can make claims about ourselves without invoking powers or spells. Or, in the set up I started, we are formed of magic, and powers or spells or demons act on us. I'd say I am not the enlightenment, for instance, though it keeps coming up in my memory (hauntings), and even in the here and now.

I think that's right. We speak a nihilist language of moral subjectivity and subjectivity eliminationism. But this self negation must obviously fail. I am determined not to be, therefore I am. The Nazis failed and the capitalists will fail because when the Monopoly is complete, the money game is over, but the world remains.

One feels on all sides these limits of objective science We are still talking about the workings of brains more that 2000 years dead. There can be no logical or scientific explanation for that. There is meaning that communicates across millennia , and to deny it is to affirm it. There is value, and we discover the cost of denying it.

Any minute now I'm going to be talking about not living on bread alone, and rich men not getting into heaven. We are still waiting for the double blind trials on these... — unenlightened

Meaning is a magic -- thinking about dis-enchantment, and how it can dispell meaning into language as a series of barks. I think that qualifies as one of these pseudo-places @Jamal, at least for me. I really do believe when I read things that they mean something because it's as obvious as my senses. But as soon as I think about how it's possible to feel like I know what Aristotle means by the mean between extremes, without being fluent in ancient Greek, that is wild to think about in terms of a phenomena to be explained. Why should the various signifiers I utilize have anything to do with the mind of a man long dead?

"People are stupid.", says Banno

I think we have been stupefied, not by conspiracy, but by the veneration of blindness in the name of objectivity, and we have been selling our souls for a mess of pottage. And all of this has been down to the failure of Western philosophy to defend the good.

I feel experimental, and stupefied. I've rewritten a response here many times now :D.

I've no explanation as of yet.



I've tried that book before. I didn't finish, but I know I'll do it again and finish it. Frantz Fanon should be more widely read.

I like that Heidegger's history is coming to be more widely known. It's important, I think.

I don't think it discounts Being and Time at least, though. Mostly because of Levinas. I figure if Levinas can see value in the philosophy and make use of it then I can. (though Levinas is still critical of Heidegger -- like philosophers ought be towards one another)

I think of science as the process of acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge being the result of scientific examination and experimentation. — Sir2u

I agree with this.

That is why knowledge is so well kept by the industries that succeed in gaining it, it is bloody expensive to maintain the labs and funded universities that do the research.

Oh, sure. I'm aware. Knowledge is valuable. Not just in some esoteric sense. It's worth money. Lots of it.

How would you define it? — Sir2u

I think that science is a part of knowledge. I don't have a general definition in the sense for all possible examples.

But usually I think of it as any culture's knowledge which enables. Science and technology, for me, are closely linked. I'm more skeptical of notions of science which posit metaphysical theses. I tend to think of science as what human beings do together. But the specifics of that, verses other things we do together, aren't easy for me to pin down.

Somehow human beings come together in groups and are able to generate knowledge that happens to be useful to people outside of that group, but in a particular way too. Something to do with being able to manipulate our environment.

Would it not be the other way round? The economy being tailored to science. — Sir2u

I'm interested! One of the reasons I thought to start the discussion was the hash out various meanings of "science".

Care to say more?

You can get a lot of information from academic journals on the web, but not the ones that contain the information that is moving the economy.
But the question there is, how many people would actually be interested in reading them? Not too many i believe. — Sir2u

Yup. And due to budgetary reasons public libraries don't invest in such things because they are prohibitively expensive and the interest is low. Usually public libraries attempt to cater to the people around them (which they should). So in terms of the social infrastructure that might be required I don't think I have an explicit opinion that'd actually be practical. I'm not sure how to get there.

But it seems fair. Why block knowledge? Isn't that a good thing for the public in a democracy?

Speaking of a re-occurring magical spell -- can we repudiate the enlightenment? Haven't we already done so, or tried?

Dis-enchantment as the repudiation of subjectivity: no hauntings from the past, no indoctrinations in the here and now, and no invocations for the future. If we are magic, and we're still around to say, then the dis-enchantment must be some kind of an illusion.

Even if we are magic, for dis-enchantment to work the magical power cannot be me. There are magical powers in the world which act, which various invocationists unleash upon the world and which we don't know really how they work. Once the advertisement increases sales the secular magician goes on to summon another demon into the world without a care for what other effects might come about. It lives on somehow beyond that moment, in the hauntings. And there are other secular magicians who will offer to exorcise the hauntings, too. But these offerings are offerings directed at me, not formations of me. I suppose that's what I'd like to say, even if we are magic.

I hope to meet the bar of philosophy. Such is my intent at least!

My interpretation of the notion of "magical powers", is that it is an 'undue' influence, a misleading, or distortion precisely of my interpretation of the world. — unenlightened

Interesting. So rather than looking at "interpretation" there's an outside influence on a person's interpretation. That already answers my question, then, about whether the self is a spell -- no! The self is already there, as is an interpretation too. There's a lot already going on before we can say, here's a distortion of an interpretation.

Folks may recall my threads on psychology as just such a systematic misleading tool. Every experiment begins with misdirection in order to prevent the natural human response of compliance with the other's wishes, or its opposite. The main successes being in the field of advertising and brainwashing; this has now reached the level of seriously interfering with elections by tailored posts based on individual data for example. Other techniques might include 'love-bombing' for example used by cults and others to recruit. There might be talk of memes here too.

So much for the secular magicians. — unenlightened

Advertising, brainwashing, love-bombing -- techniques developed to influence people for organizational ends. But there's something different, here. It's not like door knocking where you have a pamphlet to talk about what's pertinent to a person about the world around them. There are honest ways of building relationships -- and it's exactly that it's not a technique, but a relationship. It's not a procedure for getting a person to do X, but a conversation which goes both ways.

But we are already haunted by our selves. Billions of people all haunted by the way they interpret events, all seeing the magic from the outside, or not seeing it because it is inside. I was brought up with "The Bomb". It was the new thing in the world, to be accommodated by psyche; by pretty much everyone in the world. "When you hear the alarm, crouch under your desk, put your head between your knees, and kiss your arse goodbye." It was transformative, this new destructive power, and more shocking even than the revelation of the depths of human depravity exposed in the deliberate mass starvation in Russia, and the Final Solution in Europe. This is my interpretation of events: we haunt ourselves. The secular magicians are playing with forces they cannot comprehend because they cannot comprehend themselves. — unenlightened

Great point. The self as a haunting is really fascinating to me. In a good way. Stories of the past as hauntings of the present invokes the impossibility of memory bringing the past forward to effect the future (through our actions).

I like this phrase "the secular magicians". It fits.

So how to philosophise the forces that guide philosophy? First, breathe.
Now let us speak as equals round a campfire in the dark, of stories we have heard of faraway places and forgotten monsters, and the wonder of the stars, and the brevity of life.

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way.
— Trent Reznor, Hurt — unenlightened

:)

I think it's fruitful, but I don't know where the track is. — Jamal

Fair. I probably don't either then.

Can we distinguish between counter-spells that reveal the truth, like the glasses, and those that merely compete on the same ground, like the minimalism example I gave--bewitching us with something different and possibly better, but still bewitching us? How would we make that distinction? — Jamal

Yes, I think we can. And I think that's helpful too. In fact, one can probably sell the glasses, would be a way to put it. Counter-spells for sale, get your counter-spells here! Doesn't exactly have the same mystique as a magic box of glasses that shows you The Forms.

There's a similarity there with Plato's myth. I think I'd like to say They Live! is like that myth, but for something magic-akin (in Zizek's mind, ideology). It's a myth to talk about ideology rather than a spell proper.

Yes, and this is why it helps to use the concept of magic; I disagree with those who are dismissing it with an easy let's get real, there's no such thing as magic — Jamal

Cool. Same page, here. I find the notion of applying anthropological categories formerly reserved for understanding "primitive" peoples to better understand ourselves an interesting thought.

Immanent critique springs to mind. You dig into it from the inside, or to mix metaphors, you pull at the loose threads of contradiction, till you see how the spell really works—and then you tell people about it. You don’t presume to begin outside, like you’re something special; you're able to see the spell thanks to your critical reason, which you apply from within while knowing you’re under a spell like everybody else. You continue to fetishize commodities after you’ve read Capital.

This is a bit like the question of the historical relativism of philosophy: it’s a problem only if you’re not aware of it. You don’t have to be transcendent in your thinking, only critical. — Jamal

I like this. Good points.

I’m a bit lost too. There’s magic, enchantment, ideology, and, though I didn’t mention it, there’s myth too. And these terms are all used differently by different thinkers. For example, Adorno and Horkheimer contrast magic as a mostly ancient practice that addresses things in their specificity, with myth and enlightenment, which tend to bring things under general concepts as a means to explain and dominate nature. I feel like I should have stuck to the Weberian angle of disenchantment and enchantment. But then the OP would have been more boring. — Jamal

As long as we can acknowledge being a bit lost then I'm OK with that :D

Less boring is always better, especially for an OP because it's hard to gauge what'll actually stick or pick up enough people.

I think I'm mostly on track in stating "magical thinking", yes?

I like the idea of counter-spells. — Jamal

Me too! Almost like the glasses in They Live! -- I think part of the point of calling it "magic" is to note how odd this behavior is in relation to other things we say and do and to attempt to counter-spell it, as it were. Or at least acknowledge that we're stuck with it.

The recent lifestyle movement they called “minimalism” was set against the spell of consumerism, but was really just a magic spell itself, sitting alongside all the other self-help trends as yet another choice in a consumerist world.

Just describing this phenomenon feels so surreal to me in the magical sense. For lots of reasons but foremost being that I feel like "magic" is the right description for how consumerism has an adaptability unto itself, or at least feels like it's behaving on its own, like it's alive. But it's not like consumerism is a thing with properties, either, so it sits in a quasi-place.

but it really would be nice to have a purpose so I don't leave this world not knowing if I fell short. — TiredThinker

You made it this far. That's pretty good!

You undoubtedly have made a positive impact on someone's life. And that's enough!

I like to think of existential nihilism in conjunction with Epicureanism, specifically Lucretius -- acknowledging that the truths of Epicurus sound harsh to someone unused to them he wrote a poem to attempt to lighten to blow.

So I might say the lighter side of existential nihilism is that everyone is significant and meaningful. That's part of why it's hard to say there's a true meaning to life. If there were, then someone who is significant would be wrong -- and it seems to be working for them, so what could we possibly mean by that, given our own inability to know the truth on such things?

So all meaning must be derived from ones own mind, — TiredThinker

Is it derived from one's own mind? I'm not so sure. There are, for instance, existential Christians. From what I said before, since there is no true answer to "What is the meaning of life?", one answer to the question would be the Christian way of life, and there are Christians who think like that -- at least if I believe conversations I've had. (EDIT: Which would mean, for them, meaning is not derived from their mind, but God -- just with the acknowledgment that this is not really a true belief as much as a meaningful belief)

and one can still seek pleasure as a nihilist even if pleasure, pain, numbness, oblivion, are all basically the same to them beyond biological preferences?

One can -- do anything. I thought about earlier saying I'd prefer to substituted "ones own actions" for "ones own mind" in your question above.

I think that the existential emphasis, at least, would be on what you do. That's what brings you meaning. (until it doesn't.... but only you could really say if that's the case)

Well... attack upon labor began as soon as the CIO had power and flexed it, but I'm biased.

ADDON: Taft-Hartley Act is the first thing I think of.
ADDON2:
"The Taft–Hartley Act amended the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), adding new restrictions on union actions and designating new union-specific unfair labor practices. Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns."

I thought Harvey fielded the restaurant question fairly well. I'd point that person asking to the IWW as a realized place to go for restaurant organizing, and I guess this is also why I have this sympathy for service workers as being productive. It's not like those factory workers did everything. And now that women have become part of the workforce those roles have become more public than private than when Grandpa Marx was alive. ;) (EDIT: Should note, this being the internet, that I think this is a good thing from capital. Just noting differences in attitude towards what were considered "womens work" roles before they became firms)

yup!

Oooo listening -- I'm glad he mentioned "experiences" as a thing that's being produced! Super exciting. The reason for inventions of superfluity is the need for expanding consumption! (I mean... there are industries not only doing cruise lines, there are industries built on selling cruise lines!)

Ever wonder why loot boxes became a thing in video games? Or, even, video games? The revolutionary power of capital!

Hell yeah. I'm glad to have you still along.

I'm glad he highlighted the disposable time quote -- goes back to communism is free time and nothing else.

An interesting thing Harvey is highlighting with respect to population. "Marx couldn't stand Malthus" -- when capital actually benefits from having population. And also it's interesting to think about population growth as a predictor of Marx's theories. That's the geographer's eye reading Marx at work.

"India has recently taken over China as the most populous country in the world." - I didn't know that. Looking at this it's plausible. I, for one, do not keep up on population rates on the regular as my day job, so it's believable.

I like his eye for labor reserves. Also I'd note on top of labor reserves, especially with respect to Africa, there are also raw resources as yet untapped by capital that are slowly making inroads that way.

Heh. Harvey explaining how Grandpa Marx hated the Lumpenproletariat -- the Gutterpunks are still welcome! Just ignore Grandpa then! ::lmao::

I can see how Harvey definitely disagrees with my thought that productive labor is within a firm too. Maybe best to keep the productive/unproductive question open @fdrake

There is no value without realization. If you work at something and you make a commodity and you can't sell it then the commodity has no value. The tendency in the Marxist tradition to fetishize production... no they equally important. You can't have realization without production, and you can't have production without realization. Value depends upon the contradictory unity....

Ahhhh! Nice. That's super cool to hear with all the questions I've been asking. You don't have to discuss realization in volume 1 of Capital because it's assumed away. That makes so much sense! Also why I'm confused so much in reading this, thinking back to Capital V1 :D "Barriers" were never mentioned, and here Harvey is saying "barriers" matter, which only occur in the field of realization.

"the thread of devaluation"

two forms of devaluation --

(1) you lose the value entirely. you make something take it to market and can't sell it. what then is lost. both labor put into it and also the constant capital was lost.

(2) you may partially lose the value, by selling it at a loss. Got back the raw materials, but not the labor, or whatever.

the transitions that go on from this to that point are potential places for devaluation -- every time there's a change from M to C to M.

First barrier to the realization process -- consumption capacity. Intensified because use-value does not have the boundlessness of value. Capital needs to take its spiral form and have an infinite growth. So you'll get a crisis of some kind from over-production.

"The creation of new needs and the discovery and creation of new use-values" -- I mean... eat it Hare! :D -- Marx clearly thought all needs were any use-values

"For the first time nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely an object of utility... so as to subjugate it under human needs" I'm happy to see p409 pop up in lecture. To be honest, I'm much more on Marx's side in being happy to see human beings having power over nature. I prefer having choice to not having choice.

Hrm. I'd be interested in the data Harvey is mentioning. I knew in the United States that wages have decreased in terms of real purchasing power since 1980, but not that many countries are. "The credit system" basically baring the burdens of capitalist over-production, but with them saying "OK, we'll lend more to others not in debt, just to make sure we keep the boot on the face of the ones we already got with this scam" -- makes sense of micro-loans in Africa. And anti-socialist military interventions from the United States to Middle and South America.

Hrm. A reason to also question my distinction -- if the oligarchy absorbs all productive activity, then there's a reason to question that all firms are productive insofar that they turn a profit. There's the perspective from an organizer who wants the people to unite on the shop floor, which is what I've been expressing, and then there's the perspective of what everyone ought to be doing if we all did productive labor. I think I'm OK with services because I think we need services, and that services clearly support social structures in good ways (nurses, for instance. Or janitorial staff -- yeah you should clean your own home, but should we all individually clean an entire building, or should people be compensated for what clearly is necessary? Guess a has-been SEIU organizer would say those professions...)

Just going to listen now that we're at Q&A. I had a couple thoughts but not a good question yet. And I like to hear the people there ask questions. Not just a middle-aged man thinking on his own :).

I'll admit I didn't check the arithmetic yet. I feel like that's important, but not for a first reading. It'd be super interesting to try and parse the arithmetic examples with the bit that we ended on, with Capital I and Capital II

I feel like magical thinking is common, but I'm uncertain how to spot a spell, an enchantment, or an ideology abstractly. There's a sense in which pointing out a spell begins to release its power over someone, unless they like the spell: and then is it a spell, or is it who they are? How many layers of habit can a spell penetrate? Is identity a spell of sorts?

But there's always someone smarter than me (and, there's always someone smarter than anyone, is all I really mean) -- so there's always a possibility that even though I can spot a spell, that I'm enchanted. And if I'm enchanted, was it the enchantment that allowed me to spot the spell? Are there spells which counter-spells?

Magic is something maybe only seen from the outside. In which case, it's hard to identify if it's magic, because you sort of have to know how it works "from the inside" too. In which case it's no longer magical, so how do you spot the spell if it's lost its potency?

So while I find it all very interesting, I also get lost very quickly.

21MAR23 ending paragraph is right before the large title here.

(It will be shown later that the most extreme form of alienation, wherein labour appears in the relation of capital and wage labour, and labour, productive activity appears in relation to its own conditions and its own product, is a necessary point of transition – and therefore already contains in itself, in a still only inverted form, turned on its head, the dissolution of all limited presuppositions of production, and moreover creates and produces the unconditional presuppositions of production, and therewith the full material conditions for the total, universal development of the productive forces of the individual.)

(Also, looking at the number of pages ahead, this is about the halfway mark!)

Well, to judge from the wikipedia page, it can mean a lot of things!

I like existential nihilism. A possible answer from that perspective to your questions:

I take it most nihilists believe that nothing means anything? — TiredThinker

In the sense of some kind of intrinsic meaning to life then yup. For some "intrinsic" does too much work though. It feels like a slight of hand.

The existential nihilist would say there's meaning in life, but its origin is with you. There's no true answer to these questions, it's the answer which brings meaning to you.

If nothing has any meaning why aren't more nihilists jumping off bridges and what not?

I like pleasure, and that's not pleasurable.

Where do nihilists believe meaning comes from if it were to be legitimate?

From the person asking the question "What is the meaning of life?" -- no one can answer it other than the person asking the question.

Quote from 414 as I pick it back up to prep for class:

(for we have not yet reached the aspect of capital in which it is circulating capital, and still have circulation on one side and capital on the other, or production as its presupposition, or ground from which it arises)

More a side note, but there are a lot of parenthetical notes like this throughout the text. A 2nd or 3rd reading project would be to pick out these "we have not yet reached the aspect..." to start drawing out these different aspects and their relations to one another. When do we reach the aspect of capital when circulation is no longer on one side and capital is on the other? What aspect are we at now?

For a first reading that's too much detail to ask after, I think, just noting something worth pursuing in drawing out The One Big Map of Marxism.

Also, noting a part of Marx which contradicts a thought I wrote earlier, where the concrete is how one resolves contradictions:

The contradiction between production and realization -- of which capital, by its concept, is the unity -- ...

So apparently concepts can unify contradictions in addition to concrete resolutions, so the directionality between ideal and concrete will not help in resolving "What are the rules for thinking dialectically, for sublating, or checking contradictories?"

Happens with me and Marx all the time.

Oh, Marx on slavery p 420 (awww yeah) -- apparently we're on the right track in our wonderings @fdrake:

What precisely distinguishes capital from the master-servant relation is that the worker confronts him as a consumer and possessor of exchange values, and that in the form of the possessor of money, in the form of money he becomes a simple centre of circulation -- one of its infinitely many centres, in which his specificity as worker is extinguished

There's a moving passage from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglas where he rejoices in having a wage and feels like his very humanity is restored due to being this possessor of money and exchange values, to be valued at all and treated like a man. It stuck with me as a lesson that there's a difference between slavery and wage-dependence. Good to see that reflected here, I think.

Another bit on contradiction, though here I think it's a little different because he's talking about cross-purposes tendencies, or telos:

By its nature, therefore, it posits a barrier to labour and value-creation, in contradiction to its tendency to expand them boundlessly

p 423/424 provides a passage that suddenly makes sense of simple exchange for me -- this interpretation would have it that simple exchange is between commodities and commodities only, rather than for goods and services, which is the part of the economy that Marx believes bourgeois economists skip over.

...Hence that overproduction comes from use value and therefore from exchange itself. This is stultified form in Say -- products are exchanged only for products; therefore, at most, too much has been produced of one and too little of another. Forgetting; (1) that values are exchanged for values, and a product exchanges for another only to the extent that it is value; i.e. that it is or becomes money; (2)it exchanges for labour. The good gentleman adopts the standpoint of simple exchange, in which no overproduction is possible, for it is indeed concerned not with exchange value but with use value. Overproduction takes place in connection with realization, not otherwise

The labor-time is already there in the product and an equivalence of time is exchanged between two commodities, so no profit can take place there. But as soon as you have enough money to control the origin of value, i.e. labor, then the possibility for more than simple exchange comes about (though clearly not always, as the discussion about productive/unproductive labor makes apparent)


I kind of like the following quote for an absurd plaque:

In practical commerce, capitalist A can screw capitalist B — Karl effin' Marx

**

p432 has a lovely paragraph about the relationship between value and price -- not just a distinction, but a relationship -- more or less pointing that a cunning capitalist can split the surplus-value with the consumer to undercut other capitalists and ensure that the product sells (since unsold product is always worse than even selling it at a loss)

Marx talking about the general rate of profit on 435 has me putting together the dots: the general rate of profit is the rate of profit considered across the totality of capital, all the capitals put together, rather than the rate of a given firm. While that's what made sense to me it's nice to see some textual support.

It's honestly cracking up how much Marx brings up Proudhon to say how he's wrong. Proudhon really got under his skin. :D

p 456. So close. Might get the last 2 pages before class.

EDIT: Oh, yup. False alarm. Ready for class!

I suppose I'm fine with disappointing the middle class tinkerers-from-afar, the policy wizards and focus group addicts. For one, if Marx is right, they aren't the agents of change: their position within the social organism is such that they'd defend it, even when they see the possibility of being eaten up by it, because how else are you going to live? Democrats focus on the middle class for a reason. It's the carrot whereupon a person can finally live an individual life, now having enough access to the goods produced by the economic machine.

So why bother tailoring it to a group of people that just want things to remain the same? Obviously they'd dislike Marx.

Sure

That due to the general trend of the 20th century from the Progressive Era, post-WW2 programs, and just unfolding of the idea of protecting people's time (8 hour workday, labor laws, etc.), Marx's initial critiques, which were valid for the time have been somewhat overcome. — schopenhauer1

I'd say this is too narrow a scope. It's been somewhat overcome, for whom? Events from the New Deal to now validates Marx's description of Capital -- class bifurcation from capital expansion that through its economic power has come to revolutionize democracy itself, putting it up for sale, undermining New Deal era social programs to continue to accumulate and create an industrial reserve army. While the labor aristocracy -- the AFL-CIO -- is comfortable with the relationship and the negotiated peace, it's pretty easy to see that the reason they're comfortable is they lost faith in people power and really only believe in conciliation to keep their position in the board room. So, contra Hannah Arendt's view that labor unions bring representation to the liberal capitalist state, and so finally gives political voice to people who work, I'd say these organizations have become absorbed by capital, and most working people simply don't have representation in the United States.

tl;dr - Marx is still relevant to the events we see today, regardless of how we parse the New Deal and whether having stock-options as payment is owning the means of production.

Morning thought on Marx --

One thing I've expressed in this thread and have always found frustrating is how Marxism is for the workers, and yet it is simultaneously wed to one of the most esoteric philosophical movements, Hegelian dialectic. Not exactly the most approachable philosophy, like one might like a philosophy for the working class to be.

But, on the other side, this is a kind of double-bind frequently visited upon workers: if it's simple then the worker hasn't grasped the true complexity, and if it's too complicated then the worker is confused with themself and clearly can't grasp the true complexity.

So, in a way, this was the leading philosophical movement of Marx's training. To choose something else would be to treat the subject as if it were not worthy of philosophical thought, which would be a self-contradiction in terms of Marx's philosophical project. (and, also, one of the reasons I've always liked Marx as a philosopher -- he treated the bronze-souled subjects as worthy of philosophy!)

Now, I think, dialectic is out of fashion so it's frustrating for us to have to learn not just Marx but then this philosophical move that's largely been pushed to the side. But, really, that's just part of reading historical works. What's fascinating to me is how Marx's picture of capital, in spite of all this esoteric trapping, still rings true today.

Me, for having not posted.

My stumbling notes from where I left off last time at about 350 to...


There's a part where Marx is trying to do the step-wise thing I just did above, but I'm getting lost as he jumps around too fast for me. p 368-370, or the part right before Notebook IV.

p 376 has the most succinct sentence to drawing the distinction between surplus-value and profit:

Just now the original capital of 100 was: 50-10-40. Produced surplus gain of 10 thalers (25% surplus time) Altogether 110 thalers

There's some bits in there that I don't follow right now. Especially has Marx is bouncing around between examples -- it's going too fast for me to follow immediately. But here I can see what he's talking about -- to figure surplus-value you have to look at the working day and split it into labor's reproduction, and surplus-value, whereas profit is figured with respect to the total firm , i.e. start with 100 thalers capital, end with 110 thalers: surplus-value at a 25% increase, while profit is at a 10% increase in the set up to distinguish between the two.

p400 -- coming to understand SNLT as the costs of reproducing labor setting the price of labor.

(the production of workers becomes cheaper, more workers can be produced in the same time, in proportion as necessary labour time becomes smaller or the time required for the production of living labour capacity becomes relatively smaller. These are identical statements)

An interesting question -- how many distinct processes are there? I can draw meaning out of a passage, but I mean -- at the end of the theory. Here thinking about the phrase "realization process", "production process", "exchange process" -- etc.

Basically, what's the final process map look like? Which processes are embedded in which? is there a consistent map between theses processes at any point in time of Marx's writings, or is it more like there are fair interpretations of what's written, and a more experimental-scientific spirit would be required to pin down the best map?

In the realization process, for instance, Marx has three processes. But there are many sub-processes at work within the three processes of 1) capital has maintained its value by means of exchange of money for living labor, 2) production-process (sub-process) whereby surplus value is created and accumulated to a commodity, then 3) demonetization, the commodity as container of objectified labor time that, if mismanaged, all value could go away i.e. one man owns 130 thalers worth linen (supposing I'm doing that right. I had some questions about how to add, but it seems to fit with Marx's 140 thalers math where he's including the 10 thalers worth of equipment as total capital) that then decay because of mismanagement, that then must be re-monetized in order to become the form of value once again. ie. sold for money.



p 407:

The creation by capital of absolute surplus value -- more objectified labour -- is conditional upon an expansion, specifically a constant expansion, of the sphere of circulation. The surplus value created at one point requires the creation of surplus value at another point, for which it may be exchanged; if only, initially, the production of more gold and silver, more money, so that, if surplus value cannot directly become capital again, it may exist in the form of money as the possibility of new capital

Another process map in the next paragraph:

On the other side, the production of relative surplus value i.e. production of surplus value based on the increase and development of the productive forces, requires the production of new consumption; requires that the consuming circle within circulation expands as did the productive circle previously. Firstly, quantitative expansion of existing consumption; secondly: creation of new needs by propagating existing ones in a wide circle; thirdly: production of new needs and discovery and creation of new use values

A tripartite division of moments for a process of consumption which has to follow along the process of production -- i.e. if we decrease SNLT for a given commodity then, in order to realize exchange rather than just have even more linen, you have to expand the number of persons who are consuming that linen. Otherwise, you'll have the same profit rates from before, and some extra linen that will rot.

I like this paragraph. p 409

Thus, just as production founded on capital creates universal industriousness on one side -- i.e. surplus labour, value-creating labour -- so does it create on the other side a system of general exploitation of the natural and human qualities, a system of general utility, utilising science itself just as much as all the physical and mental qualities, while there appears nothing higher in itself, nothing legitimate for itself, outside this circle of social production and exchange. Thus capital creates the bourgeois society, and the universal appropriation of nature as well as of the social bond itself by the members of society. Hence the great civilizing influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-idolatry For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means or production. In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life. it is destructive towards all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces

In all the side notes and thoughts, this paragraph was a great little conclusion -- that capital, in its totality, is a revolutionary force which upends all previous ways of life and values in its pursuit of growth. (next paragraph talks about its internalt contradictions which lead to self-destruction... I'm not so optimistic :P )

Reading though this notebook I'm struck by how much Marx's method resembles Aristotle's in that he's constantly responding to and summarizing previous economist's work, but then attempting to point out how they are a one-sided expression of his own general theory. "they got it right up to this point, where they disagreed with me" :D

Hrm, here's a quote that might also help with "contradiction" in Marx:

as use value it is absolutely not measured by the labour time objectified in it, but rather a measuring rod is applied to it which lies outside its nature as exchange value

use-value as any need within a social system which is actually satisfied (at least under capital, where exchange is necessary), exchange-value as realized price, rather than ideal price. Contradiction in that need is in units of number-commodity-consumed, and exchange is in units of labour-time (which has a relation to money through the system of circulation at a given time)

So there is a relation between two entities with different units -- one set of units influences the other, and so there's a kind of "contradiction" in that neither use-value is exchange-value or vice-versa, but their identity simultaneously relies upon one another. I.e. without exchange-value there'd be no general use-value, even in simple circulation (the original problem of two incommensurate goods becoming commensurate through a third good, time). But, simultaneously, without actually satisfying real needs, the use-value would not have an exchange value. It'd be unproductive labor of the sort that falls out of circulation without even being consumed.

Something like that. It's honestly still the most confusing part of Marx's system for me. There are times when I feel the move is natural and others when I don't, and still can't figure out a real rule to it. My guess is there isn't a real rule in terms of interpreting Marx, since Marx is a philosopher, but it still leaves the question there for anyone interested in Marx as a scientific system -- how to turn dialectics into something that's not just a philosophical move, but can actually be checked by others? Something that doesn't just rely upon a demonstration and a judgment call (though, that could also be the very thing that's needed, and leaving it at that unspecified level might be best!)

another contradiction at p 415:

The contradiction between production and realization -- of which capital, by its concept, is the unity -- has to be grasped more intrinsically than merely as the indifferent, seemingly reciprocally independent appearances of the individual moments of the process, or rather of the totality of processes

Though that seems to make sense from everything -- in Hegelian fashion we could say that the contradiction between production-realization is a more developed form of the contradiction between use-exchange value (or whatever the appropriate mapping would be ... as I said I'm pretty uncertain what The Big Marxist Map really looks like)

Probably stop there for today. Looks like I'll be ready for tomorrow after all! 35 pages to go.

Hrm, hrm, hrm.... thinking more about slavery...

The United States provides a pretty good example of capitalism + slavery. I'm looking at p 354, right after the section title which starts "Labour does not reproduce the value of the material in which, and of the instruments with which, it works"

Marx uses the unit of thalers in this analysis.

Capital at 100 thalers, divided for a given working day into -- 50 for cotton, 40 for wages, 10 for instrument. Supposing the wages of 40 thalers is set at 4 hours and the capitalist sets the working day at 8 hours then there are 40 thalers of necessary labor time, 40 Thalers of surplus value. The capitalist starts with 100 thalers, then through one "cycle" we'll call it (since the numbers are exaggerated) ends up with linen which started with 50 thalers of value, then absorbed 80 thalers worth of labor time.

Here at the middle section of M-C-C-M, in particular the second -C-.

At the end of third part in the cycle, then, what started as 100 Thalers ends as 130 thalers worth of linen, and 10 thalers worth of fixed capital. Insofar that the capitalist is able to successfully exchange that linen, then they can start the process again with 130 thalers where they started with 100. (hence highlighting how exchange is just as important as production for the cycle of capital -- else you just have a bunch of linen)

So, in this, the production of cotton was slave-based, and linen was worker-based. Is there an economic reason for this? Are certain modes of labor, i.e. that which exploits the natural goods we want, somehow more economically feasible under slavery than capital, and vice-versa?

There's a part of me that wonders if there's a kind of equilibrium point between slave-labor as capital and wage-labor as worker markets where the reasons for the transition from slave economies to wage economies are economic in character, i.e. profit maximizing, but the particulars of an industry are what incentivizes the economic organism between the two modes.

For instance, in the south you had to pay slave-drivers, which were wage-workers in the system of exploitation, to make sure slaves continued. In a similar vein, fast food industries have long said they'd replace workers with machines, but in fact you have to pay for those machines and the people to maintain them and it actually ends up being cheaper to just hire a person than to implement that style business -- i.e. it's a good threat, but a bad economic model.

Part of me thinks slavery is partially bad for business, but not entirely. i.e. sometimes it's cheaper to have workers who manage their own bills, and sometimes it's cheaper to pay soldiers to force people to work.

Going through some of my highlights...

This bit helps me think about productive/undproductive, because it shows how the laborer is simultaneously the origin of productive value, but not the owner of productive value -- what he gets in exchange is equal to what it takes for his physical living body to show up to work tomorrow, but what the capitalist gets for this is the ability to direct value-production and keep the products/capital/etc. due to owning it.

p 322:

What the Worker exchanges with capital is his labour itself (the capacity of disposing over it); he divests himself of it. What he obtains as price is the value of this divestiture. He exchanges value-positing activity for a pre-determined value, regardless of the result of his activity. Now how is its value determined? By the objectified labour contained in his commodity. This commodity exists in his vitality. In order to maintain this from one day to the next...he has to consume a certain quantity of food, to replace his used-up blood etc.

i.e. The body with its capacities, and especially the capacity to work. The price of a worker is that body and work-able capacities -- which itself is obviously historically situated and geographically situated as well, so changes depending upon how much objectified labor is required to have a body with work-able capacities.

This is the sort of thing I think that the "raises all ships" sorts have in mind in accepting the mechanisms of capital -- sure, it's unfair, but the price of labor in absolute terms of objectified labor time increases over time while the relative value of the classes clearly diminishes, even though the lower classes of an industrial nation will have access to more objectified labor time than the lower classes of a colonial or neo-colonial nation.

But, anyways, that's why wages are unproductive -- the purchase "drops out" of the circuit of capital, rather than remaining within that circuit to continue to increase the cycle of capital. I think that's a good rough estimate for productive/unproductive -- it's productive if it happens in a firm, because then a capitalist owns the capital and pays a wage to extract labor time and add it to the circulating whole of capital value, whereas the worker takes goods out of that circulation to live. (generally speaking)

But for our purposes here, it might be useful for folk to contemplate what it means to tell children that things can get better.

And not just children. — Banno

True. And while I'm saying there is no progress, my set-up doesn't make progress impossible -- only points out that the analysis is in the negative at the moment.

There's a balancing act in forging the myth -- between optimism and pessimism, because both actually lead to human stupidity: both doing nothing, one because it'll happen anyways and the other because it doesn't matter, when the very problem is the doing nothing part :D

I think I understand and pretty much agree with all of your points, but I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

Happens to me all the time. I'll return to a topic and find I have maybe 3 new thoughts and then back to the wondering part :D

Are there Sadists or are there people who cause pain in others on the basis of a diverse variety of motives that we ignore when we slap the label of sadist on them? Do you remember when you were a kid there were a few kids who enjoyed torturing animals? Do you remember anything else about them, like what their family lives were like, whether they seemed to harbor a lot of anger towards the world, for instance? That is an example of a motive the label of sadist hides from view. When we believe we have been unfairly treated by those closest to us, we can manifest it as anger against the world. We believe the world has treated us badly and it deserves to suffer. We justify our actions as making things right. Our ‘sadism’ isn’t so much an enjoyment of the pain we inflict as the satisfaction we get from correcting an imbalance in the cosmos. — Joshs

I want to call this psychological type a paladin -- the paladin justifies the violence they inflict on the basis of the enjoyment of correcting an imbalance in the cosmos.

Suppose a social organism, like the United States, where the police and soldiers are all paladins.

The paladins really like being paladins, and there are generals who happen to benefit from having paladins at their disposal. So they push to increase their stock of paladins through an Honor Code.

In such a world, even though these people are no sadists, they are a part of a social organism which increases violence within the world. So, from the point of view of view of the increase or decrease of violence, at least, even if no one is evil -- violence increases, and regress is what I'd call that.

A morning thought -- slavery, parsed in the form of capital, is actually treating person's as capital, more or less. In a way they are living machines, and just as labor is the origin of value in capital so that holds in the general theory, but the organism is different because the mechanisms of capital are defined such that liberal free exchange is the basis of the analysis.

The laborer is the origin of value, and so is the slave -- the social position within the organism changes, though, from alienated-worker to being owned as capital. I think that's how I'd parse slavery in capital now, at least.

If I've read this right, it says that the pianist's labour is not productive, but the piano maker's is. Why? I think it makes sense to look at this in terms of the advancement of capital M-C-C-M.

Transparently, a piano making business takes money, invests it in materials and labour, produces a piano, then sells it.

A pianist's labour, on the other hand starts with a commodity (labour power), which has a price (money) which the labourer gets for their service (money), which is used to get other commodities (foodstuff, etc).

The piano making business thus has M-C-C-M as a transition of stages, the pianist however has C-M-M-C as its transition of stages, only the former is an advancement of capital. Any material resources the pianist buys to continue playing reproduces their labour, rather than their money (tools, food, fuel, electricity). — fdrake

I think that's good!

I get this mental picture that the pianist is, for whatever reason, an individual and so yeah, that's how I'd parse the music maker from the piano maker.

But I think it's interesting to raise the history of the music industry! There's a Marxist history of music to be written in there that'd be very interesting -- the proletarianization of the musician from the Concert Hall to Basement Punk Rock shows. :D

A slave isn't a wage labourer, they don't receive a wage. So they can't have the M or M steps as part of their C-M-M-C labour transition. Perhaps slaves create wealth, which is converted to value through the circulation of the commodities' values constituting that wealth. I'm wondering, however, if it makes sense to consider slaves as "wage labourers with wage 0" from the perspective of capital. All of their labour is surplus labour, every moment of their labour is uncompensated work.

In that regard, you could still have slaves in M-C-C-M. You start off with money, you buy slaves and commodities, the slaves work with the commodities to produce more commodities, which are then sold for money. Then, the next time you want to make something, you don't have to buy the slaves, you just have to buy something to reproduce their labour. If Marx is construing the M-C step to necessarily to contain an exchange of wages, then he'd be right to exclude slavery from capital advancement on that basis.

Maybe generalising it is illuminating. If all workers were slaves, there'd be no wages and selling of labour, which would mean there'd be no C-M-M-C transition. If some workers were slaves and some were wage labourers, it seems you can have C-M-M-C active in the economy at large with slaves providing a competitive advantage over those capitalists which use wage labourers.

I'm not sure what to make of this. — fdrake

I think that when slaves are the basis of labor that's a different mode of production as the theory is stated -- but then, you're right that we have these dual economies then simultaneously feeding into one another. Is it still labor-time that's being extracted in slavery, or even more? If so, not in the manner of a firm which is purchasing labor. And I'm curious about the causes of slavery and its interaction with capital, in particular, because one way to put it would be to say that it's basically the theoretical limit of exploitation of labor time, but that's sort of restating it in terms of capital when slavery is frequently said to be part of older forms prior to even feudalism, so I imagine the general theory would have to treat it somewhat differently.

But then.. there's the reality of them not being separate at all, and how the practice evolved with the economic form of capital rather than being some ancient thing. Marx's positivism showing through, it seems.

Violent: violate. Do we want to violate? Is that a motive? Can we be motivated to violate ourselves, or is that an incoherent idea? — Joshs

I'm tempted to double down, but it's more interesting to me to not. Let's say we don't want to violate others or self as a motive on pain of an incoherent notion of motive.

If we establish that want, need, motive, desire is always in service of the prevention of a loss of personal integrity, and is itself the pursuit of self-validation, — Joshs

Interesting. Can it be established?

then the question becomes how we we understand the separation between self and other. If we don’t want to destroy self but are motivated to kill others, is this not in fact our need to kill or destroy what we see as alien within the other?

I actually want to answer this one different from the next, though it feels like a chain of thought.

I think it's possible to want to violate. Wanting an action to an object is a form of fantasy: I want to climb that mountain. I want to run 6 miles. I want to punch my boss.

However, what you've brought up is that the "I want..." is not a motive, per se -- and that's a fair point too I believe.

I've been loose in using "I want" so far.

Isn’t our perception of the alienness of others relative
to ourselves directly correlated with our motives of altruism, kindness and selflessness vs desire to punish, harm and kill
others? We sacrifice ourselves for loved ones and of to war against those we demonize as the dangerously alien.

I'm going to try and clean up desire a bit here from merely stating "I want..."

I like to start from a tripartite division of desire into types, taking after an interpretation of Epicurus:

Epicurus offers a classification of desires into three types: some are natural, others are empty; and natural desires are of two sorts, those that are necessary and those that are merely natural (see Cooper 1999).

We don't have to use this terminology, I'm only sharing it as a way of saying where I'm coming from in my response.

I'd say that the sorts of motivations you are describing fall within the natural and unnecessary category: which is where it seems most of psychology actually takes place, so it's almost too convenient for us to adopt Epicurus' rough thought "these desires are OK enough until they cause too much anxiety" in our modern world sense. (it's not like people are actually looking for ataraxia, for the most part)

But, here's where I have a reason to doubt -- those sorts of desires don't follow structures as clean as "Our preception of the alienness of others in relation to our self is directly correlated with our motives of altruism, kindness and selflessness vs desire to punish, harm and kill others" suggests to my mind.

Or, at least, there's enough information going on in that sentence that I don't want to just say "Oh, yes, of course"

Motives:

Altruism/pushishment
kindness/harm
selflessness/kill

Roughly. I'm just using your sentence to structure some dyads.


I'm going a little formal here just to see if it sticks. If it doesn't then by all means skip. I'm mostly hoping to not go down a romantic hole in regards to the warrior -- yes, of course, there are self-sacrificing people. But what I'm highlighting is that there are also sadists. And it's possible to set up a social world where those who get off on kindness go to the kind spaces, and those who get off on violence go to the violent spaces.

It seems to me assuming the existence of a motive to kill misses the central issue here, which isn’t about desiring violence for its own sake but about the challenges we face in recognizing the value in others different from ourselves, and in thus avoiding the tendency to see malevolent motives (like the desire to kill) in the struggles of others to protect themselves and the community they identity with from what they perceive as harmful ideas and behavior. — Joshs

Fair. I'm fine with dropping the assumption. Maybe some of the above will progress our thoughts.

The critical issue here is the origin and nature of motive: what we want to do and why we want to do it. If we explain motive on the basis of arbitrary mechanism( evolutionarily shaped drive, reinforcement, etc) then we’ve lost the battle before it’s begun. We just throw up our hands and say motive is arbitrary and relative. If instead we make motive a function and product of sense-making , and understand sense-making to be a holistic process of erecting, testing and modifying a system of constructs designed to anticipate events with no ulterior or higher motive or purpose other than anticipation itself, then we can unite motive and intelligibility. — Joshs

And could we not be motivated to kill? Could it not even be intelligible? "We had to drop the bomb on Hiroshima because..." is the phrase I have in mind. There are many becauses. The motive is clear. And science did it. And this isn't even in one of those unintended consequences ways: it was a driving motive of many scientists on the project to win the war.

I think what I see, from the advances of science, is an increase in ability to do exactly what we want -- and what we want isn't always non violent. So, contrary to a decrease, I'd say we have an increase in violence because we're better at it. We even compartmentalize it to different functions within the state so that others don't have to deal with it.

Is that really a decrease in violence?

Thomas Kuhn said there is progress in science. What he meant wasn’t that there is a cumulative, logical or dialectical advance that for the most part includes the context of older theories within. the newer ones , but rather the ability to ‘solve more puzzles’, even as the meanings of the scientific concepts which define these puzzles change with each shift in paradigm.
What if we were to assume for the sake of argument that science is inextricably intertwined with the rest of culture, and that if Kuhn is right about scientific progress as development of puzzle solving, then cultural progress as a whole is a kind of progressive puzzle solving.

What does it mean to solve a puzzle? Let me offer the following definition. Cultural problem solving is not about accurately representing an independent world. It is about construing and reconstruing our relation to the social and natural world from our own perspective in ways that allow us to see the behavior and thinking of other people in increasingly integral ways. Progress in cultural
problem solving is about anticipating the actions and motives of others (and ourselves) in ways that transcend concepts like evil or selfish intent. It is not that we become more
moral or more rational over time (Pinker’s claim is that the formation of the scientific method made us more rational). We were always moral and rational in the sense that we have always been motivated to solve puzzles. What progress in puzzle solving allows us to do is to see others as like ourselves on more and more dimensions of similarity.
So I think Pinker is right that there is a trajectory of development that leads toward less violence and conflict, but he is wrong to define it in relation to conformity to a certain Enlightenment and Eurocentric-based notion of empirical rationality. — Joshs

Glad to find something we can debate.

While progress in puzzle solving allows us to do, it's very much up to us what we do, what counts as a puzzle, and what counts as a solution. I believe you'd agree with me this far.

How is it that this increase in puzzle solving leads to a decrease in violence? If science enables us to do, and what we want to do is kill, then we have some pretty obvious examples of science helping us to do exactly that. Is it really just a numbers game of relative population rates across time?

I'll take the position that there is no scientific progress.

I don't see it as so obvious to call it progress, though I understand why people say there is such a thing. We can see differences between time periods from the evidence available to us, and then we go and look for things we like more now that exist today that didn't exist yesterday, or we can look for things we dislike that used to exist and no longer exist. This provides a working understanding of the word "better" or "progress", regardless of whether we believe history is a real thing that can actually progress.

For me, though, I always ask: progress for whom?

And generally the person performing the analysis in favor of progress is measuring progress in terms of what's good for themself.

Progress is relative to social position. Even as we've gotten more powerful, slavery is still a part of the world economic system: And that's gotta be one of the few "bads" that people will concede is a bad that shouldn't be no matter what and we're better off today because of it's no longer around. But, really, it's just no longer around within particular nation borders (and, *really* really, human trafficking still occurs across borders into liberal, capitalist nations, sometimes for labor and sometimes for sex)

So, no -- what I see is scientific regress. We're better and more able to help the well-to-do while we use the not-so-good-off, which doesn't look that different from building pyramids to me, but now with the ability to end not just our own empire but all of human life.

No, just like -- an organization. Something which came out of it all. Networks of people who weren't in communication before now are. Something more substantive than an internet blip.