RED DAVE

From Hitetlin:
There are three assertions here: (1) "[t]he Marxists adamantly assert that all profits are theft"; (2) "that the workers keep losing their standard of living"; (3) "that anyone who believes otherwise has been brainwashed by the bourgeois propaganda machines."

Now (3) is obviously nonsense. I have no idea what kind of Marxists, so-called Marxists, pseudo-Marxists, Marxist wannabes, etc., you've been hanging out with, but I have never heard, in all my years of experience as a Marxist, anyone over the age of 17 talk like that. I remember when i was about that tender age, when dinosaurs still walked the Earth and Noah was still taking courses in celestial navigation, I was ranting and raving about "Bolshevik discipline" or some such and how Marxists how to be totally dedicated to the cause, etc. (remember, I'm 17), and an older comrade put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Dave, even a Bolshevik needs a catharsis every once in awhile."

(2) I demonstrated in my last post is true. And if it's true for the wealthiest and most powerful of capitalist nations, you can imagine what's going on elsewhere.

As to (3), before I begin, let me say that that particular quote has its origins not with Marx or Engels, but with, I believe Proudhon, who said, "Property is Theft."

The term that Marxists generally use is "expropriation." What that means is that the worker, during a working day, produces a certain amount of value. No labor; no value. Part of that value goes to replenish the fixed costs of production: plant, tools, salaries of nonoperating personnel, salaries of executives, R&D, etc. And part of it goes to preseve the existence of the worker and their family. Now, after all these expenses have been deducted, there still remains value that has been created. It can be measured in the form of profit.

This we Marxists call "surplus value" because it is value above and beyond the cost of the production of the particular commodities being produced. As far as we are concerned, the central conflict in society is: who controls surplus value? Since we Marxists believe that the source of all value is labor, we believe that control of that value should be with the working class. Since capitalists believe that that value would not be created without the efforts and risk taking of the capitalists, they believe that they should control it.

So, since the capitalists expropriate value that they have not themselves worked to produce (we're talking profits, not salary), and in that expropriation they are backed by the full force of the state that they have created for their own benefit (libertarians and Objectivists notwithstanding), it is proper to say that this expropriated value has, in fact, been stolen. I understand that this is a value judgment. I determined this to be one of my fundamental values about the time that I was the above-mentioned 17 year old. No pleadings about the stress, strain, risk, creativity, leadership, etc., of the capitalist class has caused me to change that belief.

So, yes, Hitetlin, Profit Is Theft.

Have a nice day.

RED DAVE

Cosmo

Did Red Dave just bitch slap Hitetlen?

:rolling:

Hitetlen

Some of them post on these boards and they may well be 17 or less. But since we agree that it is nonsense, we can move on.

You used the word carefully: "demonstrated". Good selection. The trouble is that your demonstration is insufficient. I asked about the details of the data, specifically about the usage of the consumer basket, the best (though still not good) way of comparing different societies or the same one in different times. Without details your demonstration is not convincing.

However, let's suppose that the unrevealed numbers would support you. In this case you demonstrated that a carefully selected segment for a carefully selected timeframe sank deeper into poverty on the absolute scale. (Sorry, the relative poverty is irrelevant.)

That is far from sufficient. Other, differently selected data would contradict your analysis.

There are several problems here.

Number one: the Marxist concept of "value" has no meaning when it comes to deciding the "monetary value" of an exchange. The reduction of "value" to the actual labor is far too simplistic and vague to be useful.

Number two: the value of the "value" cannot be determined. If I would carve a statue that you may wish to purchase, there is no "society" which would be able to decide a proper value. It is just the two of us, possibly haggling over the price. If you like it and you deem the price reasonable, you buy it. Otherwise you reject it. (By the way, don't read the word: "statue" literally. It could be anything.)

Since the whole concept of "theft" presupposes an objectively existing and measurable "value" for the product, so there will be a "surplus" value over and above it, this term became subjective and as such not very useful.

Yes indeed a value judgment and a subjective one. That is not convincing.

And the same to you.

Bumble Bee Tuna

As I said in the post you just replied to...

Same as if I made a dialogue where I directly quoted you saying "Other, differently selected data would contradict your analysis." in repsponse to someone demonstrating that the Earth is round. Then we could all laugh at how stupid I had made the Capitalist look with my strawmen caricature.

-B