The Real Movement

Communism is free time and nothing else!

Tag: transformation problem

June 1, 2016

Money and socially necessary labor time: A (Pre-)Review of Moseley’s new book

You are not supposed to review a book without having read it. This often poses a problem for me, since I never buy books, but sometime want to say something about them before I can steal them off the internet.

Such is the case with Fred Moseley’s new book, ‘Money and totality’. Fortunately, in the case of Moseley’s new book, there is a paper trail going back at least to the 1990s on which I can draw to raise questions about his argument. These pre-publication texts (here, here, and here, along with a recent review of the book by Michael Roberts, raise enough questions about Moseley’s so-called ‘macromonetary’ approach to capital that allow me the opportunity to outline a number of troubling problems with methods.

I will detail them in the following post. The reader is forewarned, however, that what I say here may have already been addressed by Moseley in the book.

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May 1, 2016

Whoops! Did Michael Roberts and Fred Moseley just revise Marx?

In this morning’s compare and contrast, we look at two different formulations of the category, socially necessary labor time, in Roberts’ essay, Consistent, realistic, verifiable; his review of a new book on labor theory by Fred Moseley:

Formulation 1: “Marxist value theory is based on the view that commodities are priced in the market according to the labour time expended on them.”

Formulation 2: “The market decides whether certain amounts of labour time expended on producing particular commodities are ‘socially necessary’.”

In labor theory of value, socially necessary labor time, of course, is the labor time required for production of a commodity, its value. However, in Roberts’ summary of the argument made by Fred Moseley SNLT is first described as a quantity of labor existing before exchange. Then it is later described by Roberts as a quantity of labor determined by exchange — by “the market”.

So which is it, Mr. Roberts? Is socially necessary labor time determined by production or exchange? There is no rush on this, Mr. Roberts. I am sure the proletarian revolution can wait patiently while you theoreticians figure this out.

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April 30, 2016

The TSSI school has completely capitulated to the value-form school

In a surprisingly abrupt about face, it looks like the TSSI school has capitulated to the value-form school of Michael Heinrich and company on all the important points of controversy between the two schools.

Of course, the TSSI school is the least ethical of all Marxist schools, because they want to drop Marx while pretending to defend him. The value-form school at least has enough principles to admit they think Marx was wrong, but not the TSSI school. Expect the TSSI school to continue pretending they uphold an orthodox interpretation of Marx’s labor theory of value.

In any case, we now have it in black and white, courtesy of Michael Roberts, who, in his review of Fred Moseley new book, Consistent, realistic, verifiable, argues that Marx labor theory of value basically examines the capitalist mode of production, “[from] the capitalist point of view, [where] money advanced must lead to more money, or forget it.”

I have no words to describe my reaction to this statement.

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January 24, 2016

Post-capitalism, Accelerationism, communism and the march of the job-eating killer robots

Two speculative views of what comes after capitalism for those without enough imagination to picture themselves on a beach having group sex.

The first offer some discussion of the so-called Left accelerationist writers Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. Left accelerationism is a sort of awkward nerdy, pimple-faced techno-fetishism that seeks to make Nick Land palatable to Sanders supporters.

The second discusses the even less credible argument, put forward by Channel 4 News in-house radical Paul Mason. Mason is … well, the Channel 4 News’ idea of a radical, if a radical worked for Channel 4 News. Of course no radical actually works for Channel 4 News, but if a radical did work for Channel 4 News, they would likely be a radical just like Paul Mason.

The starting point of these conceptions of life after the class-war, is the now ubiquitous prediction that soon capitalism will no longer generate enough new jobs to go around owing to the replacement of human living labor by machines.

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August 9, 2015

On the irrelevancy of Andrew Kliman

Andrew Kliman writes about the relevance of Marx’s “Capital” today; in it he highlights five aspects of the book he thinks continue to make it relevant. According to Kliman, the continuing relevancy of Capital depends on five things:

First, Capital is a “stripped down” description of the capitalist mode of production, not a complete and final description of capitalist society. Second, the book not only critiques bourgeois economics but many of the most popular alternatives offered by radicals of its time. Third,  capitalism, as described in Capital, is an autonomous, self-acting, process in which “those in power” aren’t really in control of the process. The fourth point is that Capital explains a process where the ‘rules’ of commodity production continue to hold in for the total national capital, even if these rules are violated in particular cases. The fifth and final point is that Capital shows technological improvement tends to reduce the profitability of investment.

Since Andrew Kliman is almost always wrong about everything he discusses of Marx’s theory, it is no surprise to me that he is wrong about the book, Capital, as well. Kliman completely misses the true significance and relevancy of Capital, because he really has no idea why the book remains relevant today.

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July 17, 2015

First we get the power, then we get … Oops!

Okay, now what?

scarface_17Citizen CoKane always has relevant comments to my blog that put me on the spot:

His question this time is what are workers in Greece supposed to do when their counterparts in Germany appear to be complacent, even indifferent to their plight? The workers of Greece clearly can’t overthrow capitalism worldwide all by themselves and the rest of Europe seems paralyzed at best. I reproduce his comment in its entirety:

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June 14, 2015

Reply to LK: Notes on the historical and monetary implications of the transformation problem

One of the big problems with a discussion of Marx’s formula for transformation of labor values into capitalistic prices of production is that no one, not Marxists nor bourgeois simpleton economists, seem to understand what he was doing. Now, I will admit this argument is pretty arrogant, because it implies that I, somehow, have figured out what everyone else didn’t, but bear with me and decide for yourself. If my argument doesn’t make sense at the end, please correct me.

As I stated in my last post, the transformation problem expresses an irreconcilable contradiction within the capitalist mode of production. Marxists will not be surprised at this assertion; digital_money_764bourgeois economists, on the other hand, deny the existence of this contradiction and have an ahistorical conception of capital. In their view, the bourgeoisie has invented the ideal state of man which, having been invented, can continue indefinitely unless interrupted by an exogenous event. So, when they look at the transformation formula, they see in it a contradiction and assume Marx has failed to make his case.

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June 12, 2015

Reply to LK: How labor theory of value destroys fiat ‘money’

It’s not very often that I agree with Keynesians about anything, but this post, Fiat Money Destroys the Labour Theory of Value, comes real close. The writer of the post, LK, who has a surprisingly good grasp of labor theory basics, argues that fiat money destroys labor theory of value and I completely agree with him/her on this point.

“Marx’s whole explanation of the emergence of money in Chapter 2 of Capital assumes that money must be a commodity. … So only if money is a special commodity that itself has a labour value can it function as a universal medium of exchange and numéraire. You couldn’t have a clearer expression of Marx’s view: money must by necessity be a produced commodity with a labour value in order to even function as money, because, in Marx’s view, all commodity exchange is founded on the fact that commodities (including money) are made commensurable by having quantitative labour values.”

0If Marx appears to be demonstrably wrong about anything in economics, this is likely the single most glaring example. However being wrong about money is not like being wrong about your prediction for GDP next year. Everything Marx argues in Capital is built on his arguments in the first three chapters, including his analysis of money. For Marx to be wrong about money has implications at least as profound as establishing beyond all doubt that value has nothing to do with labor. It is not as though Marxists could admit labor is not the source of value, but maintain Marx was still right “overall”. In that same sense, there is no way you can pretend Marx was wrong about money being a commodity, but right about most everything else. You can’t do it and LK isn’t going to let Marxist economists try to put that weak bullshit over on us.

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March 14, 2015

Gold after the death of Marxism: A reply to George Caffentzis

This post is in response to a question posed to me on Ask.fm regarding George Caffentzis’s essay, Marxism after the Death of Gold:

“You’ve probably read this, and may have already addressed it on your blog, but in case you haven’t, I’d appreciate your thoughts.”

I am familiar with the essay in question and have written about it before. But I will return to it to provide an answer that takes into account my personal theoretical development since that time.

*****

9547247-making-money-with-your-computerGeorge Caffentzis does something in his essay that Marxists occasionally (all too often?) do: Completely and baldly lie about Marx’s theory. This essay is founded on a lie that Caffentzis knows or should know is a lie. And the case does not look good here: Either Caffentzis does not know the premise of his essay is a lie and is therefore unqualified. Or he know it is a lie and is not to be trusted because his knowing distortion of Marx’s argument clearly has an agenda.

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January 16, 2015

In case you were wondering: Yes, the chief economic adviser to Tsipras is insane.

The title of this post is, by any measure extremely rude and provocative, but bear with me. If you can get through the first section of this post, which is extremely wonky, I will show why one of the most important advisers to SYRIZA is likely living in his own special world, and not subject to arguments founded in the real world. According to Einstein (or Mark Twain, or an old Chinese proverb or Benjamin Franklin — who knows for sure) insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. If this is true John Milios is insane, as I will prove.

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