#marxvx

[tender-vittles]

@marxvx - Thanks!!!! It's so exciting! ☺️☺️

[getlostinthesounds]

marxvx replied to your post “My girlfriend is reasonably trying to convince me about how potatoes...”

HOLY SHIT I FORGET THIS SO OFTEN. I FORGET POTATO ISN'T A BREAD LIKE EVERY DAY

Right!?! Glad to know I’m not alone in this hahaha. The logic of them all being starches makes perfect sense in my mind. 

[sad-ie]

DID I MEET YOU TONIGHT?? OR WAS THAT SOME1 ELSE

THAT WAS ME!!!!! I MADE THE CONNECTION BUT FELT WEIRD ABOUT BRINGING IT UP!!!! IT WAS VERY NICE 2 MEET U IRL!!!!!!damn

[diamaterialista]

hey, i'm super interested in applying marxian economics to the modern economy, where'd you find that image of rate of profit by NAICS?

It's actually a table I made myself. I used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Let me explain briefly what's going on here.

There are two types of capital, constant and variable. Constant capital is the capital that does not change in magnitude during the process of production: the money spent on the land, raw materials, energy, et cetera. That's just the money to get everything set up and running. That capital isn't gonna change, so it's constant. Variable capital is the capital spent on hiring workers, which grows in the process of production through workers producing value. Marx uses c and v respectively to refer to these two different types of capital.

As Marx famously demonstrated, capitalist profit arises from forcing workers to work longer than the amount of time necessary to produce a value equivalent to their wages, effectively making the working day have two parts: one paid, in which the worker reproduces the value of their wages, and one unpaid, in which the worker creates surplus value (s) which the capitalist appropriates as profit.

As noted, only variable capital creates surplus value; constant capital does not. So taking that into consideration, the rate of exploitation or rate of surplus value (c') can be expressed as:

c' = s/v * 100%

Since I'm basically plagiarizing P. Nikitin's Fundamentals of Political Economy at points here I'll just quote the example I want to copy outright:

Suppose a capitalist advances the following sum (in dollars) for the production of commodities: 100,000c + 20,000v = 120,000. He sells the commodities produced by his workers for $140,000. This means that he receives $20,000 as surplus value.What will be the rate of surplus value?s' = s/v * 100% = 20,000/20,000 * 100% = 100%.This example shows that here the labour of the worker is divided equally into necessary and surplus labour; i.e., half the working day he works for himself and the other half he works for the capitalist for no wages. The greater the proportion of surplus labour to necessary labour, the higher the rate of exploitation.

For constant capital I used the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures "Capital Payments", "Cost of Energy", "Cost of Materials", and "Cost of Purchased Services". For variable capital I used the measure "Cost of Labor". To estimate surplus value I used Bureau of Economic Analysis Gross Output data, which is based on the producers' prices at the point of sale as opposed to production, minus my measure of constant plus variable capital as described above. It's fairly rough but it actually gives a pretty decent approximation, I think.

(And by the way, in case you didn't know, NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System.)

[democracyisdead]

I have been following your blog for a bit and am a Marxist (not Leninist, but decidedly against social democracy). I've never encountered radical democracy before your blog and have never met anyone characterize their views as RD. Would you mind elaborating on its history and where it fits in with other contemporary left tendencies a bit? What makes it different from the more common tendencies?

Well I can give a start. If you’re interested in more detail, democracyisdead is a solid blog to follow. Another Canadian radical democrat, incidentally. We’re pals.

Radical democracy doesn’t really mean radical in the traditional sense. It’s intended to mean “the root” of democracy. The core ideal of the whole thing is to maximize democracy. The people must rule.

There are differing opinions on what this means and how to achieve it. I’m an oddity in that I’m actually a Marxist. Most RDs are socialists, and some few have convinced themselves democracy is meaningful under capitalism.

(It’s not, evidently, since the primary determining factor in elections is the amount of money invested. Finance is a powerful corrupting factor.)

It’s also an embrace of the fact that democracy is not limited to elections. Dissent (including riots), devolution of power, decentralization of power, self-determination, public debate, demographic weighting, petitioning, accountability, and direct democracy are all important as well. There are many little policy ideas that people have here and there as well. I, personally, believe it would be a good idea to immediately set the salaries of all elected officials equal to the average or the median national income, whichever is lower. Just as an example.

We generally tend to believe that whatever happens, it should happen as the result of the unfettered will of the people.

As far as history goes, it emerged in the ‘90s, theorized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. It’s gained traction since. Elements of radical democracy exist in Mexico’s ELZN, the Kurdish PKK, the Swiss government (it’s how they got partial direct democracy), and it basically makes up Ukraine’s entire left (see: Radical Party). Radical democratic contingents exist throughout South and Central America and are starting to gain ground in Europe. We’re also hoping to set up shop in Canada, clearly. Honestly, knowing Canada’s history and political makeup, I’m really surprised it didn’t catch on sooner.

Here’s another excellent post from democracyisdead​ on this same subject.

As far as specific differences go, radical democrats are hard-line anti-authoritarian (clearly). There is a strong element of nationalism, though it’s not nationalism in the regular sense. Civic nationalism, as opposed to internationalism, holds that nations should have the right to self-determination and go about unmolested by foreign powers. What makes a nation in this context is pretty complex, but I don’t think most of us believe in restricting the free exchange of culture and the free movement of people, just the imposition of authority.

I know many believe in economic isolationism, but I, personally, am a fan of alter-globalization, which is to say developing a comprehensive strategy for building a robust global economy which can most efficiently meet the needs of all populations, but without coercion, imperialism, or theft of wealth.

We tend to sit fairly close with Anarchists, but are even more against imposition/force, and believe that retaining governments and borders, so long as they are maximally democratic, is a good idea.

For books, read… honestly it doesn’t matter.

Democracy is a conversation, so it’s better to talk about it and debate it than just read some text like it’s the bible of how to do democracy. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is the founding text. I read A Manifesto of Real Democracy, but honestly Democrates is a melodramatic shit who fetishizes Athens too much.

Hope this helps!

If you have any more questions I’d be happy to answer.