What are some legitimate critiques of communism that people have historically deployed...

Valid point, but that only applies to a minority of people from my experience.

The LTV is not as important to communism as anti-communists assume it to be.

Saying "the workers make everything and therefore if the workers united they would be the most powerful force" is not LTV, it's just a statement of fact as the workers do indeed create everything even accepting the premise that "value" is added to that produce not through the labour required to make it. It is no less true that it only exists to begin with because of the worker.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
Could it have worked?

>The LTV is not as important to communism as anti-communists assume it to be.

As a philosophy for how things should be? No, it's not necessary. As a historical claim? It sure as fuck is.

You can't get to the dialectical materialist inevitability of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie class by the proletariat without every successive round of exchange funneling more and more wealth, on not only a relative but an absolute basis, away from the proletariat and towards the bourgeoisie, and you can't get to there with any sort of marginalist economics, because wealth isn't zero sum.

>Saying "the workers make everything and therefore if the workers united they would be the most powerful force" is not LTV,

Correct, but irrelevant.

>it's just a statement of fact as the workers do indeed create everything

While it is a statement of fact, it's an incorrect one, as there are rather significant values generated by people who aren't considered "workers" in the Marxist sense. You could only validate the statement by expending the class of "worker" to pretty much everyone, at which point the strict class divides start to break down.

>It is no less true that it only exists to begin with because of the worker.

But the value is determined by non-worker forces. If you gave a man a time machine and he went back to Appalachia, AD 1,000, and he hired the local natives to dig up a coal mine, that coal would be worth a hell of a lot less than said coal's production in 1900, even if the labor and investment of hours*skills is exactly identical.

>tfw if Pinochet didn't throw the toys out of the pram we could be Star Trek by now.

>the snake eating its own tale: the article

On the other hand, they gave up Shitty 70s upholstery and vinyl for free helicopter rides.

> away from the proletariat and towards the bourgeoisie
But that's exactly what happened and is continuing to happen.

>You could only validate the statement by expending the class of "worker" to pretty much everyone, at which point the strict class divides start to break down.
That exactly what Marx does. Proletariat is a vastly more inclusive term in Marxist usage than "working class" for instance is in modern speech, literally everyone who doesn't own value-producing private property is proletariat.

>But the value is determined by non-worker forces
Doesn't matter, it still exists because of the worker. Here is what the Spookbuster has to say on the topic:

>The labourers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labour disturbances which show themselves here and there

This is the jist of why the proletariat are important and entitled to the total product of their labour, not LTV, but simply because they can provided the class consciousness is great enough.

leftypol has the worst memes, I hope you all are aware of that.

Then don't save them.

Probably not, honestly.

Too much corruption potential, and it's still hard to beat having an entire segment of society that lives or dies based on the economic decisions they make.

>But that's exactly what happened and is continuing to happen.

You can make an argument (and it's not a simple one) on a relative basis. On an absolute basis? Ahahahaha fuck no. How many of the proleteriat of Marx's day had internet connections, televisions, health care that enabled them to live to their eighties or nineties, clean, sterile food in abundance?

But of course, Marxist predictions of a global revolution rely on increasing marginalization and desperation because of said marginalization, requiring the choice between revolt and starvation. Look around, how much of that do you see as a result of capitalism?

>That exactly what Marx does. Proletariat is a vastly more inclusive term in Marxist usage than "working class" for instance is in modern speech, literally everyone who doesn't own value-producing private property is proletariat.

So then how can you have the elimination of the upper bourgeoisie class by the proletariat if the bourgeoisie are also proletariat? If the proletariat is literally everyone, then we already have a dictatorship of the proletariat.

>Doesn't matter, it still exists because of the worker.

No, it does matter. LTV makes a normative statement that the method in which an object acquires value is as an investment of the labor and skill the worker puts into it. This is simply not the case, as can be evidenced by any market shift in a commodity that isn't caused by labor factors.

>This is the jist of why the proletariat are important and entitled to the total product of their labour, not LTV, but simply because they can provided the class consciousness is great enough.

It also makes a rather unwarranted assumption that pure class consciousness of the proletariat leads to a single unified body with a monolithic sense of interest. That doesn't seem to be the case as can be demonstrated by literally any argument about immigration into a first world country by the third world.

>1457496221444[1].png
this was obviously written by an autist from /pol/

No legitimate critiques? How about:
>failed everytime it was tried
>sets countries about 30 years back (China and Russia aren't even developed countries(
>made africa even worse than it already is (Ethiopia, Zimbabwe)
>no existing communist countries (China is one party democracy, Venezuela is anarchy etc.)
>thinly veiled autocracy
Under communism I'd probably be forced to be a factory worker or a farmer and I don't like to be told what to do. Humans should choose their own path.

>The labourers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labour disturbances which show themselves here and there
The moral of the story is that you do not even need to bother with making worker strike actions illegal, like the USSR and PRC did, nor you need corporal punishment in the workplace, because you can just mechanize everything and let the lazy, spooked bastards wallow in the glory of their unemployment, which is what the "workers" movement of our beloved 2016 internet Soviet apologists, and their "enormous" power, ultimately amounts to.

This. I'm a fan of marx. Critiques of the LTV are way more damaging than 'muh human nature'

>Labor Theory of Value
Show me in Kapital where Marx talks about this and uses it as "the basis" of his critique.

The thing is wealth is a relative matter. This is why purchasing power is also a relative matter, the value of goods alters based on how much you could get away with charging for them so as such when wealth rises in absolute terms so too does the amount of money needed to be spent in absolute terms.

> requiring the choice between revolt and starvation. Look around, how much of that do you see as a result of capitalism?
A lot, I do not think the world has gone a decade without a communist revolution successful or otherwise since 1917.

>So then how can you have the elimination of the upper bourgeoisie class by the proletariat if the bourgeoisie are also proletariat? If the proletariat is literally everyone, then we already have a dictatorship of the proletariat.
They are not, you clearly have not read Marx or understand these terms.
The bourgeosie are people who own the means of production.
The proletariat are people who do not.

These terms are very simple and very mutually exclusive.

>No, it does matter. LTV makes a normative statement that the method in which an object acquires value is as an investment of the labor and skill the worker puts into it
Again I'm not talking about LTV. I'm talking about the simple fact that in the most basic terms workers make all the stuff.

You cannot create value in abstract terms unless there is stuff for value to be assigned to. This is strikes work, if the bottom rung of labourers simply cease to work then the system comes to a halt because they make everything.

>It also makes ....
1. It does, class consciousness very simply means the monolithic recognition of common interest.
2. That's because people who argue about such things are not class conscious. They are letting themselves fall into the trap of class in-fighting on a nationalist basis - it's the exact opposite of class consciousness.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

It is quite literally in the first chapter. Go skip to page 35 of the pdf.

>In this roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also,
in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is
abstract human labour. It is the expression of equivalence betwe
en different sorts of commodities
that alone brings into relief the specific character of value
-creating labour, and this it does by
actually reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds of commodities
to their common quality of human labour in the abstract.

Then go skip to chapter 16 and get to how he formulates the rise of "surplus" value, and it is literally LTV to a T.

>He doesn't know that communism anticipates and ultimately depends on automatization

But does it anticipate the working class remaining religious as fuck, hating the gommies, and not falling for their bait?

Marx doesn't even talk about the LTV, that's Ricardo, Marx's idea is different.

Yes, check out Gramsci.

Cultural hegemony is one of the pillars of the continued survival of the capitalism.

>The thing is wealth is a relative matter.

Prove that. You can certainly formulate measurements of societal wealth in abstract terms.

>This is why purchasing power is also a relative matter,
Purchasing power != wealth.

>so as such when wealth rises in absolute terms so too does the amount of money needed to be spent in absolute terms.

But not nearly commesurately. You could do without modern health care. You could do without internet. You could do without TV, and in so doing, lower your cost of living, even if you're a minimum wage drone somewhere, well below what a 19th century factory worker was doing.

>A lot, I do not think the world has gone a decade without a communist revolution successful or otherwise since 1917.

How many of those were formed by ragged, starving people, desperate to seize the means of production as a necessity of survival? At least in Europe and the U.S. and the most capitalistic of countries, you don't have people reduced to the margins like that in any appreciable number.

>The bourgeosie are people who own the means of production.
>The proletariat are people who do not.

That is quite likterally different than what you said back If you concede the point that the people who do own the means of production do in fact do productive "work" as well in addition to their function of owning means of production, you're left with a contradiction. They're proleteriat but not proleteriat.

Which is it?

>Again I'm not talking about LTV. I'm talking about the simple fact that in the most basic terms workers make all the stuff.

Define "workers", because if you're claiming that "workers" make all the stuff, then conversely, anything that is made that has value is created by a worker. At that point, pretty much everyone who ever creates value is a "worker" and the term becomes meaningless to build a societal model.

1/2

>You cannot create value in abstract terms unless there is stuff for value to be assigned to.

Why not? It's done all the time in finance right this minute.

>This is strikes work, if the bottom rung of labourers simply cease to work then the system comes to a halt because they make everything.

And then they're replaced by other people, becuase marginalism works.

>1. It does, class consciousness very simply means the monolithic recognition of common interest.

And if there is no common interest? The needs of say, the urban bottom rung workers are often very different from those of rural botom rung workers in terms of foreign trade and how easy or difficult the flow of goods, people, and information are.

> That's because people who argue about such things are not class conscious. They are letting themselves fall into the trap of class in-fighting on a nationalist basis - it's the exact opposite of class consciousness.

That's a fun and unfalsifiable statement. Let me make one of my own.

If, as Marxists generally claim, Capitalist societies are the playgrounds of the bourgeoisie, who control the societal and cultural organs of public dissemination of information and education, then Marxism or Communism cannot be anything more than said bourgeoisie perpetuating itself. After all, it is most pronounced in universities and university cultures, which must necessarily be in the pockets of the dominant social class. Any indication otherwise is merely bourgeoisie propaganda so fully penetrating a person that they are unaware of their role.

What about employment being necessary for the survival of the working class, as opposed to communists making them less and less independent, as everything that can be mechanized is mechanized as fast as possible, and bureaucrats other than them are doing the economic planning, and determining what is produced and in what quantities?

Why would the working class prefer a new bourgeoisie of intellectuals?

No, he just talks about how all exchange value is instilled by value producing labor, and how the bourgeoisie parasitically leech off a portion of that value producing labor, until such time that they will control all or at least a critical mass of the total world's value, and the proletariat will be starving. At that point, the proletariat will need to take the means of production into their own hands or risk elimination.

He might not call it by name, but his underlying vision is pure LTV with a total and myopic disregard for non-zero sum exchanges.

It violates human nature, and ends up violating human life.

>He might not call it by name
He does call it by name, he changes the idea significantly though. I've not really read a criticism of Marx's SNLTV that wasn't actually just a criticism of Ricardo.

>These critiques

workers ownership of the means of production

>Prove that.
There is a metric for this known as "cost of living".

As you will notice as the country gets poorer in absolute the cost of living gets smaller.

numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp

>!= wealth.
I know it doesn't, my point was that both are relative and largely proportionate to each other. So as such you can be as wealthy in absolute terms as you like, however the relative nature of purchasing power will always work against you. So even if you look wealthy in comparison to the absolute wealth of someone similar to you in say 1950 you still have to deal with the fact that you wind up on a similar end of the totem pole so the system will market to you as such by trying to take as much as it can get away with. For this reason where wealth rises in absolute terms so too does the power of it fall in absolute terms.

>You could . . .
Yes, and a 19th century factory worker could have done without gin, contemporary medicine and so forth lowering his cost of living until he was living off potatoes on a small patch of land like his agrarian ancestors. But this is irrelevant as you still find yourself spending loads of money to sustain your modern lifestyle, and as society progresses what would once be luxuries become ever more necessary.

>At least . . .
I like how you term the wealthiest countries as the most capitalistic of countries.

But the thing is communist militants have appeared in the first world. They just generally fail because the first world tend to be seats of capitalist power that are the most equipped and most interested in strangling communist movements in the crib.

>That is quite . . .
It is not, you just don't know what you're on about. As a matter of fact I made the exact same point in the linked post.

> literally everyone who doesn't own value-producing private property is proletariat.

>Define
The proletariat, people who do not own private property and as such can only survive by selling their labour.

>Why not? It's done all the time in finance right this minute.
I suppose you've got me there.

But that is quite literally meme-value. It exists only because there is value assigned to it, not for any tangible purpose. You cannot eat credit.

>And then they're replaced by other people, becuase marginalism works.
Even still you still need people there to do the work for the system to progress. If you replace them or not you've still implicitly recognized their significance in the operation.

>And if there is no common interest? The needs of say, the urban bottom rung workers are often very different from those of rural botom rung workers in terms of foreign trade and how easy or difficult the flow of goods, people, and information are.
They are not, their common interests in economic terms are largely one and the same and class-consciousness comes in recognizing this.

This is what the hammer and sickle symbolizes. The solidarity between two radically different types of workers, but workers no less.

>That's a fun and unfalsifiable statement
I don't see what your issue is, you can falisify it by making the case that nationalism is class conscious.

A centrally planned economy is not communist.

Assuming everything is fully automated then communist ideology holds it's time to take it easy and worry about things other than your own survival.

>>giving a small, unelected clique carte blanche to remake society with absolutely no meaningful checks on their power is an almost certain recipe for totalitarianism
also happens with capitalism

That's satire, no SJW has ever used the term shitlord

SRS and tumblr use it all the time (or they used to). How new are you?

>There is a metric for this known as "cost of living".

Which does not prove that "wealth" is something measurable in a relative basis (and compared to whom?) as opposed to an absolute basis of "how much stuff do you have?"

>. So as such you can be as wealthy in absolute terms as you like, however the relative nature of purchasing power will always work against you. So even if you look wealthy in comparison to the absolute wealth of someone similar to you in say 1950 you still have to deal with the fact that you wind up on a similar end of the totem pole so the system will market to you as such by trying to take as much as it can get away with. For this reason where wealth rises in absolute terms so too does the power of it fall in absolute terms.

But you run into a problem in that there is an absolute nadir of wealth, when you have nothing and are facing starvation. And Kapital posits an increasing number of the proletariat facing exactly that, and reacting to that as the impetus for worldwide revolution. That isn't happening. There is no real indication it will ever happen, and therein lies a rather glaring problem to Marx and his predictions.

Even if you're on the bottom of the totem pole in western society, you're not likely to die in a gutter.

>Yes, and a 19th century factory worker could have done without gin, contemporary medicine and so forth lowering his cost of living until he was living off potatoes on a small patch of land like his agrarian ancestors. But this is irrelevant as you still find yourself spending loads of money to sustain your modern lifestyle, and as society progresses what would once be luxuries become ever more necessary.

What makes them necessary? Food, shelter, living space, those are necessary, and those are what Marx predicts will be squeezed out.

>I like how you term the wealthiest countries as the most capitalistic of countries.

Because they are.

1/3

>But the thing is communist militants have appeared in the first world.

At nowhere close to the rate they appear in the third world.

>The proletariat, people who do not own private property and as such can only survive by selling their labour.

In the last post, you defined the proleteriat as people who do not own the means of production, which is distinct from private property. Which is it?

Furthermore, you have a large subset of people who DO own personal property/means of production and ALSO sell their labor, and I've yet to see a coherent response from you as to what they are.

>But that is quite literally meme-value.

All value is "meme" value. Objects only have value because of relation to knowledge and ideas embraced by larger society. Go back to my admittedly absurd example upthread of the guy with the time machine who opens a coal mine. Coal is pretty worthless to a AD 1,000 confederation of Amerindians. It's only with the rise of memes of things that are useful with coal that it acquires value. Information is valueable. Organization is valuable, in fact, as a society gets ever more complex, those things acquire greater and greater value. Just vecause you denigrate them as "memes", or you can't touch them, doesn't mean they have non-value.

>Even still you still need people there to do the work for the system to progress.

Yes, but the point I was aiming there is that there is no common material bond between the people striking and the people replacing them. At best, there is an ideological bond, or if I was being less charitable, a memetic one.

>They are not, their common interests in economic terms are largely one and the same and class-consciousness comes in recognizing this.

Not at all. Urban communities, because of their insufficiency at producing local food, power sources, and general dearth of space, require constant resupply from the outside in order to maintain themselves. They are directly benefitted by having strong trade links. Rural communities, are very often less likely directly dependent for day to day staples, but often require manufacutred products that are beyond the capabilities of local industry, but which might or might not be necessary on a day to day basis. And the creation of such trade links often brings an influx of people that the existing economic structure is ill equipped to deal with: agriculture's bottlenecks often have to do with land, not available labor.

They do not have common interests, and the farm worker and the factory worker will have very different answers if they're asked "is this proposed tariff good for you personally?"

>This is what the hammer and sickle symbolizes. The solidarity between two radically different types of workers, but workers no less.

Created by an intellectual caste that has little in material common with either of them, and often against the resistance of the working class. Hundreds of years before Marx, the Discourses on Livy posited a quite different class system, that is quite internally coherent. You might want to give it a look.

>I don't see what your issue is, you can falisify it by making the case that nationalism is class conscious.

First off, I don't see how you can get from making a claim that nationalism is class conscious to supporting a notion that all people who argue against "their true" class interests are merely insufficinetly class conscious.

Second, you can use it to shut down every argument against the class system proposed by saying that the arguer merely doesn't see the class system as it truly is.

What about human nature does it violate, what is human nature? Is human nature static?

I used tumblr from 2010 to 2015, I've been here since 2013.

They really don't.

>Objects only have value because of relation to knowledge and ideas embraced by larger society
You should spread the word in Africa that hunger and thirst are social constructs.

This is most meme argument, even communists use that shit against capitalism.

I go to work, away from my family, work very hard, come home, and at the end of the week I have $10 to spend.

My neighbor stays home all day, never works, and at the end of the week has $10 to spend.

My neighbor will never turn into me; I will eventually turn into my neighbor.

People with different aspirations and different goals and different attitudes and different ambitions will never work hard when lazy people profit equally from their work.

And no, the workers are indeed class conscious, that's why they stay away from you creepy bastards.

>Which does not prove that "wealth" is something measurable in a relative basis (and compared to whom?) as opposed to an absolute basis of "how much stuff do you have?"
Yes it does.
If you live a rich country or even area shit costs more. It is that simple.

>. And Kapital posits an increasing number of the proletariat facing exactly that
He would be correct in predicting that because it is plain to see that poverty even in the western world is growing whilst the middle class is shrinking.

>Even if you're on the bottom of the totem pole in western society, you're not likely to die in a gutter.
To be pedantic you are because the bottom of the totem pole in western society is homeless people.

>What makes them necessary?
You are not likely to hold a job unless you can wash yourself with hot running water. You are not likely to hold a job above the most basic of jobs unless you have a phone and as such electricity. As things become standard they become necessary.

>Because they are.
I'm going to need you to define what you understand "capitalism" to be.

...

>Mfw I live in a capitalist society and this is how it is at every job I've had.
>Mfw jobs don't promote based on merit, but based on credentials, cronyism, brown-nosing, and sycophantic rituals that appear to arbitrary bullshit corporate culture.

I'm not saying Marxism is the solution.

However, if everyone in a Capitalist society went out and got a Ph.D in something, many of them would still have to work manual labor jobs etc. simply because of things like job market saturation and the insurmountable need for labor. There will always be people digging ditches, laying cable, fixing sidewalks, trimming trees, etc.

Until these things are finally killed by automation, at which point the available job market will be smaller, but the number of people who need jobs will be greater.

As automation, and the capitalist incentive to automate professions in order to save money, continue to dictate the progression of technology, we begin to approach a "post-scarcity" society. Once we are there, employment for most will be impossible, so that society will have to either end its stigma against the unemployed or backslide into luddite primitivism.

If we choose the former, our so-called capitalist society will eventually be indistinguishable from a successful communist society.

Some believe Successful communism is indistinguishable from the political circumstances of a post-scarcity society.

kek, very nice.

I hate to tell you, but this ride's almost over.

t. marx

>At nowhere close to the rate they appear in the third world.
This is true, and as I say this has a lot to do with the first world being the seat of capitalist power and as such being the most equipped and interested in shutting down communist movements before they can even be a threat.

>In the last post, you defined the proleteriat as people who do not own the means of production, which is distinct from private property. Which is it?
Those are not distinct from each other. Not being aware of this is a dead giveaway that you have never so much as skimmed a wikipedia article on communism.

>Furthermore, you have a large subset of people who DO own personal property/means of production and ALSO sell their labor, and I've yet to see a coherent response from you as to what they are.
1. Personal property is the exact opposite of the means of production aka private property
2. Those are bourgeoisie, as I say there is no in between here, if you own private property you are bourgeois. This is not hard to understand.

>All value is "meme" value
You can burn coal and keep yourself warm, that is a tangible manifestation of value. What value does money exactly have that isn't solely assigned to it by memes?

Of course you could burn it to keep warm, but that's a really shitty source of fuel.

>Just vecause you denigrate them as "memes", or you can't touch them, doesn't mean they have non-value.
I never said they hold non-value. I said they hold meme-value, which is value it's just value that's assigned solely by intellectual abstractions.

>Yes, but the point I was aiming there is that there is no common material bond between the people striking and the people replacing them
There is, they're both common in the state of their material relationships and as such have a common interest in how to best reap benefit from this.

Of course scabs are vermin so there's definitely no ideological bond, the material common interest however is perfectly applicable.

Communism is by necessity dictatorial. It cannot function in practice if society is not run by an omnipotent state. That is the only critique I need to convince me that it's an horrible idea.

>this ride's almost over.
Not in our life times buddy.

By what necessity exactly?

Am I the only one who thinks that the government should actually prevent automation of any non-manual labour job?

>They do not have common interests,
But they do, the common interest in ridding themselves of the bourgeoisie and the state that is exploiting them. This is the common interest Marxists talk about.

>Created by an intellectual caste that has little in material common with either of them, and often against the resistance of the working class
Intelligentsia are also proletariat, my friend.

>all people who argue against "their true" class interests are merely insufficinetly class conscious.
If they were more class-conscious they wouldn't be xenophobic nationalists. That's the basic idea.

>Second, you can use it to shut down every argument against the class system proposed by saying that the arguer merely doesn't see the class system as it truly is.
That's exactly what I'm saying.

It's not "shutting down" anything, it's an argument. And anyone who disagrees must have some kind of counter-argument.

>not wanting to be EXTREME sh*tlords

To function. How exactly can a communist society function if you don't have The Government to say who does what and who gets what. Also since a communist society is absolutely communist (not like modern nations which come in many shades of socialism/capitalism with political parties with alternate views) there is not much room for elected government and all parties will be communist since it would be incredibly impractical to switch from communism to socialism or some form of capitalism every few years even if the people vote for or want such a government.

Yes you fucking Luddite.

The guy quoted was arguing against communism.

>You should spread the word in Africa that hunger and thirst are social constructs.

Are you stupid, or just very ignorant? Even with something as basic as food, you need knowledge to make use of it, which is not a "social construct".

Picture a hungry African child. He comes across some mushrooms. He knows that some mushrooms are safe to eat, and others are deadly poisonous. Without knowing if these particular mushrooms are safe or not, they don't exactly have food value to him. Someone else, on the other hand, who would know whether or not they're safe, can assign value to said mushrooms.

>I want humans to have no jobs and instead devote their lives to the consumption of consumerist products and shallow mass-produced media
At least skilled jobs (read "not middle management purgatory or jobs requiring little intelligence) give people some sort of purpose and mental stimulation

First define what you understand by "communism">

No I want humans to take it easy and worry about having a good time, producing art, advancing science and so forth without ever having to worry about their basic survival.

If you need a wage-job to give your life purpose you've already bought into the bourgeois capitalist scam.

>If you live a rich country or even area shit costs more. It is that simple.

And yet even the poorest have more. Funny how that works.

>He would be correct in predicting that because it is plain to see that poverty even in the western world is growing whilst the middle class is shrinking.

They're not starving. Hell, in my country, obesity is most common among the poor.

>To be pedantic you are because the bottom of the totem pole in western society is homeless people.

The homeless do not comprise enough of the population in any western country to support the communist revolution. Hell, Marx had deeply divided ideas as to whether or not the lumpenproletariat were actual revolutionary material.

>You are not likely to hold a job unless you can wash yourself with hot running water.

Which can be obtained for free, if you go out to public services.

>You are not likely to hold a job above the most basic of jobs unless you have a phone and as such electricity.

And most jobs of that nature didn't even EXIST in marx's time, hence the whole rising absolute wealth thing.

>I'm going to need you to define what you understand "capitalism" to be.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned by private individuals who operate them to maximize individual profit. They are free to do so under the color of law and without governmental interference in the operation of their means of production.

Please note, that under this definition, as far as I'm aware, there are 0 purely capitalistic societies, and probably will never be any. However, you can clearly see that some areas will be closer to this than others.

State owns everything; "from each according to their means to each according to their needs"; state also controls eveyrthing (not in the 1984 way but in the "this is the job you've been assigned" or "this is the allowance for groceries that you will receive this week" way. My definition needs refinement and I'm open to suggestions.

>But they do, the common interest in ridding themselves of the bourgeoisie and the state that is exploiting them. This is the common interest Marxists talk about.

WOAH, back up there. You have a long way to go before you've demonstrated

A) The bourgeoisie exploits them
B) The state exploits them
C) such exploitation is greater than teh benefits that the above two provide
D)That ridding themselves of such exploitation is their dominant unifying interest.

In fact, the argument that the bourgeoisie exploits the worker is fundamentally formulated in LTV economics, the whole skimming off the excess value thing. If you adopt marginalist economics, the phenomenon doesn't even make sense.

>Intelligentsia are also proletariat, my friend.

Not usually. While exceptions exist, by and large they're academics, who gain interests in state-controlled institutions of intellectual capital. That would make them bourgeoisie.

>If they were more class-conscious they wouldn't be xenophobic nationalists. That's the basic idea.

That's arguing from your conclusion, that the Marxist notion class, the one that their class identity transcends their national identity, is correct. If you say, use a Machiavellian notion of what constitutes a "class", then you would come to a completely different conclusion.

By saying that the reason that they act in a nationalist manner as opposed to a class manner is because they're insufficiently class conscious you are in essence presupposing the rightness of a Marxist class structure and theories of how social organization work.

>That's exactly what I'm saying.

And I'm saying that there's no way to disprove this "argument", because you can take any counterclaim against it by merely saying that the speaker doesn't have sufficient class consciousness to really understand things, and therefore their statement is irrelevant.

My fear is a Wall-E type world where everyone does nothing all day but eat mass-produced junk, watch mass-produced crap designed to appeal to the common denominator and generally live in a society that is even more materialistic (though not consumerist since consumerism/capitalism will no longer exist in such a society) than the one we live in today. Many people will have little incentive to go into higher education and only a select few people will attempt to advance science (for whatever that's worth in such a society) and even fewer people will produce art of any real value since most people (being uneducated and uncultured) will just want art that appeals to them, i.e. the lowest common denominator.

>And yet even the poorest have more. Funny how that works.
But this is the thing I've been saying, wealth is relative.

>They're not starving. Hell, in my country, obesity is most common among the poor.
This is true. What is your point?

>The homeless do not comprise enough of the population in any western country to support the communist revolution.
I know they don't, I was just pointing this matter out.

>Hell, Marx had deeply divided ideas as to whether or not the lumpenproletariat were actual revolutionary material.
He straight up said they're not because they'll almost certainly never achieve class consciousness.

>Which can be obtained for free, if you go out to public services.
Yes, because despite being a luxury by 19th century standards it has become so standard as to be a necessity.

>Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned by private individuals who operate them to maximize individual profit.
Alright.
>They are free to do so under the color of law and without governmental interference in the operation of their means of production.
Where in god's name did you get that qualifer from?

>arguing with a Marxist/communist
top kek m8y. Save your fingers the effort.

I suggest you read the communist manifesto, or even the State and Revolution by none other than Vladimir Lenin and see what they have to say about the state.

> How exactly can a communist society function if you don't have The Government to say who does what and who gets what.
With people deciding for themselves. Seems like a pretty simple solution.

>In fact, the argument that the bourgeoisie exploits the worker is fundamentally formulated in LTV economics, the whole skimming off the excess value thing. If you adopt marginalist economics, the phenomenon doesn't even make sense.
This much is true, it's part of the reason bourgeois economics post-Marx changed so radically. But really, this simply demonstrates of poverty of theory pre post and of marx himself: of believing *how* it speaks to have material force.

Any recommended translations?
And if they choose to not be communist any longer? Won't they be in a rather tough spot like many communist countries were after the fall of the USSR?

>But this is the thing I've been saying, wealth is relative.

And in that, you are directly in contradiction of Marx, who asserts that the Communist revolution will happen because ABSOLUTE wealth will drop to a point that the working class, as a class, cannot survive.

>This is true. What is your point?

My point is that the conditions Marx identified as being necessary for a global communist revolution are not existing in the countries he thought they were most likely and are likely never to exist.

>Where in god's name did you get that qualifer from?

From a need to distinguish it from feudalism. Otherwise, you can make the claim that the Roman economy of the 2nd century, the French economy from the 10th, the Song dynasty economy in 12th century China, primitive hunter-gatherers, and current day DRC are all practicing "Capitalism".

The lowest common denominator would exist with or without hard jobs. Probably even more with than without because people who spent time on job just doesn't hold enough time to dive big into what they should and what they shouldn't consume.

a modern company is much more than just labourers creating value to their bosses. Imagine all the risks and costs it takes to create a buisness, the ideas that create money, the advertisement and knowledge required to be at the top etc. No one is forced to work for anyone, create your own buisness if you can, its not illegal for anyone to create a buisness, but youre a pleb and cant create any value on the market and should forever be a pleb.
>gib monis pliz i deserve, im a gud painter plz
Marx is a lazy bum who didnt work his entire life, he always lived on other peoples money, he created a philosophy of hate that led to massive peoples starvation and death, only so he could live guilt free of his jewery...
Communism will only work when tax money is used to buy robots which in turn create commodites like food and such, otherwise no, a free market where entreprenurship and innovative leads to wealth is neccesary for people and economies to grow. Communism makes countries stay in said time because nothing new can be created.

>And if they choose to not be communist any longer?
Well, that's their prerogative. It might put them at a disadvantage in the world market, tho.

> If they choose to not be communist any longer?
Why would they? Communism is some kind of a perfect Utopian system. Who wouldn't want to live here? Who want to build it is another question of course. Many doesn't want as Soviet Union prove.

>A) The bourgeoisie exploits them
Proletariat=making stuff
Bourgeoisie=profiting off the made-stuff by virtue of the abstract notion of private property thus entitling them to the value in exchange for a wage paid to the prole.

>B) The state exploits them
Private property exists because of state violence by the police threatened against anyone who tries to infringe upon the bourgeoisies property as recognized by the state.

By this same principle it is equally true that the state is necessary for capitalism.

>C) such exploitation is greater than teh benefits that the above two provide
It does not provide benefits, it simply gives a portion of what the proletariat have produced back to them in compensation for all they have stolen.

>D)That ridding themselves of such exploitation is their dominant unifying interest.
They would make more money and have more free time therefore communism is the tits.

>Not usually. While exceptions exist, by and large they're academics, who gain interests in state-controlled institutions of intellectual capital. That would make them bourgeoisie.
No it wouldn't.
Do they own private property? No? Then they're proletariat.

Following your logic anyone who works for the state is not proletariat, which is nothing short of retarded.

>That's arguing from your conclusion, that the Marxist notion class
I know it is, but I have yet to see why it's the wrong conclusion or more accurately premise.

>ecause they're insufficiently class conscious you are in essence presupposing the rightness of a Marxist class structure and theories of how social organization work.
Very observant of you. And?

> because you can take any counterclaim against it by merely saying that the speaker doesn't have sufficient class consciousness to really understand things, and therefore their statement is
You could point out how class consciousness of this sort isn't good for one thing thus by invalidating the premise you've invalidated the conclusion.

Good, aslong as people are happy...
Fucking communists and looking down on people, you think X art and culture is good because youre a snob and think youre better than everyone else and should be some kind of communist party noble, fuck you...

If capitalism continues then we're more likely to live in a kind of bizarro world where rather than everyone being unemployed everyone works an absolutely useless job for the purpose of driving consumption even more. This has already happened to a great extent in most western countries.

However if communism happens then instant Star Trek.

>Probably even more with than without
I disagree because I believe that in a "post-scarcity" post-jobs (except scientific research jobs) fewer people would bother with higher education and "intellectual" things in general since they would not be raised to work much or put much effort into life in general.
>Why would they? Communism is some kind of a perfect Utopian system.
If we're talking in theory then sure communism is a perfect egalitarian utopian system but then free market capitalism with a basic income is a perfectly fair meritocratic system. But in practice then no, communism is not a perfect utopian system and it is very likely that people would want to switch to an alternative system at some point in time. And if you want to further discuss hypotheticals then maybe we can assume that the people realise that they've lost their individuality and incentive and decide to switch to socialism or maybe even a socialist/capitalist hybrid to regain these things.

tbqh I'm not a translations snob so I just read the first one I get my hands on.

>drink wine all day
>work 2 hours
>if you want
>do stupid art
>Lyfe
Meanwhile people in other countries are probably creating your food, materials for your stupid arts and so on. And to force a lifestyle upon people like Marx wants is awful, many people wouldnt want to live there, but the government wouldnt let them ofcourse, because everyone should be dirt poor as the man next door.

>who asserts that the Communist revolution will happen because ABSOLUTE wealth will drop to a point that the working class, as a class, cannot survive
The amount necessary to reproduce its labour will drop below a point. Tobacco not necessarily a physical need by any stretch, is/was nonetheless viewed by Marx as a socially necessary good, as a commodity that had to be produced in enough quantities for a socially necessary amount of consumption by the working class. The reason to consider it as such is tautological; it was because it was. It follows from there that if we speak of the plenitude of goods we now have as being such, we can interpret a situation in which one can have historically more, have cell phones and bananas and whatever, but nonetheless not have the cost of reproducing their labour being met.

This might not necessarily be how marx looked at the matter, but it's a clever workaround, and not contradictory insofar as it not being a matter given with much elaboration in the old literature.

>Bourgeoisie=profiting off the made-stuff by virtue of the abstract notion of private property thus entitling them to the value in exchange for a wage paid to the prole.

And you know, providing organizational and other soft services that the proleteriat often cannot provide for itself, at least not efficiently.

>Private property exists because of state violence by the police threatened against anyone who tries to infringe upon the bourgeoisies property as recognized by the state.

haha, what? At least where I live, the state inflicts violence against anyone who tries to infringe upon private property of all classes. I don't know what sort of shithole you live in.

>By this same principle it is equally true that the state is necessary for capitalism.

Outside of insuring that you can have people come and exchange goods and services, how exactly?

>It does not provide benefits, it simply gives a portion of what the proletariat have produced back to them in compensation for all they have stolen.

It provides security, among other things. You do like living in a world where murder is policed against, I hope.

>They would make more money and have more free time therefore communism is the tits.

I'm going to need some kind of proof for this assertion.

>Do they own private property? No? Then they're proletariat.

But they do. In fact, most everyone owns private property. I assume that you mean they own part of the means of production, which in most universities they do.

>Following your logic anyone who works for the state is not proletariat, which is nothing short of retarded.

No, only people who are given ownership interests in public institutions.

>I know it is, but I have yet to see why it's the wrong conclusion or more accurately premise.

Because it has 0 predictive value, for starters. Because it asserts to be a wholly materialist theorem, yet relies upon ideological connections to formulate classes. Because it has no mechanisms to deal with notions that intraclass divides are in many cases greater than interlcass divides due to factors unrelated to class. (i.e., that a German banker and laborer often have more in common than a German laborer and a Venezuelan laborer. )

>Very observant of you. And?

And you're an idiot who isn't arguing with intellectual honesty.

>You could point out how class consciousness of this sort isn't good for one thing thus by invalidating the premise you've invalidated the conclusion.

So it's ok if it's not true, as long as it leads to Marxism?

Yeah, the other user was right. Talking to you is a waste of time and oxygen. Good day, retard.