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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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I Want To Believe (in Marx's Labor Theory of Value)

Content warning: this post contains MARXISM. If seeing Marx's massive beard or even hearing his name is too traumatic for you, stop reading now.

...

Recently I found one interesting article, not interesting in itself, but how it illustrates arguments about psychological necessity of faith and belief frequently discussed here.

Yes, it is Marxist article written by professional Marxist in Marxist journal. Last chance to avert your eyes from forbidden lore is now.

...

Yes, it is very obscure, but if post about civil war in furry community can pass there, this might too.

If you are interested how I got there, the route was Anatoly Karlin -> devcroix -> journal article by distinguished academic historian -> academic journal dedicated to Marxist theory

Was Stalin a Marxist? And If He Was, What Does This Mean for Marxism?

(tl;dr: yes he was, it means lots of things for Marxism, none of them nice)

This is not the article I wanted to share.

This is the article.

Unfree Labour and Value Productivity: Challenges for the Marxian Labour Theory of Value by another academic, not distinguished enough yet to deserve his own Wiki page.

So what is it all about?

Labor theory of value(LTV), the cornerstone of Marxist thought. If LTV fails, whole Marxism crashes to the ground.

Narrator voice: it failed, it was debunked many times, starting in 1890's. Somehow, it had no effects on world historical events of 20th century.

So, what exactly is this article about?

This paper explores the question: does unfree labour produce value?

According to Big Beard Man's theory, it does not. (Practical Marxists later strongly disagreed, but this is not topic of this article)

Since the direct purpose and the actual product of capitalist production is surplus value, only such labour is productive [...] as directly produces surplus value.

But why is it? (except that Marx said so) What is the distinction between wage and slave labor, slave and animal labor, animal and machine labor?

Author examines these distinction, and finds them rather arbitrary.

No need to read 40 pages of Marxspeak(I hadn't either), this table summarizes the argument and the dilemma.

there is no theory-internal logical barrier to believing that wage labourers do produce value but unfree human labourers do not, that human slaves produce value but animal slaves do not, or that animals produce value but machines do not. All of these options lie within the space of open possibilities.

So, Marxist author in this article deboonks cornerstone of Marxist philosophy and watches the whole thing tumbling down in its own footprint like the towers on Nine Eleven.

This had been done many times before, this is not the importance of this article, the importance is in his last sentences.

At times, Marx is adamant that wage-labour is an absolute sine qua non for the creation of surplus-value, and I have a hunch that this is the view he should stick with

(long Marx quote)

But I do not know how to affirm this tenet except as an article of faith.

It is not about materialism and science, it is about faith.

The author still has faith, still needs to believe, still wants to "stick with Marx", still wants to "affirm" the tenet he just destroyed, still considers himself Marxist and begs desperately fellow professional Marxists to help him (these are the only people who would ever read this journal, I am possibly first non-Marxist to stumble on this article)

This is completely natural human behavior. Rationalist credo "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" is deeply abnormal for human beings.

Are you laughing at him? This is exactly the same thing as all who people who wish wistfully "if only I had faith in God" "if only I could belong to Church".

I'm not a Marxist and don't see any problem here. Unfree labour still has costs. You still have to obtain your slave labour, feed them, protect them from dying from exposure and disease, prevent them escaping. Surely Marx would agree, if asked, that a labour camp produces surplus value?

Anyway, how can machines not produce value under Marxism? We're all agreed that a steel mill's productivity has a lot to do with the tools and machinery they have available to them. So obviously the machinery produces value. Marx had experienced industry, he knew machines existed... How could he have missed this? How could anyone have missed this?

The real problem is that labour doesn't have a relation to quantity or quality. If I have a really disorganized factory with stupid, clumsy employees, there's lots of labour but little output. The crappy output doesn't become more valuable because people worked hard. That, I believe, is what goes against LTV.

Anyway, Marx was not a Marxist. Confusingly, he was Marxian. I believe there's a quote where Marx says he's not Marxist. And he's certainly not Marxist-Leninist, they're wildly different ideas thrown together.

The fact that an idea is stupid does not mean that someone as intelligent as Marx could not have agreed with it. Kant believed that you can know a priori the geometry of space and Popper thought that evolution theory was not scientific.

If machines do produce value, then the capitalist isn't stealing from the proletarian, they are producing wealth together. There is no exploitation and the ethical side of marxism falls entirely.

This I think is another point of view that is problematic for Marxists but also for other people: namely that capital is literally a tool for capitalists to produce value. In the same way hammer and sickle is a tool for worker/farmer to produce goods, Tesla, Inc. is just a tool for Elon Musk to produce cars. Famer does not necessary have to make the sickle from iron ore and a tree, he has to rely on other workers and their capital producing it. In this sense the capitalist is just more complex type of worker.