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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.
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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.
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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?
According to Big Beard Man's theory, it does not. (Practical Marxists later strongly disagreed, but this is not topic of this article)
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.
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.
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 am a very weird human being. When I first read this stuff on LessWrong as a teenager I remember being very annoyed by how smug they seemed about "hey, breaking news, you should believe true things and not false things." As an adult, yeah, fine, if anything they were understating it. I'm not pretending to be some kind of rational agent, but I don't explicitly come out and try to believe false things, what the fuck?
But I still don't understand how people can do this and it still frightens me that it's not even uncommon. They still know on the inside that it's still not true, right?? There's no Men-in-Black neuralyzer that comes along if you pretend you don't know it long enough... right?? Why does he want to believe something that isn't true?
Why wouldn't you believe (or pretend to believe) something that isn't true if there are such massive benefits to be accrued and such huge incentives for doing it?
Try looking at the stock market sometime. Do people really believe that a nothing EV maker in Vietnam is worth more than Ford?
It concerns me that "believe" and "pretend to believe" aren't very obviously flagrantly different things.
They can't be. The PR system of the brain demands that the mind fools itself in order to conform and fool others. If a somewhat honest person were to consciously lie every day, there would be friction against their values. They wouldn't be able or willing to keep up the act. Thus believing and pretending to believe must meld together, at least partly.
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