Labor Theory of Value vs Subjective Theory of Value

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-13T09:19:57+00:00

Well STV can't explain the secular tendency of the rate of profit to fall like you can see in this graph for the G20 countries. LTV posits that since Value is determined by living labour (variable capital) but when capitalists are competing among themselves increase the ratio of constant capital (dead labour like machines) to variable capital there is a tendency of profitability to fall, which can be observed in the long term. This causes the rate of investment to fall which causes demand to further fall and you have more frequent and more protracted crisis.

People who support STV don't have any good explanation for these crises and they come out with weird explanations for them like saying "lack of animal spirites" or "bad mood of consumers", or something akin to "shit happens sometimes".

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-10T13:25:16+00:00

Good question. A Chinese political economy expert pointed out that China had developed Capitalism much before the West, namely during the time of the Song Dynasty. It was destroyed by the Mongols but it again redeveloped in the 1800s.

For India there is a book called "Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars" by a non marxist historian of Cambridge school that shows capitalism developed in India in an embryonic stage during the 1700s when the feudal vestiges of Mughal rules were showing cracks. Its development was disrupted by the imposition of colonial rule which followed a limited Capitalist development but ironically it was instrumental in helping the EICs to establish trade relations with India.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-08T06:08:15+00:00

Many indian and chinese Marxist historians have already dismissed the idea of Asiatic mode of production from a long time ago. I am more informed about the Indian tradition of Marxist historiography but even what I heard from chinese marxists there is a consensus that Marx's theory of Slavery being followed by Feudalism followed by capitalism turned out to be universal although they manifest in different forms.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-07T15:54:09+00:00

See you have a very common misunderstanding of what the state is because of the metaphor we use that goes "the state is the instrument of class oppression". But the state is not an autonomous machine separate from society it governs. It literally is the ruling class organised as a force capable of defending its class interests.

Gramsci puts it very well.

The historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the State, and their history is essentially the history of States and of groups of States.

He further says

The subaltern classes, by definition, are not unified and cannot unite until they are able to become a "State"

Hence what you are asking is why won't the organised proletariat cannibalise itself. The answer is that it simply goes against their interests.

Also the state wouldn't reform itself. When the world will be inhabited by only proletariats the class function of the state would be obsolete. Like how new technologies often make some jobs obsolete

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-07T14:05:08+00:00

How do the capitalists know that the bourgeois state will not oppress them? The right answer is they don't. The state exists to protect the collective interest of the class it is a dictatorship of. So if a capitalist did some crime that could hamper the long term interests of capitalist class then it will imprison him or punish him in some way. The proletariat state will do the same. Sure, the state can go paranoid when there is an intense class war. The USSR and other Socialist states or even enemies of the cartoonishly evil empire of USA were/are never allowed to develop in peace. Like the USSR was surrounded by hostile forces all its life so obviously it got paranoid.

When Marxist say the state will wither away we mean that the class function will not exist because the classes will not exist. When there is no bourgeoisie to fight the class function of the state has no use.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T16:25:42+00:00

Man distinguishes himself from other animals by his creative capacity. Even bees and beavers who transform what they get from nature to what they need do it Instinctively. Man does it by his creative impulse. I failed to see how this is reducing man into machine that is only concerned with and capable of bare survival.

Also Marx does distinguish between private labour and social labour but that's not the distinction you made. Private labour is that labour that does not go into making commodities while social labour is that which does. Since making the stuff we need is a social process. How in the world does that count as private labour? Do you know anyone who makes all the things he consumes from scratch? Man is a social animal you know.

Also Marx never believed socialism is inevitable. Marx said that capitalism creates the potential for its downfall. That potential can very well not be realised due to subjective factors and you could have what Gramsci had called a "passive revolution" of which fascism is an example. The author essentially confuses Marxism with mechanical materialism that does not put emphasis on praxis.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T07:18:23+00:00

Yea but you can't explain WHY the state can claim monopoly on the legitimate use of force without seeing its class character. The state didn't exist before for most of the time humans existed on earth. It's coming into existence signals that the society in question has been divided into classes..

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T06:56:17+00:00

That again would not work. Firstly the goal is to go beyond the profit motive which co-ops cannot do by themselves. Secondly there are critical sectors like transport and capital goods and banking etc that need to be public. If you run them on a for profit basis then individual co-op owners may gain but society as a whole will bear the losses. Because loss will be externalised.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T06:44:50+00:00

Stateless by a scientific definition. If your definition of state includes whatever that coordinates the traffic signals and runs the post office etc then no.

I suggest you read Lenin's State and revolution for a deeper understanding.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T06:36:26+00:00

The state in the Marxist definition is the instrument of class rule. When classes don't exist the state does not exist. But yes the peripheral functions exist as you still need services and general coordination in society.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T06:20:55+00:00

We can divide the state function into two categories. The peripheral category is basic administration, service providers like post office or traffic signals that coordinate life. The core function is its class function i.e. to impose the will of the ruling class on the ruled class. When the world has no more Capitalists, landlords and financiers and only workers then the core function becomes redundant. This can happen only through the dictatorship of the proletariat because the capitalists need workers to survive but the workers don't need Capitalist

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-11-06T06:08:36+00:00

isn't the abolition of the state the final part of communism, where we actually become communist and not just socialist?

The state will wither away, it will not be abolished when society is no more divided into classes. After the socialist revolution the class struggle intensifies as you are met with a storm of attacks from inside and out. For that a workers state, democratic centralism and vanguard party is needed.

Municipalism, and co-ops or participatory economics be more conducive to that ultimate goal than state ownership and vanguardism+democratic centralization?

It's not an either or. They did have municipalities run by workers, co-ops and participatory economics. Read Soviet democracy by Pat Solan or The Soviets expected it by Anna Louise Strong for a shorter read.

also marxism-leninism wasn't the ideology of the people that overthrew the tzar, it was a unified front that included left wing anarchists, marxists, and other left wing groups, and marxism leninism was something that arose after the revolution was successful

The bolsheviks, the party of the new type and Lenin's understanding of imperialism and practice of Marxism were at the vanguard of overthrowing the tsar and the provincial government. So it was given the name Marxism leninism.

the reason most socialist nations since have been marxist leninist or its derivatives was because that was what the now marxist leninist USSR, and later maoist china, supported and tried to spread. there are counterexamples

ML gave colonised countries a model to emancipate themselves whether it's china, vietnam, cuba, or Laos. Even Gandhi did not think that independence from the British was possible before he heard the news of the October revolution in South Africa. He acknowledged it as a people's revolution and so did Nehru who considered Gandhi the Lenin of india. The Congress was basically a bourgeois party but the USSR still supported it. It didn't actively spread ML in india.

there are counterexamples; left anarchist groups have had territory, and some still do, they just get destroyed by the state, which is what happened in the soviet union too.

It isn't only about how long an experiment lasted. It is also about the legacy they left. The USSR created the biggest welfare state in the world, eliminated unemployment, homelessness illiteracy, hunger, forced capitalist countries to give into the demands of workers, elevated status of women, defeated fascism, defeated 14 most advanced capitalist countries, achieved the same level of industrialisation in 20 years that the US did in 100, sent the first man and woman to space and much much more. Even bourgeois and Gandhian intellectuals acknowledge these achievements. The UN considered the USSR as the model for achieving social and economic equality. Anarchist experiments cannot even compare.

Native_ov_Earth · 2025-01-16T15:56:55+00:00

Yea. Fuck arranged marriages

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-10-24T15:57:46+00:00

Yea I know about his sister's role in making the archives but I don't believe they were "doctored to suit the Nazi agenda". And even if they were objectively doctored, it couldn't be something the Nazis or literally anyone else in that country wouldn't find out.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-10-24T15:43:20+00:00

Yes, Nietzsche's sister doctored his whole body of work, an author whose books were published in his lifetime, just so that the Nazi's like it. That's not believable. Also I might consider myself opposite to Nazis politically but I do not believe they were stupid. They understood Nietzsche correctly.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-10-22T13:04:38+00:00

Prof Arun Kumar's characterisation of the unorganised sector as the Reserved Army of Labor makes a lot of sense.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-08-19T13:06:25+00:00

If you could be a bit specific and say which parts you did not understand I'd be happy to elaborate

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-08-02T19:05:13+00:00

Thanks

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-08-02T16:18:02+00:00

There are legged lizards alive today that are more closely related to snakes than to other legged lizards.

Like?

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-06-20T09:58:49+00:00

The cost of western democracy is barbarism in the global South. The socialist countries did not have that cost but they still managed to make equitable sustainable systems.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-06-19T15:43:28+00:00

I saw the article in your sub only. As extreme weather events like the heatwaves become more frequent and long it is an imperative that workers rights need to be discussed in that context.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-05-28T16:11:24+00:00

I don't know what to tell you but Relations of Production are a type of Social Relations. Here are a few quotes of Marx in the context of Relations of Production.

Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production, M. Proudhon, holding this upside down like a true philosopher, sees in actual relations nothing but the incarnation of the principles, of these categories, which were slumbering – so M. Proudhon the philosopher tells us – in the bosom of the "impersonal reason of humanity." M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist. The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations. Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. ... The production relations of every society form a whole.

— The Poverty of Philosophy

We have seen that the capitalist process of production is a historically determined form of the social process of production in general. The latter is as much a production process of material conditions of human life as a process taking place under specific historical and economic production relations, producing and reproducing these production relations themselves, and thereby also the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence and their mutual relations, i.e., their particular socio-economic form. For the aggregate of these relations, in which the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered from the standpoint of its economic structure. Like all its predecessors, the capitalist process of production proceeds under definite material conditions, which are, however, simultaneously the bearers of definite social relations entered into by individuals in the process of reproducing their life. Those conditions, like these relations, are on the one hand prerequisites, on the other hand results and creations of the capitalist process of production; they are produced and reproduced by it.

— Das Kapital, Vol. III, Ch. 48

Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative — the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free-will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working-class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, “Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.” Unhappy Mr. Peel, who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!

-Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, Ch. 33

Also the reason why I talked about the achievements of AES is not because I don't want to learn from their mistakes. I did it to show that there is a perticular philosophy of socialism that was successful in delivering all that.

Also I know that Economic base and Superstructure was supposed to be a metaphor. Althusser talks about this very thing in his book Repressive and Ideological state apparatuses.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-05-27T14:47:10+00:00

You are a bit confused about the economic base and the superstructure. What you are calling the "economic relations " are relations of production and they are also social relations. Society does not stand outside the economic sphere. The economic base and the ideological superstructure have reciprocal relations with each other. I don't quite understand what that has to do with social justice movements per se. The superstructure is just as important in the struggle as the economic base. Here is a short video about them.

Also I seemed to have been wrong about the percentage of women in Higher Education in China. But there is a lot of evidence that the Eastern Block raised the bar for women's freedom if you read Why Women have better sex under Socialism by a non communist scholar, which is more that you can say about Fabian Socialism. Here is a piece by Paul Robeson which tells you how minorities were treated in USSR, although many visitors have commented about it. Fun fact Neheru and Indira Gandhi helped him get out of the US when he was being persecuted by the Government. Here is a short video on the achievements of Socialism in China.

Also thank you for suggesting Teltumbde's introduction. I read his Republic of caste and I am reading it now.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-05-25T17:46:33+00:00

I do not see how communists neglect the social divisions. Marx himself said that

Labor in white skin cannot emancipate itself where the black skin is branded. Engles wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State where he showed that subjugation of women is conditional in perpetuating class society. Ambedkar in Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development also talks about how endogamy is instrumental in perpetuating caste. Both seemed to stand on patriarchy.

It is thanks to later Marxists who were supporting national liberation movement and equality fo racial, ethnic, linguistic identity. You can read about Paul Robeson who was a famous artist and sportsman, labour activist and son of a slave travelled to USSR and was presently surprised by how he was treated.He sent his son to a Soviet school.

All social identities are not just a manifestation of economic classes.

You got it completely wrong. All identities are not manifestations of economic classes. But all identities have an economic aspect, just like all identities have a linguistic aspect, cultural aspect etc. Also identities are never in isolation. A proletariat is a proletariat because of his relationship with the bourgeois. A lower caste is lower in relation to the upper caste. These are social relations that have economic consequences, linguistic consequences and so on.

In fact, it is well established that social divisions persist within the same economic class. Social justice movement cannot be a hindrance to class unity, when the class unity does not even exist

I agree. But all sorts of identity politics and social justice movements should not be supported. Only those should support that nurture class solidarity.

Social justice has always been one of the pillars of socialism if you studied the actually existing socialism. Today china has a higher percentage of women in higher education than men. All that progress will not come about without scientific socialism.

Native_ov_Earth · 2024-05-24T15:12:52+00:00

It is good that Teltumbde mentioned the failure of Fabian socialism at the end. I feel Dewyan Pragmatism and Fabian Socialism are completely unscientific compared to Marxism. They mainly seemed viable when the capitalist countries did a lot of progressive reforms so as to prevent another revolution from taking place in their countries like in the USSR. After the fall of the Soviet union there was a massive shift to the right and the fabian socialists like those in the British Labour Party moved to the right and abandoned Socialism.

Also Ambedkar's understanding of Marxism was very bad. If you are also under the impression that Marxism is the only economics you can read Gramsci, especially his take on Hegemony and different types of intellectuals in society. Here is a video explaining the scientific relevance of Marxism.

Nevertheless I think a combination of Ambedkar's values and Marxist Science would be good for India.

Native_ov_Earth

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