thats the secret, most people online dont read books, they read either the wikipedia page about books or hear about a book enough that they get the gist of it then say they read it

My former best friend saying he read Das Kapital, then thinking commodity fetishism means "people like to buy stuff a lot"

Took me nearly all of quarantine to even touch the first Part of Volume 1 don’t even think I finished chapter 3 of the first part

I read Volume 1 but I speak German so it's easier, Marx's long ass sentences are confusing in English

Vol 2 ane 3 i only read important chapters

we really need that breadtube video essay on capital fr...

who tryna collab

no more bread tube

not even a little contrapoints every few months or once a year. please let me have that choice

what is this, Stalinist USSR repressions?

by building up the habit I would read a chapter before I slept and when I woke up and it just built up

more of a Maoist struggle session guy

ok im ready

Breathe in breathe out

You don't like sitting in a dark moldy room struggling over a some minor political line for 6 hours?

yea i got a fetish... for commodities

People are beefing until this very day how to define value

My views:

Value is a process, a social algorithm that creates relationships between people via commodities and their rankings thereof...

Exchange value is the visible result of this social algorithm or process...but value is more than just exchange value + use value combined

The labor theory of value is true

Socially necessary labor time has a monetary expression

Money vice versa can also describe socially necessary labor time

The tendency of the falling rate of profit is true

Some say value is just PRODUCTION

Some say value is just CIRCULATION (deez are the biggest bozos)

Reality is...it's both

Value is bof outside shyt and inside shyt

Value is like LANGUAGE

We translate our sounds into words to communicate ideas

Value communicates our relationships towards each other we have using objects

Value is the process of communication, dynamic, always changing and expanding

Value isnt static or something to be measured

However exchange value is the visible end result of dis process

Just like it is hard to mathematically prove what "+" and "-" really mean and how they work, but it is easy to understand + and - being used in maths

Value is like having to prove the validity of addition or substraction, the behind the scenes abstraction behind this operation

Exchange value is the visible shyt we can easily see in our world, just like 1 + 1 = 2 makes sense to us without knowing any proof of how addition works for which you would need advanced mathematics

Exchange value is the visible result of value and can be measured in abstract labor or in money, any child can see what something costs or how much time it takes to build something

Therefore it is possible to put labor time in money terms and vice versa

But value...the process behind it all, the grammar of our relationships, the way we interact as humans using objects, defining our status and worth via objects, organizing our society around objects...much more difficult to comprehend and something that doesn't need to be measured, only needs to be understood

Value is the algorithm by which we rank and organize commodities within the relation between human beings

Exchange value, including monetary market value, is just a byproduct of this social algorithm

Dis definition would fit with cockshott shenaningans then

But also it combines the social sciencoid view

Best of bof worlds...

U got tha outside world shyt and tha inside world shyt

Marx always meant bof sides

Value is a social process, but society is always bound by the laws of nature as well

Value is both about the act of production and the act of circulation, not either/or

The production side can be handled via Cockshott shyt with labor time, the circulation side can explain the social phenomena behind commodities and especially money

Dis makes sense to me fellas...

Unequal exchange is when

Abstract labor inside a product

&

Monetary value of a product

Don't align

And the short explanation is dis is possible bc of currencies

Dis is why westernoids have higher wages and higher prices

The labor of Global South can be high for a product but the monetary compensation in the trades are low

Dis seems obvious to me

But a lotta fellas disagree

Including my mans cockshott

Usually abstract labor and monetary value gotta be equal; and a lot of times they are, but shyt gets wacky in international trade, and marx HINTED at going in dis direction in capital volume 4 or 5 or sumn

Marx made an allusion in a letter that the capitalist -> worker exploitation also applies between rich countries -> poor countries

Dis should be common sense IMO but a lot of fellas refuse it bc they say by definition, socially necessary labor time and money paid to a capitalist must always align

Dis is why some leftoids actually say trade and globalization will help 3rd world or sum shyt

However...dis ignores currency conversion and tariffs and trade barriers n shyt tho

Marx compares it to a worker being exploited...

Yeah...he benefits in that he doesnt starve by working...and he works "bc he wants to" theoretically...but really...what choice does the worker have

Same with the periphery countries trading, they benefit in some sense, but they do it cus they have to, and in dis process dey still get exploited

Even if a periphery country owns the MoP, it wouldnt make trade equal the way it works in capitalism bc of currency conversion rates

You can have whatever criticisms about Cuba you want how much I might disagree I can respectfully disagree but calling it a Soviet neocolony, especially as an American to say about Cuba, is so disgustingly paternalistic tbh that's the shyt I really don't f*** with

And the fact that damn near all Maoists blindly repeat that dumbass bullshit lie manufactured by the US is just the result of China's braindead foreign policy post Sino Soviet split

The f*** u want

You typing hard as hell today

That's all he does post a smiley then leave he never articulates his disagreement probably because he cant lol

U know I'm always happy to debate just don't want to be that guy derailing threads wit unwanted arguments

this the socialism thread we argue among ourselves all the time fam