Social fascist
Revisionist
Economist
Tailist
Mechanistic

(THIS IS HOW MAOISTS TALK)

crazy how i talked to rich people the first time in my life and just motaviated to me study marxism even more

Me as a brown law student in a prestigious elite scholarship program who worked for big law firms surrounded by aristocrats and shyt

You dont even know the type of ideology I had to deal with

I remember going to a meeting for doctoral candidates at a law firm and they were talking trash about the Fridays for Future fellas and even tho half of those kids are s***libs I still felt disgusted by these rich fellas in skyscrapers talking down on protesting kids

The ideology in German corporations

Real af

• Value can mean the “use value”. It is how useful the good is a to a human being. This is rather subjective and difficult, if not impossible to quantify.

• Value can mean the “exchange value”. It is the rate at which the good can be exchanged for another good.

• A commodity is a good that is, or in the future will be, exchanged. It has both a use value (otherwise nobody will want to exchange for it, since it would be useless), and an exchange value.

• There are goods that have no exchange value: For example, if a mother bakes a cake for her children from dough, the cake itself is not baked for the purpose of exchanging it for another commodity. The cake is purely made for consumption within the family. Therefore, the cake has no exchange value, but it does have a use value. The cake is not a commodity in this case.

• All commodities are goods, but not all goods are commodities, since not all goods are made for the intent of exchange. In a hunter-gatherer society where no trade exists, no commodities would exist – everything is made for personal consumption. However, in capitalism, most things are made not for immediate personal consumption, but for trade. Under capitalism, most goods indeed are commodities, since most goods are produced for the intent of exchanging it on a market. Capitalism is the mode of production where commodity production has reached its thus-far historical peak.

• While the distinction between “use value” and “exchange value” is important to understand which goods are commodities and which goods are not, this distinction should not be overemphasized: When we speak of capitalism, we must speak of commodities first and foremost, since these are the most common forms of goods. When we speak of value in capitalism, we are therefore speaking of the value of commodities. But: It would be wrong to split up the “value” of a commodity into exchange-value and use-value. The value of commodities is always both. If it has no use-value, it cannot be a commodity. If it has no exchange-value, it cannot be a commodity. The value of commodities is a unitary concept, not a dualistic one. The value of commodities is always both use-value and exchange-value combined.

• “Value” under capitalism expresses the relation between the commodity as a “thing” on the one hand and between human beings on the other. If all humans died from one day to the other, how could a Ferrari have any value? If all humans disappeared from one day to the next, all former commodities of the world would now just be mere objects, without any value whatsoever. For commodities to have any value, humans must exist. For value to have any meaning, goods and commodities must exist. Value is part of both the exterior world of objects and in the interior world of minds, both in the world of objects and in the world of humans, always these two sides at once: Value is a unitary concept.

• Value is what expresses the connection between humans and objects – the exchange-value being the social connection, the use value being the private connection we humans have towards these things, or, in the case of capitalism, towards these commodities.

• The exchange-value determines how the commodity-as-an-object forms a social relationship amongst individuals; the use-value determines the relationship between the subjectivity of the inside world of human desires and the physicality of the outside world of objects.

• Value is neither based purely on the extrinsic nature of a commodity (such as: the amount of other commodities you can exchange your commodity for), nor is it based purely on the intrinsic nature of a commodity (such as: how much energy or time it took to produce this commodity). Value has both an extrinsic and an intrinsic moment. The value of commodities is of course a social relation (since a commodity must by definition exist for the intent of trade), but it also has a natural component to it (the energy, the time needed on average and so on).

• Value is how society considers the material commodity. However, society and commodity are always bound by the laws of nature, such as the laws of energy, physics, chemistry, geology or the laws of time, aging and mortality. Therefore, just as much as society shapes its relation to the commodity, the commodity’s outside circumstances shape their relation to society as well.

• Therefore, in capitalism, a material product of concrete human labor acquires social character through value. Value is then the objective social process that gives the material product of concrete human labor the dimension of sociality, transforming it from a mere object to a commodity.

• Value can therefore be described as a social algorithm.

• What is an algorithm? An algorithm is an abstract logical procedure consisting of an ordinate and finite sequence of successive steps needed to solve a problem. For example, the sets of rules that allow for the four elementary arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) to occur are algorithms. Allow me to elaborate: For us, an addition of two numbers seems very logical, if not intuitive. You can take one object and another object, and now you have two objects. What we observe in these operations is the external form of the relationship between two numbers: We know the numbers, we know the arithmetic sign of the operation (here: a “+”) and its final result (the sum). However, we are not able to observe the logical procedure that leads to the correct result, which remains hidden and invisible, abstract inside our mind. Unless we are logicians or mathematicians, we are normally not even fully aware of the ordered set of logical rules that led us to solve the operation. Most people in this world can add two numbers, but how many people in this world are aware of the Peano axioms, which are used to formalize natural-number arithmetic? How many humans could axiomatize arithmetic (like the addition of two numbers) from the more basic facts of successor operation and inductions? Presumably not many. Yet, even though most of us do not know the exact nature of the logical steps behind adding numbers, the sequence of these logical steps really exists and produces factual results. It constitutes the algorithm of the arithmetic operation.

• Similarly, inside a market exchange, there is an algorithm that determines an equivalence-relation between commodities. However, unlike the algorithms behind elementary arithmetic, this algorithm exists outside our minds, outside the minds of sellers and buyers – it is not a pure act of human thought, but a generative social structure that most current-day humans were born into, that exists independent of their will. The value of commodities is, like the algorithm behind the addition of numbers, something that just “works” and produces reliable results – yet it is, unlike the purely mind-based arithmetic algorithm, a social algorithm, a real abstraction. Value is the algorithm operating within the social relation of the market exchange, which allows us to determine the equivalence-relation transforming qualitatively different commodities into quantitatively identical exchange-values. Value is what allows us to trade 1 kilogram of coffee for a given amount of money – qualitatively different objects, but quantitatively equivalent within the sphere of the market.

• Value is the set of successive steps leading to the determination of the exchange-value, which in turn is the formal expression of objectified abstract labor constituting the social substance of a commodity.

• Value is therefore the social algorithm of market-equivalence between commodities and between the individual concrete labors that produced them. The social process of value determines simultaneously the equivalence between two commodities (as a market-exchange-ratio) and as an objectified quantity of abstract labor. Or, in other words: A given market-exchange-ratio and a given quantity of objectified abstract labor are the mutually equivalent results of the social algorithm of value, expressed in the form of a given exchange-value. What the social algorithm of value adds to the material and merely bodily form of objects-of-use is the social form of exchange-value as the equivalence between market-exchange-ratio with other commodities and quantity of objectified abstract labor.

• In formal terms: If there is a set of commodities C, composed of the three commodity types x, y, and z, there is the following equivalence-relation, denoted by the symbol ~:

1. Reflexivity: x ~ x
Example: 10 grams of sugar = 10 grams of sugar

2. Symmetry: if x ~ y, then also y ~ x
Example: If 10 grams of sugar cost 0.10€,
then 0.10€ can buy 10 grams of sugar.

3. Transitivity: if x ~ y and y ~ z, then also x ~ z, so in total: x ~ y ~ z
Example: If 10 grams of sugar cost 0.10€,
then 0.10€ can buy you 10 grams of sugar.
If 0.10€ can buy you one bubblegum, then one bubblegum costs 0.10€. Therefore, 10 grams of sugar are worth one bubblegum.

Both 10 grams of sugar and a bubblegum are worth 0.10€. 0.10€ can buy you both 10 grams of sugar and a bubblegum.

• The social algorithm of value is the set of real steps operating within the act of market exchange that puts the commodities (sugar, bubblegum and money) in an equivalence relation, where these formal properties are verified. (Note that money is now no longer based on gold-standard, which would make it commodity-money without a doubt, but now based on fiat-currency, which makes this relation more complex)

• The commodity has a dual-nature, it has both use-value and value, the latter is expressed in the form of a determined exchange-value. It is important the stress the logical difference between “value” and “exchange-value” here: Between the two concepts, there is a relation similar to that existing between the sum as an algorithmic operation of calculation and the sum as a result of this operation. We easily recognize the sum (= the result of an addition), but we do not easily understand the complex arithmetic algorithm behind this addition, the logical steps that lead one number to be added with another number to come up with a third number. Similarly, the exchange-value is the visible result of an algorithm, obvious to the world, while the “value” as a procedure within the market-exchange is the social algorithm leading to this result, a much more complex concept. When we refer to an already determined magnitude of value, such as that of a given commodity, what we are actually referring to is the social form in which we express value, which is the “exchange-value”. Vice-versa, when we intend to consider the origins of the already determined exchange-value to find out from where it comes out, we refer to “value” as the social algorithm, the sequenced steps leading to this result.

• The definition of “value as a social algorithm” contrasts with the idea of value usually presented in Marxist debate. Usually, value is conceived as a “substantial concept”, with the discussion being about what the substance of value consists of and how it is measured, be it labor-time embodied in production (the traditional productivist approach) or money realized in circulation (the newly emerging Western approach).

• Instead, value should be conceived as a processual concept, a social algorithm, a generative relational structure, representing an abstract procedure (the social algorithm) deriving from a real social process (labor), which continuously transforms abstract labor from potentiality into actuality, giving it an objective, a specific and a quantitatively determined social form as exchange-value.

• Value in capitalism is unitary (exchange-value and use-value always combined), but its substance (abstract labor) is dualistic, and its social form (exchange value as the end-result of the social algorithm) is also dualistic. Abstract labor is dualistic in that it reflects the social labor necessary in production and the social labor necessary to satisfy social needs; the social form of value, i.e. exchange-value, is dual too in that it simultaneously represents a given market-exchange-ratio and a given quantity of objectified abstract labor. The dualism of value is not between substance and form, but inside each of them. Value is the social process that momentarily resolves the dualisms inherent in its substance (abstract labor) and its form (exchange-value), which continuously re-appear in the commodities produced and exchanged on the market, placing them in a relation of equivalence. As a transformative process, value is neither object nor subject, but both things together in a social algorithm, because it is what transforms the subjectivity of its substance as abstract labor into the objectivity of its form as exchange-value.

• Marx’s concept of value is different from the Hegelian concept of Absolute Spirit, since it is not a transcendent subject from which social reality derives and to which it continuously returns, but, on the contrary: Value is an immanent structure that itself is a product of the immediate capitalist social reality. As real abstractions, the algorithm of value is the unconscious and spontaneous result of the concrete and material social practices of a multitude of individuals, the fruit of the myriad of exchange activities that take place at every moment on the market.

• Value is the procedure, the algorithm that converts the concrete, immediate and actual product of human labor into a commodity. Just as language is the code that transforms the sounds the human mouth can produce into socially communicable concepts, value is the code that transforms individual labor into social labor. This discovery is what allows Marx and us to find the key to decipher the social hieroglyphic of the commodity.

• Value has a relational, a processual and a dynamic nature, which leads to it constantly expanding, “endowed with a motion of its own”. When the social algorithm of value infects its own substance – abstract labor – it proceeds to establish the capitalist social relation of wage labor, the purchase and sale of labor power, and now becomes capital, self-valorizing value. “Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process, and as such, capital”.

• Value exists as capital – the social algorithm of value goes beyond mere social production and reproduction, and now invades with its abstract code both human and non-human nature. This expansion does not have a teleological character, but remains a spontaneous, socially objective process without a planning subject. The search for profit is the conscious aim of capitalists, the same way that organisms instinctively pursue the goal of survival.

• Value is what transforms mere objects of use for humans into commodities standing in social relation between them. Value is not a static concept, but rather a process, a social algorithm.

• Algorithms were not defined in the times of Marx. However, Marx, in his Mathematical Manuscripts, actually foreshadowed the notion of algorithms when he tried to interpret differential calculus. The mathematical procedure developed by Marx shows how it is possible to obtain from a purely abstract and symbolic process, such as the algorithm of derivation, a real and factual result, such as the function derivative, which is actually operating in nature and whose discovery has allowed important practical applications in a wide range of techniques. The concept of value, elaborated by Marx in the economic works of his maturity, presents strong logical a***ogies with the symbolic operator of derivation in their common structure of algorithm – a purely abstract procedure that produces factual results.

• Value is as a social algorithm operating in market exchange, acting as a symbolic operator of social equivalence between commodities. As operator, value consists of a procedure, an ordered and finite set of steps necessary to achieve a given result. As symbolic operator, value is an abstract procedure that applies in commodity market exchange to content or substance logically distinct from itself. As operator of equivalence, value determines a quantitative relation, requiring that the substance to which it applies is commensurable and qualitatively identical between commodities, differing among them only quantitatively. As social operator, value has a purely social substance, in the sense that it is independent of any physical, natural, and material features of the commodities. As Marx points out, the only possible common feature that meets the criteria of quantitative social equivalence is that the commodities are all the product of human labor. Labor is therefore the substance to which the social algorithm of value applies.

• Abstract labor is the substance of value, and has a dual nature.

• Exchange value is the form of value, and has a dual nature.

• Value is therefore measured dually: In money and in labor-time.

• In term, it must be possible to express labor-time in money, which would of course also mean that money can be expressed in labor-time.

• Unequal exchange is a situation in which value in production (labor time) is different from value in circulation (money).

The ugliest goblin looking b**** denied me today because I wasnt pretty enuff while this really good looking broad said she wants to meet me i jordanlaffed irl

Socialism Thread

Exactly

I gave y'all my value essay and that's what you focus on

loser marxism/revolution of the sexual proletariat soon

I didnt know the Confederacy planned to become a theocratic dictatorship, invade Central/South America, and institute a system of apartheid/slavery that included everyone even white people thank God these demons were put down

IDK if that counts on loser, we might need to expand the definitions

@Womanpuncher69 some political economy for you on this page

Yes I read Hegel
Yes I read Cockshott
Yes we exist

the long standing bilateral diplomacy between the united states and morocco was one major reason the confederacy were never able to conduct overseas diplomacy. morocco recognized the union during the civil war and actively prevented confederates from conducting overseas diplomacy or trade, and also detained overseas southern diplomats.

Dworkin famously labelled a SWERF right?

But anybody who doesn't think s***work is liberating for women gets that label

Morocco is the Israel of the Maghreb

I don't know a single serious Marxist who isn't "against" prostitution AKA transcending from prostitution

Dworkin isnt aMarxist tho I think