Tristan

You’re only showing that you don’t understand Marxist theory.

We’re agreed that the labour theory of value is wrong, and Marx’s theory is wrong to that extent.

Now his whole theory is about capital, and rests on the proposition that the value of all capital goods can be imputed ultimately back to the labour factors of production, and only the labour factors of production. Okay, fair enough?

So if you want to say that some part of his theory is salvageable, which is what you are saying, then obviously you cannot make that conclusion based on:
1. the same theory you agree is wrong: LTV, nor
2. the same epistemology that caused the error in the LTV in the first place.

But you’re making both mistakes.

1.
Marx’s basis for saying there was a “surplus value” over and above the market rate for wages, and immorally expropriated into profit, was the labour theory of value. Take that away, and you have no rational basis for asserting that there is anything exploitative about the worker being paid the market rate for wages. I’ve asked you to identify what is the criterion of this alleged “surplus value”. You haven’t done it because you can’t do it.

Answer the specific questions I asked you! Don’t just assert that there is a surplus value – that’s what’s in issue! You need to say what defines the difference between it, and the market rate. A truckload of beer, please.

2.
Furthermore, even if the LTV were correct which it isn’t, the surplus value wouldn’t be due from the employer to the individual worker, because the capital goods that the worker used – the hammer, the factory to make it, the mine to produce the metal, and so on – got their value from the labour of all the other workers further back up the line of production. Therefore the payment is due to the workers AS A CLASS, not to an individual worker, and can only be realised by the socialisation of the means of production.

Therefore mere social democratic reforms won't answer, which is why Marx despised them. The only solution according to Marx, to usher in the bliss of socialism, is the complete abolition of private property altogether. So when in his later life he supported democratic socialism, he was contradicting his own theory!

You're contradicting both yourself and Marx by suggesting that some workers should join in the exploitative expropriation of the alleged “surplus value” of other workers.

3.
In any event, according to Marx, the transition to socialism will happen with the inexorable certainty of historical laws without the need for anyone to consciously do anything about it, so you’re contradicting yourself and Marx again.

4.
Furthermore, since "scientific" socialism - dialectic materialism - allegedly proves inevitable that capitalism must run its course by exploiting the workers, anything that retards that process is bad and futile because it only delays the inevitability, and the bliss, of socialism.

That’s why Squeers has conceded in earlier posts that it’s good for the workers to be exploited and the planet to be trashed, because when you’ve got a PhD in Marxism, that doubly-garbled confusion –
a) that capitalism does those things, and
b) that it’s logically good -
is what you believe!

Therefore you haven't proved what you allege about "surplus value", and I have disproved it.

And unlike my *correct* understanding of Marxism, you don't even know what the arguments are that proved it impossible in theory, even before it was attempted in practice killing millions!

So the turn-out of the Marxists really couldn’t be any more pathetic. It’s like you’re not just being a bit stupid by accident, you have an active commitment to being as totally stupid as anyone could possibly be if they tried really hard.

The fact is, anyone understands Marxism much better than you do, by understanding no more than that it is a belief system of nauseating hypocrisy, based on despising freedom and civilisation, blindly and stupidly promoting arbitrary power and consistently killing the poorest.

Thanks for proving it so well – and consistently!

Squeers, Tristan, Yebiga, anyone else

Would you please set out clearly what parts of Marxist theory you agree are wrong, and what parts you say are still right.

Make sure, in asserting what's right, you don't use any of the theory and epistemology you agree is wrong.

Let's see it, in two clear categories:
1. Wrong
2. Right

Go ahead please.

(To anyone not stupefied by Marxoidism, it should be obvious that we're going to get a welter of confused contradictions, covered in a slather of ad hominem argument and left wing slogans.)

Please prove me wrong.

It's important to understand the point that these liars are trying to squirm out of. Marxism is completely wrong, and NOTHING of it is salvageable.

Marxist ideas that remain right:

* class struggle a force for progress
* Surplus Value - effective 'unpaid labour time' as a consequence of exploitation
* need for international solidarity
* the need to counter alienation - which exists partly because of the division of labour; partly because of commodity fetishism and menial/punishing/non-creative work - instead provide all people with the opportunity to engage in creative labour - artistic, musical, literature ad infinitum
* business cycle; periodic destruction of capital; a consequence of overproduction and the inability of small capital to remain competitive
* tendency towards monopoly
* tendency of the rate of profit to fall; intensifying exploitation
* reserve army of labour
* aristocracy of labour (working class can be divided internally)
* progressive forces must 'win the battle of democracy'
* transitional demands such as free education, progressive tax
* the state does not represent the 'universal' interest; and is driven by social/economic forces to defend the interests of the capitalist class
* Gramscian emphasis on hegemony
* Emphasis of the Centrist and Leftist Marxists on freedom and democracy under socialism
* Imperialism and exploitation of the Third World driven by Great Powers wanting captive markets/resources; the innate drive in capitalism to expand - even if this does not fulfil humanity's interests
* End secret diplomacy that leads to terrible wars; attempt to pursue multilateral, mutual disarmament where possible
* difference between exchange value and use value
* co-operatives "attack exploitation at its roots"
* democratise production and consumption

Not sure of:

* can we explain history dialectically?;

* Some form of 'revolution'? - perhaps... - but peaceful if at all possible - revolutionary reforms, 'slow revolution' as the Austro-Marxists put it - Here I mean qualitative reform of the constitution as a consequence of democratic pressures - and not violent insurrection (MORE COMING)

Some Marxist concepts I don't believe in:

* Marx's 'labour theory of value' in *unmodified* form
* Marx's outright rejection of religion
* Marx's philosophical materialism
* Centralisation of all major production in the hands of the state during the socialist phase (I support a democratic mixed economy instead)
* Communism in its pure form - don't know if it's possible
* teleological progress in history can't be guaranteed - there are setbacks as well - we can't be sure history will bring progress
* the working class as a 'universal class' - the proletariat does not necessarily champion the liberation of all oppressed groups - that consciousness needs to be fought for - it doesn't grow 'naturally' out of capitalism
* Leninist emphasis on the vanguard party
* simple class bifurcation
* Leninist acceptance of Terror and centralisation - which leads to demoralisation, Stalinism

Thanks ever so much for your posts Tristan comparing sound and unsound Marxist ideas ...

However, I don't see democracy and democratisation, as advocated in the working class movement, as having much historical connection to Marx, either in terms of origins or in terms of nineteenth and twentieth century history.

For example, what about the history of democratic ideals and slave revolts in the ancient world?

Jesus (and Spartacus) remember, were leaders of slave revolts. There are some who would see St Paul the Roman Citizen as being a spy from the powers that be in Imperial Rome. That St Paul and St Peter founded the church of Rome, from which almost all Christian churches and sects derive doctrinally today, and that the Council of Nicea included all of Paul's writings in the new testament, detracts from Jesus's message. But read The Gospel Of Matthew.

The class battles between the aristocracy the merchant class and the slave class in ancient Athens also led to institutional suggestions about how to organise society in ways more democratic than letting Plato's guardians be noble all-wise dictators ... Like the idea of balloting for jury service, for bodies to make some sorts of decisions. And some original ideas that led a thousand years later to the common law of meetings. (Previous question?)

Not to mention Proudhon, Berkman, etc etc.

I'd suggest Tristan you read up on the Spanish revolution ...