A Crash Course in Marxist Economics

a rhizzone community article by — published

dimashq posted:

tears posted:

im just trying to learn

speaking of, where is a good place to learn more about finance? I tried reading Tony Norfield's book but found it hard to understand.



hello, mean tears was just going to write "try divination", but ive banished her for a while so i can reply, im sure she''ll be back soon enough though

as u have probably grasped as you attempted to tackle norfields book, understanding finance is hard, so i hope u dont take this as me being rude but if u found norfield difficult then theres probably not much i could recommend at similar level that would help you understand about finance without going all the way back to basics - if you just want to have a vague understanding you could try his blog, he has some good stuff there. considering how few people know anything about capitalist finance i am pretty sure its not a requirement to understanding communism

but wats that i hear u say, u actually want to learn it all, every little bit of everything, just like i do? well why did u not say so at the beginning, heres one of many possible walkthroughs starting at the very beginning:

first off u need an understanding of basic marxist economics, i assume you already have this but the first thing is to work out what money is, so go ahead and read the first three chapters of capital #1. this is the most important bit and youre gonna re-read these chapters over and over; never forget them, no matter how many layers of financial derivatives youre on.

next u need some sort of guide to the rest of basic marxist economics because only an asshole would recommend reading capital at this point; id recommend leontiev (political economy a beginners course) even with its glaring deficiencies because its basically an old soviet text book from 1944, and everyones got to start somewhere, chapter 9 now represents everything i hate about people who think they understand imperialism but since you're posting here ill assume that wont be an issue because you already understand what imperialism actually is and youre super angry about that just like me!

in case u need a refresher please read this thread, or just read it anyway (applies to everyone): https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/14062/

if u havent read them already the obvious books to read at this point are cOpes Divided world divided class and smiths imperialism in the 21st Century, and lenin on imperialism obviously, i would supplement it with the collection of quotations in Marx & Engels on colonies industrial monopoly & the working class movement (kersplebedeb, 2016) as a bare minimum thats your foundational understanding of what imperialism is and how it works, if you were not angry before i bet u are now!

the reason u need this is that i dont think there is any point to trying to understand the most complicated aspects of capitalism without understanding the fundamentals and this does not in any way mean having "read capital" or whatever some smug communist might boast to you, it means understanding super-exploitation at the world scale, which is super easy really - the most important thing is an open mind. but predictably it turns out most “marxist economists” dont even understand this one wierd trick to understanding capitalism

ok good, you understand the basics of imperialism in the year 2018, maybe dip back into marx, obviously read chapters 26 to 33 to understand the genesis of capitalism, but supplement this understanding with federici's caliban and the witch, witch is an essential companion piece, some gerald horne, eric williams capitalism and slavery and rodney's how europe underdeveloped africa, also if u havent read settlers um, do that but dont tell anyone you hadnt read it; oh and read Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour by maria mies and some butch lee if you havent already, and mao, that guys pretty cool

all of this is because imo theres no way you can really understand finance without understanding the facets of the military-political history of imperialism, which is where the need to understand super-exploitation comes in, because if someone doesn’t understand why the cia created isis then how are they ever gonna understand what inflation is?

ok so now youre ready, ready to try and understand finance - by this point Tony Norfields "The City" will probably be easy, thats what i would recommend at this point anyway - now you can branch out into other stuff if you want. toyotathon was readying hudsons superimperialism which i like but see my warning above, you could also delve into something like baran and ssweezys monopoly capital though there are also caveats here, and if you want something like Amins work on unequal exchange, but since youve read cope and smith you've basically shortcutted to a reasonably good understanding (of unequal exchange) so you are backfilling with older work at this point. read monthly review, with the same caveats that apply to barran ands sweey themselves

norfields the city is pretty lightweight imo so one book i fucking love is nabuderes crash of international finance capital; essential reading imo but it is difficult going and its basically an abridgement of a larger work so,

i should say at this point you will of course be supplementing all of this with the financial news which you will now be addicted to. so where can u get good financial news? nowhere lol. but since capitalism does need to be very accurate in lots of things to do with finance certain data especially to do with price is plentiful so all your bond prices and market capitalisation and exchange rate data is at the tip of your finger, on line. other data is very difficult to come by, especially detailed company finances

for lack of any noticeable variation in msm financial sources i tend to browse bloomberg (lol) and yahoo finance (lol) plus zerohedge (:yikes:)and naked capitalism (...its bad but whatever), the same caveats to any amerikkkan news source do apply but often much more; "investopedia" will translate whatever bs capitalist finance terms u dont understand into slightly more understandable bs

now its time to tackle capital volume 3, which i am currently grinding through right now and it is excellent. Part IV, V, and VII are essential, VI is good, and youve probably already read part III by this point anyway cos u wanted to know what marx said about teh tendency of the RoP to fall. I havent read parts I and II but am looking forward to deepening my understanding of the equalisation of the general rate of profit, something i only really understand from leontiev

obviously i would also recommend reading the entire backlog of sam williams blog which is a great thing and i am afraid it will disapear one day. now you're on your own, just immerse yourself in whatever it is you want to learn about; and never forget what you read in chapters 1-3 of capital volume 1 way back when

and im sorry if that wasnt the answer you were looking for but this is exactly what id tell my younger self as she floundered about trying to understand wtf finance is, that and "try divination", obviously

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The future is wow!
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Discussion of A Crash Course in Marxist Economics on tHE r H i z z o n E:

#1
Post rating: +

tears posted:

dimashq posted:

tears posted:

im just trying to learn

speaking of, where is a good place to learn more about finance? I tried reading Tony Norfield's book but found it hard to understand.



thx tears, saved/favorited ur post. I actually would say the City only went over my head like half the time but I put it down and knew i would probably get more out of it in 6 months or a year or whatever. I usually have to read books several times and its rewarding to go back and realizze you were an idiot the last time you read it and literally the equivalent of slime in a jar the first time.

#2
Post rating: +

tears posted:

dimashq posted:
tears posted:
im just trying to learn

speaking of, where is a good place to learn more about finance? I tried reading Tony Norfield's book but found it hard to understand.



hello, mean tears was just going to write "try divination", but ive banished her for a while so i can reply, im sure she''ll be back soon enough though

as u have probably grasped as you attempted to tackle norfields book, understanding finance is hard, so i hope u dont take this as me being rude but if u found norfield difficult then theres probably not much i could recommend at similar level that would help you understand about finance without going all the way back to basics - if you just want to have a vague understanding you could try his blog, he has some good stuff there. considering how few people know anything about capitalist finance i am pretty sure its not a requirement to understanding communism

but wats that i hear u say, u actually want to learn it all, every little bit of everything, just like i do? well why did u not say so at the beginning, heres one of many possible walkthroughs starting at the very beginning:

first off u need an understanding of basic marxist economics, i assume you already have this but the first thing is to work out what money is, so go ahead and read the first three chapters of capital #1. this is the most important bit and youre gonna re-read these chapters over and over; never forget them, no matter how many layers of financial derivatives youre on.

next u need some sort of guide to the rest of basic marxist economics because only an asshole would recommend reading capital at this point; id recommend leontiev (political economy a beginners course) even with its glaring deficiencies because its basically an old soviet text book from 1944, and everyones got to start somewhere, chapter 9 now represents everything i hate about people who think they understand imperialism but since you're posting here ill assume that wont be an issue because you already understand what imperialism actually is and youre super angry about that just like me!

in case u need a refresher please read this thread, or just read it anyway (applies to everyone): https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/14062/

if u havent read them already the obvious books to read at this point are cOpes Divided world divided class and smiths imperialism in the 21st Century, and lenin on imperialism obviously, i would supplement it with the collection of quotations in Marx & Engels on colonies industrial monopoly & the working class movement (kersplebedeb, 2016) as a bare minimum thats your foundational understanding of what imperialism is and how it works, if you were not angry before i bet u are now!

the reason u need this is that i dont think there is any point to trying to understand the most complicated aspects of capitalism without understanding the fundamentals and this does not in any way mean having "read capital" or whatever some smug communist might boast to you, it means understanding super-exploitation at the world scale, which is super easy really - the most important thing is an open mind. but predictably it turns out most “marxist economists” dont even understand this one wierd trick to understanding capitalism

ok good, you understand the basics of imperialism in the year 2018, maybe dip back into marx, obviously read chapters 26 to 33 to understand the genesis of capitalism, but supplement this understanding with federici's caliban and the witch, witch is an essential companion piece, some gerald horne, eric williams capitalism and slavery and rodney's how europe underdeveloped africa, also if u havent read settlers um, do that but dont tell anyone you hadnt read it; oh and read Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour by maria mies and some butch lee if you havent already, and mao, that guys pretty cool

all of this is because imo theres no way you can really understand finance without understanding the facets of the military-political history of imperialism, which is where the need to understand super-exploitation comes in, because if someone doesn’t understand why the cia created isis then how are they ever gonna understand what inflation is?

ok so now youre ready, ready to try and understand finance - by this point Tony Norfields "The City" will probably be easy, thats what i would recommend at this point anyway - now you can branch out into other stuff if you want. toyotathon was readying hudsons superimperialism which i like but see my warning above, you could also delve into something like baran and ssweezys monopoly capital though there are also caveats here, and if you want something like Amins work on unequal exchange, but since youve read cope and smith you've basically shortcutted to a reasonably good understanding (of unequal exchange) so you are backfilling with older work at this point. read monthly review, with the same caveats that apply to barran ands sweey themselves

norfields the city is pretty lightweight imo so one book i fucking love is nabuderes crash of international finance capital; essential reading imo but it is difficult going and its basically an abridgement of a larger work so,

i should say at this point you will of course be supplementing all of this with the financial news which you will now be addicted to. so where can u get good financial news? nowhere lol. but since capitalism does need to be very accurate in lots of things to do with finance certain data especially to do with price is plentiful so all your bond prices and market capitalisation and exchange rate data is at the tip of your finger, on line. other data is very difficult to come by, especially detailed company finances

for lack of any noticeable variation in msm financial sources i tend to browse bloomberg (lol) and yahoo finance (lol) plus zerohedge (:yikes:)and naked capitalism (...its bad but whatever), the same caveats to any amerikkkan news source do apply but often much more; "investopedia" will translate whatever bs capitalist finance terms u dont understand into slightly more understandable bs

now its time to tackle capital volume 3, which i am currently grinding through right now and it is excellent. Part IV, V, and VII are essential, VI is good, and youve probably already read part III by this point anyway cos u wanted to know what marx said about teh tendency of the RoP to fall. I havent read parts I and II but am looking forward to deepening my understanding of the equalisation of the general rate of profit, something i only really understand from leontiev

obviously i would also recommend reading the entire backlog of sam williams blog which is a great thing and i am afraid it will disapear one day. now you're on your own, just immerse yourself in whatever it is you want to learn about; and never forget what you read in chapters 1-3 of capital volume 1 way back when

and im sorry if that wasnt the answer you were looking for but this is exactly what id tell my younger self as she floundered about trying to understand wtf finance is, that and "try divination", obviously

Edited by tears (today 11:38:03)









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#3
Black Belt
Post rating: ~
Can we frontpage that tears post plz?
#4
Post rating: ~
#5
Post rating: ~
i'm curious as to how turkish communists are responding to this, does anyone know anything about that?
#6
Post rating: +
Speaking of the bourgeoisie having to know things, this is an excellent resource

https://gvcc.duke.edu/overview-of-work/

Which had reports on basically everything. For my own work I read these

https://gvcc.duke.edu/cggcproject/korea-institute-for-industrial-economics-trade-kiet/

Which are invaluable. Reading Smith is a must beforehand so you learn what the terms actually mean and how to read beyond bourgeois propaganda. But we can't expect Smith and Cope to write a new book every year nor for them to delve into particular countries and regions. We'll have to rely on the bourgeoisie for that.
#7
Post rating: +
Also a secret bonus of Norfield's book is the first two chapters are a history of post-war british imperialism. As far as I'm aware, he's the only one who has provided a causal explanation for Brexit that doesn't ultimately boil down to "bad men made a bad decision."
#8
Post rating: +

lo posted:

i'm curious as to how turkish communists are responding to this, does anyone know anything about that?



well it s mostly telling the turkish people that the issue is not just a result of the current spat between yanks and turkish government, it s more about capitalism and its current form in turkey blah blah blah, something everyone here is already aware of. but there is another concern here, which is that there is a strange drive both among the ruling party and also the opposition (especially chp and the exmaoist microsect that people both mock for being completely insignificant and also for being the real mastermind representing the deep state) to drum up support behind the government by claiming that "we are all in this together". people supporting the opposition parties are quite disgusted by this display but these people get disappointed by their parties almost every day and then go back to supporting it in a few seconds as they are petit bourgeois trash so it s pretty much pointless. other than that they have been focusing on strikes as always, which is a more sound decision. living and working conditions have been in steep decline for some time already which is the issue they are focusing on and this currency drama is only making this problem more acute, so the currency stuff is not that interesting or important on its own when it comes to political action or strategy or whatever.

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