Panopticon posted:icecrystal posted:one of the things he says a lot is that labor, like every other commodity, becomes more valuable the less of it there is so a reduction of hours correlates directly with an increase in wages. it also forces employers to hire more people, reducing unemployment. i'm not exactly doing him justice here so i'll try to find something more persuasive to link you to.
surely the increase of purchasing power per labour unit would be canceled out by the fewer commodities being produced
the other plank of his argument is that right here right now most commodities that ppl actually live on e.g. food and housing are being massively overproduced right here and right now. hes not wrong, in that most ppl employed in the service sector could sit on their asses and smoke weed all day for a net improvement to the planet. certainly everyone i work with
blinkandwheeze posted:isn't that lunatic a goldbug
hes not a goldbug in that he thinks returning to the gold standard would be a good idea. but he really likes to emphasize how weakning and finally eliminating the gold standard was a deliberate and important move on the part of governments to deal with capitalist crises
For one thing, I am not buying the argument it could not happen because of the cold war. Assume the SU had reduced hours of labor by half. In the first place, this would have had no effect on its national security, since it had the largest single stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet. Further, especially after Hitler got what was coming to him, and with the vast industrial heartland of Europe vulnerable to the Soviet military, no one in their right mind was going to seriously consider fucking with the Soviet Union militarily.
especially after it had just happened. ok.
Jehu seems unaware of gradations of conflict, like if an outright invasion isn't currently viable then there's no threat and no reason to have a military. You can't just threaten a nuclear strike in response to every little cut. In a word, coldwar.
littlegreenpills posted:the other plank of his argument is that right here right now most commodities that ppl actually live on e.g. food and housing are being massively overproduced right here and right now. hes not wrong, in that most ppl employed in the service sector could sit on their asses and smoke weed all day for a net improvement to the planet. certainly everyone i work with
hey sign me up
animedad posted:
I dont understand how someone can hate DM that much
As far as what the socialist world could've done to win the cold war, I think now that we understand just how much the existence and functioning of capitalist machinery relies on the historical structures which produced bondage upon the majority of the world, then the logical conclusion is helping the rest of the world with what Samir Amin calls national popular de-linking. The existence of the ruble as a pole of counter-currency to the international dollar regime was a big contributor to like the ability of countries to have stuff like living standards and functioning political machinations. I think they could have been a lot smarter about how to use that position, and although I'm not well read on how to form an international economy based upon your currency, I think probably something like the Chinese reform and opening up but based upon a general development of productive capabilities in order to further shatter colonial dependency would've probably been cool.
Another thing that I think would've been interesting is like what Steg, mostly jokingly i assume said, about reconciling with the PRC. Personally, as someone who likes Lin Biao but also thinks that the eastern bloc was awesome and the last time his homeland had any semblance of dignity, I think a more involved engagement with Chinese political factions that could've been swayed towards reconciliation (like the PLA when led by Lin Biao) would've been a smart move. Anyway those are my suggestions and if anyone ever locates a time machine, please pass this post along to Nikita Khruschev.
chickeon posted:jehu can't grasp really basic parts of Capital, he's a complete dumbass and the idea referenced in the thread title is the kind of psychotic mysticism which permeates most of his writing and is second only to profound misunderstanding among its characteristics
which parts? he continually denies that the working classes can ever be agents of transformative revolutionary change and insists that marx agreed with him on that ground. i want to be cured of my jehuism while preserving the good parts, which may involve getting off my ass and reading some postone one of these days