#1
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#2
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On the one hand, Paul Cockshott believes that there is a labor aristocracy that super exploits workers in the vast majority of countries for the benefit of workers in a few countries.

On the other hand, he believes the labor aristocracy is in Saudi Arabia and that british worker is super exploited for Riyadh's oil profits.
#3
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#4
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time to poison this thread by bringing up homophobia and transphobia accusations
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#6
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That video is possibly the worst attempted rebuttal of unequal exchange I’ve ever seen. Based on his arguments, I’m not sure if he has ever read a single theorist that he’s trying to take down. If you’re looking for resources on it, I recommend Divided World Divided Class for a full examination. This article is a shorter version:

https://monthlyreview.org/2015/07/01/imperialism-and-the-transformation-of-values-into-prices/
#7
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cockshott, cockshott cockshott cockshott

#8
UNUSUALY COOL
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Acdtrux posted:






#9
UNUSUALY COOL
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paul cockshott is a former maoist who became a cryptofash computer dweeb which is why he thinks the government should be chosen by lottery and also why he hates gays. his books on SIMD and Pascal are useless turds. close thread.
#10
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i dunno, if i were in a court of law i might have to give the defense a say
#11
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then i'd hang them, they'd be so surprised!
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cars posted:

his books on SIMD and Pascal are useless turds.



#13
UNUSUALY COOL
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I've changed my mind, Mods please allow this thread to live but also move it to DYTD like all the other threads about bourgeois electoral politics in the imperial core.
#14
UNUSUALY COOL
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If it helps, OP: you don't have to engage with Paul Cockshott, a senile ex-Marxist pseudo-"Marxian" fascist who writes useless D-minus comp sci books, even more useless economics books & thinks the government should be chosen at random through an App. His opinions can simply be dismissed as incoherent and ridiculous. Please don't think that because someone has published a textbook or manual in an engineering field that he has any useful or interesting ideas about the world as it actually exists or even about the subject of the book as it exists in the real world. I can assure you from experience, at least in the English-speaking world, that there is no reliable correlation among those things, especially if the guy's book sucks.
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#17
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cockshott wishes so badly to reap the benefits of his opportunism while hiding his perversion of marx that he took a break from writing hastily formatted papers, started a youtube channel, and purchased the world's shittiest microphone so one would have to physically strain to make out his arguments. he probably never thought some faceless asshole named ZuluDFA would appear in the youtube comments and cast doubt on his whole career.

Edited by nearlyoctober ()

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cocks not hot
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bang bang my cock shot me down
#20
texas
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is he right about the economic calculation problem?

imo, since cokshott is a trained computer scientist, the theses he advances that are related to academic computer science are those that we should take seriously. or, at least, if there's something he can contribute to ongoing debates, i suspect it'll be related to that.

last time i went on a cockshott kick, what i gathered was that he thinks the entire economic calculation debate took place in an era before computation was formally defined, and so all of it was mere speculation. but now, cockshott claims, we not only have a formal definition of computation but a whole body of mathematical results of the cost of computation: i.e. given an algorithm, one can easily predict how the computational costs (in either length of computation or memory required) will vary with input size. Usually this is called the complexity class, if my noob level CS knowledge rings true. But the difference between an algorithm in one complexity class and another is the differencr between something that can compute w/ actual computers that exists vs. something that would take as many minutes as there are atoms in the universe to compute.

The upshot of this, I take it, is that there are formally provable results that can settle once and for all the actual efficiwncy of central planning.

that's what i got out of cockshott. it will be disappointing, to me, if he is wrong about the possibility of applying theoretical computer science to economic planning. sucks about his other opinions too i guess lol

Edited by radical_dave ()

#21
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What I remember from watching Paul Cockshott videos is that he wrote a paper with empirical evidence for the labor theory of value, but I don't know enough about economics (I don't know anything about economics) to know how valid that work is.
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#23
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I stopped reading when you said it was metaphysics, scrolled down, saw a bunch of line by line argumentation, and decided I don't enjoy rehashing this argument. Maybe someone else feels like doing it. If you are genuinely interested in learning about unequal exchange theory, you should just read Zak Cope's Divided World Divided Class or Emmanuel's work. They both go in-depth on what unequal exchange is and what are the facts that support it. The first 100 pages of the 2nd edition of DWDC is Zak Cope responding to critiques like the ones above.
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#25
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Boom Cockshott.
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#27
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pogfan1996 posted:

I stopped reading when you said it was metaphysics



catchprhase