#241

babyfinland posted:

yes it is ron paul




#242

babyhueypnewton posted:

lol is this guy Ron Paul? No one uses gold to measure the economy because we do not spend gold on things but dollars, and we havent had a gold backed dollar since 1971.


Thanks Paul Krugman

#243
ay so since people are talking about this, where does the value (as in social labor instantiated in a commodity) come from for currencies that aren't metal backed? some sort of MMT thing where the labor done by the state is what counts, or is this one of those things that Marx talks about that has a price but no value (however that would work for the money 'commodity')?
#244
I think the change from the gold-standard to fiat money (backed by U.S. hegemony) has basically no bearing on Marxist theory of money. Unless you literally can't take anything Marx's said and apply it to your own life his theory doesn't really need gold except for the fact that he talks about it. After all, he wrote this:

The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of
value generally, quite distinct from their palpable and real bodily
·· form; it is therefore a purely ideal or notional form.


and that

...gold serves as an ideal measure of value, only because it has already, in the process of exchange, established itself as the money-commodity.

i.e. a historical contingency

100 years before anybody dreamed of abandoning the gold standard (exaggeration).

Not exactly sure what you're asking, money represents SNLT but fluctuates for supply and demand, the only difference between now and Marx's time is the imaginary value of gold has been replaced by the imaginary value of U.S. military and economic power.

Here's good friend of the forums McCain on money: I've never criticized his understanding of economics.

http://mccaine.org/2010/12/19/marx-and-monetary-theory/

ofc Mccain and I are also just random assholes on the internet

#245

babyhueypnewton posted:

the imaginary value of gold has been replaced by the imaginary value of U.S. military and economic power.


i thought that the value of gold was not "imaginary" but rather derived from the SNLT required to extract it from the ground (and process etc), and Marx spends a good deal of time in chapter 3 of vol 1 talking about what happens when SNLT required for extraction (and processing etc) of e.g. silver changes relative to that of gold, so that's the labor that counts for the exchange value of money based on gold. so what labor counts for modern US dollars? government employees?

#246
tanks. You're welcome.
#247

c_man posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

the imaginary value of gold has been replaced by the imaginary value of U.S. military and economic power.

i thought that the value of gold was not "imaginary" but rather derived from the SNLT required to extract it from the ground (and process etc), and Marx spends a good deal of time in chapter 3 of vol 1 talking about what happens when SNLT required for extraction (and processing etc) of e.g. silver changes relative to that of gold, so that's the labor that counts for the exchange value of money based on gold. so what labor counts for modern US dollars? government employees?



you are correct that there is a contradiction between the infinite desire of capital for circulation and the real limitations of a money commodity that must be produced with real labour, circulated through physical means, and the physical need for a safe store of value and the value lost when money is not circulating and that gold causes many problems that paper money solves (though paper money has its own problems). but this is not the essence of money nor the fundamental contradiction, there has never been a time in history in which gold = money and people actually used gold coins as money (even in ancient times gold sat in temples while debt served as the mode of exchange and coinage served as the measure of government power for taxes and military spending *same as now* ). gold is simply a way of creating confidence which has been replaced by oil, U.S. bonds, military might, and a host of other things which go under the category of dollar-hegemony.

I think you're confused because money has value since it is a real thing (printed in the treasury like any other physical thing) but this is basically negligible. Money does not have a price and does not function like any other commodity since it is the one commodity that represents the common value of all other commodities:

The price of the commodity which serves as a measure of value and hence as money, does not exist at all, because otherwise, apart from the commodity which serves as money I would need a second commodity to serve as money - double measure of value. ... There can therefore be no talk of a rise or fall in the price of money.



Marx as quoted in Moseley:

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~fmoseley/working%20papers/TRANSFORMATION.pdf

The product in its natural form is already money, it does not need to be first transformed into money by exchange, by a process of circulation. It moves from the production process into the circulation sphere not in the form of commodity capital that has to be transformed back into money capital, buy rather as money capital that has to be transformed back into productive capital, i.e. has to buy new labour-power and materials of production. The money form of the circulating capital, that consumed in labour-power and means of production, is replaced not by the sale of the product, but rather by the natural form of the product itself, i.e. not by withdrawing its value again from circulation in the money form, but rather by adding money newly produced.

#248
i'm not asking about the price but the value. different commodities that can simultaneously be used as money (e.g. gold and silver) can have relatively different values deriving from differences in the SNLT required to bring them to the market, and Marx spends some time talking about the effects that this has on the status of one or the other as the de facto money commodity, the prices of other goods, the velocity of circulation etc. there are still situations today where more than one possibly money commodity exists, and similar analyses can be applied. but whose labor is it that determines the SNLT embodied in one currency or another (here the analogy would be the labor it takes to get the gold out of the mine or pan it from the river or whatever)
#249
so like, whose/what labor do you compare to know whether the Zimbabwe dollar or the US dollar or the yuan or whatever exist as the de facto money commodity?
#250
the labor required to produce money is negligible. money is not determined by the competition of the market because it is not a commodity that produces surplus value but simply a measure of value. which currency is the de facto currency is determined by politics and historical contingency, not like dollars are cheaper to make than euros cause they use less ink or something. im sorry im so confused
#251

babyhueypnewton posted:

the de facto currency is determined by politics and historical contingency, not like dollars are cheaper to make than euros cause they use less ink or something.


yeah this is obviously true but marx is very clear that the actual SNLT embodied in the money commodity is what sets the price. like pages 213-214 in the most recent penguin edition is where he talks about the actual value (here i assume he means SNLT) of the metal changing have having an effect on the prices of commodities. so on one hand i agree that it makes no sense to have it be something directly to do with the people working in making ink more efficient or whatever, but on the other marx is very clear about this. which is what makes me think of the MMT arguments about modern currencies essentially being coupons that can be redeemed on tax day.

#252
something like, the labor necessary to reproduce the services of the state
#253
why is harvesting every last bit of gold on the earth "socially necessary labor time"?

maybe im reading this wrong if i am please forgive
#254
i believe the answers that you seek re: money will be in volume 2 if they arre to be found at all in marx. this is a fundamentally social question that has to do with circulation rather than production, as the problem arises precisely because the 'production' of money has littler or no effect on its nominal value. so yeah while v. 1 says a few things about money because it's necessary to understand what's goin on with production and the labor theory of value, money as a means of circulation and as currency (which is the money we're talking about here) is fleshed out in v. 2 (and probably v. 3. i haven't read that one yet). sorry i can't be more specific. i just re-read v. 2 but i'm on bourgeois vacation and don't have it with me.
#255
also the concept of circulation velocity will be important probably
#256
if you want to pound on a liberal about imperialism in front of liberals, the writer of this piece

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/26/strange_bedfellows_putin_the_chomskyite_left_and_the_ghosts_of_the_cold_war/

is getting absolutely destroyed in the comments and he has decided to wade down into them to respond ... no lie, all the top rated comments are telling him to go home with his state department propaganda, its pretty cool. Take your "W" as Drake said to a white guy.
#257

babyhueypnewton posted:

WildStalins posted:

the real movementis p cool

actually bothered to read this blog and it's horrible. no offense to you but this guy is 100% wrong about almost everything but the issues disputed are pretty difficult so it's not easily apparent why.

http://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/i-critical-weaknesses-in-andrew-klimans-argument-on-the-falling-rate-of-profit/

My justification for this approach is simple: In Capital and throughout his career, Marx employed a commodity money in his analysis to reach his conclusions. I have yet to find a single credible argument against gold as standard of prices in the analysis of empirical data. Thus, it does not have to be demonstrated why a commodity money is necessary for analysis within labor theory. Rather, labor theorists must explain why a commodity money is not necessary — why, in other words, a valueless fiat currency can serve in place of gold as standard of prices.



lol is this guy Ron Paul? No one uses gold to measure the economy because we do not spend gold on things but dollars, and we havent had a gold backed dollar since 1971. btw this appears to be the main point of the blog as every post I've seen mentions it.

I'm all for random anonymous knowledge clashing, removing personalities, cliques, and academia from the equation, but there are too many blogs and websites full of bullshit these days.



that guy calls himself Jehu, he has a twitter and askfm

#258
the question of money was debated in anarchist spain and early ussr. bordiga was against money you should check him out
#259
money is gay
#260

babyfinland posted:

the question of money was debated in anarchist spain and early ussr. bordiga was against money you should check him out

no do not check him out

#261
hmm why is bordiga problematic huh
#262
he soudns like bodega and its petty bourgeois
#263
proudhon proposed a system of so-called 'arab money' decades before that however.
#264
http://globalresearch.ca/search?q=bordiga
#265

TheIneff posted:

hmm why is bordiga problematic huh


ill bet i know

#266
he didnt like stalin, and therefore it is imperative to totally ignore him
#267
not a bad rule of thumb really
#268
marx was a reformist so im gonna stop reading capital
#269
whatever floats your boat
#270
im actually not
#271
stalin was bad because he exhibited the Oriental disdain for individual human life
#272
rong thredony
#273
bordiga is cool. Blink out
#274
[account deactivated]
#275
Reading Bordiga is like reading Croce. Like why? He was surpassed by history by both Lenin and Gramsci and is now a historical footnote to understand the evolution of Marxist philosophy like Feuerbach.
#276
Babyfinland is not a communist so not sure why you would listen to his reading recommendations
#277
good to see you've endorsed eurocommunism, huey
#278
im the most communist poster in the forum babyhuey.
#279
lol
#280
we are all labour now