Senorah posted:

littlegreenpills posted:
political consciousness comes from the heart. the very fact of my communism will slowly convert my wife to it via the fact she associates it w. hugs and cuddles. of course this cuts both ways wrt to her sex positive keynsianism


don't waste the candles lgp; your wife will be purged. central command will assign you a new wife.

we should really do this right away, like day 1, or he's going to show up to planning meetings and monopolize all the time with dead-eyed monotone stories about his empty home life

him: (All the paychecks in the whole world) kind of have to (add up to more than all the invoices in the whole world) or nothing is ever profitable as pay in not the only cost. Also there is the slightly odd idea about money being spent multiple times. For example I might buy some copper wire, that was copper blocks which was copper ore which was dug out of the ground. At each stage it was worked on by someone who charged their material costs + wages + a small margin. That is the total on the invoice to the next guy who repeats the process until I finally buy wire. Now I might be the guy who mined the ore and the system is closed (ish). I cannot buy the weight of copper in the ore as wire because all the other people and invoices need paid.

me (i haven't actually posted this yet): Absolutely, everything you said is right. But the thing is the whole chain doesn't come to an end when you buy the copper wire. How did you get the money to buy the wire? Selling *something*, even if it's only your own labour time. A firm has to invoice its purchasers for as much money, or more, than the cost of everything it buys. You can't buy any more things than your paycheque will cover. (Even with credit you run up against this limit in the long term, obviously.)

Now say there's a finite amount of money in them*. It gets moved around, in exchange for things. The main thing a firm is bothered with is whether it's taking in more money than it's giving out. They send out invoices which exceed the value of all their paycheques, inputs, maintenance bills etc. But every firm in the world is trying to do this, simultaneously. In this scenario, a net inflow anywhere has got to be balanced by a net outflow somewhere else. Well, fine - unprofitable firms go bust. But the very fact they've gone bust means that other firms have to become sites of net outflow. The best that can be hoped for, long term, is something like a steady state scenario - nobody ever makes a net profit or loss. It's a zero-growth economy.

Now obviously we don't see this in real life, so the question is what am I missing?

*of course money isn't finite, central banks can print more of it and dump it into the system, possibly shoring up the bottom line of unprofitable sectors of the economy with it. Assume that's what happens in this scenario. You still end up effectively a steady state system at best, because while unprofitable firms can now buy products from profitable firms, the increased amount of money in the system reduces the purchasing power of the money that profitable firms are piling up.

when he naturally objects with "hold on individual people aren't trying to maximise their profits, they can survive living paycheque to paycheque. also they dont need startup capital to sell labour time, they get it for free!" ill hit him with my innovative stealth dialectical microeconomic formulation of TRPF designed for STEM grads and other assholes

littlegreenpills posted:

i have some heavy mania going on. im trying to slyly convince a libertarian engineering grad that marxism is right without mentioning the term marxism. how's this

him: (All the paychecks in the whole world) kind of have to (add up to more than all the invoices in the whole world) or nothing is ever profitable as pay in not the only cost. Also there is the slightly odd idea about money being spent multiple times. For example I might buy some copper wire, that was copper blocks which was copper ore which was dug out of the ground. At each stage it was worked on by someone who charged their material costs + wages + a small margin. That is the total on the invoice to the next guy who repeats the process until I finally buy wire. Now I might be the guy who mined the ore and the system is closed (ish). I cannot buy the weight of copper in the ore as wire because all the other people and invoices need paid.

me (i haven't actually posted this yet): Absolutely, everything you said is right. But the thing is the whole chain doesn't come to an end when you buy the copper wire. How did you get the money to buy the wire? Selling *something*, even if it's only your own labour time. A firm has to invoice its purchasers for as much money, or more, than the cost of everything it buys. You can't buy any more things than your paycheque will cover. (Even with credit you run up against this limit in the long term, obviously.)

Now say there's a finite amount of money in them*. It gets moved around, in exchange for things. The main thing a firm is bothered with is whether it's taking in more money than it's giving out. They send out invoices which exceed the value of all their paycheques, inputs, maintenance bills etc. But every firm in the world is trying to do this, simultaneously. In this scenario, a net inflow anywhere has got to be balanced by a net outflow somewhere else. Well, fine - unprofitable firms go bust. But the very fact they've gone bust means that other firms have to become sites of net outflow. The best that can be hoped for, long term, is something like a steady state scenario - nobody ever makes a net profit or loss. It's a zero-growth economy.

Now obviously we don't see this in real life, so the question is what am I missing?

*of course money isn't finite, central banks can print more of it and dump it into the system, possibly shoring up the bottom line of unprofitable sectors of the economy with it. Assume that's what happens in this scenario. You still end up effectively a steady state system at best, because while unprofitable firms can now buy products from profitable firms, the increased amount of money in the system reduces the purchasing power of the money that profitable firms are piling up.



when he naturally objects with "hold on individual people aren't trying to maximise their profits, they can survive living paycheque to paycheque. also they dont need startup capital to sell labour time, they get it for free!" ill hit him with my innovative stealth dialectical microeconomic formulation of TRPF designed for STEM grads and other assholes

Is that the natural objection? If he's a smarter capitalist won't his answer be expansion, discovery, "innovation", blah blah blah. The thing injected into the system is Wealth created by people discovering new things to sell, new markets, new ways to do things, blah blah blah the world is flat I love starbucks

Two terms that, since the early twentieth century, have been crucial to discussions about racial or ethnic relations – ‘discrimination’ and ‘integration’ – first appeared in official French documents in the years 1954 and 1955, respectively. They quickly became key references in the government’s pioneering efforts to recognize the importance and fight against the effects of French racism. Each was first taken up in texts that analysed the connections between the French Republic and one group of its citizens, so-called Muslims from Algeria. A government-sponsored study of ‘Algerian Muslim’ workers in continental France (the ‘metropole’) introduced the term ‘discrimination’; ‘integration’ was the title that the Interior Minister Francois Mitterrand affixed to the new policy direction that France was to take to bring ‘Algerian Muslims’, in both French Algeria and the metropole, into the nation. His announcement on 5 January 1955 was, of course, a direct response to the outbreak of violence on 1 November 1954, which was accompanied by demands for independence in Algeria and which began what its instigators proclaimed the Algerian revolution.

...

In measures taken in early 1956, it was on the basis of origins – having an ancestor who resided in Algeria at the time of the French conquest (1830) – and explicitly not by religion that the government established a legal definition of ‘Muslim French citizens from Algeria’(FMAs) and then put in place ‘exceptional promotion’ policies meant to increase quickly the number of FMAs in government posts – a necessary precursor, they argued, for refounding a new ‘Franco-Muslim nation’. In 1958, the ‘events of May’ brought General Charles de Gaulle to power in France and announced the establishment of the Fifth French Republic. Over the next few years, more sweeping and ambitious versions of the reforms developed in 1955 were implemented across all of France, both in Algeria and – in fact,most particularly – in the metropole. These included efforts to identify and combat racism,among them campaigns to inform French people about the challenges faced by their ‘Muslim’ fellow citizens, and efforts dramatically to increase basic education and housing opportunities, as well as to accelerate the process of ‘industrial development’ in Algeria.The most emblematic effort was the transformation of exceptional promotion from the 1956 measures that encouraged the hiring of FMAs to a quota system in 1958, which reserved a fixed percentage of open posts for FMA candidates. A focus on domestic racism and an analysis that attended to redressing the effects of discrimination while privileging the fight against economic misery and social inequality led to policy responses that directed education and training to ‘Muslim’ children and adults, massive investment and development schemes, and increased entry to government jobs and positions of political decision-making. These were supposed to reveal that France recognized and sought to over-come the discrimination and other structural conditions that had denied ‘Muslims’ opportunities.

...

The most obvious concerns US reformism in the early 1960s, notably the elaboration of affirmative action. The historian Nancy MacLean, for example, details the support measures that US proponents of this policy insisted were necessary for its success – strict quotas,legal enforceability, training schemes and support mechanisms, and speedy high-profile nominations, joined with a focus on redistributionism that would target the neediest candidates – and how they failed to be incorporated in actual policies; my work shows that these exact policies were all actually adopted by the French.

http://www.academia.edu/884505/Algeria_France_Mexico_UNESCO_a_transnational_history_of_antiracism_and_decolonization_1932-1962_

Affirmative action, desegregation, and 'integration' have always been liberal responses to revolutionary demands, Algeria being the best historical example imo because it went much further than anything the USA has ever done, and because it completely failed and thus killed liberalism. Whether desegregation is something specifically worth fighting for in 2014 America is a question of tactics but I would be very suspicious, Full Communism is both the only demand that one should make and the only demand that actually leads to reforms.

babyhueypnewton posted:

Two terms that, since the early twentieth century, have been crucial to discussions about racial or ethnic relations – ‘discrimination’ and ‘integration’ – first appeared in official French documents in the years 1954 and 1955, respectively. They quickly became key references in the government’s pioneering efforts to recognize the importance and fight against the effects of French racism. Each was first taken up in texts that analysed the connections between the French Republic and one group of its citizens, so-called Muslims from Algeria. A government-sponsored study of ‘Algerian Muslim’ workers in continental France (the ‘metropole’) introduced the term ‘discrimination’; ‘integration’ was the title that the Interior Minister Francois Mitterrand affixed to the new policy direction that France was to take to bring ‘Algerian Muslims’, in both French Algeria and the metropole, into the nation. His announcement on 5 January 1955 was, of course, a direct response to the outbreak of violence on 1 November 1954, which was accompanied by demands for independence in Algeria and which began what its instigators proclaimed the Algerian revolution.

...

In measures taken in early 1956, it was on the basis of origins – having an ancestor who resided in Algeria at the time of the French conquest (1830) – and explicitly not by religion that the government established a legal definition of ‘Muslim French citizens from Algeria’(FMAs) and then put in place ‘exceptional promotion’ policies meant to increase quickly the number of FMAs in government posts – a necessary precursor, they argued, for refounding a new ‘Franco-Muslim nation’. In 1958, the ‘events of May’ brought General Charles de Gaulle to power in France and announced the establishment of the Fifth French Republic. Over the next few years, more sweeping and ambitious versions of the reforms developed in 1955 were implemented across all of France, both in Algeria and – in fact,most particularly – in the metropole. These included efforts to identify and combat racism,among them campaigns to inform French people about the challenges faced by their ‘Muslim’ fellow citizens, and efforts dramatically to increase basic education and housing opportunities, as well as to accelerate the process of ‘industrial development’ in Algeria.The most emblematic effort was the transformation of exceptional promotion from the 1956 measures that encouraged the hiring of FMAs to a quota system in 1958, which reserved a fixed percentage of open posts for FMA candidates. A focus on domestic racism and an analysis that attended to redressing the effects of discrimination while privileging the fight against economic misery and social inequality led to policy responses that directed education and training to ‘Muslim’ children and adults, massive investment and development schemes, and increased entry to government jobs and positions of political decision-making. These were supposed to reveal that France recognized and sought to over-come the discrimination and other structural conditions that had denied ‘Muslims’ opportunities.

...

The most obvious concerns US reformism in the early 1960s, notably the elaboration of affirmative action. The historian Nancy MacLean, for example, details the support measures that US proponents of this policy insisted were necessary for its success – strict quotas,legal enforceability, training schemes and support mechanisms, and speedy high-profile nominations, joined with a focus on redistributionism that would target the neediest candidates – and how they failed to be incorporated in actual policies; my work shows that these exact policies were all actually adopted by the French.

http://www.academia.edu/884505/Algeria_France_Mexico_UNESCO_a_transnational_history_of_antiracism_and_decolonization_1932-1962_

Affirmative action, desegregation, and 'integration' have always been liberal responses to revolutionary demands, Algeria being the best historical example imo because it went much further than anything the USA has ever done, and because it completely failed and thus killed liberalism. Whether desegregation is something specifically worth fighting for in 2014 America is a question of tactics but I would be very suspicious, Full Communism is both the only demand that one should make and the only demand that actually leads to reforms.

thirdplace posted:

Jimmmy carter didn't invade anyone which puts him on top of the moderns, and he made americans feel sad which is also good

You forgot Nixon.

getfiscal posted:

obama is probably the best president in american history. who comes close, really.

Adolf Hitler

getfiscal posted:

i mean bush jr. did so many bad things that drone-murdering a few hundred people at weddings probably wouldn't even make it onto his war crimes docket

This is also really good thinking here. Didn't do the secret wars
No evidence.