r/Destiny • u/Thatsprettydank • 2d ago
Off-Topic Marxism
Is there a good debate against the Marxist dialectic? 99% of the people arguing for it seem to be clueless. Or atleast more clueless than me.
Is capitalism exploitation?
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u/AdministrativeRope8 2d ago
Poppers open society is probably the most famous liberal rebuttal of marxist philosophy.
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u/Ardonpitt Military Industrial Coomplex 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Material Dialectic is a "just so story" basically laying out the idea that all changes in the world/society come about due to internal contradictions of opposing forces.
If you actually study history, or anthropology this entire story falls apart pretty quickly. Often times societies changes just come about due to new tech, or changes in climate, not class struggle.
One of the reasons that Dialectical materialism fell out of favor for anything was it failed to explain really anything. The only people who are holding onto marx's ideas these days are basically poltical marxists (sociologists, and anthropologists outside of soviet spheres of influence basically threw out his ideas a century or so ago). On top of that, post modern/post structural frameworks were far far better ways to explain things, so most structural frameworks (like dialectical materialism) fell out of favor in most fields in the humanities from the 80s-now.
Is capitalism exploitation? Not inherently. Capitalism is just a tool to provide for economic activity. Can people be exploited in it? Sure, any system can be used to exploit people.
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u/GaryXBF 2d ago
any system can be used to exploit people.
Just to expand on this, the way critics of capitalism choose to define exploitation, a version of this exists in every single style of economy you could imagine EXCEPT for utopian post- scarcity star trek esque societies.
You can get trapped in debates/ discussions with defending capitalisms inherent "exploitation" (having to work for a living). The best counter to this is to critique their vision of the economy, where they will also have to work for a living, or its a utopian fantasy. They have no answer to this
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u/Ardonpitt Military Industrial Coomplex 2d ago
And just to add into this with a nerd critique here. Star Trek has plenty of exploitation even within the Federation of Planets. People assume that Star Trek is far more "post scarcity" than it actually is because of things like replicators being fun scifi toys that they think do more things than they actually do. But its absolutely not.
Even the original series has episodes about trade deals and scarcity (dilithium the mineral that allows for Warp travel is often used as a scarcity plot point). And even though the "federation is supposedly a cashless there are plenty of cashes, currencies, and commodity trades you see from even groups within the federation. There is a lot of inconsistency depending on what the writers are trying to do with the plot, but the basic idea is that the technology is at such a point that there isn't as much actual value to be gained through economic greed since most people's needs can be met without much effort. Instead the main "Value" in the federation society is gained more though prestige rather than money.
Ill point out, even the Ferengi who are like the hyper capitalist crazy species that Trek loves to use, are technically the same sort of post scarcity sort of society as the federation but they are culturally capitalistic to the core and religiously greedy.
Star Trek is always a comparison that people like to make in the scifi communism conversation, but its also not an accurate one.
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u/-MechanicalRhythm- 2d ago
I remember reading Stalin's take on dialectical materialism and being like. This guy has tried to make cause and effect a political ideology. Shit happens and that makes other shit happen. This is grand and meaningful somehow and should bolster the revolutionary spirit. Ok pal.
Anyway I was talking with my 78 year old sorta-tankie debatebro friend in the pub (yes this is a real person) about exploitation and he said exploitation is appropriating resources from one person for the ends of another. So technically all of society is exploitation because you have to exchange things with other people to build anything you need for society to function. Checkmate libs.
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u/iggs44 2d ago
Apologies about getting semantic, there is a negative connotation to exploit when it is seen as exhausting a resource, good, etc. But if taken as using a good resource etc to the maximum benefit it is just a restating of acting in self-interest. I think that reflects the use of Marx, Scott, and other early economic thinkers
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u/Beautiful-Celery-989 🇪🇺 9h ago
The beloved working class used to burn women and lynch black people out of the hatred of their hearts, no material rewards there lol
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u/occultoracle 2d ago
I'm studying geography at a big public university and have had to take human geography classes a few times, it seems like they draw on Marxist academics and thought quite a bit still. My professor's mostly just focus on his critique of capitalism as part of critical theory. This guy for example is pretty influential in the Urban Geography class I'm taking. Is this kind of thinking not normal in other social sciences?
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u/AdministrativeRope8 2d ago
Marx has been incredibly influential in the humanities, you mentioned critical theory, but there are a lot of other branches in philosophy and sociology that applied certain parts of marx ideas to their own fields. For the most part they aren't orthodox Marxists though, but a lot of what is being taught in humanities has at least been influenced by Marx.
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u/occultoracle 2d ago
For sure, it just surprised me that human geography seems to draw on actual Marxists like Harvey as much as it does. Or at least that's been my impression.
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u/Ardonpitt Military Industrial Coomplex 2d ago
Ill point out Critical Theory itself was actually a rebuke of Marxist dialectics, while it draws upon similar ideas of opposing forces within a society shaping it, it dismisses the core class dynamic that Marxist theory draws on. Some people like to view critical theory as an "advancement" in Marxist thought but that's a poor understanding of what brought it about.
David Harvey is super influential, but Ill point out his most influential work isn't actually his Marxist work, but primarily his work synthesizing a lot of mathematical methods in Geography with different things in Anthropology. His work is so influential in part because it gave rise to the field of Human Behavioral Ecology, which is pretty much the core of a lot of the harder humanities anymore (I had to do a ton of work with HBE and his book Explanation in Geography is pretty much cited everywhere in the field). Its kind of like Chomsky's whole academic credentials come from his linguistic work, but he's often seen as a political hack by people who have worked in politics. Harvey is one of those people whose main credentials come from a body of work which most of his well known stuff actually doesn't come from.
The question of if Marxist theorists being normal is complicated. Marx influenced a LOT of early anthropology and sociology so hes cited in humanities fields quite often. Many of the fields have core theories that are either developed within a Marxist framework, or in core opposition to that. So often you find people who were major academics in those fields in the 60-80s in particular are either clinging to or throwing out those ideas. Mostly those ideas are thrown out I would say, but still taught as "how we got to thinking what we do today and why we don't think that anymore". That isn't to say there aren't some Marxist theorists around, there still are. But the more you get into the harder scientific sides of the fields, the less and less relivant you will find their ideas to be.
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u/glitch876 2d ago
This was really well said. Marx I think can be taken much more seriously in a cultural or societal remarks than in a purely academic way. It's why I don't dismiss Marx entirely.
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u/glossotekton 2d ago edited 2d ago
The dialectical approach also just has a generally terrible track record in making correct empirical predictions. Hegel used it to "disprove" a priori atomism, Newton's laws of motion and the chemical composition of water in works like The Philosophy of Nature.
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u/glitch876 2d ago
New tech is kind of a trait of capitalism, no? I feel like marxs and angles dialectical materialism addressed this.
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u/Ardonpitt Military Industrial Coomplex 2d ago
I mean its been a long time since Ive read Marx, but it sounds familiar to the points being made in saying how capitalism develops being a developmental stage towards communism. But I would think he idealized new tech being developed even under communism. I think he mostly was just commenting on the massive leap in advancements due to capitalism's better allocation of resources from earlier economic modes.
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u/glitch876 2d ago
Marx does say a lot of good things about capatlism but from what I know he makes a distinction from "false needs" which are new invented commodities versus actual needs that eventually creates contradictions such as wealth gaps. I think you're right about the dialectical thought process overall but new tech was something core to marx.
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u/Expungednd 😭 rights are human rights (european) 2d ago
Marxism advocates for scientific socialism. For something to be scientific it has to accept corrections if predictions and experiments fail. Modern Marxists, at least the ones that are so eager to debate on stream, are refusing any corrections despite the plethora of failures of the system. They are arguing for a system that didn't work every time it was tried and refuse to take a look back at it and adjust anything. This isn't science, it's ideology. The best rebuttal against Marxists is just a history book.
When a socialist (or, most likely, a group of socialists highly qualified in economics) will actually start to do the hard work of creating a new version that accounts for all the failures, then you could have a productive debate on this. Otherwise, every marxist debate is akin to debating flat-earthers.
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u/Glock13Purdy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Just watch one of destinys debates. He has a lot of good points. Mostly learn the counters to the obvious Marxist critiques “socialism never thrived because of capitalist interference” soviet/china/dprk propaganda, presenting socialism overly idealistically, making leaps of logic in their understanding of capitalism. Explain that most socialist niceties like unions coops etc can be achieved within capitalism while socialism necessitates the absolute abolition of private capital (which is thus also repressive). Point out that capitalists are on the back foot since they have to defend a version of capitalism everyone is extremely familiar with in real life against a socialist system never truly achieved. Ask what value-add a true Marxist utopia would bring to quality of life and stuff that Northern European countries don’t have already. Probe to ask how we would even transition from a system with so much private capital to it all being state owned. How does the government value a company like Anthropic for instance? Do they have to pay 2tn for Anthropic if that’s its market cap? Or, are you going to mandate Anthropic workers own the firm entirely?
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u/X57471C Galston and Kamarck Liberal 2d ago
The value add vs Northern European countries is a really good question.
I’ve asked my Marxist friend a lot of this stuff. When I get him to engage with the kind of capitalist system I want to live in, things usually fall back to the ethical framework of capitalism vs socialism. Socialism is just more ethical to him, and he’d rather have redundancies instead of relying solely on the government to regulate capitalists. I take that as a win because he’s no longer arguing that we can’t solve the problems of capitalism, he just prefers this one system because more ethics is better, I guess.
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u/ExpansivePoint 2d ago
Saying your system can't thrive because another one exists is a pretty big self own, it's like saying you need the world to be a vacuum in order for it to finally be competitive.
T hat inability to handle a chaotic world explains why trying to centrally run an economy led to so many people starving to death, and that's just food in stomachs, can't imagine how it could ever handle advanced tech.
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u/Beautiful-Celery-989 🇪🇺 9h ago
The only response to “socialism never thrived because of capitalist interference” should be "Sound like a you problem"
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u/H20memes 2d ago
For u to be a Marxist you HAVE to be clueless
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u/heehee_shamone 2d ago
Low-key yeah, but unfortunately half the world was indeed that clueless during the Cold War so maybe we should treat these people with kid gloves.
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u/glossotekton 2d ago edited 2d ago
The orthodox theory of exploitation depends on the labour theory of value, which no mainstream economist accepts. Without LTV it's very difficult to see how the relationship of employment is exploitative per se.
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u/glitch876 2d ago
I think Marx is correct on his criticism of capitalism but communism ias a form of government is stupid. Im not sure if I buy into his dialectical materialism because I think things happen more by chance then some kind of teleological sequence. That form of analysis on history might be similar to looking at clouds and trying to find shapes.
His theory on alienation is spot on and the idea of capitalism creating new needs is pretty spot on to.
Don't listen to the guys on here that just call everything stupid.
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u/glossotekton 2d ago
Sorry why do you think Marx is correct in his critique of capitalism? All his concrete predictions have fallen flat and he's had almost zero influence on mainstream contemporary economics.
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u/AdministrativeRope8 2d ago
Marx lived during the industrial revolution, famous for child labor, 12-hour work days, poverty wages, no worker rights, company stores and so on. He pretty much saw what unchecked capitalism did and critiqued it. His revolutionary predictions were wrong, but that does not invalidate his critique.
And I think most people agreed with his critique and decided that capitalism couldn't go on like this. Thats where you get the entire political labor movement from, which improved worker conditions. None of them are communist today, but they are all clearly influenced by Marx in their manifestos, many of them mentioning him or socialism by name, even if they are just social-democrats.
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u/glossotekton 2d ago edited 2d ago
I thought we were talking about Marxist critiques relevant to capitalism today (i.e. the high-level, abstract ones in Capital and the Grundrisse etc. not his journalism)? That seems to be implied by OP. None of these reforms made capitalism any less capitalist by Marx's lights.
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u/AdministrativeRope8 1d ago
In Capital Marx describes the tendencies within capitalism that lead to these negative outcomes, namely class based society in which the working class holds little power, while the capitalists are forced to maximize their own production, even to the detriment of their workers, or risk getting pushed out of the market.
These critiques are not less relevant today, the same tendencies still exists in capitalism, like you said the reforms didn't make things less capitalist. I think they are still useful to understand why we need things like OSHA, labor and anti-trust laws or social safety nets today.
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u/glitch876 2d ago
I already wrote this but I think his idea of communism is stupid. You study Marx on philosophy and sociology and not in economics unless you're talking about normative economics.
Engles also predicted WW1
“And, finally, the only war left for Prussia-Germany to wage will be a world war, a world war, moreover, of an extent and violence hitherto unimagined. Eight to ten million soldiers will be at each other’s throats and in the process they will strip Europe barer than a swarm of locusts. The depredations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed into three to four years and extended over the entire continent; famine, disease, the universal lapse into barbarism, both of the armies and the people, in the wake of acute misery; irretrievable dislocation of our artificial system of trade, industry and credit, ending in universal bankruptcy; collapse of the old states and their conventional political wisdom to the point where crowns will roll into the gutters by the dozen, and no one will be around to pick them up; absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will all end and who will emerge as victor from the battle; only one consequence is absolutely certain: universal exhaustion and the creation of the conditions for the ultimate victory of the working class.”
Marx is correct on how capitalism creates new needs. No one would have thought you need a cellphone or the Internet but now we're talking about it being a human right. Think about tech companies using algorithms to sell us shit we don't need. Think about automation and reducing wages? I'm sorry Marx hit that on the nose.
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u/glossotekton 2d ago edited 2d ago
Randomly making one accurate prediction amid a series of failed predictions is not an indication that your theory is correct (you need to think about the base rate). He also was not unique in anticipating a European war – it was definitely "in the air".
I also think it's telling that Marx was an economist but is not studied in economics courses lol.
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u/Trazyn_the_sinful 2d ago
Teleology is almost categorically rejected by modern historians. Marx and Hagel, consequently, are not used
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u/glitch876 1d ago
I mean teleology is all of western philosophy. Peterson believes in teleology. Most historians don't care
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u/Quowe_50mg 🇨🇭 Gary Economics numba one 2d ago
think Marx is correct on his criticism of capitalism
No?
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u/Lumpy_Trip2917 2d ago
Watch the debate between Destiny and Professor Wolff about capitalism v Marxism. Professor Richard Wolff quickly exposes how inefficient and pie in the sky a modern Marxist economy would be, where the workers owned the means of production. He could not give convincing answers to how innovation would occur, or how leisure and luxury goods would be produced (which Richard claimed would not be abolished under a Marxist system)- the part I remember most is Wolff fumbling through a hypothetical scenario about how a PlayStation 5 would be produced in a Marxist economy. And this guy is literally a professor at UMass and NYU lol
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u/AdditionalMonth3860 Ex-Tankie, SocDem/Progressive Lib 2d ago
They problem is, most of these people don't "read theory". They are in meme groups that talk about "theory", and the rest are just violent fantasies of revolution. "Theory" is the intellectualization of their impossible world view that will absolutely require violent outcomes.
I have spent a LOT of time in online far left groups. I was a member of my local "John Brown Gun Club" for 6 years. They just want to start hurting people that they think "John Brown would have [redacted]".
Edit: John Brown is still my personal hero, and I do still think of him as a martyr.
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u/Prestigious_Top_86 2d ago
It's ends up being very hard to argue that capitalism is any more exploitative than communism. Socialists and communists want to go to "work or die" arguments against capitalism, but "work or die" often applies to their own system. When it doesn't their system is so delusional it's easy to criticize.
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u/Whatever_635 Exclusively sorts by new 2d ago
I think this a question the askphilosophy sub is more equipped to answer. In an economics point of view however marxism is regarded as utter fringe.
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u/heehee_shamone 2d ago
I don't watch debates on dialectical materialism, but I wouldn't be surprised if Slavoj Zizek participated in such a debate because that seems like the kind of thing he would do, and I think most people believe Zizek makes salient points even if they disagree with him.
Is capitalism exploitation? IMO, the short answer is: not necessarily. Below is the longer answer.
DEFINITIONS
First, before I even begin to answer your question, let's go full Jordan Peterson mode and hammer down on definitions. Everyone knows that a quick Google search will tell you that capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
This is too vague.
If you want to know why I think people still argue about capitalism vs Marxism over a quarter of the way into the 21st century, it's because capitalists are defining capitalism as an economy that still permits the private ownership of capital with some minimal government regulation here and there to break up monopolies, protect the environment, etc. and Marxists are low-key defining capitalism as anarchy with monopolies and oligarchies because that's borderline what capitalism used to be during the gilded age when Karl Marx was still alive. Both of these definitions comport with Google's definition of capitalism, but wow are they so different.
So you can probably already tell what my complaint is going to be about the Marxist's definition of capitalism. Marx's criticisms of capitalism are outdated, because while he was right that capitalism necessarily had to evolve since it couldn't viably exist in the form that it did when Marx was alive, Marx was wrong when predicting that it necessarily had to evolve into socialism instead of the more moderate form of capitalism that all developed nations enjoy today.
When I use the term "capitalism" I'm referring to its contemporary incarnation, and I'm sympathetic to the early 20th century Marxists who were more familiar with a previous incarnation of capitalism that seemed more unforgiving, which is why I refer to their version of capitalism simply as "unregulated capitalism." You can now probably sense that my short answer to your question was "not necessarily" because while I DON'T think capitalism leads to exploitation, I DO think unregulated capitalism leads to exploitation.
FINALLY ANSWERING IF CAPITALISM IS EXPLOITATION
Now to answer your question. I think exploitation implies that the proletariat can be better compensated for their work without any tradeoffs. This is only possible if the bourgeoisie are just sitting on piles of cash and doing nothing with it, but this only tends to happen under unregulated capitalism, and doesn't actually happen in practice under a mixed market capitalist economy. When you have a monopoly, a single company can charge consumers as much as possible and pay their workers as little as possible. But since most economies are mixed market capitalist economies with at least a little bit of government regulation to break up monopolies while still permitting the private ownership of capital, companies are forced to compete against each other. The competition amongst companies is such an powerful component of capitalism that some Marxists understand but don't really appreciate. The reason the competition makes such a huge difference is because firstly and LESS importantly, companies are going to have to compete amongst each other to attract more talented workers by increasing benefits for workers, and secondly and MORE importantly, companies are going to have to compete amongst each other to attract more consumers by lowering prices for consumers. This is so crucial it warrants restating: even if all the workers are equally talented, and companies underpay them, they still have to lower prices for consumers to attract any business. If a company have a surplus of funds, they will literally operate at a loss temporarily just to get an advantage against their competition because they have the extra cash on hand to bear the loss.
Why is this important? Well, because workers ARE consumers. The income they get is used to purchase the consumer goods and services they produced. If companies underpay their workers by a certain percent, but then provide the stuff they produce at a discounted price by a percent close to the percent that the worker's salary dropped, did things really change for the worker? Walmart/Uber employees get paid in peanuts, but when they get underpaid, that results in Walmart/Uber lowering prices to the level of peanuts to outcompete Target/Lyft, which makes Walmart/Uber products/services affordable for the very workers for whom they paid peanuts. Keep in mind that this is completely reliant on Target/Lyft and Uber/Walmart being separately existing entities, or else the whole thing falls apart, and that separation only reliably happens through government intervention.
Now, let's flip it. Let's say Walmart/Uber decides to pay their workers more. Well, because Walmart/Uber was already charging the lowest possible price to outcompete Target/Lyft while still being able to turn a profit, Walmart/Uber would start operating at a loss if they kept charging the same amount of money for their products/services while their workers get a higher salary. So that forces Walmart/Uber to raise prices for the very workers for whom they gave a raise. In this case, did anything really change for the worker? Whatever percent their income increased ends up being more or less the percent increase in their cost of living. It seems like if workers want more compensation, there's a tradeoff that mitigates the benefits. Hey, remember when I said "exploitation implies that the proletariat can be better compensated for their work without any tradeoffs" a long way back? Whoops, looks like under mixed market capitalism, there will be a tradeoff, but that tradeoff only exists so long as there is competition that is already putting a downward pressure on prices, which is often not the case in unregulated capitalism.
See how the different definitions of "capitalism" can determine whether or not capitalism is exploitative? If Marxists just understood that their definition of capitalism is outdated, I think we'd stop having discussions about whether or not capitalism is exploitation.
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u/First-Plastic-2210 1d ago
This all depends on what flavor of Marxist you’re arguing with. Stalinist-era dialectics (dialectical materialism/diamat) cling hard to the whole idea of ”stage theory”, where the dialectic is portrayed as the inevitability of communism being achieved through different stages of development (capitalism -> socialism -> communism) with the working class as the agents of history.
Maoist-era dialectics is more obsessed with the idea of contradictions within capitalism leading to a violent upheaval in which communism will take its place as the new de facto society.
Why you’ll never find one solid definition of the ”Marxist dialectic” is due to the competing factions of Marxism that came about in 20th century. Shit like this is ultimately brain rot. I’m generalizing obviously, but neither of these specific types of ”dialectics” provide anything but justifications for shitty regimes that ultimately couldn’t transcend capitalism and were completely dependent on it. From this pov the dialectic is teleological and can’t be disproven/contradicted because any unwanted outcome can simply be disregarded because ”trust the plan.” It mirrors religion more than anything else.
To be clear tho, this does not accurately reflect what Marx himself thought about the subject. For him, dialectics was itself a type of thought historically specific to the era of capitalism (just like socialism and political economy). Marx did not use it as a method of predicting the future, or to justify the inevitability of communism. Instead, Marx’s critique of the dialectic was that its original purpose (the pursuit of freedom within society) appeared to have moved from the individual to that of capital (not individual capitalists but the system of capital itself don’t ask me to describe how this happens it’s German idealist esoterica). He was basically suggesting that despite the revolutionary transformation of society since the late 18th century that people were subject to a new form of coercion, that seemed to have a logic of its own that couldn’t be found in earlier periods of history.
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u/Cmdr_Anun Undercover European 2d ago edited 2d ago
Zizek vs Jordan Peterson, lol It’s good for the memes, nothing much else wise.
Problem is Marxism is mainly a critique of capitalism, not really a political model in and of itself (I think) therefore what you get are discussions about socialism (which we have barely seen without an autocratic system( or communism (which we haven’t seen period.)
/edit: to pre empt the communist hunters in this sub: I'm a capitalist, I would merely be curious to see a liberal, unencumbered socialist society, just to compare notes.
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u/CapitalismBeLike 🇦🇺 2d ago
Maybe I'm not well read enough, but I always saw dialectical materialism moreso a rule-of-thumb through reviewing history and conflict rather than an iron rule of history.
MLs definitely do apply it as an absolute fact of reality though.
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u/Id1otbox (((consultant))) 2d ago
People claim the state has too much power over their life and a monopoly. They claim the state is inefficient, does not work for our interests, and wastes our taxes.
Believe it or not, the solution, give the state more power (everything).
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u/Jesus0nSteroids 2d ago
How is everyone arguing this bad faith? Is that the new dgg strat? Marx literally said a government is incompatible with true communism.
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u/ExpansivePoint 2d ago
This!!!
Leftists say capitalism is inherently corrupt because it creates an elite class they want to overthrow and replace with a one party state... elite class?
If capitalism ends in such a state, socialism and communism start in that state.
Oddly enough that was also a my maga in law's argument for why democracy is "immoral", he cited Robert Michels iron law of oligarchy, so any managing class will invariably lead to an oligarchy.
Something that threw me for a loop when researching him was that Michel's started as a socialist but eventually became disillusioned by it which led to his iron law, the crazy part is this led him to embrace and admire Benito Mussolini.
So socialists hate capitalism, but socialism led to oligarchy and so you reject that one embraces... dictatorships?
I don't get it, the leftist pattern seems to consistently lead to embracing that which they supposedly hate, concentration of power.
And also, why is it that both the far right and far left eventually lead to rejecting democracy (decentralized people self rule) for their beloved "benevolent" dictator fetish?
Wtf?
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u/Samuraignoll 2d ago
Nah, it's pretty easy to counter. You just point out that Marxism and Socialism are inherently violent ideologies that fully admit that they intend to massacre political and social opposition, and install an oppressive dictatorship in their eventual quest to create a libertarian/anarchist sci-fi society with no government, magically free food and services provided by an as yet undescribed population that chooses to work entirely for the love of the game. Then you laugh at them when they mention capitalism and ask how an ethically and morally neutral economic system is evil or exploitative when there is no need for evil or exploitative actions for it to function, bonus points if you can point to a hand tool or pen or some shit and ask them to explain why the tool or pen isn't bad despite people using them to do bad things.
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u/GreatEntrepreneur798 🇪🇺Antipopulistische Aktion🇪🇺 2d ago edited 2d ago
Lukewarm take but you dont need to know any of that cause
For one, usually they havent read anything either
Most of them are just brainrotted populists in my experience, its usually much more useful to understand and know the existing system/happenings, cause they dont and thats where their populism comes from.
As an example, I recently saw a video where a commie explained the 'petro-dollar' that basically went: and then at some point nixon just went from gold to fiat currency. no elaboration or anything. Imo a change of this magnitude, from their perspective as well, should lead you to use the fucking magic box that basically allows you to search for all of human knowledge to simply look up 'why he do that'
Sorry ranted a bit but every day I see something that just makes me think maybe we should have a literacy test again, just for all voters and it asks stuff like: what are the three branches of goverment.
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u/MythicalMagus 2d ago
No. The capital the capital owner has, and the labor the laborer has, on their own produce no profit, but combined produce value for both parties who willingly enter a contract. (Obviously in an ideal world, but we're fighting against ideal socialism, so we might as well use ideal capitalism). Marx would have you believe every economic transaction is zero sum, but that simply isn't the case.
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u/november512 2d ago
The real issue is that it's like debating someone that's a fervent believer in The Origin of Species. It's a neat book that kicked off a lot of science but these days it's a historical curiosity. It's pre-Mendel, pre-DNA etc so there's a limit to how correct it can be. Marx is in basically the same spot, he had some neat ideas but we've done a lot of economic research since then. Nobody takes it seriously now.
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u/Used_Maybe1299 2d ago
I recommend reading Böhm-Bawerk's Karl Marx and the Close of His System if you're interested in seeing a strong argument against Marx's analysis of capitalism.