Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Neo Marxism

Labor-power is *time.* When you sell your labor-power you sell yourself, your potential for activity or labor, for a determinate amount of time. And obviously time is material. Therefore, labor-power is material. So it would seem that I was right in the first place.

Not necessarily, you could be hired by the amount of work to be done rather than the time taken. Piece wages rather than time wages in Marx's terminology. Besides what makes you think that time is material?

You are confusing materialist considerations with considerations about matter.
 
No, you tried to pretend that machinery or a factory or something could be called "capital," which is of course exactly what the capitalists want us to do. Next you'll be referring to labor-power as "human capital," as the capitalists do. To say that capital is financial value invested at interest is not a tautology but a definition.

Marx:
"The conversion of a sum of money into means of production and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of value that is going to function as capital."
 
No I don't. Capital is labor-power at the stage of its alienation in symbolic form. So obviously, at that stage in the cycle, its not labor-power per se, it is labor-power in alienated and symbolic form. It's still labor-power though.

Labour-power doesn't circulate. Capital circulates, commodities circulate, money circulates.
 
Bullshit!!!!

No, you said (and it was the assumption of ignorance behind it that i was attacking):



Not that people were ignorant and should be, as per your presentation of what i said. You're continuing the mispresentation here as well, as my going 'bonkers' amounts, in full, to asking:

Phil should really withdraw his assumption that you are clever... What idiocy: I claim anyone has the right to say NO if not given the clear and full info, in a comprehensible manner and he insinuates bullshit I would never say and clearly - most obviously - I state the opposite of what he is insinuating...

So, once again: either he's not clever, Phil, or he's mean and nasty - i.e. a liar, hence morally incompetent, i.e. dangerous!

...in response to your above post. I don't really care though, it's all in the record on that thread if anyone cares enough to read it (god knows why they would though) - you brought it up and have brought it up repeatedly over the last 6 months and each time i correct you just ignore it. So i'm just putting in my correction here once more and ignoring any waffle you'll come back with as a result.

Oh, no, you won't: it really IS in the records above and it clearly shows what I am stating, in direct collision with what you are LYING about in this thread!!!! Or simply not understanding anything at all. Sad, either way... Well, for someone so consumed with a superiorioty complex, such as yourself - it's devastating...:rolleyes::hmm:
 
Not necessarily, you could be hired by the amount of work to be done rather than the time taken.

In that case you would be selling your *labor* and not your *labor-power.* For Marx the sale of labor-power is the all-important difference between capitalism and earlier economic forms. Essentially it is a return to slave-labor, albeit piece-meal. It also produces a slave-mentality among the occupants of a capitalist society.

The sale of labor-power is by definition the sale of time, which is the sale of life. Time and life are material, and therefore so is labor-power. So once again we see that I am right.
 
Marx:
"The conversion of a sum of money into means of production and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of value that is going to function as capital."

Proves my point, not yours. Money has to be "converted" into material things, therefore it is not originally or essentially material.
 
In that case you would be selling your *labor* and not your *labor-power.*

In Marx's mature work, labour is not a commodity to be sold, rather labour-power is a commodity to be sold.

The sale of labor-power is by definition the sale of time, which is the sale of life. Time and life are material, and therefore so is labor-power. So once again we see that I am right.

That's a slightly more convincing piece of spin.
 
Leave aside the technicalities and focus on the essentials and it's obvious that phil and marx are right.

If you could pluck gold out of the air, it wouldn't ever have become valuable.
It was only valuable because it was hard to get hold of, because there was a cost in human life to get hold of it. Its price was the slavery of those who set in the mines to dig it out. That's the spiritual history of the value of gold, and thereby the value of money today.
 
Leave aside the technicalities and focus on the essentials and it's obvious that phil and marx are right.

Phil's technicalities - that is the philosophical analysis of concepts as being concepts of matter or concepts of ideas - have nothing to do with the essentials of political economy. That's my point.

If you could pluck gold out of the air, it wouldn't ever have become valuable.
It was only valuable because it was hard to get hold of, because there was a cost in human life to get hold of it. Its price was the slavery of those who set in the mines to dig it out. That's the spiritual history of the value of gold, and thereby the value of money today.

That's not a bad take on the labour theory of value. :)
 
Not necessarily, you could be hired by the amount of work to be done rather than the time taken.

In that case you would be selling your *labor* and not your *labor-power.* .
Never heard of piece work? :rolleyes:

Essentially it is a return to slave-labor, albeit piece-meal. It also produces a slave-mentality among the occupants of a capitalist society.
No it's not. In slavery the person is sold. They are not free to sell their labour. It's a 180 degree contrast to wage labour
 
Proves my point, not yours. Money has to be "converted" into material things, therefore it is not originally or essentially material.
I can't see that you're proving a point at all. Money is always material *and* metaphysical, as a symbol or representation of some sort and as the metaphysical concept of universal equivalent. You seem to have a problem seeing the metaphysical as material.
 
No it's not. In slavery the person is sold. They are not free to sell their labour. It's a 180 degree contrast to wage labour

No, wage-labor is piecemeal slavery. How many people do you know who can survive without selling their labor-power? Which means they are selling their time, which means they are selling their lives, which means they are selling themselves, and which also means that 90% of the adult population has no choice but to do this. Doesn't it?
 
I can't see that you're proving a point at all. Money is always material *and* metaphysical, as a symbol or representation of some sort and as the metaphysical concept of universal equivalent. You seem to have a problem seeing the metaphysical as material.

That's why it's better to speak of "financial value" than money in this context. Money isn't really relevant. But financial value is *never* material and *always* metaphysical. It is not a sensual object: one cannot touch, taste or feel it. And it runs the world. So we see that metaphysical powers are "real," or at least have real, objective effects. So we see how foolish materialism truly is.
 
That's why it's better to speak of "financial value" than money in this context. Money isn't really relevant. But financial value is *never* material and *always* metaphysical. It is not a sensual object: one cannot touch, taste or feel it. And it runs the world. So we see that metaphysical powers are "real," or at least have real, objective effects. So we see how foolish materialism truly is.

Financial value does not have any effect on the world, though the act of pricing might do. Just as labour-power derives from materialist considerations but cannot be touched, tasted or felt ie. it is not material in itself but relates to material relations between men. Note that neither labour-power nor financial value are objects in any sense. You are confusing materialist considerations with considerations of material objects.
 
Marx explaining his materialist method:

"The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into being. For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of consciousness – and this is characteristic of the philosophical consciousness – for which conceptual thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of production – which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside – whose product is the world; and – but this is again a tautology – this is correct in so far as the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into concepts. The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head’s conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as the presupposition."

Exchange value, far from being metaphysical entity, cannot even exist other than 'an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole'. If you flatly contradict Marx, as Phil does, and conceive of exchange value as a thing in itself then it is unsurprising that you end up in strange philosophical waters where metaphysical entities impose themselves on empirical reality. If you remind yourself that the conception of exchange value relies upon the real, living totality of material relations then all the philosophical mysteries vanish.

ETA: It should be added that the above makes it clear that there is no half-way house between materialism and idealism. Either concrete reality comes into existence in the manner that the concrete conception of reality does or it doesn't. Either thought process follows physical process or it doesn't.
 
That's why it's better to speak of "financial value" than money in this context. Money isn't really relevant. But financial value is *never* material and *always* metaphysical. It is not a sensual object: one cannot touch, taste or feel it. And it runs the world. So we see that metaphysical powers are "real," or at least have real, objective effects. So we see how foolish materialism truly is.
You don't understand materialism. Schoolboy error, Phil
 
Why would anyone want to understand materialism,? - probably it can't be understood, as it's obviously utter rubbish.
 
Why would anyone want to understand materialism,? - probably it can't be understood, as it's obviously utter rubbish.
Perhaps I should have said that he doesn't understand what is material and what is metaphysical, and the points of contact (and otherwise) between them. I mean, this a philosophy forum and those are central issues in understanding the nature of things.

If you don't like the subject matter I don't really understand why you're here
 
Why would anyone want to understand materialism,? - probably it can't be understood, as it's obviously utter rubbish.

I would say that materialism is simply the failure to make a strong identification between thought and reality or what appears to be reality - that is the world is independent of thought. Consequently the world is not understood purely in terms of the conception of the world. Matter is considered primary, spirit or mind is considered secondary. If it relied on a particular ontology then it would indeed be utter rubbish but really it is just the consistent failure to make idealist assumptions.
 
I would say that materialism is simply the failure to make a strong identification between thought and reality or what appears to be reality - that is the world is independent of thought. Consequently the world is not understood purely in terms of the conception of the world. Matter is considered primary, spirit or mind is considered secondary. If it relied on a particular ontology then it would indeed be utter rubbish but really it is just the consistent failure to make idealist assumptions.
I was going to pull you post apart and respond to different parts of it, but in the end I thought better just to state my position.

I think we have completely different ideas of what materialism and idealism are.

To me, idealism is the belief that ideas arise and exist independent of external (to the human) reality, ie they are not dependent on being. The idea of an immutable soul, or of a hegelian spirit are examples of this.

On the other hand, materialism is the belief that what we think is ultimately limited by our being in the world, the material surroundings we exist in. And material to me includes ideas and metaphysical phenomena.

Therfore, I don't ever see why I would make an 'idealist assumption'. To me that means making things up, inventing ideas without reference to external reality.
 
And here is Hegel painstakingly showing how one can not be without the other, poor twat with no idea what's what...:rolleyes:
 
...If you could pluck gold out of the air, it wouldn't ever have become valuable. ...
Gold has been considered sacred and valuable even when comparatively plentiful, as in pre-columbian South America.

It is almost the only metal that can be gathered as the metal -- one does not need any knowledge of smelting ore to get metallic gold. Copper and silver nodes can be also found naturally*, but most such deposits are in the form of ores, chemical compounds that must be processed by fire and charcoal to yield the metallic substance, to conjure the sword from the stone.

Gold's beauty, its ease of working, and the fact that ready-to-work metallic gold can be collected from the surface of the earth, panned from streams, or directly hacked out of rocks (if you know where to look) seem to be what made it a sacred metal in many pre-industrial societies generally.


eta:
* and lumps of almost pure metallic iron very, very occasionally fall out of the sky :eek:
 
I think you've (Spion) not contrasted materialism and idealism but rather realism and subjective idealism. It makes no sense when you come to consider someone like Hegel who was a realist and an idealist. "What is real is rational and what is rational is real." Hegel's spirit has no independent existence from human reality. His idealism consists in not that he was introducing the spirit ex machina but that his whole method was to systematise the analysis of the world in terms of the conception of the world (the Notion) and the relation of these conceptions to the absolute. Hegel goes to considerable lengths to analyse the world as it is, however he forces the state of the world to be a product logical thinking. His idealist assumptions are routed deep within his whole terminology rather than this or that particular thesis.
 
I think you've (Spion) not contrasted materialism and idealism but rather realism and subjective idealism. It makes no sense when you come to consider someone like Hegel who was a realist and an idealist. "What is real is rational and what is rational is real." Hegel's spirit has no independent existence from human reality. His idealism consists in not that he was introducing the spirit ex machina but that his whole method was to systematise the analysis of the world in terms of the conception of the world (the Notion) and the relation of these conceptions to the absolute. Hegel goes to considerable lengths to analyse the world as it is, however he forces the state of the world to be a product logical thinking. His idealist assumptions are routed deep within his whole terminology rather than this or that particular thesis.
Hmm, OK, that's all suspended sediment in an aqueous fluid to me.

Never mind Hegel, what do you consider to be the relationship between ideas and being?
 
Back
Top Bottom