this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Asshole, stupid or communist? Oh wait, that was redundant.
Yeah, to be a communist you have to be stupid enough to read books on economics.
Reading an actual book on economics makes it impossible for a benevolent individual to be a communist, at least without a physically painful amount of cognitive dissonance.
Do you feel angry or depressed often? It's cognitive dissonance. ;)
Oh, you sound really informed on this. What books of marxist economics have you read to come to this conclusion? What theory of subjective value based economics books?
I mean, I've just spent over a decade studying various schools of economics, maybe you have much more insight than me on this topic.
Of course you have, dear.
You're literally a self described libertarian lmao
Anyway, stop dodging the question. What economic writings have you read from Marx that you're basing your opinion of Marxist economics on? What problems did you have with them?
Yes, well, some people are braver than others, and are thus able to declare what they believe in. What do you believe in?
There's a bit of a "oh, you like economics? Describe all economic theories then." vibe here but I guess I started it. Sorry about that.
I don't know why you would bring Marx into this. He was a philosophist, not an economist or a politician. As a philosophist, he was correct in many of his observations, the problem comes from trying to actually implement in the real world some of the things he said.
Historical materialism & class struggle for instance. He describes the change from feodalism to capitalism as it happened but then goes deep into conjecture land in fantasizing the future change to socialism and communism. When this was violently experimented with in 1900s, it didn't go at all as he described. The class struggle is not inevitable at all, and only happens with a combination of bad leadership and agitation (check lemmygrad.ml for practical modern examples of latter). His idea of classless society was basically speculative science fiction, and still is.
I disagree with many points of his critique of capitalism. For instance, the value of a product or service is not derived from the labor put to it, but the value of the product or service to whoever is buying it. Thus surplus is a valid concept.
I disagree that wealth concentration is a fundamental problem. In the grand scale, more individual wealth leads to more individual happiness, so the important thing is that everyone's wealth increases. If my neighbor gets 100x richer in real wealth in the time I get 2x richer, I will still be 2x richer. It only becomes a problem if those figures are 100x and 1x or worse, or if he uses his 100x wealth to buy an army to take my stuff, and my claim is that this is not happening in most of the capitalist world.
Literally a communist, something that could actually get me targeted by the state instead of being a "no step on snek" cosplayer.
His magnum opus is literally an economic analysis of how capitalism functions lmao
Okay, so you haven't read his work and you buy into the idea that "all socialist projects have failed" despite all their successes, and the continued survival of many projects.
So you favor a more shallow understanding of where value emerges from, and you haven't read what Marx has actually said about subjective value. What makes the product valuable to whoever is buying jt? Subjective value wants you to believe it is just arbitrary.
Okay, so have you read anything about surplus labor value theory? Anything about alienation under capitalism?
Also the notion that were all getting richer at different rates needs evidence.
Well. Ok.
I probably cannot help you really, but I'll throw a suggestion. You should start your study of economics here: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
Sadly, you will scoff at and ignore my advice right now, but perhaps you'll remember this some day and are able to integrate the knowledge better after some life experience. Good luck and remember: you don't have to be a communist. You can choose to be something much more. It's never too late to change, especially when you're young.
Why would I read Sowell when I already know about neoliberalism and what it did literally everywhere it was tried?
Breaking news: Pigeon shits on chess board, flies off.
Recommending Sowell unironically for economics is like recommending L. Ron Hubbard for physics. Sowell is a crank and supports Imperialism and Colonialism, as in his own admitted views believes they enrich the victims. Not only that, but he makes incredibly basic, fundamental mistakes whenever he has to talk about Marxism, proving himself uneducated on the matter and unqualified to talk about it.
People are recommending Marx as well for economics over here, and while you might disagree with Sowell, at least he didn't write science fiction. Unlike Marx did (e.g. classless society = speculative scifi). Many other leftist economists are pretty much in fantasy land in my opinion as well.
Sowell is science-fiction. He's a Chicago school crank that either intentionally misunderstanding basic economic concepts and basic Marxism in order to make money from clueless conservatives, or is unintentionally misunderstanding the absolute basics of economics and Marxism because he's a Chicago school crank. The reason I think it's fairly likely he's misleading everyone and laughing to the bank is because he's made horribly indefensible positions such as being pro-Imperialism and Pro-colonialism, which leads me to believe it's fairly likely he's a grifter.
Marx is absolutely a better recommendation, his analysis of Capitalism is sound and he spent his life defending it and improving it. Advocating for a future Classless society doesn't make it sci-fi, it's just advocacy. That's like calling Unionization efforts sci-fi, that's an utterly embarrassing position to hold. Just because you can't actually counter Marx doesn't mean you have to recommend Sowell, if you're going to troll then do better.