Good work. Marx involvement in communism is tiny compared to his work as a critic of capitalism. Really still, THE critic of capitalism. Everyone benefits from reading Marx.
After Capital, read Critique of the Gotha Program, then read the 18th brumaire, then read the Communist manifesto, then read What is to be done by Lenin, then Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, then read the state and revolution, then you'll get it.
Honestly, I don't understand why Marx would be considered so taboo to anarchism. Not only does his critique of capitalism seem to generally conform with anarchist thinking on the matter, from what I understand his position on the state isn't as authoritarian as many would have us believe. He just made a relatively poor choice in wording to explain worker control that implies authoritarianism (at least to my understanding).
In my opinion, there is a problem with Marxiam economics. Socially necessary labour time and Social metabolism implies social body existing before capitalism. Kropotkin explains how mutual aid is a factor in evolution, a factor between factors. And Kropotkin investigates animal kingdom to show whatever factors may be somewhat analogous to tendencies in human species. Social body, a society whose members share a common survival program and thus what is useful for any one of the member and not for other needs to be transferred to that member, can be seen as a tendency in animal kingdom including humans. But humans evolved into being humans, ability to abstract thinking, making judgements etc. And humans as humans, rather than as animals, seem to lack a social body. In other words capitalism, feudalism and social hierarchies in general exist because human social body did not evolve into being yet. It is only a tendency between tendencies, and not an economic constant. Human socialibity (which is socialism) is our aim, animal sociability is one of the conditions of our existence. Capitalism is not accidental to human social history, as can be seen from monsters predating it such as subjugation of women. Engels' work on the origin of family is outdated for this reason.
I love that you're back. I only wish that you'd gone into the fact, as far as the labor theory of value is concerned, that it was the orthodox economic theory of his time (and that even without this most of his analysis holds up even under alternate conceptions of value). There are a number of people I'd want to share this with, but can't really, because I know they'd scoff at the concept of the labor theory of value, and so wouldn't interact with the other aspects of Marx's theory. IDK if maybe you'd think about doing something, after this series, that could more focus on introducing the concept to persons perhaps more hostile to some of the ideas presented, such as the aforementioned labor theory of value, but I think it'd be cool to do so. Anyway, even if I can't really share this video with people who I think could use it, I liked this video a lot; don't mistake my suggestions/specific issues for criticisms.
Hey, great to see you're back. I really liked Heinrich's intro but I still haven't gotten around to reading through Volume 1, let alone 2 and 3. And for that matter I haven't read Graeber's Debt yet either, although Utopia of Rules was very good. Are you familiar with John Hollow and Moishe Postone? If you liked Heinrich you'll probably appreciate what they do as well. Holloway is an anarchist and Open Marxist, and Postone uses a version of the New Reading of Marx to critique 20th century "actually existing socialism". I haven't read through Postone yet but he's been highly recommended to me. Looking forward to part 2!
I'm going through Volume I with a fine tooth comb. I'm going to look into getting the commentary you mentioned. I'm using David Harvey's book just now. Having gone back over Chapter 1, Section 1, I was a little bit confused about use-values being "limited by the physical properties of the commodity", to use Marx's phrase (Oxford World Classics edition). I suppose I hadn't really remembered that commodities could also be services (I work as a care worker, so I probably should have remembered this :p). The reason I was confused is because I thought about an abstract work of art: if a well known artist scrunches up a piece of paper and gives it a title, you can bet someone somewhere will pay good money for it because of who the artist is. If I scrunched up a piece of paper and tried to sell it, it's highly unlikely that anyone will buy it off of me. Even if all of the physical properties of the paper are the same (in so far as two non-identical things can be the same), one scrunched up bit of paper is 'useful' and the other 'useless' in Marx's analysis. Since the physical properties are the same, the 'usefulness' of the artist's paper seems to be derived from some mysterious power that we give to the product of a particular person's labour. The best explanation I could come up with myself was that the artist's piece of paper satisfies some sort of desire linked to a person's vanity. By purchasing the scrunched up ball of paper by artist (x), a person can boast about owning an original work of art by (x). My piece of paper would fail to satisfy any want or need, on the other hand. So that seems to work as an explanation for how one is useful and the other useless. But then another question arises: what is the value of such a work of art? Scrunching up a piece of paper in any society isn't going to require a lot of labour time, so the socially necessary labour time is going to be very low, assuming there is access to paper. Is the work of art (or any comparable art work that requires very little labour time) only as valuable as other things of the same kind, ie. another piece of paper? Or do we value works of art, even when we exchange them, in a different way from other commodities? Any thoughts on the above would be appreciated.
i think what he meant by the use value is limited by its physical properties a use value, was that the physical properties of any thing which was made from useful labour essentially transform the way its use value can be seen. for example; if you need a pouch for keeping your house's keys for example, and you need it to be portable, then the shape and size of the pouch affects the way its use value can be seen. A big and large pouch, with its size and shape would limit the use value of the pouch to just carrying stuff around. a small pouch on the other hand would extend the pouch's capability to be portable and thus transform its use value and limit to more than just carrying stuff around; it would also make it portable. it is just a guess tho. i am no academic. > the 'usefulness' of the artist's paper seems to be derived from some mysterious power that we give to the product of a particular person's labour. yes, the usefulness of the artist's paper, to its consumer, is derived from the fame of the artist who made it, and thus buying the artist's paper satisfies their love for the artist.
I couldn't tell you. I'm generally adverse to money so I don't think I've much to add say about LTV from a numbers perspective. However, to talk about it without addressing the power imbalance between lender and borrower would be a mistake.
Broadly. I'm not completely opposed to it but I think usually better off without it. Whenever there is an exchange of things there is usually a power imbalance in one way or another, large or small. To give freely and unconditionally is preferable as it does better to safeguard consent. Having a market is still reasonable and cool and they're easier to navigate with some common exchange currency; but putting a price on everything from luxury goods to basic necessities is problematic and wrong.
@@QuotidianOli But why is it wrong? Prices serve as important signals of information: they fluctuate to show preferences, scarcity and over-supply. If you haven't read up on it already, see the Economic Calculation Problem: this was a continuous hurdle in Socialist countries in the allocation of resources.
So like: Every conversation I have with a "libertarian" capitalis[m supporter] always involves us talking past each other because we have vastly different conceptions of the market. Their whole devotion to market fundamentalism relies on conceiving of markets as decentralized and flexible systems for producing that social metabolism LSR defined here. Meanwhile, i'm trying to help them understand that capitalist markets encourage such dramatic concentration of wealth that whatever democratic character might be possible in a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth is utterly destroyed. Can anyone recommend literature digging into alternatives to capitalist markets that still (or maybe better) satisfy those conditions of decentralization and flexibility without encouraging the concentration of wealth. ... Fuck, it's time to read more Bookchin, isn't it?
@@hopedream11 I could swear one of my social ecology podcasts has been pushing that one lately. Where'd you find it? Any chance you listen to Srsly Wrong, Coffee with Comrades, or Utopian Horizons?
@@hopedream11 Srsly Wrong is the most long-running. They started out as two Canadian dudes (one of whom animated The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, years ago) trying to make heads or tails of politics and have been increasingly focused on social ecology since a fan pointed out that they spent a lot of time and effort reinventing the Bookchin wheel. They inject a lot of humor and good-natured compassion to soften the blows of discussing the ecopocalypse and whatnot. Utopian Horizons, I've only heard a couple episodes of, but the idea is that they'll look at a different artistic attempt to imagine utopia each episode, to mine the useful ideas and discuss the meaning of the effort and all that. Coffee with Comrades is way more focused on interviewing organizers of various stripes. They've been social ecologists from the outset as far as i can tell, and are also sweet and Canadian I think.
just for the record, i don't complain about you reading Marx. i just came to the conclusion that labour value is nonsense and from there most of it kinda collapses. a marginalist perspective seems to make much better sense for anarchism, even anarcho-communism. but since you seem to be reading Mises and Hayek, too, maybe you'll come to the same conclusion.
The marginalist perspective is ridiculous right from assumptions to methodology. Marx's LTV is supported by multiple empirical studies. Look into the works of Anwar Shaikh, Paul Cockshott, Andrew Kliman, Lefteris Tsoulfidis etc. The marginalist theory is nonsense.
@@arjunravichandran7578 i've looked into Cockshott's "analysis" already, and he takes some statistic where "labour" is only measured in british pound. if i remember correctly what he actually shows is that tend to spend most money they don't spend on raw materials on labour. that doesn't mean that all possible labour would be equally valuable. a well-functioning market would tend to direct labour (and non-labour activity) into the most productive and (because of competition between employers) best-paid sectors, so you would expect income per person to be at least in roughly the same ballpark. but that's not because all labour is worth the same, but that the labour that is worth less just isn't being done. in a centrally planned economy, however, all bets are off, especially if the planners wouldn't even consider the possibility that labour can be unproductive. the only ones significantly benefiting from such an arrangement are the ones involved with the planning and enforcing.
If this is not for me then who is it for? I'm an amateur economist, political theorist, and policy analyst, but I can't follow it. Am I supposed to know by context which kind of 'value' you mean? 'Cause I don't.
The OG internet anarchist.
We have been missing you comrade.
And back with Capital Vol 1! Nice
Sadly more than ever with youtubers being wolfs in sheep's clothing
the man who made me an anarchist is back!
same
Fucking same love him
Same
Samesies!
Same and not by fancy theory but because of great empathy
Good to see you posting again.
Good work. Marx involvement in communism is tiny compared to his work as a critic of capitalism. Really still, THE critic of capitalism. Everyone benefits from reading Marx.
PLEASE STAY SAFE COMRADE!!!!
Glad to see this finally come out and looking forward to seeing the rest of the series. Well done comrade!
F I N A L L Y! I thought you weren't going to continue the series! I'm so glad you're back! My favourite UA-camr.
Always good to have you back.
Welcome back, comrade! Excellent work!
I missed this channel so much
Good to see you're back
Glorious!!
Miss you man. Hope you’re well. Your videos have helped me become a committed libertarian socialist
Omg thank you
Welcome back!!
You have blessed us with a new video! 😁
14:01 Great choice of an artwork, one of the best I saw in Berlin museums. Also, welcome back comrade.
Good to have you back?
yup
He's back folks
Thank you so much for making this video and more about Das Kapital in the future!
Welcome back mate!
Glad to have you back my friend. Love your work!
Great to see you coming back. Love your work Cam
we love to see it
After Capital, read Critique of the Gotha Program, then read the 18th brumaire, then read the Communist manifesto, then read What is to be done by Lenin, then Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, then read the state and revolution, then you'll get it.
Thanks Cameron!!!!
He's back!
thank god you're back, i could listen to you speak for hours :)
Honestly, I don't understand why Marx would be considered so taboo to anarchism. Not only does his critique of capitalism seem to generally conform with anarchist thinking on the matter, from what I understand his position on the state isn't as authoritarian as many would have us believe. He just made a relatively poor choice in wording to explain worker control that implies authoritarianism (at least to my understanding).
Welcome back!
LTS IS BACK!!!!!!!! YAAAAAAASSS QWEEEEN!
oh hell yeah love the LDS :P
14:45...
Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean you can't learn from them... this sentiment I definitely agree.
Thanks. Really interesting.
I won't pretend I get it yet, but one step closer.
The barter stuff was particularly new to me.
Thank you Cameron!
Great review!
hell yeah welcome back
Welcome back comrade
Could you narrate more of the “Conquest of Bread”, please?
You're back! :')
Thanks a lot for this video!
Thank you for coming back! I hope you're doing ok
It feels like I have missed content like this for too long. Good to see you're back.
wow, what a coincidence.
nice.
In my opinion, there is a problem with Marxiam economics. Socially necessary labour time and Social metabolism implies social body existing before capitalism. Kropotkin explains how mutual aid is a factor in evolution, a factor between factors. And Kropotkin investigates animal kingdom to show whatever factors may be somewhat analogous to tendencies in human species. Social body, a society whose members share a common survival program and thus what is useful for any one of the member and not for other needs to be transferred to that member, can be seen as a tendency in animal kingdom including humans. But humans evolved into being humans, ability to abstract thinking, making judgements etc. And humans as humans, rather than as animals, seem to lack a social body. In other words capitalism, feudalism and social hierarchies in general exist because human social body did not evolve into being yet. It is only a tendency between tendencies, and not an economic constant. Human socialibity (which is socialism) is our aim, animal sociability is one of the conditions of our existence. Capitalism is not accidental to human social history, as can be seen from monsters predating it such as subjugation of women. Engels' work on the origin of family is outdated for this reason.
If it isn't clear, i think Marx conflates this two and Kropotkin doesn't.
Also, market is a lot less autonomous than Marx or liberals think. Otherwise Marx would be right and capitalism would've already crashed.
I love that you're back. I only wish that you'd gone into the fact, as far as the labor theory of value is concerned, that it was the orthodox economic theory of his time (and that even without this most of his analysis holds up even under alternate conceptions of value). There are a number of people I'd want to share this with, but can't really, because I know they'd scoff at the concept of the labor theory of value, and so wouldn't interact with the other aspects of Marx's theory. IDK if maybe you'd think about doing something, after this series, that could more focus on introducing the concept to persons perhaps more hostile to some of the ideas presented, such as the aforementioned labor theory of value, but I think it'd be cool to do so.
Anyway, even if I can't really share this video with people who I think could use it, I liked this video a lot; don't mistake my suggestions/specific issues for criticisms.
The OG youtube left himself
good stuff o7
hES BACK
Glad you're reading marx as more anarchists should
Why did you take down your other videos as capital?
I didn't understand it very well
The fourth volume is the most important.
My mans out here breadpilling 😌 🥖
Hey, great to see you're back. I really liked Heinrich's intro but I still haven't gotten around to reading through Volume 1, let alone 2 and 3. And for that matter I haven't read Graeber's Debt yet either, although Utopia of Rules was very good. Are you familiar with John Hollow and Moishe Postone? If you liked Heinrich you'll probably appreciate what they do as well. Holloway is an anarchist and Open Marxist, and Postone uses a version of the New Reading of Marx to critique 20th century "actually existing socialism". I haven't read through Postone yet but he's been highly recommended to me. Looking forward to part 2!
Debt, is an amazing book. Best of Graeber's work.
I'm going through Volume I with a fine tooth comb. I'm going to look into getting the commentary you mentioned. I'm using David Harvey's book just now.
Having gone back over Chapter 1, Section 1, I was a little bit confused about use-values being "limited by the physical properties of the commodity", to use Marx's phrase (Oxford World Classics edition). I suppose I hadn't really remembered that commodities could also be services (I work as a care worker, so I probably should have remembered this :p). The reason I was confused is because I thought about an abstract work of art: if a well known artist scrunches up a piece of paper and gives it a title, you can bet someone somewhere will pay good money for it because of who the artist is. If I scrunched up a piece of paper and tried to sell it, it's highly unlikely that anyone will buy it off of me. Even if all of the physical properties of the paper are the same (in so far as two non-identical things can be the same), one scrunched up bit of paper is 'useful' and the other 'useless' in Marx's analysis. Since the physical properties are the same, the 'usefulness' of the artist's paper seems to be derived from some mysterious power that we give to the product of a particular person's labour.
The best explanation I could come up with myself was that the artist's piece of paper satisfies some sort of desire linked to a person's vanity. By purchasing the scrunched up ball of paper by artist (x), a person can boast about owning an original work of art by (x). My piece of paper would fail to satisfy any want or need, on the other hand. So that seems to work as an explanation for how one is useful and the other useless. But then another question arises: what is the value of such a work of art? Scrunching up a piece of paper in any society isn't going to require a lot of labour time, so the socially necessary labour time is going to be very low, assuming there is access to paper. Is the work of art (or any comparable art work that requires very little labour time) only as valuable as other things of the same kind, ie. another piece of paper? Or do we value works of art, even when we exchange them, in a different way from other commodities?
Any thoughts on the above would be appreciated.
i think what he meant by the use value is limited by its physical properties a use value, was that the physical properties of any thing which was made from useful labour essentially transform the way its use value can be seen. for example; if you need a pouch for keeping your house's keys for example, and you need it to be portable, then the shape and size of the pouch affects the way its use value can be seen. A big and large pouch, with its size and shape would limit the use value of the pouch to just carrying stuff around. a small pouch on the other hand would extend the pouch's capability to be portable and thus transform its use value and limit to more than just carrying stuff around; it would also make it portable.
it is just a guess tho. i am no academic.
> the 'usefulness' of the artist's paper seems to be derived from some mysterious power that we give to the product of a particular person's labour.
yes, the usefulness of the artist's paper, to its consumer, is derived from the fame of the artist who made it, and thus buying the artist's paper satisfies their love for the artist.
is there any chance you do anything like this for the subsequent volumes?
so glad you brought in debt the first 5000 years by david graeber.
Hello I would like a McDonald's
Jk great video
With Capitalism, you can have it. With Socialism, it'd need to be decided by the other people.
Kept You Waiting, huh?
Is this stuff so easy because you explain it simply or because you cut out the majority of the difficult parts?
I haven't gone into detail about Marx's form analysis which is pretty much the hardest part to understand.
10:26 personally I think the gift economies of primitive societies could be classified as a sort of delayed barter system.
ASMaRx
Thought this channel was dead.
Yo guys, i just wanna ask, does anyone know what happened with badmouse? Yeah, I could ask reddit but oh well, i guess im here now :D
Hi longtime fan :) mind if I mirror this on my channel? I mirror content (demonetized) to attract people to leftist content creators
Nice, go ahead
Please make a video about guns
Please talk to Jason Unruhe!
Fellow anarchist saying THANK YOU - diolch yn fawr - for this summary of Marx's work. He was an exemplary economist and a garbage politician.
But was he right about the LTV?
I couldn't tell you. I'm generally adverse to money so I don't think I've much to add say about LTV from a numbers perspective.
However, to talk about it without addressing the power imbalance between lender and borrower would be a mistake.
@@QuotidianOli True, but when you say you're adverse to money, do you mean you're against the concept of it?
Broadly. I'm not completely opposed to it but I think usually better off without it.
Whenever there is an exchange of things there is usually a power imbalance in one way or another, large or small. To give freely and unconditionally is preferable as it does better to safeguard consent.
Having a market is still reasonable and cool and they're easier to navigate with some common exchange currency; but putting a price on everything from luxury goods to basic necessities is problematic and wrong.
@@QuotidianOli But why is it wrong? Prices serve as important signals of information: they fluctuate to show preferences, scarcity and over-supply. If you haven't read up on it already, see the Economic Calculation Problem: this was a continuous hurdle in Socialist countries in the allocation of resources.
Marxists.org/archives/
I enjoy reading some good books while I am at home!
Also: all Anarchists need to read and understand Marx. Otherwise what's the point.
*lips smacking intensifies*
.
So like:
Every conversation I have with a "libertarian" capitalis[m supporter] always involves us talking past each other because we have vastly different conceptions of the market.
Their whole devotion to market fundamentalism relies on conceiving of markets as decentralized and flexible systems for producing that social metabolism LSR defined here.
Meanwhile, i'm trying to help them understand that capitalist markets encourage such dramatic concentration of wealth that whatever democratic character might be possible in a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth is utterly destroyed.
Can anyone recommend literature digging into alternatives to capitalist markets that still (or maybe better) satisfy those conditions of decentralization and flexibility without encouraging the concentration of wealth.
...
Fuck, it's time to read more Bookchin, isn't it?
Bookchin is good Towards a New Socialism is another good book too.
@@hopedream11 I could swear one of my social ecology podcasts has been pushing that one lately. Where'd you find it? Any chance you listen to Srsly Wrong, Coffee with Comrades, or Utopian Horizons?
@@mirmalchik haven't heard of those podcasts tbh what are they?
@@hopedream11 Srsly Wrong is the most long-running. They started out as two Canadian dudes (one of whom animated The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, years ago) trying to make heads or tails of politics and have been increasingly focused on social ecology since a fan pointed out that they spent a lot of time and effort reinventing the Bookchin wheel. They inject a lot of humor and good-natured compassion to soften the blows of discussing the ecopocalypse and whatnot.
Utopian Horizons, I've only heard a couple episodes of, but the idea is that they'll look at a different artistic attempt to imagine utopia each episode, to mine the useful ideas and discuss the meaning of the effort and all that.
Coffee with Comrades is way more focused on interviewing organizers of various stripes. They've been social ecologists from the outset as far as i can tell, and are also sweet and Canadian I think.
just for the record, i don't complain about you reading Marx. i just came to the conclusion that labour value is nonsense and from there most of it kinda collapses.
a marginalist perspective seems to make much better sense for anarchism, even anarcho-communism. but since you seem to be reading Mises and Hayek, too, maybe you'll come to the same conclusion.
and SWARM looks like a great cause, thanks for supporting them! :)
The marginalist perspective is ridiculous right from assumptions to methodology. Marx's LTV is supported by multiple empirical studies. Look into the works of Anwar Shaikh, Paul Cockshott, Andrew Kliman, Lefteris Tsoulfidis etc.
The marginalist theory is nonsense.
@@arjunravichandran7578 i've looked into Cockshott's "analysis" already, and he takes some statistic where "labour" is only measured in british pound. if i remember correctly what he actually shows is that tend to spend most money they don't spend on raw materials on labour. that doesn't mean that all possible labour would be equally valuable.
a well-functioning market would tend to direct labour (and non-labour activity) into the most productive and (because of competition between employers) best-paid sectors, so you would expect income per person to be at least in roughly the same ballpark. but that's not because all labour is worth the same, but that the labour that is worth less just isn't being done.
in a centrally planned economy, however, all bets are off, especially if the planners wouldn't even consider the possibility that labour can be unproductive. the only ones significantly benefiting from such an arrangement are the ones involved with the planning and enforcing.
If this is not for me then who is it for? I'm an amateur economist, political theorist, and policy analyst, but I can't follow it. Am I supposed to know by context which kind of 'value' you mean? 'Cause I don't.
@Wheat Water & Fire I probably won't, but thanks for the recommendation.