271
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
271 points (96.9% liked)
World News
38949 readers
1525 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
In this case that the cost of replacement of labor power factors in to the wage a company has to pay in order to maintain production.
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Wage_labour_and_capital
edit: replaced quote with an imo more fitting quote from the same book.
One of the most frustrating things about academic Marxism is that it hypothesizes that “capitalists” (whom they bung together with remarkable aplomb) do things like figure in the reproduction cost of labor. They don’t. They’re focused on the next quarter and maybe the next year. Maybe even the next five years. But no one ranging from Elon Musk to (not sure who his opposite would be so I’m kinda taking a stab here) Warren Buffett is thinking in terms of generational replacement. First, they’re not going to live that long. Neither are their shareholders. Plus capital is mobile - it’ll just go someplace else.
This is a headline precisely because it’s a man bites dog story. If your company gives you paid parental leave it’s either because it’s legally required or for retention. It’s not in the hope that the little toy will become a software engineer at the company in 25 years.
It doesn't? It never postulates that capitalists actively control the economy or do more than the bare minimum, on the contrary that they are bound to the laws of the market is one of the main points of marxism. That the cost of replacement factors into the cost of labor power is like the cost of replacement factoring in for any other commodity on the market. I highly suggest you read the booklet I linked, it's very short.
I’m actually pretty well read on the subject, both from the 18th to 19th century literature and from modern Marxist and other socialist economists. I’m also a biologist who has a bit of a specialization in pro-social models of behavior from a mathematical perspective and who derives data from real world observations and experiments.
The idea that capital controls the labor market is fairly central to the Marxist approach to capitalism. Both Marx and Adam Smith attributed dynamics to conscious actions that today we, as sophisticated systems theorists, would come up with better models to explain. They had an attitude towards human action that in some ways were the forerunner to modern sciences of collective behavior, but they’re still ridiculously primitive compared to modern theory.
Again, I am not the only academic to make this point. You find it is ubiquitous in modern Marxist literature. There are still some traditionalists, of course. I’m sure you know a particular white bearded professor who has what I honestly believe is the best introduction/course on Capital ever created. I honestly really like his work.
But what I don’t like is when communists or socialists refer to themselves as “Marxists.” I particularly don’t like it when they shoot down an idea using something that was written by someone in the 19th century, as if we haven’t had multiple revolutions in understanding economics and the science of complex systems since then.
What I’m saying is that you can read Marxist forums on line, and you can read Marxist academics publishing papers in Marxist journals, who argue that so-and-so is wrong because Marx(or whomever) said X. Nobody, and I mean nobody, quotes Darwin to refute a point in biology. Darwin was a genius, but he was a product of his time and got some very basic and very important stuff completely wrong. Ask a biologist about it and they’ll tell you it’s completely wrong and we figured it out a hundred years ago. They won’t canonize Darwin, even if they really really want a Darwin bobblehead for their desk.
Again, and I cannot make this more plain and I am not the only academic to say this: it’s called evolutionary biology, not Darwinism. I have friends and colleagues at places like the econ department at the New School, and they refer to what they do as “economics.” That’s where I’d prefer things to go.
Thanks for the explanation.
It reminds me of the concept of depreciation in accounting, in which you're accounting for the "loss of value" of a piece of machinery as time goes on. I guess it fits how the capitalists view people (labor) as yet another kind of machine. I dunno how it fits with what you're trying to explain here, but it somehow clicks for me. So that the factory owner can keep buying machinery, they must allocate some of their funds not just for the upkeep of the equipment, but also save up for the cost of buying a new one.
Admittedly, I'm not very well-versed with neither accounting nor the theories put on display here, but we learn something new every day, right?
(PS: I'm still working through the pamphlet you've linked. I might have gotten a lot of things wrong, and in that case, I apologize.)