Peeps who are more versed in Marxist economics than me, right wingers keep claiming this paper debunks literally every core tenant of Marxism, I feel it doesn't really just from reading it but I can't really put it into words why, I feel it's misrepresenting Marx (Marx and Piketty being the same, Marx never predicted technology, Marx never predicted wages would ever rise which I'm pretty sure are all very wrong).
What is a good rebuttal to this paper?
Consider reading Capital and Marx's other works if you want to be able to answer these things, OP.
Isn't the development of (new) technology a core component of capitalism as described by Marx in Capital?
Weird how a paper about "developments not described by Marx" would ignore, you know, the main development not described by Marx that was later incorporated into Marxism by Marxist-Leninists.
The first chapter of the paper (Capital Failures) is just strawmanning Marx. Marx did not say that the Reserve Army of Labour would never result in wage increases, he said the lot of the worker would be "worse" off due to an increase of alienation.
Once again economists can't get their head around basic human concepts because their head is jammed so far up their ass with their spreadsheets.
"Alienation and exploitation are sociological concepts and thus cannot be measured on a spreadsheet thus don't exist. Marx must be talking about wages then." This is what actually goes through the mind of the bourgeois economist .
The paper doesn't appear to approach Marx much, mostly attacking a particular argument of Piketty regarding income inequality, with Marx and to a lesser extent Ricardo shoddily tied in at the start to give the work more self-importance than it deserves.
The paper makes a substantial argument only on the topic of inequality (which isn't in any way central to marxism or the predictions of marxist economic theory) and moreover does so by using the example of Sweden's economic growth in the post-war social democratic era.
I haven't read Piketty so i can't judge whether this BTFOs him or not, unless Piketty focuses entirely on something as relatively trivial as income inequality as the primary crisis of capitalism then i doubt it.
This paper doesn't even begin to approach Marx which isn't surprising very few bourgeois economists ever do.
had been constant or falling during the first decades of the 19th century, had
already been rising, probably for about two decades (Allen 2001, 2007, 2009a;
Clark 2005; Feinstein 1998). The share of labor in national income, which had
fallen to under half by 1870, also started to increase thereafter, reaching two-thirds
in the 20th century
I don't even understand what this is debunking?
that the profit rate was comparatively low at the end of the 18th century and
rose until around 1870 reaching a maximum of 25 percent, but then fell back
to around 20 percent, where it stabilized until World War I. Matthews, Feinstein,
and Odling-Smee (1982, pp. 187–88) suggest that these rates did not fall in the
20th century, though there is a lot of heterogeneity across sectors.
Pic related
third provides no data and I think any empirical look can see that capital does in fact concentrate. You only need to look at the automotive or tech industry to see mass concentration.
Conclusion
MUH HOOOMAN NATURE
Marx, the father of Sociology, the father of political economy, the guy who said Capitalism will constantly reinvent itself and eventually collapse due to the ingenious development of technology, never took into account politics, social developments or technology.
Seriously how are Bourgie economists so fucking retarded?
This is easily the biggest problem these autists have. They can NOT into concepts and reasoning and have to have absolutes, assumptions, and mathematics.
I just read the beginning and can already tell it's a massive pile of shit
the key forces shaping how an economy functions: the endogenous evolution of
technology and of the institutions and the political equilibrium that influence not
only technology but also how markets function and how the gains from various
different economic arrangements are distributed.
Holy shit imagine being this brainwashed. Not to mention the Ricardo reference about capitalists demanding a larger and larger share of productivity is exactly right (does anyone have that graph that shows productivity skyrocketing and wages staying the same?) and they act like it was debunked, even though its easily observably true
The third point they're making is bizarre and self defeating, they're basically claiming that yes, Marx is right, but because of regulation breaking up monopolies, Marx is wrong?
It doesn't stop the fact that regulation is needed because of the tendency of Capital to concentrate.
True and anti-trust legislation is neither really effective, nor actually desirable at the end of the day.
you literally can measure the rate of exploitation mathematically but i get your point. neoclassicals have imbibed the most autistic kool-aid possible.
reactionaries really are paper tigers after all
of the unemployed would keep wages at subsistence level, making capitalism inconsistent
with steady improvements in the living standards of workers.
That's Lasalles Iron Law of Wages. Fucking ignorant shills
alright nigger, stay dumb
Interesting graph, do you have the source so I can read more.
While where on the topic, I see the author measure rate of profit in real terms. How do most Marxist estimate measure profit? How does it differ from neoclassicals? And how is it better?
Why not actually engage with what some people in this thread have said criticizing the paper? If your even able to
Marx did make predictions that the proletariat would grow immiserated i proportion to the development of capital, and this did turn out to be incorrect. But that is far different than wages themselves.
And regardless, as Marx pointed out in the critique of the gotha program, the issue is not that workers are stuck with low wages, but that they are forced to sell their labor power.
t. first worlder
The fundamental issue with this paper is that it is written with a false pretense of political neutrality, something that just doesn't exist in economics. Neoclassical economists abuse their academic dominance to force every debate onto their terms, even if it makes no sense, so this description of Marxist economics is nonsense. Numbers and graphs do not make economics a hard science separate from politics and sociology, they are what give economics meaning and context to begin with.
the biggest reduction in poverty in the 20th century has come from the development of east asia
To be fair most of the statistics that "show" poverty reduction are slightly fishy.
Also, a raise from abject poverty is not a raise to the standard of american middle class. By and large these people are being taken from being wedded to their land, to being prolitarianized (if I can use the word). This is inline with Marx's ideas on trade and the creation of a global proletariat.
Sure, but still China, South Korea, and Vietnam all rose from dirt poor to middle income status on par with latin america.
Two of those are communist, the other got enormous economic aid from the US
IIRC most stats showing worldwide poverty reduction disappear if you remove communist china from the equation
Yes, and this is something that Marx agreed with. That capital had the ability to life these groups out of dirt poverty, and make them into an organized proletariat.
I would contest the extent they're communist, hell the art of the deal was a Vietnamese best seller. But regardless, even if there has been no reduction in poverty, that still means it's holding steady and not increasing.
Here's what Marx predicts:
t. communist manifesto
He slightly amends this claim in the critique of the gotha program, however
