Why are you still a Marxist in the current year?
All of Marx's empirical predictions turned out to be false. Diminishing profits, LTV...
Isaac Allen
Bentley Gomez
how the fuck are you supposed to do socialism if not through marxism
Alexander Ortiz
Incrementalism. And finally when the material conditions allow it. You and I will not be alive if socialism ever happens.
Jason Baker
Honestly, I agree. I find myself growing out of my "ML" phase and getting closer to the revisionist/incrementist view.
Specially given the fact that my country is not even industrialized.
Elijah Campbell
the succdems were right all along?
Nathaniel Campbell
Look at this guy who didn't read the IMF's GFSR Report from this month showing a long-term decline in profitability in the core capitalist economies.
To be sure, corporate profits are high thanks to a historic influx of fictitious capital, but they're falling when measured against what they've already invested: their capital stock. There is now so much money floating around but it's not being spent on real investment, mainly speculation, and capital goods orders are falling fast and capital goods imports into the U.S. are now negative. The profits are being made in mergers and acquisitons, buybacks, and dividend payouts – which of course causes income inequality to spike, devouring the consumer base which is eaten up by the rise in asset prices.
There's a slight uptick in profitability (EBITDA to asset %) in the U.S. because of Trump's suger-high tax cuts (which corporations have used to splurge on more stock buybacks, further inflating their asset values) but it's going to come crashing down sooner or later. Tick tock bitch
Elijah Gonzalez
Luke Kelly
This entire post is bait, and was already refuted in the first six posts.
Matthew Flores
Marx is right in a lot of his analysis, but there's a lot of it that doesn't really apply. For one, class consciousness" is absolutely non existent in most countries. I believe capitalism will come to its end eventually due to its contradictions. But it still is really young (200 years tops?) and we're going to deal with it for a long time, hopefully with reforms that make it decent for the working class.
I don't believe in a magic quick change. History shows us that major changes take centuries and centuries. This shit is slow. Small increments won't "hide" capitalism flaws, if it does it would mean Marx was wrong, but we know that's not the case.
Blake Collins
Yeah. And even today capitalism's profitability crisis won't necessarily result in its end. If anything we're kind of repeating the late 19th century's "long depression" that lasted several decades where capitalism shambled its way from crisis to crisis. That's "normal" capitalism and we're living in it.
I'm also a long-view guy. And Marx was right about the fundamentals.
Caleb Phillips
If this is true, is this an argument against accelerationism? Since the basic premise is that we need to make things worse to make them better, it also just means we're making things harder on ourselves for a collapse to come slightly sooner, but if we can't have socialism in our lifetime then we're making it harder on ourselves and we won't reap any benefits, just more suffering.
Ethan Taylor
Of course. Accelerationism is the most retarded shit ever, and a great way of making the working class fucking hate you. Nothing says "fuck you" better than literally advocating for libertarianism for the very slight possibility of having a revolution.
Justin Lewis
How the fuck do you guys reconcile accelerationism when there's also people the right thinking the same thing? that they will vote for left candidates to accelerate the downfall of society?
Jaxon Gutierrez
Tf, where are you from?
Oliver White
Revolutions happened in industrialized countries, it's just that they became reasonably skilled at crushing revolutionaries.
Seriously fucking read a book
Kayden Adams
Hmm. I dunno. I'm not a fan of the Nick Land accelerationism if that's what you mean although I'm aware there's a "left" version – I don't know much about it. This might contradict Marx but I've heard one theory (via Michael Roberts) that periods of revolutionary upheavals are possible when two factors are present: (1) after the working class has recovered from a depression to feel confident in its strength and conscious of its position and (2) when the ruling class has its back against the wall and is unable to grant concessions due to a falling rate in profitability.
Periods include: 1890s-1900s, post-1918 and the 1970s. But not right now, at least in the core capitalist countries.
The Tsarist regime in Russia was basically shitting itself constantly until the 1890s when Sergei Witte (the closest thing Russia had to a Bismarck) reformed the economy in a program of heavy state investment in industry and railroads which generated the urban proletariat – and the resulting social tensions – that would try to overthrow the government in 1905.
In that sense you might make a case for left-accelerationism, but that involved rapid industrial growth. Right now the problem seems to be that the working class has not recovered from 2008. We just shamble on for another 20 years, maybe. Pretty depressing.
Jaxson Perez
Argentina. We have some industry but not much, and the industry we have is not national, it's foreign.
Carter Thompson
Also another point, the number one problem for Socialism is that the public believes it's claims have been discredited because "important figures" have said so. Distributing the evidence of Marx's correct predictions should be of utmost importance to Western leftists
Ryder Reed
lmao I got 800 upvotes to the top of /r/economics the other day on an article from a Marxist economist describing the looming recession from a Marxian framework, a few hundred comments of people arguing. No mention of Marx or socialism in the post but one guy figured it out. "This guy seems like a communist…"
Most conventional economic theories don't make any sense to explain what's going on with capitalism right now (or maybe, ever, but that's another story). Nobody serious is really talking about the "excessive power of labor" contributing to falling profitability like they were in the 1970s. Labor is cheap. And I think automation is overhyped for the same reason.
Thomas Morales
Marx has committed but a single mistake.
Anticipation for globalisation, AKA proletarian internationalism, AKA world revolution.
Everything else is correct, and developed along the lines that, of all theories, only Marxism has anticipated.
In everything else, he was incredibly predictive and correct.
Jose Reed
Chase Diaz
Isaiah Nelson
We already had multiple threads on this. It isn't.
8ch.net
8ch.net
And Cockshott
m.youtube.com
m.youtube.com
Luis Turner
I never was.
Robert Rivera
That's not what it means in any definition of the term. Accelerationism is both a theory describing capital-technology positive feedback loops, and a cluster of ideologies advocating influencing or further accelerating those feedback loops to achieve certain ends (which depends on the ideology of the "accelerationist" in question). I'm guessing the "make shit worse" misunderstanding probably comes from either Zig Forums or some retarded journalist.
It has nothing to do with voting.
Grayson Anderson
ebry taim
Dylan Sanders
Hey so OP after being BTFO by these posters
Have you reconsidered your positions at all?
Hudson Green
I doubt he's coming back.
Levi Nelson
Gabriel Butler
Sorry to inform you, but LTV, falling rates of profit et al have all been empirically studied and confirmed
Connor Gomez
Happens in cycles as he predicted
Has actually been empirically proven
Okay so it happened but in less industrialised countries
As a rate of everything you spend you get. more from labour rather than capital intensive industries
Austin Perez
There's a secular fall in the rate of profit as well, as multiple people have already pointed out. Claiming that it's only cyclical contradicts empirical evidence.
Luis Anderson
yeh but they go up and down in the short term
John Brooks
I'm not well read about Russian revolution or the German one so can someone tell me if the success of the Russian revolution could be attributed to Leninism (centralism)? I've read Rosa writing and she obviously was against centralization (which I understand and even support) but I think we can all agree in times of revolution having good organization is crucial.
Lincoln Anderson
Socialism is easy when you take the mooch shitskins and thieving kikes out of the equation.
Ryder Sanchez
Socialism will only be truly possible when all reactionaries are in camps
Michael Rodriguez
This
Aaron Stewart
Centralization vs decentralization is an imaginary difference that doesn't manifest in practice
Chase Cooper
How so?
Dylan Green
No they're not, they're organizational strategies.
Sebastian Young
Both rely on technocracy, and hearing out those most qualified, so it really doesn't matter if there's just a bunch of decentralized councils because they're forced to listen to the person with the most clout/experience anyways.
Juan Wilson
Carson Diaz
Isaiah Hill
Where did Roberts get this idea? I get the part that the bourgeoisie must be unable or too stupid to make concessions in time, but where has the other part ever been true?
Evan Hernandez
LOL look at the US rate of profit and tell me that's not falling.
Luis Fisher
Someone please explain the rate of profit to a brainlet like me. Is it a problem only to free-market economics? Would state capitalism help alleviate some of its problems.?
Dominic Morgan
Eco fascism is the future
Easton Green
watch the cockshott video on it
Owen Williams
OP posted and then skedaddled cause he's a fag
John Cox
That isn't accelerationism chuckle fuck