Let's Study Economics With Anwar Shaikh

Wonder how Shaikh gets along with Andrew Kliman. Does Shaikh subscribe to the "temporal single-system" interpretation of Marx? Or is he more a heterodox economic willing to toss out key ideas like the falling rate of profit while still calling himself a Marxist?

I don't think they get along very well. Just a quick google search brings this up:
critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/responses-to-readers-austrian-economics-versus-marxism/andrew-kliman-and-the-neo-ricardian-attack-on-marxism-pt-1/
Shaikh does uphold the theory of the falling ROP, as well as profit equalization. He actually shows that profits can't and empirically don't equalize between companies and industries overall (due to different vintages of fixed capital), but that they actually DO equalize in new investment.

You are a hero tbh.

I have two stem degrees and I still haven't mustered up the courage to read it.

That's just silly. Don't let the porkies discourage you with their "reading is hard" propaganda. Also, the lectures are very good, you can dip your toes in by watching them first.

I've had this book on rental sitting in my room for over a year and I only recently took it back. I don't think I ever read past 10 pages, it was just too intimidating.

Did you read Capital first?

Nope.

Start with that, then. Volume 1 is very readable.

I don't think it is necessary to read capital first. Shaikh examines all schools of economic thought. Reading capital will give an advantage for sure but you can go in without background. I think the video lectures are more accessible than the book for beginners. Definitely take the time to go through the first 10 or so lectures which cover microeconomics. Shaikh's (classical) theory of micro is pretty common sense and he contrasts it with neoclassical micro theory which is bullshit.

The 2nd half the the video lectures cover macroeconomics and are more dry and more mathematical.

IMO you want to have the background in either classical or modern econ to understand at least one side of what he's talking about. He does use a lot of terminology that won't be clear to people who haven't done preliminary reading. If you go in without that knowledge, you have to treat it more like a physics textbook where you're googling stuff a lot and taking notes/going through examples.
The video lectures are more approachable, but the same issue applies.

Oh you misunderstood, i guess i explained this badly, I have an issue with the narrative structure here, not the content.
I have issues with the "consumer-character". I don't think that is an actual economic agent, at least not in a Marxist sense, where economic agents are described in terms how they relate to the means of production.

From my point of view a consumer is a fictional character where exploitable psychological weaknesses are projected onto, for the purpose of marketing. My view of marketing is very grim, i basically think it's a form of psychological torture. The basic premise seems to be to convince people they are deficient, for the sole purpose of selling a solution to said deficiency. People who get exposed to this, but lack the money to pay the solution, as well as ineffective solutions create a sort of excess suffering. It's quite possible that the combination of the information age and bio-tech could lead to intense targeted psychological stressing people to cause them stress induce health problems to bolster sales of bio-tech products.

If you consider that not all consumers are also workers it becomes very complicated. Consider that addictive product properties play a similar role, and in my scifi-distopia example above. You get the addition of creating a leach based on survival. From the point of view of the worker, this is negative reinforcement to coerce people to sell their labour power. From the point of view of a capitalist, this might become an avenue for competition, if you can make some other capitalist dependant for survival on your bio-tech product you have another avenue for leverage in business negotiations.

Current mainstream economics treats consumer desire as a point of origin for systemic dynamics, and as a box to store blame. If you use the consumer category you are arguing uphill. You have to argue that consumer choices are manipulated, and in effect involuntary, and consumption is not a place where decisions are made. If you do not use the consumer category the argument changes, and you are arguing that marketing is just another aspect of managing workers, and competition for realizing value. A position you can easily justify because the marketing fields brag about their abilities loudly.

And for making suggestions about a different system you would seek to have a psychological influence system that seeks to promote reasoned contemplation rather then mindless pleasure seeking or carrot and stick system.

Well he yells in one of his earlier lectures about this and calls it a productionist view. He literally says that's it's about social conflict. That might be a reasonable thing to say, but it's not much worth in terms of explanation. I would see a strike as a measure where workers seek information on weather they can increase their wage by reducing the amount of labour power they sell. Your inputs are organizational effort and your output is a wage increase and improved working conditions. You might seek out economic efficiencies in organizing by seeking out feedbackloops. You might be better off spending union dues to fund a strike in a competing company potentially inducing capitalists to start funding strikes for rival companies.

Requesting some greentext passages from the book to wet my appetite.

the videos are for that

No. Do your job, OP. Gimme greentext. Otherwise this (important) thread goes glub glub.

He has another lecture series on youtube as well.
Anwar Shaikh: Historical Foundations of Political Economy
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTMFx0t8kDzc72vtNWeTP05x6WYiDgEx7>>2888466

thanks laddio

Shaikh's Theory of Interest Rates, and "Gibson's Paradox"
Neo-classicals think that the interest rate should correlate with inflation levels. In reality, it actually correlates with price levels (IE, real value of commodities). Because this doesn't match neo-classical idealism, they call it a paradox!
Shaikh explains that interest rates are the price of finance. Banks are business like any other that aim to make a profit. Through competition, they are forced to set their interest rates at a level that gives them a normal rate of profit. The reason that the interest rates correlate with the price levels in an economy is simply that when the price levels rise, the price of constant capital (and even wages) for the banks rises as well, meaning they have to increase their interest rates to extract an acceptable profit.
Shaikh discusses this topic in lectures 11 and 12.

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Can any of you help me? I'm writing a short text with counter arguments to anti-communist ones. The thing in which I have problem is economics. Does the rate of profit fall, and if so, can you give me the sources to use? Shaikh and Cockshott have probably something to say about this but I couldn't get access to his book, Cockshott's papers are relatively easy to find so I don't think that will be a problem. I have this question since I started looking online for things to adress and found a thread on /r/neoliberal which brought this criticism.

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Use Michael Robert's sources:
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/the-us-rate-of-profit-1948-2015/
In short: yes it does fall, for exactly the reasons Marx described in Capital Vol III.

Thanks you! This is exactly what I needed.

The falling rate of profit is a really easy thing to argue against. By some measures the US RoP is currently the highest it's been since WW2. However there's a Shaikh lecture on YT that explains the measure he uses and why.

No thank you.

Forgot the gay shit.

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Bump

Baboons get out

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This lecture was really interesting:
youtube.com/watch?v=mULRcWrCe6A&list=PLB1uqxcCESK6B1juh_wnKoxftZCcqA1go&index=9&t=0s
Anwar Shaikh looks at the empirical evidence and the theory of "anti-competitive firms" in this video (and couple preceding ones).
He criticizes the Leninist conception of monopoly capital on an empirical basis of prices and profit rates. By and large, the big corporations do not get unusually high prices or profits. US "monopoly capital" now being threatened by Chinese capital. A huge company that buys up lots of competition still has to compete with other big companies, and it even competes with itself (closing down subsidiaries, moving capital internally from one sector to another, etc). Of course companies engage naturally in cartel behavior, but one thing everyone knows about cartels is that they compete with one another, and they also do not last forever. The reason why Keynesians and mainstream economists both say that there are "anti-competitive firms" is that the mainstream theory of "perfect competition" holds that all firms are the same size.
As a result, Shaikh argues (afaict) that "monopoly" is not a meaningful category. This has direct implications for Leninism, since Lenin's conception of imperialism is based on Hilferding's work on monopoly power. Shaikh summarizes here:
youtube.com/watch?v=iRqcFiAY9wA
He says that he thinks imperialism does exist, but the theory of imperialism shouldn't be connected to the concept of "monopoly capital."

So, how to explain imperialism? Or is he wrong?
Interestingly, John Smith's book on imperialism doesn't really rely on "monopoly capital" as its central thesis. Instead, it focuses on the "global value chain." Essentially, because of the way that Western corporations contract labor out into 3rd world countries, the value of the product doesn't materialize in those countries, and instead at the country of sale. Contractor factories are pitted against each other for the ability to produce, and are basically just paid the cost of production/re-production, while the profits are sucked up by the company contracting the labor out. It's even more blatant when they own the whole value chain.
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=E9CC758D5231BEDADE8B29D1A291A416

Shaikh's lectures on international trade focus on David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage (the theory that trade surpluses/deficits naturally balance out in international trade), and debunking it (Marx was against it too):
youtube.com/watch?v=f0JejeZRtcs&list=PLB1uqxcCESK6B1juh_wnKoxftZCcqA1go&index=14&t=0s
Comparative advantage is pretty much the only thing that the "neo-classicals" actually take from classical economics! In reality, trade deficits/surpluses can last for decades. One reason that they don't go away is that when foreign money floods into a country with a trade surplus, the country with the surplus puts much of that money in the banks of the countries with the deficits! This is really obvious when you look at the US-China relationship, and the IMF in general. So actually, by politically and militarily forcing countries into trade relations where they have a surplus of exports to the West, the West not only gets all their products, but also gets control over their finance!

The other point to consider from the above lectures is development/underdevelopment. Underdevelopment theory has been very important for the theory of imperialism for over a century. Shaikh points out that all the advanced economies went through a phase of protecting their industries from international competition in order to develop them. When the USA forces 3rd world countries to end protectionism, it essentially stops the development dead in its tracks, and forces them into cutthroat competition.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this. I may have to re-read Lenin's imperialism some time soon in order to evaluate it in light of Shaikh's arguments. We should have an empirical way to determine which countries are engaging in imperialism, on top of the obvious heuristics (such as, who has military bases all over the fucking planet, etc). But if Lenin's argument was based on flawed, idealistic economics ("Monopoly"), then a significant chunk of the theory in his book (but not all) would have to be replaced.

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recursive competition ? So it's markets all the way down ?

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This has some very big implications, I have the John Smith book but I've never gotten around to reading it, perhaps I should.

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Any imperialism experts have more thoughts on this?

bump.

That's rather interesting. What type of measures indicate high wages?

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yeah, it is time to study

Is 'classical econophysics' any good?

one user in the Crisis thread read it and started making some models of it. it seems pretty good IMO.

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This is a very well thought post.

that's why we need to get rid of reserve currencies comrades

This dude is cool af and I’m learning a lot. Thanks for introducing him to me

That would mean reverting to gold for international payments. And probably, the gold would be stored in a few locations (London, NY) like it is today and only moves around on a ledger. Economically weaker countries would be bullied into storing their gold in the imperialists' vaults. We might even see invasions of countries trying to repatriate their gold reserves.

How about decentralized labour vouchers?

USA and co. already do this

This article has some good sources/leads/papers on imperialist value transfer:
thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/ricci-unequal-exchange.pdf

oops that's one of the papers, here's the article:
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/imperialism-and-profitability-at-lille/