Supply and Demand Theory

No doubt, that's why it's an inefficient, blind system.

After a few chapters I honestly don't think I can keep going with this. It honestly seems to be nothing more than metaphysical kvetching that discusses the same things over and over and over.
If you're gonna stick me in a room and make me watch a video of someone doing things then ask me if this video is of something real or if the video is the only thing that is real, all I know is that I'm watching a video and genuinely can not say anything further on the subject in any particular way, but given that this is all I have to work with, I might as well work with it and forget the entire pointless question.

read capital volumes 1-3, read cockshott and read SHAIKH

DiaMat is not metaphysics, the whole point is that it doesn't get into "what is true reality" wank like idealism does. Lenin gets to that later in the book.

I guess. I just don't see what the point of hammering home how Mach is an idealist for this many paragraphs is useful.
It doesn't even seem like it'd strictly conflict with metaphysical idealism so long as you continue to work within the context of perceived reality.

Well, most of Lenin's important books have two parts to them. One part is where he argues for like 50 to 100 pages with people who are long dead and irrelevant now. WITBD starts out this way, for instance. These parts are always a slog, though they are still pretty important and give you an insight into the kinds of arguments people have to deal with in revolutionary movements. Then the other part is where he buckles down and focuses on more general theory, practice, etc. These are more fun to read. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism has a similar pattern to it. I found it pretty indispensable in helping me to identify the various cloaked forms of idealism that exist today.

What do you want specifically to blow out? I took three years of economics in college before switching majors (mainly due to disillusionment with macroeconomics as being extremely vague and worthless for describing the real world), so I would be well-equipped to argue with him.

Even in a freshman class you learn that there are situations where free markets fail to efficiently allocate resources. The two classic examples are distribution of non-excludable public goods, regulation of activity with negative externalities. The breakthrough comes when realizing that most things are public goods and most activities have externalities. A capitalist might say that healthcare is a personal good, but he depends on the existence of healthy people to work at his factory just like he depends on functioning roads and an educated workforce.

As a theory of price itself they commit circular reasoning, since you're defining prices with reference to prices themselves. It may be factually true that demand and supply behave accordingly to these changes in price, but this isn't a good theory of how prices come about

literally this
supply and demand/marginal utility/whatever you want to call it is a reasonable theory of how prices are formed *from an already existing set of prices* but as a theory of what value actually is, it's worthless.

Good thread. Bumping for the sake of education.