🤔📝Comments on curi’s video "Marxism, Socialism, Reisman – Part 2"💰📺
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Justin Mallone
Oct 15, 2018, 4:10:20 PM10/15/18
to fallibl...@googlegroups.com, brucenielson1@gmail.com [fallible-ideas]
Comments on curi’s video "Marxism, Socialism, Reisman – Part 2”
https://gumroad.com/l/szitM
Reisman says Marx thinks the conditions of wage earners are like slavery cuz of three mistakes.
1. First mistake — Confusion of labor with wage-earning:
Why is labor not necessarily wage-earning?
curi says if you build a log cabin or shoot a buffalo, you get a log cabin or a buffalo, not a wage. if you are earning a wage, you do labor for your employer, not for yourself.
My thought: all wage-earning involves labor but not all labor involves wage-earning (contra Marx!)
BTW I looked up the definition of wages in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. It gives two:
> WAGES, noun plural in termination, but singular in signification.
>
> 1. Hire; reward; that which is paid or stipulated for services; but chiefly for services by manual labor, or for military and naval services. We speak of servants wages a laborers wages or soldiers wages; but we never apply the word to the rewards given to men in office, which are called fees or salary. The word is however sometimes applied to the compensation given to representatives in the legislature. [U. States]
>
> Tell me, what shall thy wages be? Genesis 29:15.
>
> Be content with your wages Luke 3:14.
>
> 2. Reward; fruit; recompense; that which is given or received in return.
>
> The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23.
And compared to current Merriam-Webster’s
> wage noun
> \ˈwāj \
> Definition of wage (Entry 1 of 2)
> 1a: a payment usually of money for labor or services usually according to contract and on an hourly, daily, or piecework basis —often used in plural
> bwages plural : the share of the national product attributable to labor as a factor in production
> 2: RECOMPENSE, REWARD —usually used in pl. but singular or plural in construction
> the wages of sin is death
> — Romans 6:23 (Revised Standard Version)
So yeah those are the two definitions I had in mind pretty much — money paid for labor/services and the reward you get for doing something.
What’s my point? Calling the buffalo you get from shooting a buffalo “wages” in an economic sense kinda seems like mixing up the two definitions to me.
(OT I liked that they used the same Bible verse for second definition ~200 years later — nice continuity there!)
2. Second mistake — Thinking that in a world free of capitalists and businessmen, where there are only manual workers, the income of those workers is wages.
curi says if you go into forest and do hunter-gatherer things, there’s no wages there — just 🏹 🦌 labor and fruits 🍓🍗 of your labor.
3. Third mistake — cuz of previous mistakes, profit appears as income that was originally wages and should still be wages, but is wrongly taken from wage earners to be profits of employers (exploitation!!)
curi: if you weren’t employed, your wages would be zero — you’d be self-employed. profits aren’t taken out of your wages — the offer of wages is alternative to being self employed, which lots of people find better than being self-employed. The idea of profit being a deduction from wages is that you’re worse off being an employee, cuz if you weren’t an employee, your wages would be all the value of your labor, and if you’re an employee you’re getting less. But if you weren’t an employee you’d be doing something else entirely. And you might be able to make more income that way, but maybe not. Depends on different things.
(People think something like: if they had all the employer’s capital they could earn more, have more wealth. And that’s true, but it’s not their wealth, so…)
My thoughts: and if an employee had the employer’s wealth, to get the most out of the wealth in the particular line of work they are working in, the former worker would need to hire people … so they’d be a capitalist!!! :-)
Like if suddenly an employee somehow got all the wealth of the big corporation that employs them, and they wanted to make money in that corporation’s particular line of business, they can’t put all the computers and office space and staplers etc to use productively by themselves. They would lack the skills and time to do so, and since they are suddenly wealthy they’d probably rather be doing other things besides the various tasks (many menial) that need to be taken care of in the business!
And even if they decided to do a fire sale on the assets of the corporation they have suddenly come into ownership of, the only reason they’d be able to get money for the assets is because *other people* want to pay people wages to engage in profit-seeking activities using those assets. So even selling the assets results in the use of the assets by (other) employers in wage-paying, profit-seeking activities.
I enjoyed Reisman and curi’s discussion of why demand for commodities is not demand for labor (cuz like hiring a person to chop wood and buying wood are different things, have different risks and requirements, etc.)
Understanding this helps understand the value the employer offers better. The employer is taking a risk in hiring you to e.g. chop wood — maybe you suck at it and the employer doesn’t get the wood he wants. But you get paid anyway (at least for a while).
If you were an independent lumberjack who chopped wood and then sold the wood to people like the employer, then YOU’D be taking a bunch of risks — of finding enough wood customers, enough wood, of your wood chopping skills being up to the task, of there not being a forest fire which causes you serious financial problems (or of insuring or self-insuring against such a risk), etc.
From Part I.7:
> And thus we reach what will understandably appear to many as an amazing conclusion: not only is the money earned by the workers under simple circulation sales revenues rather than wages, but also it is profit. The entire sales proceeds earned by the workers under simple circulation are profit, because, in the absence of buying for the sake of selling, there are no costs to deduct from the sales revenues, and thus the entire sales revenues turn out to be profit:
cool :)
and from Part I.8:
> It also follows that by virtue of creating the phenomenon of costs of production, i.e., the costs that show up in business income statements, the activity of the capitalists serves to reduce the proportion of sales revenues that is profit. Capitalists do not create profit and subtract it from wages. On the contrary, they create wages and the other costs which are subtracted from sales revenues, and thus the capitalists reduce the proportion of sales revenues that is profit.
also cool :)
I have a question about Marx’s thinking on simple and capitalistic circulation. Reisman says:
> Under simple circulation, manual workers produce commodities, designated by “C,” sell them for money, designated by “M,” and then use the money earned to buy other commodities, also designated by “C.” Thus, simple circulation is the sequence C-M-C. Under simple circulation, there is allegedly no exploitation of labor. The workers—the wage earners—receive the full proceeds brought in by the sale of their products. These sales proceeds are viewed as indistinguishable from wage payments, as though they were in fact wage payments.
[…]
> The exploitation of labor begins, according to Marx, only with the coming of capitalists and “capitalistic circulation.”[11] Here the starting point is an outlay of money by the capitalists to pay wages and buy previously produced commodities in such forms as materials and tools and, ultimately, also machines and factory buildings. These outlays of money are for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market, hopefully, in the view of the capitalist, for a larger sum of money than he has expended in producing them. Thus, capitalistic circulation is represented by the sequence M-C-M or, more precisely, by the sequence M-C- M′, with M′ used to represent the second M as being larger than the first and thus the sequence as a whole as showing a profit.[12]
It would seem to me like what Marx is calling capitalistic circulation could start pretty early on in economic development.
E.g. an independent lumberjack sells some wood and buys a better saw. So the money paid for the saw seems like an “outlay[] of money […] for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market.” Is the independent lumberjack a capitalist operating under capitalistic circulation? Or does he need to not just buy commodities in order to sell stuff later, but also pay somebody wages? I’m like unclear on where the boundary line is between simple and capitalistic circulation type activities in Marx’s view.
Why i care: I am wondering if Marx was only thinking of capitalistic circulation in terms of bigger business enterprises when really what he describes as capitalistic circulation could apply to even a pretty primitive level of economic development where an independent entrepreneur is trying to improve his business. Such an entrepreneur is not really what people think of as the object of Marx’s criticism AFAIK.
Anyone have meta crits about my approach to discussing the material so far?
I started looking at the included questions with the material. They seem useful to keep in mind as I go through the material.
-JM
https://gumroad.com/l/szitM
Reisman says Marx thinks the conditions of wage earners are like slavery cuz of three mistakes.
1. First mistake — Confusion of labor with wage-earning:
Why is labor not necessarily wage-earning?
curi says if you build a log cabin or shoot a buffalo, you get a log cabin or a buffalo, not a wage. if you are earning a wage, you do labor for your employer, not for yourself.
My thought: all wage-earning involves labor but not all labor involves wage-earning (contra Marx!)
BTW I looked up the definition of wages in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. It gives two:
> WAGES, noun plural in termination, but singular in signification.
>
> 1. Hire; reward; that which is paid or stipulated for services; but chiefly for services by manual labor, or for military and naval services. We speak of servants wages a laborers wages or soldiers wages; but we never apply the word to the rewards given to men in office, which are called fees or salary. The word is however sometimes applied to the compensation given to representatives in the legislature. [U. States]
>
> Tell me, what shall thy wages be? Genesis 29:15.
>
> Be content with your wages Luke 3:14.
>
> 2. Reward; fruit; recompense; that which is given or received in return.
>
> The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23.
And compared to current Merriam-Webster’s
> wage noun
> \ˈwāj \
> Definition of wage (Entry 1 of 2)
> 1a: a payment usually of money for labor or services usually according to contract and on an hourly, daily, or piecework basis —often used in plural
> bwages plural : the share of the national product attributable to labor as a factor in production
> 2: RECOMPENSE, REWARD —usually used in pl. but singular or plural in construction
> the wages of sin is death
> — Romans 6:23 (Revised Standard Version)
So yeah those are the two definitions I had in mind pretty much — money paid for labor/services and the reward you get for doing something.
What’s my point? Calling the buffalo you get from shooting a buffalo “wages” in an economic sense kinda seems like mixing up the two definitions to me.
(OT I liked that they used the same Bible verse for second definition ~200 years later — nice continuity there!)
2. Second mistake — Thinking that in a world free of capitalists and businessmen, where there are only manual workers, the income of those workers is wages.
curi says if you go into forest and do hunter-gatherer things, there’s no wages there — just 🏹 🦌 labor and fruits 🍓🍗 of your labor.
3. Third mistake — cuz of previous mistakes, profit appears as income that was originally wages and should still be wages, but is wrongly taken from wage earners to be profits of employers (exploitation!!)
curi: if you weren’t employed, your wages would be zero — you’d be self-employed. profits aren’t taken out of your wages — the offer of wages is alternative to being self employed, which lots of people find better than being self-employed. The idea of profit being a deduction from wages is that you’re worse off being an employee, cuz if you weren’t an employee, your wages would be all the value of your labor, and if you’re an employee you’re getting less. But if you weren’t an employee you’d be doing something else entirely. And you might be able to make more income that way, but maybe not. Depends on different things.
(People think something like: if they had all the employer’s capital they could earn more, have more wealth. And that’s true, but it’s not their wealth, so…)
My thoughts: and if an employee had the employer’s wealth, to get the most out of the wealth in the particular line of work they are working in, the former worker would need to hire people … so they’d be a capitalist!!! :-)
Like if suddenly an employee somehow got all the wealth of the big corporation that employs them, and they wanted to make money in that corporation’s particular line of business, they can’t put all the computers and office space and staplers etc to use productively by themselves. They would lack the skills and time to do so, and since they are suddenly wealthy they’d probably rather be doing other things besides the various tasks (many menial) that need to be taken care of in the business!
And even if they decided to do a fire sale on the assets of the corporation they have suddenly come into ownership of, the only reason they’d be able to get money for the assets is because *other people* want to pay people wages to engage in profit-seeking activities using those assets. So even selling the assets results in the use of the assets by (other) employers in wage-paying, profit-seeking activities.
I enjoyed Reisman and curi’s discussion of why demand for commodities is not demand for labor (cuz like hiring a person to chop wood and buying wood are different things, have different risks and requirements, etc.)
Understanding this helps understand the value the employer offers better. The employer is taking a risk in hiring you to e.g. chop wood — maybe you suck at it and the employer doesn’t get the wood he wants. But you get paid anyway (at least for a while).
If you were an independent lumberjack who chopped wood and then sold the wood to people like the employer, then YOU’D be taking a bunch of risks — of finding enough wood customers, enough wood, of your wood chopping skills being up to the task, of there not being a forest fire which causes you serious financial problems (or of insuring or self-insuring against such a risk), etc.
From Part I.7:
> And thus we reach what will understandably appear to many as an amazing conclusion: not only is the money earned by the workers under simple circulation sales revenues rather than wages, but also it is profit. The entire sales proceeds earned by the workers under simple circulation are profit, because, in the absence of buying for the sake of selling, there are no costs to deduct from the sales revenues, and thus the entire sales revenues turn out to be profit:
cool :)
and from Part I.8:
> It also follows that by virtue of creating the phenomenon of costs of production, i.e., the costs that show up in business income statements, the activity of the capitalists serves to reduce the proportion of sales revenues that is profit. Capitalists do not create profit and subtract it from wages. On the contrary, they create wages and the other costs which are subtracted from sales revenues, and thus the capitalists reduce the proportion of sales revenues that is profit.
also cool :)
I have a question about Marx’s thinking on simple and capitalistic circulation. Reisman says:
> Under simple circulation, manual workers produce commodities, designated by “C,” sell them for money, designated by “M,” and then use the money earned to buy other commodities, also designated by “C.” Thus, simple circulation is the sequence C-M-C. Under simple circulation, there is allegedly no exploitation of labor. The workers—the wage earners—receive the full proceeds brought in by the sale of their products. These sales proceeds are viewed as indistinguishable from wage payments, as though they were in fact wage payments.
[…]
> The exploitation of labor begins, according to Marx, only with the coming of capitalists and “capitalistic circulation.”[11] Here the starting point is an outlay of money by the capitalists to pay wages and buy previously produced commodities in such forms as materials and tools and, ultimately, also machines and factory buildings. These outlays of money are for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market, hopefully, in the view of the capitalist, for a larger sum of money than he has expended in producing them. Thus, capitalistic circulation is represented by the sequence M-C-M or, more precisely, by the sequence M-C- M′, with M′ used to represent the second M as being larger than the first and thus the sequence as a whole as showing a profit.[12]
It would seem to me like what Marx is calling capitalistic circulation could start pretty early on in economic development.
E.g. an independent lumberjack sells some wood and buys a better saw. So the money paid for the saw seems like an “outlay[] of money […] for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market.” Is the independent lumberjack a capitalist operating under capitalistic circulation? Or does he need to not just buy commodities in order to sell stuff later, but also pay somebody wages? I’m like unclear on where the boundary line is between simple and capitalistic circulation type activities in Marx’s view.
Why i care: I am wondering if Marx was only thinking of capitalistic circulation in terms of bigger business enterprises when really what he describes as capitalistic circulation could apply to even a pretty primitive level of economic development where an independent entrepreneur is trying to improve his business. Such an entrepreneur is not really what people think of as the object of Marx’s criticism AFAIK.
Anyone have meta crits about my approach to discussing the material so far?
I started looking at the included questions with the material. They seem useful to keep in mind as I go through the material.
-JM
Elliot Temple
Oct 15, 2018, 4:24:58 PM10/15/18
to FIGG, brucenielson1@gmail.com [fallible-ideas]
On Oct 15, 2018, at 1:10 PM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Comments on curi’s video "Marxism, Socialism, Reisman – Part 2”
>
> https://gumroad.com/l/szitM
> Comments on curi’s video "Marxism, Socialism, Reisman – Part 2”
>
> https://gumroad.com/l/szitM
> I have a question about Marx’s thinking on simple and capitalistic circulation. Reisman says:
>
>> Under simple circulation, manual workers produce commodities, designated by “C,” sell them for money, designated by “M,” and then use the money earned to buy other commodities, also designated by “C.” Thus, simple circulation is the sequence C-M-C. Under simple circulation, there is allegedly no exploitation of labor. The workers—the wage earners—receive the full proceeds brought in by the sale of their products. These sales proceeds are viewed as indistinguishable from wage payments, as though they were in fact wage payments.
>
> […]
>
>> The exploitation of labor begins, according to Marx, only with the coming of capitalists and “capitalistic circulation.”[11] Here the starting point is an outlay of money by the capitalists to pay wages and buy previously produced commodities in such forms as materials and tools and, ultimately, also machines and factory buildings. These outlays of money are for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market, hopefully, in the view of the capitalist, for a larger sum of money than he has expended in producing them. Thus, capitalistic circulation is represented by the sequence M-C-M or, more precisely, by the sequence M-C- M′, with M′ used to represent the second M as being larger than the first and thus the sequence as a whole as showing a profit.[12]
>
> It would seem to me like what Marx is calling capitalistic circulation could start pretty early on in economic development.
>
> E.g. an independent lumberjack sells some wood and buys a better saw. So the money paid for the saw seems like an “outlay[] of money […] for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market.” Is the independent lumberjack a capitalist operating under capitalistic circulation? Or does he need to not just buy commodities in order to sell stuff later, but also pay somebody wages? I’m like unclear on where the boundary line is between simple and capitalistic circulation type activities in Marx’s view.
>
> Why i care: I am wondering if Marx was only thinking of capitalistic circulation in terms of bigger business enterprises when really what he describes as capitalistic circulation could apply to even a pretty primitive level of economic development where an independent entrepreneur is trying to improve his business. Such an entrepreneur is not really what people think of as the object of Marx’s criticism AFAIK.
Buying a saw for business purposes is a cost of production. That means there is division of labor of capital good creation: there is a saw maker. In simple circulation, it doesn’t have to be so primitive there are no saws. The lumberjack builds his own saw and only buys consumption goods.
>
>> Under simple circulation, manual workers produce commodities, designated by “C,” sell them for money, designated by “M,” and then use the money earned to buy other commodities, also designated by “C.” Thus, simple circulation is the sequence C-M-C. Under simple circulation, there is allegedly no exploitation of labor. The workers—the wage earners—receive the full proceeds brought in by the sale of their products. These sales proceeds are viewed as indistinguishable from wage payments, as though they were in fact wage payments.
>
> […]
>
>> The exploitation of labor begins, according to Marx, only with the coming of capitalists and “capitalistic circulation.”[11] Here the starting point is an outlay of money by the capitalists to pay wages and buy previously produced commodities in such forms as materials and tools and, ultimately, also machines and factory buildings. These outlays of money are for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market, hopefully, in the view of the capitalist, for a larger sum of money than he has expended in producing them. Thus, capitalistic circulation is represented by the sequence M-C-M or, more precisely, by the sequence M-C- M′, with M′ used to represent the second M as being larger than the first and thus the sequence as a whole as showing a profit.[12]
>
> It would seem to me like what Marx is calling capitalistic circulation could start pretty early on in economic development.
>
> E.g. an independent lumberjack sells some wood and buys a better saw. So the money paid for the saw seems like an “outlay[] of money […] for the purpose of producing commodities that are to be sold in the market.” Is the independent lumberjack a capitalist operating under capitalistic circulation? Or does he need to not just buy commodities in order to sell stuff later, but also pay somebody wages? I’m like unclear on where the boundary line is between simple and capitalistic circulation type activities in Marx’s view.
>
> Why i care: I am wondering if Marx was only thinking of capitalistic circulation in terms of bigger business enterprises when really what he describes as capitalistic circulation could apply to even a pretty primitive level of economic development where an independent entrepreneur is trying to improve his business. Such an entrepreneur is not really what people think of as the object of Marx’s criticism AFAIK.
(Producing your own *metal* tools does sound pretty unrealistic, you more realistically need a specialized smith for metalwork!)
> Anyone have meta crits about my approach to discussing the material so far?
It’s a bit summary oriented. If adopting other people’s problems (which is fine, and contrasts with using their ideas to address problems you came up with, like trying to look up answers to your questions in a book) – like Reisman is the one who decided to talk about the problem of whether profits are deducted from wages or wages from profits – then it can help to say what the problem is and why you now think that problems matters.
Elliot Temple
www.curi.us
Justin Mallone
Oct 15, 2018, 8:46:04 PM10/15/18
to fallibl...@googlegroups.com, brucenielson1@gmail.com [fallible-ideas]
On Oct 15, 2018, at 4:24:54 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
> On Oct 15, 2018, at 1:10 PM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Comments on curi’s video "Marxism, Socialism, Reisman – Part 2”
>>
>> https://gumroad.com/l/szitM
>
>
> On Oct 15, 2018, at 1:10 PM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Comments on curi’s video "Marxism, Socialism, Reisman – Part 2”
>>
>> https://gumroad.com/l/szitM
>
>
>> Anyone have meta crits about my approach to discussing the material so far?
>
> Seems pretty good. Why do you think this is important or interesting or valuable?
Well I broadly enjoy the topic of economics, thinking about it, thinking about how it connects with stuff I see IRL. And I wanted to try one of your educational materials in a serious way. And I’ve read some of Reisman’s stuff before and think he’s a good thinker. And of course I think you are a good thinker as well! And I wanted to get back into the habit of posting and contributing to discussion in FI community. So given all that, this material seemed legit place to start.
>
> Seems pretty good. Why do you think this is important or interesting or valuable?
I wouldn’t wanna start with, say, Reisman’s _Capitalism_ cuz that’s way bigger and there’s no curi study material there. And I’m trying to focus my philosophy time on getting high amounts of understanding rather than skimming a bunch of stuff.
> You could maybe connect your studies more to a bigger picture purpose. Is this knowing things for the sake of knowing, or is there more to it?
> Are the goals and hoped-for results narrowly about economics, or are there different goals?
>
> It’s a bit summary oriented. If adopting other people’s problems (which is fine, and contrasts with using their ideas to address problems you came up with, like trying to look up answers to your questions in a book) – like Reisman is the one who decided to talk about the problem of whether profits are deducted from wages or wages from profits – then it can help to say what the problem is and why you now think that problems matters.
If you see your employers as capitalist exploiters (due to the various mistakes Reisman criticizes), you have a different attitude towards your job, your work, etc. You live life less well.
I’d like to be a more thorough capitalist.
-JM
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