> You possess an either infantile and misinformed understanding of Marx, or you're just being ideological here.<
I don't understand what is offending you so much here. I am claiming that Marx does not understand Capital, and just because he claimed to have analysed the role of 'capital', it doesn't mean that he 'understood' it. A christian biologist writing about the role of fossils doesn't mean he understands it.
> His careful inspection did not reveal a conspiracy theory; instead, it elucidated the ways capital influences our material existence. <
Did Marx not say that the employer is able to claim a right to 'surplus labor' because the capitalist class (state being one of them) protects this right(property rights)?
Does he not claim that almost all property is acquired via theft and coercion of the labor class? I understand that conspiracy theory is a loaded term, but his idea of 'class interest' is nothing but a conspiracy theory. That somehow all the capitalist are conspiring against the workers, without being explicitly aware of it.
Karl Marx did not understand that Capital allows production but doing division of 'labor'(used here to mean 'tasks'). Workers don't need to invest their time in the production process, and wait for the revenue of a business to pour in, while a person specializing in saving, does the job of providing the wages.
That this is a necessary factor needed in any economy and it's impossible for any society (including the one recommending by Marx) to live by not having division of capital accumulation from labor.
> I don't understand what is offending you so much here.
Why are you assuming I am offended? I'm calling out your erroneous claims of Marx's work as either misunderstanding or ideology. I'm not in the slightest bit offended. Your clarifications haven't moved the needle on being unable to determine if you're being purely ideological, or if you're infusing ideology into what is, fundamentally, a misunderstanding of Marx.
> I am claiming that Marx does not understand Capital, and just because he claimed to have analysed the role of 'capital', it doesn't mean that he 'understood' it.
Just because you think you know what Marx says, and because you have a couple of his terms in your head, does not mean you understand Marx.
You are claiming that you understand capital better than Marx, who devoted 25 years to analyzing and explaining it--particularly insofar as it relates to the material conditions of our existence, and how it informs, produces, and reproduces the social, economic, cultural, and political structures of human society. Considering the vast breadth and depth of Marx's work, that is a very bold claim to make. You can certainly disagree with the more philosophical and political conclusions Marx draws from his understanding of capital, but to make a blanket assertion that he simply does not understand capital is something that requires an incredibly strong argument. Even Marx's detractors do not make such wide-sweeping, hand-waving claims as "Marx doesn't understand capital". They typically disagree on finer points, many of which have more to do with the material ramifications of capital on political economy and social structure.
> A christian biologist writing about the role of fossils doesn't mean he understands it.
Please. You're creating a ridiculous argument here.
As an ignostic, even I wouldn't say the religion of a biologist is inherently relevant to determining whether or not that biologist understood the role of fossils. There are plenty of Christians who do not find their faith at odds with the scientific consensus on evolution and the fossil record. If you read the biologist's writing about the role of fossils, and it accurately describes the role of fossils in accord with the greater body of scientific work on the matter, what exactly does the biologist's faith have to do with determining or proving anything? Sure, it might be worth considering as a signifier of a certain probability of misunderstanding based on factors external to the biologist's own work, but it's sounding like you're giving automatic preference to a non-Christian biologist's writing about the role of fossils for absolutely zero reason. The non-Christian could be a complete imbecile who winds up on the History Channel shouting, "Aliens!" You're making errors based on a loud segment of Christians who reject the science of evolution, and automatically applying their ignorance/misunderstanding/ideology as something that the Christian biologist shares. That's foolish.
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Anyway, this is really an irrelevant tangent from a thread that was asking about people being happy programming. Although, Marx might find it rather relevant, as there is quite a bit of voiced discontent that he'd categorize as expressions of alienation. The labor of the many is transformed into the capital of the few. Dialectically speaking, it's a struggle of contraries that co-exist with different interests. Labor has nothing and its members are required to sell themselves to subsist and exist. Capital has everything, and is motivated to keep as much of that everything as it can, while expending as little as necessary to further increase the share of everything it has as more of everything is produced by those who have nothing. What does labor get in return? Nothing but a wage that is (ideally) as low as possible to prevent them from leaving the workforce (and certainly not enough to permit capital accumulation by the laborers themselves). Moreover, those with capital are additionally motivated to protect this arrangement that they might continue to profit off those who sell themselves to subsist and exist, so that those with capital do not have to work.
> Did Marx not say that the employer is able to claim a right to 'surplus labor' because the capitalist class (state being one of them) protects this right(property rights)?
You're somewhat confusing categories and their relations here. Surplus labor is that labor which is demanded of and performed by a worker that exceeds the labor necessary to pay for her wage. In the majority of cases, surplus labor is unpaid. It is a necessary condition of increasing capital through profits, which is most simply the extraction and control of the surplus value created by workers in excess of their labor cost. The capitalist appropriates this surplus value when the products of workers' labor is sold. Marx goes further to argue that capital accumulation is the condition that drives production--when production ceases to be profitable for the capitalist, capital will eventually be diverted elsewhere, withdrawn from the unprofitable enterprise, etc. There are, of course, absolute and relative surplus values, but suffice to say that capital accumulation is the driving force of the capitalists. Private property is that legal protection that is based on a history of convincing people that objects were only useful and valuable if they could simultaneously possess them use them for themselves. It has nothing direct to do with surplus labor, but is instead used to establish and defend the private ownership of the capitalist means of production, and thus the claims to surplus value and capital accumulation. If you cannot understand how this accurately reflects the workings of capital and capitalism, I'm simply not sure how we can get you past your ideological lens.
Marx does not argue that "almost all property is acquired via theft and coercion of the labor class". At least, not in such a crudely simplistic way as that. Profits are acquired via alienation and exploitation of the labor class. In earnest material modes of existence, property didn't exist until those who were more powerful began staking and defending claims on the products of others' labor--so that they themselves would not have to labor. This has continued a circuitous and tortuous route through human history until our present age in which we've codified these practices into centuries of legal trappings that convince everyone it is good and right, and entirely fair and above-board. Or so Marx might loosely argue.
The notion of class interest is no more a conspiracy theory than the capitalist narrative that labor and capital work hand-in-hand to create a better tomorrow. Class interest is trivially easy to spot and demonstrate--both in Marx's time and our own (and far back before both, as well). Look at pg's now-infamous essay on income inequality from the start of the year, and his vociferous critics. Class interest on display in both. The capitalist 'class' is inherently motivated to protect their interests and see them expanded. This is not some insane idea that requires tin foil hats, or the ravings of a lunatic. Marx doesn't exactly argue that the capitalists are inherently conspiring against the workers. Just that they are guilty of accumulating capital from surplus value that is the product of surplus labor for which the workers have not been compensated, and the capitalist does not own.
> Karl Marx did not understand that Capital allows production but doing division of 'labor'(used here to mean 'tasks').
This is how I know you have no serious understanding of Marx and his work. Marx has most certainly written of, categorized, and fit division of labor into dialectical materialism and his explications of capital and its place in human society. Exhaustively.
> Workers don't need to invest their time in the production process, and wait for the revenue of a business to pour in, while a person specializing in saving, does the job of providing the wages.
The wages are not provided by a person who specializes in saving. They are provided by the capital accumulated from the surplus value appropriated from the workers' own surplus labor, for which they are not compensated, Marx would say. Wages come from the revenues of the business. If there are no revenues, there are no wages.
You seem to be making a number of simple mistakes here that are perhaps related to misapplication of your understanding of working in tech/startups to the role of capital. It's a pretty easy set of mistakes to make, but it seriously would require a lot of discussion to even try to completely straighten all of this out. Marx is almost universally misunderstood. Even among those who understand him better than most as a result of spending years studying his vast body of work, there is still disagreement on how to properly understand him. It's the nature of such a prolific beast.
I don't understand what is offending you so much here. I am claiming that Marx does not understand Capital, and just because he claimed to have analysed the role of 'capital', it doesn't mean that he 'understood' it. A christian biologist writing about the role of fossils doesn't mean he understands it.
> His careful inspection did not reveal a conspiracy theory; instead, it elucidated the ways capital influences our material existence. <
Did Marx not say that the employer is able to claim a right to 'surplus labor' because the capitalist class (state being one of them) protects this right(property rights)?
Does he not claim that almost all property is acquired via theft and coercion of the labor class? I understand that conspiracy theory is a loaded term, but his idea of 'class interest' is nothing but a conspiracy theory. That somehow all the capitalist are conspiring against the workers, without being explicitly aware of it.
Karl Marx did not understand that Capital allows production but doing division of 'labor'(used here to mean 'tasks'). Workers don't need to invest their time in the production process, and wait for the revenue of a business to pour in, while a person specializing in saving, does the job of providing the wages.
That this is a necessary factor needed in any economy and it's impossible for any society (including the one recommending by Marx) to live by not having division of capital accumulation from labor.