Law of Value 8: Subject/Object 4 of 4

This video delves into the debate over whether economic value is "objective" or "subjective", taking the position that this dichotomy is too simplistic to capture the phenomenon Marx was explaining in his theory of value. For full text and plenty of room for long comments and discussion go to:
‪ http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/law-of-value-8-subjectobject

Category:

Education

Tags:

• marx
• ltv
• stv
• labor theory of value
• value
• subjective
• objective
• bohm-bawerk
• mises
• capital
• wage
• exploitation
• preference
• OWS
• occupy
• abstraction
• economics
• politics

[Na11y]

Good stuff. Are there more videos to come? Some of the most important aspects of Marxism weren't there such as the falling rate of profit or the inevitability of crisis. Will they be in later videos?

[brendanmcooney]

@Na11y Yes there are more videos planned in this Law of Value series. The next is on Abstract Labor. The draft script of this is already posted on my kapitalism101.wordpress site.

I have an older video about the Falling Rate of Profit. just search for Falling Rate of Profit on youtube and you'll probably find it. Or see the link on my wordpress blog.

[brendanmcooney]

@GalenAus Sorry. Not meant to be condescending. I am merely trying to describe the nature of a protest in a bourgeois democracy. This is always how I feel at a protest- like I'm just trying to make a big enough stink about something so that perhaps some distant politician might notice...

[brendanmcooney]

@Yereviltwin2 . This video is not intended to 'make a case for communism'. Do you have a specific criticism of an argument in the video or just a bunch of rhetoric?

[seigneurvoland666]

yeah i agree with a few commentators here, this specific video series on value is nearly excellent ! I would give it 100 thumbs up if I could.

[SxcLilAussieBabe]

@brendanmcooney To be fair, Marx did have an idea of how to move from capitalism to another system. He saw the working class as the group with the power to do away with capitalism, by taking control of the mean of production and setting up a new economic system which suited their interests (one in which the means of production were under their democratic control.) I do not think we should leave out that important contribution to socialist theory.

[Magicwillnz]

Amazing. I loved this video series. Everything I knew was wrong with capitalism but didn't have the words to explain it. Subscribed.

[brendanmcooney]

@brendanmcooney I am very critical of Lenin and 20th century communism but I'm convinced that Marx's critique of capital is the only body of thought adequate to the task of building a new anti-capitalist politics. My goal in this blog is to explore Marx's ideas with other people to aid in the task of forming a new anti-capitalist politics.

For the record, you do not actually have a critique of any of the arguments in my videos right?

[brendanmcooney]

@brendanmcooney He does however give us the tools we need to figure out what it would mean to form a break with capital: we'd need to abolish socially necessary labor time, value production, private property, etc. But Marx doesn't give us a plan for how this could happen. That is up to us to figure out. Lenin argued that we can eliminate capitalism just by taking over the state and turning all property into state property. I don't think this is an adequate vision.

[brendanmcooney]

@Yereviltwin2 That's a great example. Yes I would argue that Jesus has little to do w/ the Catholic Church except that they use his name in justifying holy wars, supporting the medieval state, and molesting boys. There is nothing in the political acts of the Catholic Church that has anything to do with the ideas of Jesus.

Yes I am saying, for a fact, that Marx never wrote any plan for what Communism would look like. I challenge you to find a text in which he does.

[Yereviltwin2]

@brendanmcooney

Wha what!? That’s like saying that Jesus has little to do with the catholic church. That’s silly.

So you’re also saying is that Marx was just a critic of Capitalism and nothing more? OK, are you the same? And do advocate a type of replacement for capitalism, if so, what?

[brendanmcooney]

@Yereviltwin2 I am saying the USSR had little if anything to do with Marx. His name was used but not his ideas. Communism existed before Marx. Marx sought to give communist movements a more scientific critique of capitalism so that they could no exactly what they were fighting against. He never wrote any theories about what communism would look like. Most of the institutional features of capital that he criticized were not eliminated in the USSR.