It’s been almost a century and a half since Karl Marx’s death, and decades since the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. In the still nominally…View Post
Marx’s concept of “surplus value” implies that workers are always necessarily being exploited even if they freely sign a legal contract with an employer under competitive conditions (since the cost of their wages is always less than the profits they allow the company to make). This is simply wrong.
Oh? Mind explaining why?
It’s not that workers are never exploited under capitalism; they just aren’t always exploited. [paragraph ends]
hm. he picks this back up a few paragraphs latter:
Some contemporary Marxists admit that Marx’s classical theories are mostly mistaken, but propose that we rework them, extracting what is useful and discarding the rest. For instance, we could abandon the notion of surplus value, while still holding onto the idea that workers are exploited under capitalism. Contemporary Marxists, such as Erik Olin Wright and Vivek Chibber, deduce this from the fact that there is an asymmetric relationship between relatively powerless individual workers and powerful individual capitalists.
Still doesn't explain why the idea of surplus value should be abandoned.
This reads like someone with a second-hand understanding of Marx criticizing simplified versions of Marxist ideas. I... can't say if that's actually the case or not as... I only have a second-hand understanding of Marx. It's not limited to surplus value, it kinda extends through the whole piece. You get the sense the author isn't being particularly generous to the ideas they're supposedly deconstructing.
The author doesn't know that exploitation is the extraction or surplus value, is lying, or is so confused that they sometimes know it and sometimes don't. For example, they mention that employers keep the difference between profit and what they pay the workers (not correct but at least it's in the ballpark), then a bit later imply exploitation doesn't exist if you can't get paid more to work the same job at a different company (not remotely what exploitation is about, lol).
With such basic errors you get to play the game of, "is this person honestly confused or entirely full of shit?" As they are a professor, it's the latter. They know better, which is why they're publishing a poorly-citing, incoherent, and simply incorrect ramble on some rag frequented by the lazy and ignorant rather than in any space that would be read by academics. They know exactly what they are supposed to do when writing a critique so thay it at least makes sense at a basic level and then decided not to, because their audience won't give a shit - the audience won't have read Marx, but will be happy to reject Marxism - an amorphous enemy blob of a concept, to them.
So... the remaining categorization is: hack or fraud? A hack is just bad at what they do and is treading water with shoddy work to stay in their position. But they also have an ego and think they're fighting the good fight and are doing a good job. A fraud is fully aware that they are full of shit and schemes about how to pull one over on their targets. They are very insecure and tend to lash out at others to keep the presumption of their expertise secure.
My vote is for hack. Their overreliance on pointing vaguely at Vivek Chibber feels like someone who really does think they're correct but is just lazy as shit and doesn't want to have to actually read, understand, or explain anything.
Oh? Mind explaining why?
hm. he picks this back up a few paragraphs latter:
Still doesn't explain why the idea of surplus value should be abandoned.
This reads like someone with a second-hand understanding of Marx criticizing simplified versions of Marxist ideas. I... can't say if that's actually the case or not as... I only have a second-hand understanding of Marx. It's not limited to surplus value, it kinda extends through the whole piece. You get the sense the author isn't being particularly generous to the ideas they're supposedly deconstructing.
The author doesn't know that exploitation is the extraction or surplus value, is lying, or is so confused that they sometimes know it and sometimes don't. For example, they mention that employers keep the difference between profit and what they pay the workers (not correct but at least it's in the ballpark), then a bit later imply exploitation doesn't exist if you can't get paid more to work the same job at a different company (not remotely what exploitation is about, lol).
With such basic errors you get to play the game of, "is this person honestly confused or entirely full of shit?" As they are a professor, it's the latter. They know better, which is why they're publishing a poorly-citing, incoherent, and simply incorrect ramble on some rag frequented by the lazy and ignorant rather than in any space that would be read by academics. They know exactly what they are supposed to do when writing a critique so thay it at least makes sense at a basic level and then decided not to, because their audience won't give a shit - the audience won't have read Marx, but will be happy to reject Marxism - an amorphous enemy blob of a concept, to them.
So... the remaining categorization is: hack or fraud? A hack is just bad at what they do and is treading water with shoddy work to stay in their position. But they also have an ego and think they're fighting the good fight and are doing a good job. A fraud is fully aware that they are full of shit and schemes about how to pull one over on their targets. They are very insecure and tend to lash out at others to keep the presumption of their expertise secure.
My vote is for hack. Their overreliance on pointing vaguely at Vivek Chibber feels like someone who really does think they're correct but is just lazy as shit and doesn't want to have to actually read, understand, or explain anything.