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Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

> Then you can get onto the real issue - what are the power dynamics and are real resources being used effectively or hoarded.

If you get into the real issue of power dynamics, then you realize that resources are not what is important. What is important is the social relationship between two classes - the class of heirs who expropriate surplus labor time from the class of workers who create all wealth.

The very deep but unspoken assumption in the hegemony spread by the heirs is this revolves around resources. From the perspective of the worker who may not even contemplate it, is that this revolves around relationships.

Even the name of the study shows this. Originally, people studied political economy. As the study itself became political on the side of the current ruling class, the word political was dropped, and the scientific sounding -ics suffix was attached - economics.

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WRT social relations vs resources: I've been struggling to wrap my head around these kinds of notions. Any pointers?

FWIW, I'm currently reading The Dawn of Everything (Graeber, Wengrow). Here's a characteristic pullout, from Ch 10 "Why the State has no Origin: The Humble beginnings of sovereignty, bureaucracy, and politics":

"Just as access to violence, information and charisma defines the very possibilities of social domination, so the modern state is defined as a combination of sovereignty, bureaucracy and a competitive political field."

As with Graeber's prior efforts, I feel like he's rewiring my brain, by exposing all these assumptions and presumptions I never knew I had. (a la Does a fish know about water?)

Keeping in this theme, my next book is Mine: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (Heller, Salzman).

Read the Anarchist FAQ, Why is capitalism exploitative? You can find it on the Internet for free.

Marx's Capital discusses relations of production, surplus labor time etc. as well, but is famously not an easy read (certain chapters any how, including the first one).

The workers do not create wealth (at all). We would not have iPhones if we just had FoxConn workers. We have iPhones because we had capitalists who conceived that we could have such things, gathered people who could invent the things, gave them direction, and then organized the complex factories and supply chains so that workers would have a place to come to do their part.

Likewise “heirs” is a misnomer. Most millionaires in the US did not inherit their wealth, they accumulated it.

Marxism is religious bunk.

Accumulation of significant wealth happens through exploitation of the labour of others: paying them less than the value their labour produces. It's commonly called profit.

Marxism happens to be correct as a science, even if its conclusions are against your own class interests. Possibly the most obvious example is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

And how do you determine the value of someone's labour? Marxism can't answer that, while conventional economics can.

> Possibly the most obvious example is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

So your evidence of the validity of Marxism is... a 50-50 shot? Even in the replication crisis, science at least demands no more than 5% chance for hypotheses to come true by random luck.

All value comes from labour or nature, which is trivially provable by comparing an enterprise's inputs and outputs. The outputs are most obvious in terms of the prices of sold commodities. The inputs are either capital (materials, etc.) or labour. Since materials & machinery have to be paid for in full and there is still something left over as profit, that value can only come from paying workers less than the value of their labour.

The rate of profit has a historical tendency to fall, as companies are incentivised to produce cheaper by automating. This reduces the proportion of costs attributed to labour, which means either reducing wages or reducing profits. Since workers will resist being paid less than they can survive on, profits end up falling over time.

The rate of profit does get reset by destruction of capital (like wars), just like the labour theory of value suggests. This can be seen historically, using data collected by mainstream economists. You can find such graphs in most economics textbooks. Here's some more on the topic https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/a-world-ra...

Not at all; value comes from marginal utility! The action of labour creates value, but it can just as easily destroy it. If a factory produces goods at a loss, is the value of its workers labor negative? Clearly not, but that is what labor theory of value would imply. Then, stylistically, capital goods are funded out of shareholder capital, which is risk-bearing, so demands a return above depreciation; this is accounted as profit but companies still need to promise dividends to be able to fund capital improvements. And enterprise value - which lies in a firm's relationships with its workforce, its suppliers and customers - is created by entrepreneurial labour with the promise of eventual profit.

Yes, of course in the course of competition, in mature industries profit will reduce to the cost of capital; although automation (as a productivity improvement) will delay this process, not accelerate it. But as industries mature, others arise through innovation.

Simply drawing a trend line on a graph (and it's not clear what the graph is displaying) and exclaiming that it fits theory is nowhere near enough to evidence a hypothesis, especially when the counter-trends are contrary to theory. What destruction of capital occurred in the early '80s?

I recommend you read Marx, who explains at length about the difference between use value and exchange value. Not all labour is useful, but all profit is generated by labour.

The overall global rate of profit has been steadily falling since the beginning of capitalism; this is not disputed by bourgeois economists. Destroying capital is one way to reset it, which did happen in the 80s as well through war and closing of “old” industries. Along with forced privatisations, which opened up more of the economy to commodity production for profit. And along with deregulation and violent suppression of labour movements, to reduce the price of labour. Neoliberalism is what temporarily raised the rate of profit in the 80s.

The distinction between use value and exchange value is incoherent, so there is nothing to be gained by studying Marx's writings on it. Any theory of value that does not include the concept of marginal utility is a best worthless.

There is certainly no consensus that the global rate of return is in long-term decline, and much evidence to the contrary, particularly over the recent decades when econometric data has become sufficient to measure it. And anyway, even if there were a secular trend, Marxian economics could not explain it because that theory is dependent on Marx's law of value, which is entirely contradicted by evidence.

> We have iPhones because we had capitalists who conceived that we could have such things, gathered people who could invent the things, gave them direction, and then organized the complex factories and supply chains so that workers would have a place to come to do their part.

TIL only capitalists can invent products.

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