Source of Surplus Value

Even in Marx’s day “value” in social and relative utility terms, or any subjective terms that emerges in a society, was measured using the state’s unit of account (dollars, pounds, marks, yuan, yen, pesos, &c.)

So when some economist talks about theories of surplus value they often reduce to nominal terms (the state currency unit) not real terms (energy and material). But this is fine. As long as you know when it is appropriate to translate between real and nominal terms.

Philosophizing with a Hammer and Sickle

If I was really desperate to goof off, and was bored of physics or philosophy of consciousness, I might try one time picking up Jonas Ceika’s book “How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle” because I’d like to get a postmodernists perspective on Marx and Nietzche.

Nietzche fascinates me a little bit because he was a crap philosopher, but highly esteemed, and highly despised. You know you’ve done at least one thing right when you create enemies on all sides. But what exactly did Nietzche get right that pissed off so many and led to high esteem in the eyes of others?

To put a blunt point on it, I’d say it was introducing (or rather emphasising) the study of raw unapologetic power into social philosophy.

OK. Good job. Vital. No wonder postmodernists eat it up — postmodernism largely eschewed Marx and turned to titillating each other with academic conferences about power relations. This is critical theory, and a large block of postmodernism.

But this is not the topic to hand.

I mention Ceika because I decided to take the lazy man’s way today and while looking for the pixie sleepy dust I turned on a channel @AWorldToWin hosted by Melody, which had a review of Ceika’s book. The review runs into the “younger Marx” (idealist) and the “older Marx” (political economist). That provoked a comment, so I wrote one, and will repeat here with embellishments.

Although, truth be told, instead of counting sheep I was at first listening to 1Dime who does terrific MMT explainer videos, and he had interviewed Melody .

((While doing acknowledgments here, I got a lot out of Steve Keen’s writings on Marx and the bogus labour theory of value.))

Labour Theory of Value is False (by a long way)

Melody points out a critique of Marx by Louis Althusser (1918-1990) an old white dude philosopher, who pointed out this “epistemic break” in Karl Marx from the younger (Hegelian) to the older (materialist).

I found this fascinating, because from reading Marx and following a few scholars who understand the economics content in both the Grundrisse and Capital , I was able to, thanks to Althusser (via Melody) pull out a splinter in my mind that had bugged me.

This is the little puzzle of why in the Grudrisse Marx figured out the source of surplus value in production, knew it was not all labour, but then reversed to deliberately falsify himself in Capital. He tried to find human labour as the sole source of surplus value in Capital, but failed in the Grundrisse. He found a weaselly way to twist his logic to argue for the Labour Theory of Value (LTV) in Capital, and presented it.

I mean, I understood his motive: you tell the noble lie. He wanted to scientifically (which means unscientifically in this context) “prove” capitalism was self-destructive.

Why? Because he wanted to “scientifically” motivate fervour for socialism.

But noble lies like this are still lies, and can lead to no good (in my humble opinion, not based on stupid petty moralisms, but empirically, and spiritually — in spiritual terms, one big lie, even if noble, discloses a tainted heart). Not that I condemn Marx, I do not know the guy. Marx had good reason to want to suppress his emotions about the horrors going on in his Dickensian times. He’d be inhuman not to be touched by the plight of the poor and working class in general. But instead of appealing correctly to spiritual impulses, as the younger idealistic Karl might have done, he (perhaps?) thought he’d grown up and so had to use “science” — like an 18th Century but socialist Ben Shapiro (try to forget I wrote that, I couldn’t resist). So, yeah. Who the hell am I to condemn a noble lie.

But me, today, I could never take a time machine go back and witness industrial worker horrors and defile science to motivate socialist revolution, no matter how much I’d want a revolution. My approach is that truth matters, and is more powerful than the noble lie.

Now, of course, I cannot say Marx was guilty of falsification. He wrote both volumes, so must have been aware of the problem. I think he just tried to suppress his logic and present a near-enough good argument for LTV. But in logic “near enough” has no meaning (“near” is a topological concept, and “enough” is subjective), and in fact Marx got it wrong in Capital. As any scientist today would tell you.

The physical inputs into production are energy, machinery, and skilled labour. (you might count others, but these are the big three). Marx can argue that machinery was always built using past labour. So the LTV holds good so far. But not all energy (and mass) is created by the hands of humans. And not by several orders of magnitude (as inputs into production). So the LTV is ridiculously false.

But in Marx’s day, no economists understood what energy was. Few of them understood thermodynamics or basic physics. So you could, perhaps, forgive them this error?

In fact to this very day, several strains of sockcuckery economics (the bullsh*tters — the Neoclassicals, Austrians and New Keynesians, even some post-Keynesians) totally ignore the role of energy in production. Energy does not factor into their models except as just one more commodity market like any other. The “give-away” that they do not understand is if you ask them about constraints at the macroeconomic level. If they dare say “run out of other people’s money” you know they’re scientifically illiterate. The constraints are real resources, and maximally that’s available free mass-energy (“free” here in the thermodynamicists sense, not the financial sense, free energy = exergy ).

((Yet the French Physiocrats, not the nicest guys, did understand the role of energy in production. A pity they were not humanistically inclined. It could have aided the socialist cause had they been talking with Marx and Engels.))

Crystallized Labour

People have attempted to refute Steve Keen’s analysis of the contradiction or switch that went on from the Grundrisse to Capital, but none I know of have anything good to say about it, and nor should they feel the need. You should not descend into mysticism by claiming: “It is the crystallized labor${}^\dagger$ contained in a commodity that provides it with its objective value.” which one critic of Keen’s did.

That’s because there is a far simpler case that Marx was morally correct for all damn time, and his correctness had nothing to do with the LTV, and everything to do with the ideals of justice.

${}^\dagger$ You should be asking what exactly do pseudo-materialist marxists mean by ‘congealed" or “crystallized” labour? If they give you an account absent the role of energy you know they are either self-deluded (so the religious type of marxist) or fibbing. They sure as heck are not honest materialists. But being materialists is perhaps the root of their problem. In this they share more in common with neoliberals than with myself. They need to fabricate the pseudo-scientific argument in Capital because they do not permit themselves the spiritual. I find that awfully tragic.

The comment I eventually left on the youtube clip was:

another trouble with the “older Marx” was he was anti-scientific but thought he was scientific. He showed why LTV is false in the Grundrisse, but then in Capital tried to weasel his way out of it to be able to derive the FLP ((falling rate of profit)). Total failure. You know a logically illiterate marxist zealot by whether they still believe the LTV and FRP. The “younger Marx” had it all right - labour is not the sole source of surplus value, but that does not matter because labour is the only socially exploited source of surplus value. So capitalism (qua Marx) is morally and ethically plain wrong, completely regardless of what the source of surplus value in production happens to be (it’s the Sun and soil, air and sea, for the most part, we get that “for free” without social exploitation, until the rentiers arrive on the scene).

Couldn’t get too much more succinct.

I guess I could have written it not to take such a pot shot at marxist zealots. But to my mind this sort of criticism matters.

Bosonized Revolutions

Any wannabe revolutionary today had better understand power relations (the one thing Nietzche hit a decent nerve with, even if for warped reasons and messed up directions). There economics thinking is stuck back in the ignorant past with gold standard “commodity currency” thinking, or at best updated to New Keynesian fixed exchange rate brainworm mentality.

In fundamental physics the force carriers are the bosons (characterized by not obeying Pauli exclusion). What are they in political revolutions? Could it be whatever underlies and buttresses solidarity?

Nietzche got power relations upside-down though. He rejected spirituality and religion, but these are historically, and today, the single most powerful forces in society. You know this because when they are abused they become anti-religions and anti-spiritual (christian fanaticism, New Age grifts, cult worship, Hindu and Buddhist separatism, Islamic militancy, &c., all are anti-religions) and yet retain residual powerful force (for harm). To combat this harm the greater power is spiritual — honesty, kindness, compassion, love, truth and wisdom — these are always more powerful than guns and swords. Castro knew this. He did not establish peace in Cuba at the point of a spear, he defended his people with the guns, he did not tame them with guns.

It’s not that you need to grok MMT to be a better revolutionary (but it would not hurt) but that you need spiritual weapons to fight the modern class war. Material weapons will not overthrow neoliberalism. There is no falling rate of profit. There is no direct force of historical materialism inevitably leading to the collapse of neoliberalism.

If you want to defeat neoliberals, you will be either waiting for massive catastrophe like climate or ecological damages, accompanied by violence from the green fascists, or you’ll be teaching people who are honest and decent and humble that neoliberalism is evil and cannot be tolerated, and we have no need to wait for nature to tell us this is so. We all have agency. We only lack solidarity.