Posted on 08/02/2019 3:05:11 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Why is Communism relevant today? Ignorance! Just ask around. You may be shocked to find that nearly no one under twenty-five has ever heard of Stalin, whose genocide exceeded Hitler's by a factor of five.
Communism is being repackaged in this atmosphere of ignorance. Films like “Motorcycle Diaries” and “Young Marx” portray Che and Marx as wise, prophetic figures fighting for mankind's betterment. Idealistic youth is responding enthusiastically in their need for heroes. If you travel abroad, say to India or South America, you can see full-scale marches complete with red banners and portraits of Stalin.
How do you get through to the youth? Philosophical arguments? Theism versus atheism? We can argue these issues, but let’s for a moment examine the one thing Marx was sure he got right – economics – economics, where the rubber meets the road, the proof of the pudding, so to speak.
Brief review: The worldwide Communist Revolution began when Marx published the Labor Theory of Value – a theory that seemed intuitively obvious to lots of folks – that employers exploit the laborers they hire. Specifically, Marx said that the price of a product comes from the labor to produce it, and that therefore the laborer, and not the employer, is entitled to the proceeds. He dreamed of a world where no one exploited anyone else. Borrowing from Hegel, Marx believed history was evolving through a series of political convulsions from private ownership to communal ownership – toward a utopia where all of mankind equitably shared the fruits of labor.
(Excerpt) Read more at spider-and-the-fly.com ...
Darian Diachok has been working in international development for several decades, with major postings in the Former Soviet Union. This piece appears as a chapter in his book, Escapes: A True Story, available on Amazon.
PING!
WRONG! The price is what somebody else is willing to pay for it. The pay one receives is pretty much commensurate with their level of ambition. If your ambition is to be a factory worker, then you get a factory worker's wages. If you wish to take on more risk and have the drive and ambition to succeed, you get rewarded for that.
LOL, no kidding...we simply have to roll our eyes at this pap.
Sigh. It will be back again. We all thought we managed to drive a stake through it, but like P.T. Barnums suckers, apparently the most common commodity in human history is human stupidity.
It seems like cost and price are being used interchangeably. If the price doesn’t exceed the cost, a rational being doesn’t produce it. Communists and socialists do, which is why they always fail.
Excellent article. Thank you!!!
Well he is partially correct, but only partially. You have to meet the cost of production to begin to break even. However, if what you produce is not what anyone wants then the product will soon disappear and the workers will be looking for another job, unless of course the government is able to subsidize it. But what happens when government is no longer going to subsidize it? We will find out soon enough with electric cars. So yes, supply & demand play a large role in the whole pricing process. Other cost factors include the equipment needed to create the product, and then comes the energy cost needed to run the equipment. Then come distribute costs to get the item to whatever marketplace is in place. In many instances there is then the cost of advertising the product so the largest number of people are aware the product is available for consumption. Lastly, the cost of replacement parts and labor costs to fix and maintain the equipment. So like I said he had part of it correct, but was missing many other parts of the equation.
Good write; good read!
Darian forgot one thing, though: one of the premises Marx put forth was a twofold comment on human nature. Both sides of the coin Marx got wrong: 1. Humans are born good but the established institutions corrupt them; 2. humans love to work.
If you get human nature wrong, you miss every possible point of social theory.
Fact is, people are born with a sin problem, expressing itself (broadly) as pride and envy. Also, people would rather not work and sometimes work harder to avoid work than they would have if they’d just done the job they eschew.
L = Labor
C = Capital
V = Value
L + C = V
L = V
therefore:
C = 0
The only thing that Marx ever got right was how to pee in the morning. For him, everything went downhill from there. Unfortunately, the SOB knew how to write, and he developed a following that ended up murdering well over 100 million people.
Right. So the Venezueleans should all be rich in oil wealth then.
Marx was so broke during his life he relied on handouts, and it is common knowledge that he had to pawn his trousers on more than one occasion.
“Marx said that the price of a product comes from the labor to produce it, and that therefore the laborer, and not the employer, is entitled to the proceeds. “
Marx was an idiot. The laborer did not invent the product, he doesn’t own the factory where its made or the materials from which its made. He only contributes his labor for which he is PAID. How is that exploitation?
Stupidity induced in part by our publik skrewels.
That is the disturbing part-there is surely a component of stupidity and ignorance, but...there is also a large component of willful indoctrination, both active and passive (through simple immersion)
Within a generation of Marx, even Marxists such as Eduard Bernstein in Germany and the Fabians in Britain had recognized the flaws in Marx’s labor theory of value.
WRONG! The price is what somebody else is willing to pay for it.The worldwide Communist Revolution began when Marx published the Labor Theory of Value – a theory that seemed intuitively obvious to lots of folks – that employers exploit the laborers they hire. Specifically, Marx said that the price of a product comes from the labor to produce it, and that therefore the laborer, and not the employer, is entitled to the proceeds.
True, but when the article says " seemed intuitively obvious to lots of folks,” even Adam Smith was initially among them. Hard to believe - but there it is.
PT Barnum was right.
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