Sending my wish for Madam Desai good health and longevity, so we could keep getting valuable political economy contents in this channel and several others🙏
Thanks for this, I’m studying neo classical economics at the moment as it happens. No mention of profit as a part of production costs and price determination, let alone surplus value or capital accumulation.
Excellent show----that you give the geopolitical analysis thru the lens of geo-economics is invaluable in understanding the global machinations occurring in these extremely tense and potentially catastrophic times.
Gotta love to see the development on Ben's overall political-economic outlook, how they keep shifting more and more toward firm and principled ML-ism ground as they go rather than just lingering around the typically vague anti-establishment grey area, or even falling to the fatal trap of reactionary pipeline.
Thanks Ben and Radhika for another inspiring story. A multipolar world order will enable relatively sophisticated leaders among equals. This will be a vast improvement on the flawed U.S. dominated unipolar leadership that continues to exploit and impoverish most of humanity. Within this decade the present U.S. defined and dominant unipolar world order must be overwhelmed, economically and or if necessary, by militarily force. A profit driven neo liberalism is rapidly being replaced by developing countries and emerging markets with a more user friendly neo socialism that subordinates capitalism and recognises individual nation state characteristics. China and Russia are the champions of this global movement.
One hopes this is the case, but if you look at history the irony is that it is during times of multipolarity where you have the most war and the most violence. In fact, Chinese history illustrates this quite vividly. Whenever the matter of who got to be the emperor was contested on many fronts, you had periods of warfare. Whenever the emperor's rule was firmly in place and unquestioned, you had relative peace. Europe during the World Wars provides a similar illustration. Hopefully the world to come will avoid this problem, but I'd hold the triumphalism until we see whether that happens or not.
Can't learn enough from Prof. Desai. In my quest to better understand economics, Dasai has become one of my go-to, in order to help me make since of these trying times as so much drama in the world is centered around Geo economics.
If I may give you a suggestion for new content series idea in a foreseeable future, I hope you could make content series on Chinese Economist on Economic Reform book series with Prof. Michael Hudson and Prof. Cheng Enfu where you guys would discuss and detail those books with many others guest Chinese scholars from mainland, each of them authored their own respective books to the series.
Thanks for the great discussion! 👏👏👏 PSA: Whistle Blowers/Leakers & Truth Speakers are heroes! Crush corruption with Truth! Know something? Say something! Be Bold, Brave & Smart. Have Faith & No Fear! C What U can do!
Absolutely interesting discussion. Thank you both. I'll be downloading the book right away but I wonder if I can buy a printed copy, because that'll be so much easier to read for someone like me, who basically reads on paper while travelling in the subway.
My way of thinking is, Capitalism is the realization that there is a natural mass market that can potentially be managed; Socialism is the initiative to manage the natural market to the benefit of the State and its people, Society; People calling themselves Capitalists are mafioso working to steal from the public trust in the form of profit through seized assets
Yes. Good points and a way of looking at it. My way, another way, is that man was given a brain by God - Allah S.W.T. Capitalism doesn't always make the best choices. It's not always in our best interests. Sometimes a designed capitalist system in a certain system and situations does work very well, but at other times, what is good and the best course of action, for example, to conserve energy, resources, the environment, - to consider impacts on people and society, including of course, laws, - "system design" - objectives... taking prudent action other than just living for the day or "being cheap". To think that "capitalism" is the answer to everything or whatever, its a myth. There are actors and forces - of course. Interested parties.
Yes, but looking at those economic systems that have no capitalists to speak of, the picture is pretty grim, too. It's pretty clear capitalist investment raises living standards. It's just also very clear that, done a certain way, it can lower living standards, too.
There is no such thing as Society with a capital "S." There are many societies aka "social formations." The state itself is a public society i.e. representative social formation. Markets are also social formations which cross state and national boundaries. Socialism is not based on a "public" good, it is based on the good of the industrial proletariat. This is why socialism developed into the social formation of a private party rather than a national state. The democratic-capitalist nation-state encompasses everyone within its boundaries as citizens. The socialist party-state only encompasses party members, who rule in the interest of a particular society or social formation i.e. the industrial proletariat. In 1917 there was not one but two revolutions in Russia, the proletarian revolution and the peasant revolution. They were separate societies or social formations which clashed because they were based on different interests. Socialism was based on proletarian interests, not peasant interests. I'm not sure what is meant by "natural market" but there is no such thing. Markets are societies or social formations based on individual actors who have different things to buy and sell. Markets operate according to self-interest rather than national or party interest. Hence, in capitalist societies, markets often clash with the nation-state because they obey different interests. In a socialist society like China, market ownership is constrained by the political power of the proletariat party-state. More generally, capitalist market society can be thought of as the alienability and decentralization of property ownership, as opposed to feudal society where ownership was inalienable and inherited i.e. centralized in particular persons. Socialism centralizes ownership in the industrial proletariat which is organized into a party-state. Socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same industrial coin, but power is concentrated in different social formations: in socialism power is concentrated in the proletariat party, in capitalism power is concentrated in the private property owner and private social formations such as joint-stock companies or political parties. Social democracy is a mixed economy that straddles the two sides of proletariat and bourgeoisie. Much of the world is neither proletariat nor bourgeois and have their own social formations e.g. Islam.
Capitalism gives power to people. Socialism gives power to the state. Both systems can be corrupted. More tech advances and creative advances happen under capitalism.
As usual, fantastic outline of the evolution (or more accurately, devolution) of "economics" - from a holistic systemic interdisciplinary attempt to map/ground analytical theory onto the territory of material reality, morphing over time into a mythological divine right of "the market" to hollow out all of life toward the only goal of perpetuating itself for its own sake. A means to no end. Ben and Radhika both elaborated this more than well, but if anyone cares - while watching I was reminded of a pretty great/accessible book that first opened my eyes to all this stuff when I was trapped in a mind palace of supposed "rationality", Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston Saul, specifically a section which I think illuminates this well through a universally understandable/accessible historical continuity a la Marx's holistic political-economic explanations, but doing so in a manner that forces the reader to conjure the category of class themselves through a "cui bono" (who benefits?) lens, without any potentially poisoned jargon (or at least it allowed me personally, a dipshit "libertarian" at the time, to break out of the myopic dogmatic neoclassical econ tunnel-vision trained into us by using the abstract categorical foundations of that ideology - ie "freedom" and "democracy" - against itself by emphasizing the contradictions with those concepts and effectively grounding them to reality, so maybe someone will find it useful is my point I guess lol...): _What we have done in the West is throw three elements together as if they were part of a natural family: democracy, reason and capitalism. But they are not even natural friends. The businessmen who speak so aggressively today in capitalism’s defence are, in reality, the product of its defeat by reason. This product is by no means unidimensional, however. The speculators, for example, are a sign of reason’s failure. The service providers seem inoffensive enough. All they do is fill a void in our economy. The danger lies in our believing that they are a new solution, rather than another sign of our problem. As for the managers in capitalists’ clothing, they are not entirely a disaster. After all, during the period of their rise to power, we did establish some sort of general social compromise, shaky and uneven though it is._ _However, the gap between the capitalist illusion and its reality is now so great that the practitioners and indeed the civil authorities have difficulty making economic decisions in a sensible manner. Their problem begins with the democracy = capitalism equation. Running democracy and capitalism together as a single idea is a wonderful Marxian joke. That is to say, in the tradition of the Marx Brothers. Neither history nor philosophy link free markets and free men. They have nothing more to do with each other than the accidents of time and place allow. In fact, free enterprise worked far better in its purer state, when it operated beneath friendly, authoritarian government structures. Unquestioned political stability suits the embracing of financial risk. Authoritarian governments can ally themselves to money without fear of conflict of interest. They can do things faster. Compromise less. Democracy, on the other hand, is subject to ongoing political and social compromise. It tends to want to curb activities of all sorts, business-related or not, in order to protect the maximum number of people._ _Thus capitalism’s moments of greatest glory were under the benign authority of early Victorian England, before universal male suffrage and before child labour laws, work safety regulations, the right to strike and contractual employment. It flowered under Louis Philippe, the businessman’s King, who even dressed like a company president; and again under Emperor Napoleon III, who removed the universal male suffrage which had been established by the short-lived Second Republic. It did well under Kaiser Wilhelm II, who cut back on the liberal reforms of his father and of Bismarck. The last Russian czar presided over the greatest expansion of free enterprise the world has ever seen. And in the United States, capitalism was healthiest and happiest in the period before white male universal suffrage in 1860, and then again in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when large segments of the population were without a vote because of the waves of immigration. Even after becoming citizens, these newcomers remained politically docile during the long process of integrating their particular community into the mainstream of society. American capitalists were at their most dissatisfied from the early 1930s to the 1970s - the period when there was the most active participation by the citizenry in public affairs._ _In spite of a prolonged economic crisis, business interests have been happier during the last two decades than at any time since the day before the collapse of 1929. This happiness coincides with a decline in the percentage of voter participation to levels not seen since the arrival of male universal suffrage. Nor is this pattern limited to the West. The most vibrant new centres of capitalism to appear over the last few decades are Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea. All four are governed through sophisticated and cooperative authoritarian systems. Widespread confusion between the freedoms proper to democracy and those proper to capitalism further confirms that business leaders no longer understand their own ideology. And yet the credo has been public knowledge for several centuries. Capitalism involves the use of capital, not simply its ownership. You cannot own an abstraction. Only the owning of something renders capital concrete. Property, for example. Or a factory. Gold for a long time seemed interchangeable with capital, but it was in reality a concrete good which came to be the measure of capital because it was portable._ _However, the ownership of something thanks to the transferral of capital is not enough to make the owner a capitalist. After all, the ownership of inanimate objects, such as land or buildings or gold, existed long before capitalism. Those who increase their capital by trading in such commodities are merely speculating on the value of goods. To make money out of an increase in their value is not a capitalist act. Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital._ _However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive “dirty” work to Third World societies. Finally, the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents “service” as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one’s own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are - with the exception of the high-technology sector - descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services._ - p.446, Voltaire's Bastards
25:15 - I think the great Australian economist Steve Keen makes this point well for anyone interested and has quite a few collaborations/discussions with mentat Michael Hudson. Even more impressive is his project Minsky made with some help from software programmers toward the (largely functional at this point, if I recall, haven't tried it out personally but the demonstrations of it were sensible and had often rather ingenious ways to estimate such figures - very cool to visualize as well, and funny when inputting neoclassical inputs to see the absolute chaos in output lol...) production of economic modelling software which attempts to consider the "externalities" neoclassical econ conveniently ignores via its inherent tunnel-vision/ideological blindfold - at least to the extent that this is possible to measure of course - with a main focus on environmental impact; the ultimate goal being an accurate and actively evolving holistic economic model which can be dynamically adjusted towards an _actual_ homeostasis/equilibrium. But back to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (pointed out even by Adam Smith if I recall, wanna say ch.6 of WoN) personally I think maybe phrasing it as tendency toward rent extraction (ie value extracted _without_ value produced as per classical econ) might highlight the functional impediments in a different illuminating consideration, as rent increasingly stifles such technological capacities to balance out overproduction/underconsumption, squeezing more and more out of labor at the peripheries of empire and that this surely must have a limit in its compounding demands - short of passing a threshold of entirely replacing the worker entirely (replacing the worker is essentially what Marx says in the manuscripts somewhere, is what defines the arc of technological progression) or short of implementing such technology toward mediating individual workers from each other through a deluge of digitally delivered noise that acts as a bulwark against any sort of solidarity/class consciousness/working class pushback, subsequently maximizing the division of labor to eventually reach that "4th industrial revolution" where the worker can be replaced entirely (theoretically of course, unclear if possible as even then upkeep/maintenance labor would have to be integrated and such). If that made any sense. Reminded of this quote which outlines the logical conclusion of what I'm badly trying to get at and only becomes more eerily relevant, _“Once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the… automatic system of machinery… set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.”_ But uh...pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will! Or something!
Well there is not much difference between an economic crisis and "reaching equilibrium" when you go beyond the semantics. It makes a disaster sound good. But there is no discussion on who bears the brunt of the crisis resolution.
Re reducing rates of return to capital (@ about 30 minutes) it should be noted that this is actually what is being measured when people complain about low labour productivity; they are not measuring the output of lone tradesmen carving automobiles from rocks with their bare hands, but about workers primarily operating machinery and the dollar productivity which results from that combination. Low "productivity" is frequently cited as a labour market failure and a reason to put downward pressure on wages, whereas it is more accurately understood as either a failure to apply adequate levels of capital to productive processes, or part of the described market mechanism which sees marginal returns to capital diminish with each innovative cycle, or a function of the overproduction and relative shortage of demand inherent in capitalism itself. At such times, it actually makes more sense to increase general wages and employment to spur demand and justify further investment, but ultimately, of course, it's just a house of cards which will inevitably collapse unless demand constantly increases, which requires an ever-growing population, which is clearly not sustainable on a finite planet and has largely ceased to be the case in the "developed" economies of the west. The short-term solution, of course, is to develop the economies and consumptive markets of the Global South, where real demand for goods exceeds the supply and labour is abundant, yet for some reason it's something Northern capitalist nations have not only steadfastly refused to do but actively taken steps to prevent - in a perverse repudiation of their own economic and political philosophies.
Would love to hear a segment on THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION Karl Polanyi. Also is financialization the off ramp for Capitalism to avoid the road leading to Socialism as the logical outcome of overproduction?
capitalism only needs to be run well and controlled better .it does not create crises its the people who does it and greed with it and ignorance of them.
I know this is a wild tangent, but you're talking about Finite State Machines, but for financial/economic systems. It's the defn of states and transitions and how they operate to serve the 'purpose' of the super-system. ♻️ is hard 😜
Some interesting points on things like trade balances here, but regurgitating Marx isn't going to bring you much insight into the way capitalism works in the postindustrial era. Marx was writing about a political-economic system that barely resembles what we have today. His theories centered around a form of labor ('labor-time' on industrial machines) that is no longer central to mechanical production, which is driven today by data on digital networks--a very different kind of labor quantum, with very different dynamics. And clearly, the 'answer' Marx gave to the capitalism of his era was also prone to crisis, given that all of the states that attempted to implement it in its pure form either collapsed or stopped growing. Industrial growth didn't take off in China, for example, until Deng Xiaoping cast aside the 'purer' Marxism of Mao and introduced capitalist elements into its economy. It seems a bit strange to solely focus on the crises of capitalism while eliding the crises of the alternatives to it devised by its critics, even from a Marxist perspective--not very 'dialectical'.
If you played monopoly the boardgame you either destroyed your competitors.. with them feeling frustrated or you got destroyed by that one victor who made the rest of the group feel frustrated.
Off topic but... The Extinction Rebellion alliance climate actions in London and environs this past week broke some records. "Police estimated attendance as well in excess of 750,000 people and the BBC estimated that around a million attended."
as to the tendency for profit to fall, there's a nice property of general equilibrium framework that profit reduces to zero as long as market remains competitive.
Capitalism is actually a brilliant system (as is communism) in their purest form. The problem is humans take advantage of any system and warp it to suit themselves. Doesnt matter what system you have, as long as you have a system that values ALL people as equals, with equal rights, and equal opportunities to get what they want (this doesnt mean everyone gets the same amount as some would no doubt argue). Thats why in this day and age we see both capitalist systems (USA, england) AND communist systems (China, vietnam) working very well if they are not corrupted !!!!
If academic economics increasingly doesn't work, does that mean it will eventually by sidelined? How long can be people keep believing it if it keeps being proven false? Will the capitalists eventually jettison economics as unnecessary? How long can the house of cards continue?
I think the closest thing to a free market would be a black market, or perhaps ancient trade routes. The problem with that with the black market there’s illegal contraband and zero quality control, plus the danger of being killed by a gang. With ancient trade routes, or agoras as the ancaps say, there’s no productive industrial firms for lack of incentive in innovation, lack of patent rights, rampant cheating, zero quality control and the eventual rise of a merchant class that itself becomes like a state.
neoclassical economics can be understood differently regarding the concept of value. competitive equilibrium in general might be defined as the price at which use value and exchange value are more or less equal. this situation can be more so under the framework of general equilibrium, in which equilibrium is characterized with competition, efficiency, and social welfare maximization.
Well, if you average it across large baskets of commodities by sector or in general, then yes. This is the whole thesis of Anwar Shaykh but it’s mathematically radically different than neoclassical economics.
The culture of economics is dominated by "schools of thought" each with their own peculiar language of concept identification, much the same as anything institutional, only the inmates understand each other.
I'm always baffled when people talk about the contradictions and crises of capitalism. If you're a billionaire, it works great. None of these crises are actually all that critical for the rich. It's only contradictory if you think it's for the common people. Cattle ranchers don't get eaten.
Thing is, though, arguably the largest rise in the living standards of common people in the history of humanity happened under capitalism, and the most prosperous 'socialist' states all have capitalist elements to their economy. And at the end of the day, all the common person cares about is whether their standard of living is rising or not. The theoretical nuances of debates about the superiority/inferiority of 'capitalism' vs 'socialism' vs [insert -ism] don't really matter to them--all that matters is whether they feel their quality of life improving.
It always seemed to me that neoclassical economics is a sort of scam or pseudoscience. It's just an attempt to explain away all the externalities and failures of capitalism as a "natural" and unavoidable phenomenon.
one also needs to be aware of there exist differences between neoclassical economics and neoliberalism of Chicago tradition (of Hayek and Freedman). today's problem of economic financialisation could be more atributed to neoliberalism rather than to neoclassical economics.
There are no real free-markets, for almost all people, within militarily enforced Exclusive Economic Zones. For so-called sovereign bankers, very special people who profit from Apartheid monopoly, it's a free 'stock' market. Apartheid monopoly is the forced separation of people from markets to maintain the global *cult* ideology of sovereignty. The stock market, to so-called sovereign bankers, is a market of people as chattel. Remember, a statement of sovereignty is not secular. Publish MONOPOLY on so-called 'sovereign' currency. End Global Apartheid.
the separation of economics from the political economy, as was done in today's neoclassical tradition of Samuelson, was indeed confusing to a large extent. however if properly interpreted, it can be consistent with Marx's labor theory of value.
neoclassical economics is largely concerned with the functionality of the real economy as opposed to the fictitious economy in the Marx's sense. so one should not expect at competitive quilibrium exchange value can deviate from use value too much.
It would appear that these repeated crises can go on indefinitely seeing as capitalism has repeatedly shown how adaptable it is to changing circumstances no matter how bad it might be for humans or the environment. European feudalism lasted a thousand years and the Greco-Roman slave economies that preceded it for at least five hundred despite both having in retrospect their shortcomings. So what makes you think that capitalism is going to end any time soon (assuming the era of the global corporation we seem to be in now can still be defined as capitalism rather than, say, neo-feudalism).
I look at it this way, the capitalist class, as a whole, understand where there interests lie despite that they often fight among themselves or sabotage one another for gains in profits. Workers, the ordinary people of society, have yet to understand their interest in collective ownership of the means of production and distribution. When they do, then capitalism will end when workers organize on the economic and political fields.
Ben, you are the host, not the guest. You ask questions, your guest provides answers and substance. But yet, during much of the entire presentation, you are the one expounding material rather than soliciting it. Wrong.
Why should shareholders relinquish ownership in a monopoly to the state, after they have made the conscious decision to invest in the company? They would not, of course; it would be seized by force, as in Cuba or Libya.
Naaaaah these two aren’t making a distinction between Industrial Capitalism vs Finance Capitalism.(42:00) Nor do they turn their eyes onto the alternative (as usual) Capitalism --> Monopoly--> Socialism 🤔🤔🤔 Capitalism--> Depression & Slavery Socialism--> War & Want 43:00 are you kidding me? Anyone that justifies their position based on the claimed objectives of Chinese politicians is being willfully turning a blind eye to history (or current events)
THE FALLING RATE OF PROFIT IS ALSO SUSPECT. MARX FORGOT ABOUT MONOPOLIES AND OLIGOPOLIES WHICH CAN PRICE GAUGE. MARX ALSO FORGOT THAT CAPITAL MIGRATES FROM ONE ENTERPRISE TO NEW ONES. MARX ALSO FOGOT ABOUT INNOVATION WHICH CREATES PROFITS.
@@mackone8035 It's a play on words. Mao described Deng and his clique as "Capitalist Roaders", because they wanted to put China on the road to capitalism, which they clearly did since Mao died. Sounds like the OP is paying a compliment to Ben. ☺️
I love how foolish people with no understanding of what capitalism is. Pointing to what we have and identifies it as capitalism, proving they don't even know what capitalism is.
@@checkoutmyyoutubepage What we have is crony capitalism and socialism for the rich. You'll lose your house and end up on the street but the bank is "too big to fail" and they'll get bailed out. Crony capitalism and crony socialism operate the same way..
For an insightful critique of Marxist economics, see Steven Keen. Marx was wrong. Labor is not the only source of surplus value. Machinery also create surplus value and hence profits. And the notion that “value” exists objectively and independently of price and utility sounds like metaphysical nonsense. The cost of production does not determine price any more than utility does. The notion of value per se makes no sense. Something only has value in relation to a human being, whether a seller or a buyer.
I don't understand the point considering labor creates, operates and maintains the machines. Marx continues to be correct and workers need to form into Socialist Industrial Unions: ruclips.net/video/_apBa-Gx5mo/видео.html
@@JohnT.4321 Marx stated that machinery cannot create surplus value. He said that machines represent congealed labor power and can only transmit as much value to the economy as the labor that was put into their production. That is obviously incorrect. The fact that human labor is involved in building the machines is obvious. So what? If all the workers were replaced by machines tomorrow, according to Marx, the capitalist could make no profits. Read Capital vol. 1 on the replacement of workers by machines and the falling rate of profit and the increasing impoverishment of the workers leading to revolution. That’s his theory - and It’s all wrong!
@@JohnT.4321 Listen to, or read, Steven Keen on Marx. Keen is correct. Marx was wrong. Very wrong. Profit rates have not decreased as machinery displaced human labor in the factories. Why? Because any source of energy can create surplus value and hence profits, not just human labor. There’s no difference between a human worker and a robot as far as surplus labor and profits are concerned.
@@JohnT.4321 If Marx was correct, we wouldn’t be discussing capitalism today, 150 years after he published Capital. The labor theory of value is simply wrong. Stop treating Marx as if he was infallible. Read Keen on Marx. Think critically. Marxism is not a science, it’s a secular religion. Yes, capitalism is based on the exploitation of labor and is therefore unjust. But no, machinery can and does create new surplus value, it doesn’t just transmit to the commodity the labor invested in the production of the machine. Marx doesn’t make sense here.
@@syourke3 We will have to agree to disagree. However, what you have written makes no sense to me since labor creates all machinery for production and is only an extension of labor. Machines do not run themselves nor do product walk to the loading dock into a truck.
Neonliberal.capitalist finance for A) speculation B)rentier (to charge money for access to facilities, infrastructure, etc. C) international reserve currency--- forced use of 1 capitalist empire's currency for, + vs., whole world Mixed economy or socialist economy A) finance for production of physical objects, services, data, etc. B) Many currencies for international. investment, trade. etc.
We are always grateful, Ben, for these amazing interviews with Prof. Radhika Desai! Her wise economical insights are extremely important!
Sending my wish for Madam Desai good health and longevity, so we could keep getting valuable political economy contents in this channel and several others🙏
Wasn't sure what to expect when I clicked on this. But an interview with Radhika is always welcome :)
Thanks for this, I’m studying neo classical economics at the moment as it happens. No mention of profit as a part of production costs and price determination, let alone surplus value or capital accumulation.
I cannot thank you two enough. In our home we all listen to these insights.
Great truths by Two great people 🙏🙏🙏❤️❤️❤️💖
Two great economists of our ERA are Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai . Both are Brilliant and Honest
Excellent show----that you give the geopolitical analysis thru the lens of geo-economics is invaluable in understanding the global machinations occurring in these extremely tense and potentially catastrophic times.
Gotta love to see the development on Ben's overall political-economic outlook, how they keep shifting more and more toward firm and principled ML-ism ground as they go rather than just lingering around the typically vague anti-establishment grey area, or even falling to the fatal trap of reactionary pipeline.
I tend to agree but what's the deal with the "M" word?
@@mackone8035 It's just an abbreviation for Marxism-Leninism, just me wanting to save space and keep my point concise😅
Gotcha. Thx.
I'm sure this is why Ben broke up with Maxie, who is just too "inside baseball" to ever attack the system as a whole.
Looking forward to her book. Thank you!
Very great full to having the best minds on this channel and many thanks to mis Desai for enlightening us
Thank you Radhika and Ben .
Thanks Ben and Radhika for another inspiring story. A multipolar world order will enable relatively sophisticated leaders among equals. This will be a vast improvement on the flawed U.S. dominated unipolar leadership that continues to exploit and impoverish most of humanity. Within this decade the present U.S. defined and dominant unipolar world order must be overwhelmed, economically and or if necessary, by militarily force. A profit driven neo liberalism is rapidly being replaced by developing countries and emerging markets with a more user friendly neo socialism that subordinates capitalism and recognises individual nation state characteristics. China and Russia are the champions of this global movement.
One hopes this is the case, but if you look at history the irony is that it is during times of multipolarity where you have the most war and the most violence. In fact, Chinese history illustrates this quite vividly. Whenever the matter of who got to be the emperor was contested on many fronts, you had periods of warfare. Whenever the emperor's rule was firmly in place and unquestioned, you had relative peace. Europe during the World Wars provides a similar illustration. Hopefully the world to come will avoid this problem, but I'd hold the triumphalism until we see whether that happens or not.
@@robertgillespie3635 Indeed, will do and well said, thank you.
This is incredible! I can't wait to hear more.
Thank You for sharing información which is so valuable and necessary.☮️⚖️
couldnt stop listening until the end, thank you very much for this
Can't learn enough from Prof. Desai. In my quest to better understand economics, Dasai has become one of my go-to, in order to help me make since of these trying times as so much drama in the world is centered around Geo economics.
If I may give you a suggestion for new content series idea in a foreseeable future, I hope you could make content series on Chinese Economist on Economic Reform book series with Prof. Michael Hudson and Prof. Cheng Enfu where you guys would discuss and detail those books with many others guest Chinese scholars from mainland, each of them authored their own respective books to the series.
Thank you
Thank you for the free book!!!!!!
y'all killed this one ✊🏾
Great work!
Great stuff.thank you both.
Thanks!
Read the book! Everybody! You will not regret it.
Great podcast ben
Guys please this channel deserves tons of subscribers we must do something about it.
Thanks for the great discussion! 👏👏👏 PSA: Whistle Blowers/Leakers & Truth Speakers are heroes! Crush corruption with Truth! Know something? Say something! Be Bold, Brave & Smart. Have Faith & No Fear! C What U can do!
Capitalism = Love of Money = Root of All Evils
Also produces the most wealth and prosperity and technological advances and creative advances. Should we ban water because people drown every year?
Absolutely interesting discussion. Thank you both. I'll be downloading the book right away but I wonder if I can buy a printed copy, because that'll be so much easier to read for someone like me, who basically reads on paper while travelling in the subway.
Ben is an incredible human Radhika always a brilliant educator
Good evening, and thank you both for the excellent work and this time for the books pdf.
Regards from Lisbon, Portugal.
Awesome take 👌
My way of thinking is,
Capitalism is the realization that there is a natural mass market that can potentially be managed;
Socialism is the initiative to manage the natural market to the benefit of the State and its people, Society;
People calling themselves Capitalists are mafioso working to steal from the public trust in the form of profit through seized assets
Yes. Good points and a way of looking at it. My way, another way, is that man was given a brain by God - Allah S.W.T. Capitalism doesn't always make the best choices. It's not always in our best interests. Sometimes a designed capitalist system in a certain system and situations does work very well, but at other times, what is good and the best course of action, for example, to conserve energy, resources, the environment, - to consider impacts on people and society, including of course, laws, - "system design" - objectives... taking prudent action other than just living for the day or "being cheap". To think that "capitalism" is the answer to everything or whatever, its a myth. There are actors and forces - of course. Interested parties.
Yes, but looking at those economic systems that have no capitalists to speak of, the picture is pretty grim, too. It's pretty clear capitalist investment raises living standards. It's just also very clear that, done a certain way, it can lower living standards, too.
There is no such thing as Society with a capital "S." There are many societies aka "social formations." The state itself is a public society i.e. representative social formation. Markets are also social formations which cross state and national boundaries. Socialism is not based on a "public" good, it is based on the good of the industrial proletariat. This is why socialism developed into the social formation of a private party rather than a national state. The democratic-capitalist nation-state encompasses everyone within its boundaries as citizens. The socialist party-state only encompasses party members, who rule in the interest of a particular society or social formation i.e. the industrial proletariat. In 1917 there was not one but two revolutions in Russia, the proletarian revolution and the peasant revolution. They were separate societies or social formations which clashed because they were based on different interests. Socialism was based on proletarian interests, not peasant interests. I'm not sure what is meant by "natural market" but there is no such thing. Markets are societies or social formations based on individual actors who have different things to buy and sell. Markets operate according to self-interest rather than national or party interest. Hence, in capitalist societies, markets often clash with the nation-state because they obey different interests. In a socialist society like China, market ownership is constrained by the political power of the proletariat party-state. More generally, capitalist market society can be thought of as the alienability and decentralization of property ownership, as opposed to feudal society where ownership was inalienable and inherited i.e. centralized in particular persons. Socialism centralizes ownership in the industrial proletariat which is organized into a party-state. Socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same industrial coin, but power is concentrated in different social formations: in socialism power is concentrated in the proletariat party, in capitalism power is concentrated in the private property owner and private social formations such as joint-stock companies or political parties. Social democracy is a mixed economy that straddles the two sides of proletariat and bourgeoisie. Much of the world is neither proletariat nor bourgeois and have their own social formations e.g. Islam.
Capitalism gives power to people. Socialism gives power to the state. Both systems can be corrupted. More tech advances and creative advances happen under capitalism.
Great conversation! Thank you.
Can't say I understood all of this, but thank you for presenting these ideas :)
Excellent discussion. RD is as always brilliant, her reasoning and logic is unsurpassed in her field.
As usual, fantastic outline of the evolution (or more accurately, devolution) of "economics" - from a holistic systemic interdisciplinary attempt to map/ground analytical theory onto the territory of material reality, morphing over time into a mythological divine right of "the market" to hollow out all of life toward the only goal of perpetuating itself for its own sake. A means to no end.
Ben and Radhika both elaborated this more than well, but if anyone cares - while watching I was reminded of a pretty great/accessible book that first opened my eyes to all this stuff when I was trapped in a mind palace of supposed "rationality", Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston Saul, specifically a section which I think illuminates this well through a universally understandable/accessible historical continuity a la Marx's holistic political-economic explanations, but doing so in a manner that forces the reader to conjure the category of class themselves through a "cui bono" (who benefits?) lens, without any potentially poisoned jargon (or at least it allowed me personally, a dipshit "libertarian" at the time, to break out of the myopic dogmatic neoclassical econ tunnel-vision trained into us by using the abstract categorical foundations of that ideology - ie "freedom" and "democracy" - against itself by emphasizing the contradictions with those concepts and effectively grounding them to reality, so maybe someone will find it useful is my point I guess lol...):
_What we have done in the West is throw three elements together as if they were part of a natural family: democracy, reason and capitalism. But they are not even natural friends. The businessmen who speak so aggressively today in capitalism’s defence are, in reality, the product of its defeat by reason. This product is by no means unidimensional, however. The speculators, for example, are a sign of reason’s failure. The service providers seem inoffensive enough. All they do is fill a void in our economy. The danger lies in our believing that they are a new solution, rather than another sign of our problem. As for the managers in capitalists’ clothing, they are not entirely a disaster. After all, during the period of their rise to power, we did establish some sort of general social compromise, shaky and uneven though it is._
_However, the gap between the capitalist illusion and its reality is now so great that the practitioners and indeed the civil authorities have difficulty making economic decisions in a sensible manner. Their problem begins with the democracy = capitalism equation. Running democracy and capitalism together as a single idea is a wonderful Marxian joke. That is to say, in the tradition of the Marx Brothers. Neither history nor philosophy link free markets and free men. They have nothing more to do with each other than the accidents of time and place allow. In fact, free enterprise worked far better in its purer state, when it operated beneath friendly, authoritarian government structures. Unquestioned political stability suits the embracing of financial risk. Authoritarian governments can ally themselves to money without fear of conflict of interest. They can do things faster. Compromise less. Democracy, on the other hand, is subject to ongoing political and social compromise. It tends to want to curb activities of all sorts, business-related or not, in order to protect the maximum number of people._
_Thus capitalism’s moments of greatest glory were under the benign authority of early Victorian England, before universal male suffrage and before child labour laws, work safety regulations, the right to strike and contractual employment. It flowered under Louis Philippe, the businessman’s King, who even dressed like a company president; and again under Emperor Napoleon III, who removed the universal male suffrage which had been established by the short-lived Second Republic. It did well under Kaiser Wilhelm II, who cut back on the liberal reforms of his father and of Bismarck. The last Russian czar presided over the greatest expansion of free enterprise the world has ever seen. And in the United States, capitalism was healthiest and happiest in the period before white male universal suffrage in 1860, and then again in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when large segments of the population were without a vote because of the waves of immigration. Even after becoming citizens, these newcomers remained politically docile during the long process of integrating their particular community into the mainstream of society. American capitalists were at their most dissatisfied from the early 1930s to the 1970s - the period when there was the most active participation by the citizenry in public affairs._
_In spite of a prolonged economic crisis, business interests have been happier during the last two decades than at any time since the day before the collapse of 1929. This happiness coincides with a decline in the percentage of voter participation to levels not seen since the arrival of male universal suffrage. Nor is this pattern limited to the West. The most vibrant new centres of capitalism to appear over the last few decades are Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea. All four are governed through sophisticated and cooperative authoritarian systems. Widespread confusion between the freedoms proper to democracy and those proper to capitalism further confirms that business leaders no longer understand their own ideology. And yet the credo has been public knowledge for several centuries. Capitalism involves the use of capital, not simply its ownership. You cannot own an abstraction. Only the owning of something renders capital concrete. Property, for example. Or a factory. Gold for a long time seemed interchangeable with capital, but it was in reality a concrete good which came to be the measure of capital because it was portable._
_However, the ownership of something thanks to the transferral of capital is not enough to make the owner a capitalist. After all, the ownership of inanimate objects, such as land or buildings or gold, existed long before capitalism. Those who increase their capital by trading in such commodities are merely speculating on the value of goods. To make money out of an increase in their value is not a capitalist act. Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital._
_However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive “dirty” work to Third World societies. Finally, the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents “service” as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one’s own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are - with the exception of the high-technology sector - descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services._
- p.446, Voltaire's Bastards
Love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
25:15 - I think the great Australian economist Steve Keen makes this point well for anyone interested and has quite a few collaborations/discussions with mentat Michael Hudson. Even more impressive is his project Minsky made with some help from software programmers toward the (largely functional at this point, if I recall, haven't tried it out personally but the demonstrations of it were sensible and had often rather ingenious ways to estimate such figures - very cool to visualize as well, and funny when inputting neoclassical inputs to see the absolute chaos in output lol...) production of economic modelling software which attempts to consider the "externalities" neoclassical econ conveniently ignores via its inherent tunnel-vision/ideological blindfold - at least to the extent that this is possible to measure of course - with a main focus on environmental impact; the ultimate goal being an accurate and actively evolving holistic economic model which can be dynamically adjusted towards an _actual_ homeostasis/equilibrium.
But back to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (pointed out even by Adam Smith if I recall, wanna say ch.6 of WoN) personally I think maybe phrasing it as tendency toward rent extraction (ie value extracted _without_ value produced as per classical econ) might highlight the functional impediments in a different illuminating consideration, as rent increasingly stifles such technological capacities to balance out overproduction/underconsumption, squeezing more and more out of labor at the peripheries of empire and that this surely must have a limit in its compounding demands - short of passing a threshold of entirely replacing the worker entirely (replacing the worker is essentially what Marx says in the manuscripts somewhere, is what defines the arc of technological progression) or short of implementing such technology toward mediating individual workers from each other through a deluge of digitally delivered noise that acts as a bulwark against any sort of solidarity/class consciousness/working class pushback, subsequently maximizing the division of labor to eventually reach that "4th industrial revolution" where the worker can be replaced entirely (theoretically of course, unclear if possible as even then upkeep/maintenance labor would have to be integrated and such). If that made any sense.
Reminded of this quote which outlines the logical conclusion of what I'm badly trying to get at and only becomes more eerily relevant,
_“Once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the… automatic system of machinery… set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.”_
But uh...pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will! Or something!
🙌🙌 Brilliant discussion.
Well there is not much difference between an economic crisis and "reaching equilibrium" when you go beyond the semantics.
It makes a disaster sound good. But there is no discussion on who bears the brunt of the crisis resolution.
Re reducing rates of return to capital (@ about 30 minutes) it should be noted that this is actually what is being measured when people complain about low labour productivity; they are not measuring the output of lone tradesmen carving automobiles from rocks with their bare hands, but about workers primarily operating machinery and the dollar productivity which results from that combination.
Low "productivity" is frequently cited as a labour market failure and a reason to put downward pressure on wages, whereas it is more accurately understood as either a failure to apply adequate levels of capital to productive processes, or part of the described market mechanism which sees marginal returns to capital diminish with each innovative cycle, or a function of the overproduction and relative shortage of demand inherent in capitalism itself.
At such times, it actually makes more sense to increase general wages and employment to spur demand and justify further investment, but ultimately, of course, it's just a house of cards which will inevitably collapse unless demand constantly increases, which requires an ever-growing population, which is clearly not sustainable on a finite planet and has largely ceased to be the case in the "developed" economies of the west.
The short-term solution, of course, is to develop the economies and consumptive markets of the Global South, where real demand for goods exceeds the supply and labour is abundant, yet for some reason it's something Northern capitalist nations have not only steadfastly refused to do but actively taken steps to prevent - in a perverse repudiation of their own economic and political philosophies.
❤❤❤
Gold content
Would love to hear a segment on THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION Karl Polanyi. Also is financialization the off ramp for Capitalism to avoid the road leading to Socialism as the logical outcome of overproduction?
capitalism only needs to be run well and controlled better .it does not create crises its the people who does it and greed with it and ignorance of them.
I know this is a wild tangent, but you're talking about Finite State Machines, but for financial/economic systems. It's the defn of states and transitions and how they operate to serve the 'purpose' of the super-system. ♻️ is hard 😜
👍
Some interesting points on things like trade balances here, but regurgitating Marx isn't going to bring you much insight into the way capitalism works in the postindustrial era. Marx was writing about a political-economic system that barely resembles what we have today. His theories centered around a form of labor ('labor-time' on industrial machines) that is no longer central to mechanical production, which is driven today by data on digital networks--a very different kind of labor quantum, with very different dynamics. And clearly, the 'answer' Marx gave to the capitalism of his era was also prone to crisis, given that all of the states that attempted to implement it in its pure form either collapsed or stopped growing. Industrial growth didn't take off in China, for example, until Deng Xiaoping cast aside the 'purer' Marxism of Mao and introduced capitalist elements into its economy. It seems a bit strange to solely focus on the crises of capitalism while eliding the crises of the alternatives to it devised by its critics, even from a Marxist perspective--not very 'dialectical'.
This Jaynes guy sounds interesting. Would anyone be so kind as to recommend any of his work as it pertains to what Prof. Desai is addressing?
If you played monopoly the boardgame you either destroyed your competitors.. with them feeling frustrated or you got destroyed by that one victor who made the rest of the group feel frustrated.
I always lost, and because I had just the one sibling, it was always my brother who won. Boo-urns.
@You Row, Joe! I mostly won and when I lost I didn't get frustrated cuz that's the game right
Off topic but...
The Extinction Rebellion alliance climate actions in London and environs this past week broke some records.
"Police estimated attendance as well in excess of 750,000 people and the BBC estimated that around a million attended."
❤
as to the tendency for profit to fall, there's a nice property of general equilibrium framework that profit reduces to zero as long as market remains competitive.
😂 i almost forgot about that. 😅
I'm for whichever economic system that increases the free choice of the individual. I don't care what it is called in the end, just maximize freedom.
She's brilliant and hopefully the American people can wake up in time B4 it's too late
There is no "American people", only people shafted by Amerikkka and a scant few who are enriched by the former.
Ever notice how the top tier of society gets richer from these so-called crises?
Same happens under communism.
I wish I could enable CC
Capitalism is actually a brilliant system (as is communism) in their purest form. The problem is humans take advantage of any system and warp it to suit themselves.
Doesnt matter what system you have, as long as you have a system that values ALL people as equals, with equal rights, and equal opportunities to get what they want (this doesnt mean everyone gets the same amount as some would no doubt argue).
Thats why in this day and age we see both capitalist systems (USA, england) AND communist systems (China, vietnam) working very well if they are not corrupted !!!!
Equality, democracy, etc. are incompatible with capitalism.
If academic economics increasingly doesn't work, does that mean it will eventually by sidelined? How long can be people keep believing it if it keeps being proven false? Will the capitalists eventually jettison economics as unnecessary? How long can the house of cards continue?
Radhika!
The " like " button does not respond when pressed !
Capitalism! Even when it was the bears, I knew it was capitalism.
All markets are inherently controlled, the notion of a free market is nonsense
I think the closest thing to a free market would be a black market, or perhaps ancient trade routes. The problem with that with the black market there’s illegal contraband and zero quality control, plus the danger of being killed by a gang. With ancient trade routes, or agoras as the ancaps say, there’s no productive industrial firms for lack of incentive in innovation, lack of patent rights, rampant cheating, zero quality control and the eventual rise of a merchant class that itself becomes like a state.
neoclassical economics can be understood differently regarding the concept of value. competitive equilibrium in general might be defined as the price at which use value and exchange value are more or less equal. this situation can be more so under the framework of general equilibrium, in which equilibrium is characterized with competition, efficiency, and social welfare maximization.
Well, if you average it across large baskets of commodities by sector or in general, then yes.
This is the whole thesis of Anwar Shaykh but it’s mathematically radically different than neoclassical economics.
actually radhika, the link between capitalism and imperialism has been missing in the west, not in south america
34:00
Interest rates are the enemy of progress.
One man’s crisis is the Devil’s opportunity
The culture of economics is dominated by "schools of thought" each with their own peculiar language of concept identification, much the same as anything institutional, only the inmates understand each other.
Because crises cause dissention, which is beneficial in a "divide and rule"-world.
I'm always baffled when people talk about the contradictions and crises of capitalism. If you're a billionaire, it works great. None of these crises are actually all that critical for the rich. It's only contradictory if you think it's for the common people. Cattle ranchers don't get eaten.
Thing is, though, arguably the largest rise in the living standards of common people in the history of humanity happened under capitalism, and the most prosperous 'socialist' states all have capitalist elements to their economy. And at the end of the day, all the common person cares about is whether their standard of living is rising or not. The theoretical nuances of debates about the superiority/inferiority of 'capitalism' vs 'socialism' vs [insert -ism] don't really matter to them--all that matters is whether they feel their quality of life improving.
@@robertgillespie3635 Capitalists like to say that.
Slava Alan Freeman!
🌹🌹✍✍✍
It always seemed to me that neoclassical economics is a sort of scam or pseudoscience.
It's just an attempt to explain away all the externalities and failures of capitalism as a "natural" and unavoidable phenomenon.
one also needs to be aware of there exist differences between neoclassical economics and neoliberalism of Chicago tradition (of Hayek and Freedman). today's problem of economic financialisation could be more atributed to neoliberalism rather than to neoclassical economics.
If we stop preaching the duopoly the opposition will die off and we can move forward
Greedy criminals don't control love for money so they call it capitalism, investment etc
There are no real free-markets, for almost all people, within militarily enforced Exclusive Economic Zones. For so-called sovereign bankers, very special people who profit from Apartheid monopoly, it's a free 'stock' market.
Apartheid monopoly is the forced separation of people from markets to maintain the global *cult* ideology of sovereignty.
The stock market, to so-called sovereign bankers, is a market of people as chattel. Remember, a statement of sovereignty is not secular.
Publish MONOPOLY on so-called 'sovereign' currency.
End Global Apartheid.
Your barley figuring that out
the separation of economics from the political economy, as was done in today's neoclassical tradition of Samuelson, was indeed confusing to a large extent. however if properly interpreted, it can be consistent with Marx's labor theory of value.
All due respect, but you lose people with talk of theory. The average person needs to understand socialism in simple terms.
neoclassical economics is largely concerned with the functionality of the real economy as opposed to the fictitious economy in the Marx's sense. so one should not expect at competitive quilibrium exchange value can deviate from use value too much.
It would appear that these repeated crises can go on indefinitely seeing as capitalism has repeatedly shown how adaptable it is to changing circumstances no matter how bad it might be for humans or the environment. European feudalism lasted a thousand years and the Greco-Roman slave economies that preceded it for at least five hundred despite both having in retrospect their shortcomings. So what makes you think that capitalism is going to end any time soon (assuming the era of the global corporation we seem to be in now can still be defined as capitalism rather than, say, neo-feudalism).
I look at it this way, the capitalist class, as a whole, understand where there interests lie despite that they often fight among themselves or sabotage one another for gains in profits. Workers, the ordinary people of society, have yet to understand their interest in collective ownership of the means of production and distribution. When they do, then capitalism will end when workers organize on the economic and political fields.
Why didn't feudalism "go on indefinitely"? Jesus Christ, you're thick.
Ben, you are the host, not the guest. You ask questions, your guest provides answers and substance. But yet, during much of the entire presentation, you are the one expounding material rather than soliciting it. Wrong.
He's giving her his take on her book. He's showing how deeply he dug into it which honors her.
Why should shareholders relinquish ownership in a monopoly to the state, after they have made the conscious decision to invest in the company? They would not, of course; it would be seized by force, as in Cuba or Libya.
Wall Street gambling shouldn't exist. It's unnecessary and shareholders vs workers always means that shareholders win.
Naaaaah these two aren’t making a distinction between Industrial Capitalism vs Finance Capitalism.(42:00)
Nor do they turn their eyes onto the alternative (as usual)
Capitalism --> Monopoly--> Socialism 🤔🤔🤔
Capitalism--> Depression & Slavery
Socialism--> War & Want
43:00 are you kidding me?
Anyone that justifies their position based on the claimed objectives of Chinese politicians is being willfully turning a blind eye to history (or current events)
'… so called marxist economist ...'
Did she just kick the domesticated wolf? Lol …
Does the individual with the gray hair have Parkinson's with the consistent head bobbing. Very poor anti capitalism oration.
THE FALLING RATE OF PROFIT IS ALSO SUSPECT. MARX FORGOT ABOUT MONOPOLIES AND OLIGOPOLIES WHICH CAN PRICE GAUGE. MARX ALSO FORGOT THAT CAPITAL MIGRATES FROM ONE ENTERPRISE TO NEW ONES. MARX ALSO FOGOT ABOUT INNOVATION WHICH CREATES PROFITS.
More enterprises means less capital to go around. The market cap of Earth never changes.
@@fun_ghoul the same capital can migrate from one enterprise to another
Ben the Communist Roader
Huh?
@@mackone8035 not sure what that mean
What's a Communist Roader?
@@mackone8035 ah, the opposite of a capitalist, Roader.
@@mackone8035 It's a play on words. Mao described Deng and his clique as "Capitalist Roaders", because they wanted to put China on the road to capitalism, which they clearly did since Mao died. Sounds like the OP is paying a compliment to Ben. ☺️
Only extreme capitalism
Lol
I love how foolish people with no understanding of what capitalism is. Pointing to what we have and identifies it as capitalism, proving they don't even know what capitalism is.
Oh look, a random comment that just criticizes and never claps back with facts.
@@checkoutmyyoutubepage 🎯🎯
In English please.
@@checkoutmyyoutubepage What we have is crony capitalism and socialism for the rich. You'll lose your house and end up on the street but the bank is "too big to fail" and they'll get bailed out. Crony capitalism and crony socialism operate the same way..
@@alterego157 Meth is bad. Stop.
For an insightful critique of Marxist economics, see Steven Keen. Marx was wrong. Labor is not the only source of surplus value. Machinery also create surplus value and hence profits. And the notion that “value” exists objectively and independently of price and utility sounds like metaphysical nonsense. The cost of production does not determine price any more than utility does. The notion of value per se makes no sense. Something only has value in relation to a human being, whether a seller or a buyer.
I don't understand the point considering labor creates, operates and maintains the machines. Marx continues to be correct and workers need to form into Socialist Industrial Unions: ruclips.net/video/_apBa-Gx5mo/видео.html
@@JohnT.4321 Marx stated that machinery cannot create surplus value. He said that machines represent congealed labor power and can only transmit as much value to the economy as the labor that was put into their production. That is obviously incorrect. The fact that human labor is involved in building the machines is obvious. So what? If all the workers were replaced by machines tomorrow, according to Marx, the capitalist could make no profits. Read Capital vol. 1 on the replacement of workers by machines and the falling rate of profit and the increasing impoverishment of the workers leading to revolution. That’s his theory - and It’s all wrong!
@@JohnT.4321 Listen to, or read, Steven Keen on Marx. Keen is correct. Marx was wrong. Very wrong. Profit rates have not decreased as machinery displaced human labor in the factories. Why? Because any source of energy can create surplus value and hence profits, not just human labor. There’s no difference between a human worker and a robot as far as surplus labor and profits are concerned.
@@JohnT.4321 If Marx was correct, we wouldn’t be discussing capitalism today, 150 years after he published Capital. The labor theory of value is simply wrong. Stop treating Marx as if he was infallible. Read Keen on Marx. Think critically. Marxism is not a science, it’s a secular religion. Yes, capitalism is based on the exploitation of labor and is therefore unjust. But no, machinery can and does create new surplus value, it doesn’t just transmit to the commodity the labor invested in the production of the machine. Marx doesn’t make sense here.
@@syourke3 We will have to agree to disagree. However, what you have written makes no sense to me since labor creates all machinery for production and is only an extension of labor. Machines do not run themselves nor do product walk to the loading dock into a truck.
Vote Libertarian 💯 noobs 🔥🔥🔥
Why?
@@mackone8035 u don't want more poverty and crisis?
_"Vote Libertarian."_ -one hundred noobs burning stuff
China pulled
700 million out of poverty.
So I should vote communist?
all paths lead to socialism!
Neonliberal.capitalist finance for
A) speculation
B)rentier (to charge money for access to
facilities, infrastructure, etc.
C) international reserve currency--- forced use of 1 capitalist empire's currency for, + vs., whole world
Mixed economy or socialist economy
A) finance for production of physical
objects, services, data, etc.
B) Many currencies for international.
investment, trade. etc.