"Money can really fuck you up."

[Starry Messenger]

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/law-of-value-9-abstract-labor/

<snip>

What kind of social power does money have? It seems to have any social power we might want it to have. In a society in which social life is coordinated by market exchange money has the ability to buy any aspect of this social life, to compel any action, to coordinate any complex activity. The more money we have, the greater our ability to command this social power. This is a non-specific power: It is not tied to any particular activity, commodity or person. It is social power in the abstract.

This is not social power in the form of guns or tanks. It is social power in the form of these strange tokens of value, used to measure the quantitative relations between commodities. This abstract social power goes by another name: value. The subordination of society to the rule of value we call: The Law of Value.

In other times and places social power took the form of a sword. It was direct, concrete. But value is not like this. It is abstract. We do not know where it comes from or where it is going. It does not come from the 1%. It does not come from the FED. It comes from a specific organization of society. “What sort of organization of society is necessary for the existence of this value in the abstract?” [question appears on screen]

This is not just an academic question. This question gets to the heart of how we understand capitalism and how we envision alternatives to capitalism. Often times we hear quite different recipes ending the rule of capital: abolishing private property, ending wage labor, capturing the state, smashing the state, democratizing money, ending money, and so on. There are many different facets, many interpenetrating parts of the dense tapestry of inner relations that make up a capitalist society, and they all bear the mark of the dominance of value relations over our lives. How we understand the relation of the parts to the whole effects how we understand an anti-capitalist project.

<snip>

[BOG PERSON]

1. that is a really good website

it's clear a lot of care and thought have gone into it.

one time on this website i asked (in a rhetorical fashion) "where does value come from?" and somebody replied "value isn't real. it's a social construct. you're a dumbass." because apparently social constructs are flimsy, gossamer things.

another person posted to me that labor can't be the source of value because different types of labor fetch different prices.

and another person posted to me that labor can't be the source of value because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency and the Federal Reserve can create as much money as it wants (meaning the Fed is the source of value)

[Starry Messenger]

2. He really breaks down the concepts in a way that is easy to understand and is fun too.

I don't agree with all of his conclusions about politics, but he is really useful for someone like me that finds math difficult. It's an expansion on old cartoons like this one:



Kids in the high school where I teach are actively taught anti-Marxism. They get kind of a brew of labor history with no context, and come out parroting lines like "All Socialism and all Capitalism are bad, you must have a mix! "

One student saw a picture of Karl Marx on his iPhone and said "Ewww, a Communist!" It is frustrating to watch. I guess it's still slightly better than the "patriot" charter schools in Idaho that are basically madrassas that teach free market gospel.

[BOG PERSON]

3. it's strange

ppl think they arrive at their opinions on their own. but the way we get our opinions is closer to the way the replicants in Blade Runner get their memories. it's just like Stalin said: "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

edit. i don't understand that "eww, a communist" sentiment. don't kids think revolution is erotic anymore?

[Starry Messenger]

4. That Stalin sure got around didn't he?

Like he also said: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Between the schools and the constantly well-funded bombardment of pro-capitalist literature and media, it is hard to press through the resistance. I don't know if it is like this in other imperialist countries too.

Edit: I just saw your edit. I'm amazed at how unresisting teens can be. I grew up in the 80s and ended my teens hating the establishment although I didn't have any structured way of resisting it. But kids seem to be taught that feeling anything too strongly is embarrassing and they need to get "grown up" and safely into the workforce as soon as they can. I live and work in Silicon Valley though, so that might be local culture bearing on them.

[BOG PERSON]

5. Stalin said some pretty smart stuff

teens should look to Stalin as a role model. instead of trying to be little Hitlers, little powerseekers. the world needs more teen Stalins. more bandit-philosophers.

[Starry Messenger]

6. Socialists are a lot hotter than Capitalists anyway.

vs.




(looks like he would drool in his girlfriend's ear to be funny)



(Mama's boy and friend of Hitler. Had to build cool house to have friends)



(no words)

[HiPointDem]

7. "the way we get our opinions is closer to the way the replicants in Blade Runner get their memories"

so true.