The boring, bourgeois but fairly diligent Mother Jones magazine has a nice report from last year on American companies driving their sl.. employees to greater and greater feats of Productivity. Don’t you want to be Productive? No?! What kind of a parasite are you?!
You seem to be confusing productivity and drudgery. Productivity is the amount of “value” you produce by working, drudgery is the amount of disutility you experience while working. Marx’s mistake was assuming that these two quantities were always the same and that therefore “progress” consists of forcing workers to endure more drudgery. In reality progress consists of increasing productivity per unit of drudgery.
Marx’s mistake was assuming that these two quantities were always the same and that therefore “progress” consists of forcing workers to endure more drudgery. In reality progress consists of increasing productivity per unit of drudgery.
No no no; the stereotype of Marx as disregarding the wonders of technical progress is basically a lie. This is literally the exactopposite of what Marx was saying in Das Kapital and elsewhere. Let me give a crude summary with anachronistic terms.
Marx believed that due to technical progress, relentless automation and improving labour organization—all of which he could observe as profoundly transformative during his own lifetime—industrial productivity per unit of time would eventually become so enormous that, logically, some combination of the following has to ensue in most industries: 1) the amount of real wealth that workers take home as salary would skyrocket, giving them socioeconomic leverage and a position of power over the “bourgeois”—the production organizers and the beneficiaries of financial rent (two somewhat conflicting kinds of capitalists). 2) working hours would shrink as much less man-hours and effort are needed to attain a desired absolute amount of production or, most importantly, 3) - the relative share of value that the workers end up with would decrease even as their absolute real wages slowly increase or stagnate. Instead, ever more of the value generated by industries would go to the owners and shareholders, to waste or to the ever-expanding corporate bureaucracy. Marx thought that expecting 1) and 2) was unrealistic as they run against capitalists’ direct economic and political self-interest. Therefore, 3) would escalate until it becomes just obscene and the workers can’t help but notice how their share of the pie is ever shrinking. Hence, escalating political conflict along economic lines (“class struggle”).
Oh, and Marx predicted formal technical knowledge to play an ever-increasing role in the creation of value in most industries, as opposed to physical effort, access to natural resources or personal craftsmanship and mastery. I’m not going into the implications of that; read some Zizek or something.
Also, in a Marxian view, companies naturally tend to form bloated oligopolies and, despite their relative inefficiency, dominate the market. They become more secure against governments and exert massive influence on their policy, shaping the ‘consent manufactories’ like the media and the academia along the way. If the state has a power vacuum in some area, they’ll seize dominance over it; if state power is in the way, they’ll subvert it. Eventually TNCs and lobbies, not “public” governments become the primary agents of global politics—hence imperialism, violent takeover of resources, outsourcing-as-slavery and other pretty things. “Capital cannot abide a limit to profit”, Marx said—but it leads capitalists to actions that are irrational in the long term. Nowdays, I would add advertising as wasteful zero-sum signaling for the industry and conspicious consumption as wasteful zero-sum signaling for the customers to this list of complaints.
(So either Marx was absolutely, utterly wrong on what “value” is, and what it means for a society to become wealthier—or capitalism is by nature unbelievably wasteful and getting ever more so. Which does not by itself imply that knowledge or implementation of a better system is currently possible. Unlike e.g. Hayek, Marx basically didn’t view prices, specifics of consumer demand, etc as the objective driving factors of an economy, saying that industrial production, corporate growth and finance have their own powerful logic. This, and some alleged inconsistencies, is what he’s slammed for by neoclassical ecnomists—not his thoughts on inequality, his revolutionary politics or such.)
P.S. I’m not much of a Marxist, I’m just trying to explain some of his more empirical thoughts without the strawman treatment that he gets in America.
P.P.S. Yeah, looks like the theory of value is the main point of contention for all the Marxist and Marxian theorizing out there. E.g. here’s a discussion, and at first glance people are trying to argue rationally about economics, but it’s really rather hard to parse.
You seem to be confusing productivity and drudgery. Productivity is the amount of “value” you produce by working, drudgery is the amount of disutility you experience while working. Marx’s mistake was assuming that these two quantities were always the same and that therefore “progress” consists of forcing workers to endure more drudgery. In reality progress consists of increasing productivity per unit of drudgery.
No no no; the stereotype of Marx as disregarding the wonders of technical progress is basically a lie. This is literally the exact opposite of what Marx was saying in Das Kapital and elsewhere. Let me give a crude summary with anachronistic terms.
Marx believed that due to technical progress, relentless automation and improving labour organization—all of which he could observe as profoundly transformative during his own lifetime—industrial productivity per unit of time would eventually become so enormous that, logically, some combination of the following has to ensue in most industries:
1) the amount of real wealth that workers take home as salary would skyrocket, giving them socioeconomic leverage and a position of power over the “bourgeois”—the production organizers and the beneficiaries of financial rent (two somewhat conflicting kinds of capitalists).
2) working hours would shrink as much less man-hours and effort are needed to attain a desired absolute amount of production
or, most importantly, 3) - the relative share of value that the workers end up with would decrease even as their absolute real wages slowly increase or stagnate. Instead, ever more of the value generated by industries would go to the owners and shareholders, to waste or to the ever-expanding corporate bureaucracy. Marx thought that expecting 1) and 2) was unrealistic as they run against capitalists’ direct economic and political self-interest. Therefore, 3) would escalate until it becomes just obscene and the workers can’t help but notice how their share of the pie is ever shrinking. Hence, escalating political conflict along economic lines (“class struggle”).
Oh, and Marx predicted formal technical knowledge to play an ever-increasing role in the creation of value in most industries, as opposed to physical effort, access to natural resources or personal craftsmanship and mastery. I’m not going into the implications of that; read some Zizek or something.
Also, in a Marxian view, companies naturally tend to form bloated oligopolies and, despite their relative inefficiency, dominate the market. They become more secure against governments and exert massive influence on their policy, shaping the ‘consent manufactories’ like the media and the academia along the way. If the state has a power vacuum in some area, they’ll seize dominance over it; if state power is in the way, they’ll subvert it.
Eventually TNCs and lobbies, not “public” governments become the primary agents of global politics—hence imperialism, violent takeover of resources, outsourcing-as-slavery and other pretty things. “Capital cannot abide a limit to profit”, Marx said—but it leads capitalists to actions that are irrational in the long term. Nowdays, I would add advertising as wasteful zero-sum signaling for the industry and conspicious consumption as wasteful zero-sum signaling for the customers to this list of complaints.
(So either Marx was absolutely, utterly wrong on what “value” is, and what it means for a society to become wealthier—or capitalism is by nature unbelievably wasteful and getting ever more so. Which does not by itself imply that knowledge or implementation of a better system is currently possible. Unlike e.g. Hayek, Marx basically didn’t view prices, specifics of consumer demand, etc as the objective driving factors of an economy, saying that industrial production, corporate growth and finance have their own powerful logic. This, and some alleged inconsistencies, is what he’s slammed for by neoclassical ecnomists—not his thoughts on inequality, his revolutionary politics or such.)
P.S. I’m not much of a Marxist, I’m just trying to explain some of his more empirical thoughts without the strawman treatment that he gets in America.
P.P.S. Yeah, looks like the theory of value is the main point of contention for all the Marxist and Marxian theorizing out there. E.g. here’s a discussion, and at first glance people are trying to argue rationally about economics, but it’s really rather hard to parse.