this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
1072 points (96.4% liked)
Microblog Memes
10790 readers
2153 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Absolutely no NSFL content.
- Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What's wrong with Marx's Law of Value, and what's wrong with the concept of a Vanguard? What "big book" are you referring to, Capital, or the Manifesto of the Communist Party?
Big Book → Capital, I've only read vol 1 though (2 & 3 are like a jillion pages 😭)
I started writing my complaints, but it's taking longer than I thought. I'll drop an update if I finish writing it. My issues are mainly about the assumptions Marx makes about the topology of production networks (particularly regarding cycles), and the classification system used to produce nodes (is a node one particular spindle, or all spindles generally: this has implications). I haven't read any newer theory so IDK this has probably been adressed.
There's also the transformation problem. I don't think that's as big of a deal as it's made out, since you wouldn't just be slotting these Labor-Theoretic Values in place of Market Values, but people do often suggest doing this and it's really weird to me.
To be fair, I think my understanding of the theory has some errors in regards to the interaction of Work Intensity, Labor, and Productiveness, so I'll have to do some more thinking. Might change my complaints.
Regarding Vanguardism, I don't have a particularly sophisticated critique as I haven't read the lit. The Vanguard's position would change as a result of joining the Vanguard (now holding state-like power), this changes their relationship to the revolutionary masses and their stated mission, and would inevitably change their actions in much the same way that holding Capital would (i.e, probably they'd go mad with power). But again I don't know if that's been addressed.
If you can be more specific, I can take a crack at explaining, but I can't really go off of what you've provided other than the transformation "problem," which I can address in short and link what I believe to be a more in-depth explanation of common criticisms of Marx's Law of Value.
Essentially, Marx's hypothesis that there existed a formula that he was never able to find that could solve for the difference between Capital Intensity and the notion of profit equalization across industries ended up being wrong, in that such a formula did not exist. However, we can see with empirical evidence that Marx's Law of Value ends up being correct, in that profitability is closely tied to Capital Intensity, and that equalization of profit across industries really just does not come into play outside of noise.
This wasn't because Marx was stupid or anything, but because math itself had not advanced enough to show that such a transformation did not exist, but this does not disprove Marx's Law of Value, rather, it affirms its more important foundations while dismissing a hypothesis of Marx's that he never fully developed, nor could he have.
Here's a link to the article.
As for the Vanguard, you should read about the Mass Line and Democratic Centralism, both address your issues.