Unpopular Opinion

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Leftism is better without Marxist economics (vargar.org)

submitted 3 days ago by wraekscadu@vargar.org to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't think this is particularly unpopular outside of Lemmy, but still.

I consider myself a leftist primarily because:

I want every individual to have maximum possible freedom as long as its existence doesn't reduce the summation of the freedom of all individuals.
The current system doesn't do a good enough job at this as it permits power concentration.
The policies I believe would help achieve my "want" (the freedom thing) are generally considered "leftist".

Marx for his time, did some quite cool stuff. I really enjoyed his work in sociology. His critique of capitalism had merit.

THAT BEING SAID, labor theory of value is absolute dogshit. FOR THE TIME, sure, ok- nice effort. But TODAY, when marginalism has proven time and time again to be the more superior explanation to value, defending LTV is kinda lame.

I've never met a single professional economist who takes it seriously. Most of its defenders (in my experience) tend to be folks who have no economics background, and frankly aren't willing to have a good faith convo. I'm not trying to bandwagon effect + appeal to authority here, but this is just so reminiscent of anti vaxxers and flat earthers (at least for me).

I won't go into MY reasoning for preferring marginalist economics over LTV economics as there are much much better writeups for this than what I'm capable of. Here's one I could lazily find.

But yeah. In conclusion, I'm of the opinion that it would be much nicer if leftists got rid of Marx from their economics, and instead adopted economic models that better described reality.

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[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Economics is a science that studies distribution of resources. All approaches using an LTV methodology of calculating the value of a product have failed throughout history. Do you think Chinese and Vietnamese economists use LTV to calculate the value of stuff?

economics is a field with the aesthetic of science which produces conclusions favorable to capital then retroactively justifies them with models.

'marginalist revolution' is a response to the political implications of marxist lines of thought

socialist states that 'failed' were subjected to constant economic warfare, sanctions and sabotage. i would ascribe most failures to being under siege from all directions rather than capitalist economics being 'right'

[–] wraekscadu@vargar.org 1 points 3 days ago

economics is a field with the aesthetic of science which produces conclusions favorable to capital then retroactively justifies them with models.

Misunderstanding of economics. The economics I've encountered is spinning up economic models, running simulations and so on. Saying stuff like this is very akin to anti vaxxers (they say doctors produce conclusions that favor drug manufacturers).

socialist states that 'failed' were subjected to constant economic warfare, sanctions and sabotage

China lives. It competes head on with the US. Vietnam lives. Again, this is not me endorsing China. It's just that China shifted to economic models free emerging from marginalist ideas.