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>I don't need to read the entire corpus of Marxist literature to conclude that Marxian economics is quackery. You do have to read about modern Marxist economic

>I don't need to read the entire corpus of Marxist literature to conclude that Marxian economics is quackery. You do have to read about modern Marxist economic replies to objections over a century old. The likes of Guglielmo Carcheidi, Kliman and Freeman, and even non-Marxist economists sympathetic to Marx answer many of these problems. >Claiming automation would reduce wages is a basic fallacy that economic laymen believe in. This is not strictly the claim that Marx makes, and this claim you attribute to him only comes from a particular logical view of Marx rather than his own logic.

CryptoPunk 7y ago
>>and this claim you attribute to him only comes from a particular logical view of Marx rather than his own logic. Huh? I quoted him asserting that mechanization would reduce wages.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  For Marx everything is a tendency, in his logic, we go beyond the simple positive statement and into actual historical development, consider for instance he correctly anticipated the fight over wages between the working class and the capitalists (which today precipitates in the creation of many workers' rights laws), which serves to counter-act the tendency, and a greater rate of exploitation (rather than a lower wage) is one of them. The biggest clue against your reading of Wage Labour and Capital is that Marx believed that a rise in productivity tends to a rise in wages. Marx only identifies the introduction of machinery lowering the wage rate on the idea that with such machinery, workers are more substitutable - but as far as I know he did not account for the rising proportion of people taking up what he described as a "numerically unimportant class", "engineers, mechanics, joiners". In fact, this class of workers has not seen the same reduction or stagnation in the wage rate that Marx saw would happen with low skill workers. "And precisely taking into account the forms of technical progress which Marx considered - that is the division of labour, capital saving, the mechanization of production and innovations - a fall in the maximum rate of profit can happen only in very particular cases, and no need arises to keep wages at a minimum in order to avoid a fall in the rate of profit."[0] [0] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20976/1/MPRA_paper_20976.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20976/1/MPRA_paper_20976.pdf
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    I was asked by moderators to not engage debates about ideology, so I'm not going to respond to this beyond saying that absolving him of his responsibility for making a prediction that ended up being proven wrong, and for forwarding a claim about the fundamental impact of automation that is a basic economic fallacy, is not intellectually honest.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      Even then, it was not obviously a fallacy; several well respected political economists of the time had similar ideas; both Ricardo and Malthus believed that rising automation would lower wages, though without qualification as Marx had.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

>>and this claim you attribute to him only comes from a particular logical view of Marx rather than his own logic. Huh? I quoted him asserting that mechanization would reduce wages.

claudiawerner 7y ago
For Marx everything is a tendency, in his logic, we go beyond the simple positive statement and into actual historical development, consider for instance he correctly anticipated the fight over wages between the working class and the capitalists (which today precipitates in the creation of many workers' rights laws), which serves to counter-act the tendency, and a greater rate of exploitation (rather than a lower wage) is one of them. The biggest clue against your reading of Wage Labour and Capital is that Marx believed that a rise in productivity tends to a rise in wages. Marx only identifies the introduction of machinery lowering the wage rate on the idea that with such machinery, workers are more substitutable - but as far as I know he did not account for the rising proportion of people taking up what he described as a "numerically unimportant class", "engineers, mechanics, joiners". In fact, this class of workers has not seen the same reduction or stagnation in the wage rate that Marx saw would happen with low skill workers. "And precisely taking into account the forms of technical progress which Marx considered - that is the division of labour, capital saving, the mechanization of production and innovations - a fall in the maximum rate of profit can happen only in very particular cases, and no need arises to keep wages at a minimum in order to avoid a fall in the rate of profit."[0] [0] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20976/1/MPRA_paper_20976.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20976/1/MPRA_paper_20976.pdf
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  I was asked by moderators to not engage debates about ideology, so I'm not going to respond to this beyond saying that absolving him of his responsibility for making a prediction that ended up being proven wrong, and for forwarding a claim about the fundamental impact of automation that is a basic economic fallacy, is not intellectually honest.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Even then, it was not obviously a fallacy; several well respected political economists of the time had similar ideas; both Ricardo and Malthus believed that rising automation would lower wages, though without qualification as Marx had.