5 ms·

Marx considered a decline in real wages, even with increased productivity, to be an inherent feature of capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immiseration_t

Marx considered a decline in real wages, even with increased productivity, to be an inherent feature of capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immiseration_thesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immiseration_thesis Also related is the capitalist crisis, which tends to destroy the accumulated wealth of workers in recurring boom-bust cycles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_theory

steveklabnik 14y ago
From one person who understands Marx to another, expect to get heavily downvoted around here. Every once in a while it's okay, but this isn't exactly a place that's friendly to criticisms of capitalism.
- Androsynth 14y ago
  A lot of libertarians respect Marx. In general, he had a good understanding of the problems of a capitalist society and bad solutions to those problems. If you are talking about his vision and insights, like oscilloscope, you get respect. If you espouse socialism, you don't.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    You must talk to different libertarians than I. Most of them haven't read him. Marx actually did not espouse 'socialism.' He referred to an 'lower stage of communism,' and was incredibly critical of the utopian socialists of his time.
    - kamaal 14y ago
      Sorry but communism is badly flawed in its very design. It discourages hard working people and encourages lazy people by its very core philosophy. Nobody who is hard working will ever have an incentive when told he and the guy sitting next to him will get the same reward. And no lazy guy will ever work if he is told, regardless he will get the same as the guy who works hard. People in capitalists countries by and large are over a degree of measure living in better conditions than those living in communist countries. And people messing up their financial lives by reckless borrowing, debt and bad decisions[like taking loans to study humanities] is not the fault of capitalism.
      - steveklabnik 14y ago
        That's the strawmanning I expect from this place! ('communism' explicitly does not 'give everyone the same reward.' Read more, try again please.)
        alexmat 14y ago
        Are you referring to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi... The problem with Marx, for me, is that he relied on the growth of industry to create an abundance of wealth that would satisfy everyone's needs, but he did not take into account that some resources are not material in nature, such as time and social status. Capitalism can quantify abstracts into material representations (money -> time and social status), whereas Marx had no way, as far as I'm aware, of creating an abundance of intangible satisfactions. In fact, that may be impossible where the desires are hierarchical in nature, since there can never be an abundance of top performers due to the relative nature of the rankings.
        steveklabnik 14y ago
        > Are you referring to this? Among other things, yes. That's just a slogan, but it's based in the rest of Marx's theories, obviously. > but he did not take into account that some resources are not material in nature, such as time and social status. These things would factor into the 'socially necessary' aspect of 'socially necessary labor time,' I'd imagine, but what I will say is that thinkers who have built on top of Marx absolutely address these issues. Debord, for example, with his 'society of the spectacle,' which specifically address social status (see aphorisms 60 and 61) and time (the entirety of part 5).
        oscilloscope 14y ago
        Marx considered capitalism to be a necessary phase of human development. That's where the abundance comes from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_history#The_stages_of_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_history#The_...
- crasshopper 14y ago
  Fewer downvotes if oscilloscope can explain why "capitalism" (or specifically let's say the US implementation) raised median wages for a period and then, didn't. I haven't read Marx, but if you two have, then maybe you can explain what feature of the Immiseration thesis is acting here, what changed when in the economic or political landscape, etc., in order to correspond with the evidence. On the broad whole, over multiple generations, "capitalism" seems to have been good for workers: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzdx1tJidd1qc38e9o2_500.png http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzdx1tJidd1qc38e9o2_500.pn... (via @delong) --------- As far as the crisis theory goes: is it true that workers' wealth was destroyed more than let's say upper-middle-class to upper class wealth? Stock prices declined a lot more than home prices in 2009. (Important because the medium and lower quantiles' wealth is mostly the house—but higher quantiles own liquid assets like stock shares. Some of the lower quantiles also have pensions coming to them; pension funds invest in equities and bonds and CDO's and other things. I don't know if pension funds experienced a greater hit than, let's say, hedge funds (which only take top-quantile money).) So in order to justify that "the workers" lost more wealth than "the rich" (who, obviously, have more to lose)—I'd want to see some numbers on decline in home values versus other assets, as a start.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    > I haven't read Marx, If you haven't read Marx, then I'm not interested in having this discussion with you, sorry. It'd take far too long to even get basic terminology straight. Here is a copy of the "Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie" which introduced this theory: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ Or maybe Capital I, which develops it (and the rest of Marx's ideas and provides his critique of capitalism) here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ David Harvey's lectures are a great guide if you decide to give it a read: http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ Plenty of online forums are more than happy to provide you with a basic outline of Marx's theories, including /r/communism101 and /r/debatecommunism. > is it true that workers' wealth was destroyed more than let's say upper-middle-class to upper class wealth? I will point this out though: this question does not make sense in a Marxist analysis. There is no 'middle class' or even 'upper class,' these are vulgar economists' terms.

steveklabnik 14y ago

From one person who understands Marx to another, expect to get heavily downvoted around here. Every once in a while it's okay, but this isn't exactly a place that's friendly to criticisms of capitalism.

Androsynth 14y ago
A lot of libertarians respect Marx. In general, he had a good understanding of the problems of a capitalist society and bad solutions to those problems. If you are talking about his vision and insights, like oscilloscope, you get respect. If you espouse socialism, you don't.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  You must talk to different libertarians than I. Most of them haven't read him. Marx actually did not espouse 'socialism.' He referred to an 'lower stage of communism,' and was incredibly critical of the utopian socialists of his time.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    Sorry but communism is badly flawed in its very design. It discourages hard working people and encourages lazy people by its very core philosophy. Nobody who is hard working will ever have an incentive when told he and the guy sitting next to him will get the same reward. And no lazy guy will ever work if he is told, regardless he will get the same as the guy who works hard. People in capitalists countries by and large are over a degree of measure living in better conditions than those living in communist countries. And people messing up their financial lives by reckless borrowing, debt and bad decisions[like taking loans to study humanities] is not the fault of capitalism.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      That's the strawmanning I expect from this place! ('communism' explicitly does not 'give everyone the same reward.' Read more, try again please.)
      - alexmat 14y ago
        Are you referring to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi... The problem with Marx, for me, is that he relied on the growth of industry to create an abundance of wealth that would satisfy everyone's needs, but he did not take into account that some resources are not material in nature, such as time and social status. Capitalism can quantify abstracts into material representations (money -> time and social status), whereas Marx had no way, as far as I'm aware, of creating an abundance of intangible satisfactions. In fact, that may be impossible where the desires are hierarchical in nature, since there can never be an abundance of top performers due to the relative nature of the rankings.
        steveklabnik 14y ago
        > Are you referring to this? Among other things, yes. That's just a slogan, but it's based in the rest of Marx's theories, obviously. > but he did not take into account that some resources are not material in nature, such as time and social status. These things would factor into the 'socially necessary' aspect of 'socially necessary labor time,' I'd imagine, but what I will say is that thinkers who have built on top of Marx absolutely address these issues. Debord, for example, with his 'society of the spectacle,' which specifically address social status (see aphorisms 60 and 61) and time (the entirety of part 5).
        oscilloscope 14y ago
        Marx considered capitalism to be a necessary phase of human development. That's where the abundance comes from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_history#The_stages_of_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_history#The_...
crasshopper 14y ago
Fewer downvotes if oscilloscope can explain why "capitalism" (or specifically let's say the US implementation) raised median wages for a period and then, didn't. I haven't read Marx, but if you two have, then maybe you can explain what feature of the Immiseration thesis is acting here, what changed when in the economic or political landscape, etc., in order to correspond with the evidence. On the broad whole, over multiple generations, "capitalism" seems to have been good for workers: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzdx1tJidd1qc38e9o2_500.png http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzdx1tJidd1qc38e9o2_500.pn... (via @delong) --------- As far as the crisis theory goes: is it true that workers' wealth was destroyed more than let's say upper-middle-class to upper class wealth? Stock prices declined a lot more than home prices in 2009. (Important because the medium and lower quantiles' wealth is mostly the house—but higher quantiles own liquid assets like stock shares. Some of the lower quantiles also have pensions coming to them; pension funds invest in equities and bonds and CDO's and other things. I don't know if pension funds experienced a greater hit than, let's say, hedge funds (which only take top-quantile money).) So in order to justify that "the workers" lost more wealth than "the rich" (who, obviously, have more to lose)—I'd want to see some numbers on decline in home values versus other assets, as a start.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  > I haven't read Marx, If you haven't read Marx, then I'm not interested in having this discussion with you, sorry. It'd take far too long to even get basic terminology straight. Here is a copy of the "Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie" which introduced this theory: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ Or maybe Capital I, which develops it (and the rest of Marx's ideas and provides his critique of capitalism) here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ David Harvey's lectures are a great guide if you decide to give it a read: http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ Plenty of online forums are more than happy to provide you with a basic outline of Marx's theories, including /r/communism101 and /r/debatecommunism. > is it true that workers' wealth was destroyed more than let's say upper-middle-class to upper class wealth? I will point this out though: this question does not make sense in a Marxist analysis. There is no 'middle class' or even 'upper class,' these are vulgar economists' terms.