Marx, Robert Paul Wolff Lecture 6

[@Lewclan]

Professor Wolff, your lectures are simply one of the greatest things on youtube and I cannot overstate how much I have learned from them. Please continue to upload them, you have changed my life!

[@nthperson]

Professor Wolff's history lesson is important, describing the process by which the commons was gradually enclosed and privatized. The introduction of specie as the mode of exchange also brought about the expansion of town and regional markets. Feudal tenants, required to make payments of rent in cash, took on all of the risks associated with agricultural production. They were required to take their crops to market where the appearance of middle-men (wholesale merchants) arose.

[@WhatsTherapy]

This is so great.

[@Rigsby1]

i appreciate the opportunity to hear and think about your "outrageous statement(s)"(41:04) and have no protest to make

[@Zing_art]

What an elaborate description of the loom! This man knows everything

[@nasirfazal3586]

wonderful Prof.Dr.Nasir Fazal

[@nthperson]

The introduction of new forms of capital goods to enhance production was described by Joseph Schumpeter as "creative destruction." It is part of our nature to constantly seek innovation. In many instances, innovation removes the need for us to perform irksome tasks, potentially leaving us with more time to pursue more enjoyable and satisfying endeavors. Of course, history also confirms that politics dictates economic outcomes, very directly determining the balance between human rights and property rights. Unfortunately, the long period of social reform that brought "liberalism" to the United States and some other countries, and the "social democracy" that spread throughout parts of Europe, have not been able to bring about sustained full employment. Analyzing the cause or causes of this problem, economist Joseph Stiglitz resurrected Henry George's analysis and points to the systems of law and taxation that reward rent-seeking over the production of goods and services. We remain plagued by the entrenched monopoly privilege that existed when Marx was writing.

[@lostintime519]

And Bentham! *brilliant :D

[@Buckyball_philosopher]

Right on with the "Lexus trade" of luxury goods!

[@stuarthicks2696]

The trades are lost and only the names remain to the benefit of society. Means that a smaller and smaller percentage of the population needed to produce the goods of those trades. Leaves larger and larger amounts of labor hours to other trades so we have more and more products/goods/services. This whole series focuses on factories. In today’s world few work in this master/slave relationship, Marx’s illustration isn’t the experience of the average working person today. Most of the production of the North American economy comes from small business and sole proprietors. Those who do work in factories have retirement plans and in those plans own stocks in their company and others (IRA 401k). People working in automotive factories feel a sense of pride in being a part of an entity larger than themselves in contributing to a very complex and intricate machine that an automobile is. No one person or very small group could pull this type of thing off and even if they did the cost would be beyond that of all but the few top percentile of earners so it wouldn’t even take place as there wouldn’t be a market. Do people think that in Soviet or Venezuelan or any other collectivist/Marxist society the average working person has any freedom or ability to decide for themselves what’s produced or who gets to produce or even where to live and work? No they don’t. To go back to individuals making entire products through all the stages of production would be like going back to making 10 of something versus making 1000 of them. Similar to Adam Smith’s illustration in the pin factory where when an individual making all aspects of the pin could yield 10 a day versus dividing labor and yielding 1000. It’s in productivity that we have a vast array and abundance of goods and services that never happened nor would without division of labor. In today’s world the average person has a big screen television or two, a car or two, access to many forms of entertainment, hordes and hordes of various foods. Food shelter and clothes and entertainment and a lifespan almost double what it was a few hundred years ago all for the low low price of only contributing a small portion of labor to a larger end. One only has to be a cog in the wheel at the baker or the butcher or the brewer to gain the benefit of thousands of other’s trades and vice versa. So much abundance and so many choices.

[@thewisecraker8727]

It feels like Marx idolized the craftsman as the source of meaning, but mentions little to nothing about the family. I find his critiques valid but his solution lacking, There is a deeper problem going on that has to do with human nature more so then capitalism

[@paulk8224]

so the loss of the ownership of the product of labor is a result of the division of labor and the introduction of machines into the production process? i guess heres another inversion (by this prof) going on: capitalists did and still do seek to use machinery instead of workers for the production of their products and plan the production minutiously etc such that the rhythm of work is no longer determined by the workers "inner rhythm" because the separation of the product from the worker already took place: they, the workers are producing for the capitalist, the result of their work is his property and their wage is a minus in his profit that he makes by selling those results. and its for that very reason he constantly seeks to minimize the production costs ie the wage or the number of workers required respectively. and its this confusion for why you dont get rid of capitalism by producing like in the middle ages. theres nothing peculiar capitalist nor principally harmful about steam engines, computers or even dividing up labor socially. its all about for what those tools are utilized. its not the way in which it is/was produced (in that narrow sense), it is the purpose for which it is/was produced, that harms the worker: does he produce to fit his needs or for the maximum profit for the entrepreneur?

[@banpaksebangfaixaibouri1107]

Surplus peasantry.