poblequadrat

btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClTOh1LPGY just like electro gave us ae i'm pretty sure someone is making alien sounds inspired by pc music somewhere

PC Music is a bit hit or miss for me but when it's good it's really good. Dunno, it's like old Sega Saturn soundtracks crossed with future J-pop or something, and IMO the wonky production is pretty exciting - I bet you could make some god-level edits out of some of the random details in those tracks. By the way, does the production sound 2015? I guess there are bits that do, and the mastering has that blunt, recorded-on-laptop feel, but to me it sounds more like a videogame soundtrack made on a mix of digital Roland and Yamaha gear circa 1997. You guys weren't Sega fans eh?

haha! just when you thought everything had been settled... a new disagreement... this autumn... ONE OR THREE: heat or night pt.2

lol!

I was going to say that it was ok if a bit trite ("acid! acid! acid!" and vuvuzelas) but then that shite squelch kicked in. Fucking rubbish. i mean, this isn't "one of the most unimaginative 303/acid riffs i've heard in a very long time", this is the single worst one I've ever heard by far

btw, socialism isn't necessarily marxist, and marxism is a political tradition that goes beyond marx and into political (not economic) practices that bear little relation to him so could we please discuss socialism plz?

I'm not. There have been many people, of all political and philosophical stripes who have pointed out these flaws. Adding 'multiplied by technology' is just a weasely move. in some limited sense it might be correct (if you want to reduce it to maths, the value for 'labour' would be tiny), but it's not the prime determinant any more, and hasn't been for some time (it wasn't even in Marx's time in many cases - the data he drew on to form his conclusions was fairly limited). To say the relations of production are largely identical to a hundred years ago is frankly laughable. what i mean is that you aren't pointing out any flaws, you're claiming that the relations of production are becoming communistic due to the prominence of immaterial labour which isn't true, but is not an anti-marxist argument at all, rather a point that marx himself made in the single most famous section of the Grundrisse "multiplied by technology" isn't a weasely move - a worker with a machine produces more than a worker without a machine, same as a specialised worker when opposed to unskilled labour. marx even literally used the word "multiplied" a few times iirc. i think i'm beginning to get slightly frustrated with this conversation because this is economics 101 and i sometimes get the slight impression that you might not have done your homework there's nothing laughable about saying the relations of production in 2015 can be described in terms of wage labour, the merchandise, commodity fetishism, etc. there's literally nothing new about the general mechanism of present-day capitalism. i don't know how you can argue against this - you probably have a job yourself, so how can you say otherwise? simply baffling

personally i find it very strange to use italian marxist arguments to claim that marx is full of shit you basically sound like antonio negri when he claims communism is already here, but whatever but at any rate I disagree - information is labour multiplied by technology and someone somewhere has an use for it, so it has a value. the fact that it's relatively hard to sell certain types of information is a contradiction that can potentially lead somewhere but as of 2015 the relations of production are largely identical to the ones in place 100 years ago, so we're still in the same mode of production until wage labour becomes something else and value doesn't circulate under the merchandise form

I never said we were living in a post-industrial world, though certain nations are already there, it's a simple definition - the value generated from services is greater than the value generated from industrial production, but technological advances should relatively quickly finish the job off world-wide. the volume of value is not what defines a mode of production, though if you're the kind of marxist that is fine with the concept of mode of production, anyway

automation is awesome as is the abolition of the division of labour (if you know what that means - not that everyone knows everything, but that everyone does what they can, rather than trying to "find a job") and generally working less. that's a core tenet of marxism - lenin said in the state and revolution that he loved banks and corporations because they can be managed by simply making lists and taking care of databases, which more or less anyone can do without much effort at all. i'm pretty much for that. what i mean is that we're squandering our workforce and our natural resources - we could be producing lots of stuff, or at least everything we need, for little effort and close to home, but we prefer to have huge industrial complexes churning out ludicrous amounts of stuff in faraway countries, while we build ugly, overpriced semis on our arable land and tear down our historic industrial districts to build stuff for tourist/gentrification bubbles that won't last and will leave us empty-handed. for me that's what is backwards - i think deindustrialisation actually made the first world backwards. also, just because manual labour happens in china doesn't mean that it isn't there, so i think it's a good thing to have it close to home and under the direction of socialism so that we don't have rely on fucking people over to have basic amenities, and so that all the intellectual labour goes towards making production easier. in the long term you can have industrial countries and non-industrial countries and have everyone be happy, but that's simply not feasible right now because you don't magically stop having to buy from china just because you changed your government, although obviously you can't be an autocracy as for technology, it's just a form of value so it isn't good or bad, it depends on who is using it. basically value comes from labour time and natural resources, multiplied by technology. creating it is neutral, but the moment you're extracting surplus from it and turning it into capital then it's basically a mass swindle, so while creating value can be good or bad, creating capital is a bad thing (in marxist terminology anyway). so, creating value yes, but what for? but i think socialism is similar to capitalism in some ways, really. the urge to innovate is there. ps. i don't know where you're from but i come from a heavily deindustrialised metro area that went from actually being creative to being labelled as creative, producing nothing and having close to 25% unemployment. but now we're trendy and desirable rather than grey and scary, yay.

i think my previous post is unclear so i'll clarify: 1) social-democracy can't be a class compromise if it wants to last in the long term - the sad degradation and demise of european social-democracy is something that will repeat itself if we follow the same path 2) i think that right now, social-democracy looks like it would be beneficial to the economy as it is, but in the long term it is at odds with some core mechanics of liberalism

the problem is social-democratic states have to be always carefully counter-balancing the harmful tendencies of liberalism, so they often reach a point where they can't cope with it anymore or fall into stagnation (although iirc David Harvey claims in his Brief History of Neoliberalism that for example South Korea didn't initially pay much attention to the IMF and that that was beneficial to their economy.) at any rate, having a capitalist class is having the enemy at home - they will always be pushing to destabilise the welfare state and, from what we've seen, have the resources to eventually win. liberalism should be eschewed entirely - there should of course be some independence when it comes to the organisation of labour, but just some (for example to me the idea that employment and HR should be in private hands is utterly absurd, since most states supposedly guarantee the right to a job, and most states supposedly regulate working conditions), and the abolition of capital, the marchandise and wage labour need to be on the horizon. we need to eventually have an economy that stagnates when we aren't getting better working conditions, more welfare and more power to workers, not one that stagnates when rampant speculation and absurd growth at the expense of workers stops. it should be said, though, that just undoing the stupid things liberalism has done to cities and providing adequate council housing for everyone would be enough to have a booming construction industry for a few years, and the same goes for reindustrialisation and bringing back agriculture in the first world. there are opportunities to be had if the state steers the economy away from financial capital (the problem being that it went there in the first place for a reason, but oh well). but yes, even Southern European welfare is great, or used to be at least

it's all in capital book 1, part 7. basically on the one hand, capital isn't just money but accumulation, so you need to extract more and more surplus from the same (or less) amount of labour in order to sustain the economy; on the other hand, capital, the demand for labour, the supply of labour and the volume of the working class don't grow at the same rate at all (contrary with the obsession that laissez-faire economics is "good for employment" as if that was all there is to it). in fact, when capitalists reinvest money they can create the demand for labour, but they also invest in technology so they have to employ less people, ie. capitalists regulate both supply and demand to their liking. lastly, as liberals love to point out, under liberalism "if everyone could live a decent life then nobody would work!!!!11!11!" ie. the working class wouldn't have to be competing against itself and accepting ludicrous conditions, which is essential because capitalism needs to extract more and more surplus from less and less labour i'm not a luddite though - i fully agree that the effect of technology entirely depends on whose hands it's in. which is a good argument for socialism and collective control of research and production! also, marx himself wrote the famous "fragment on machines" where he talks about how technological advances would make the production of knowledge (ie immaterial labour) the central driving force of economy, which would in turn have huge utopian potential. italian marxists are obsessed with that fragment and consider it the key to understanding what they call "post-fordist society", but people who have never read Marx thinks he's just Dickens minus the plot twists also, it's a global economy. saying we're a "post-industrial" society when we rely on mexican maquilas, chinese industrial estates and south asian sweatshops for even the most basic stuff is a fucking joke

lolwat I don't even know where to start ...I mean, the fact that he "failed to predict...modern technological advances" Is a truly insane criticism He wasn't a futurist He was a critic/theorist of capitalism He also failed to predict beanie babies And Marilyn Manson How the fuck is that even a criticism? the thing is marx 1) didn't have to predict technological advances because that isn't what he set out to do, although it should be noted Engels did own a factory and thus was well-versed in how to produce more for less 2) did take them into account - see the fragment on what he even calls the "fundamental law of capitalism" (ie. that capitalism always needs a reserve of unemployable people and that such reserve will always grow as long as capitalism exists), or the fragment on machines, etc. marx's understanding of capitalism doesn't differ that much from the classical economics that liberalism is built on - in fact that's where the marxist theory of value comes from, he just views such economy as a historical phenomenon with internal contradictions that came to be and will come to pass, rather than as a scientific law. capital volume one is as valid as liberal economics, because they talk about the same thing really. also marx didn't really make economic "predictions" - he made economic analyses that for the most part do hold, and political predictions that were pretty much always wrong (although he was particularly interested in Russia at the end of his life!). you must also specify which marx you're talking about, because he radically changed his views as the XIXth century developed. i didn't even mention marx ffs

that's not too bad. imagine being a kid in the 90s having to deal with this. or a parent. kind of relieved the expansion pak is $20 and hasn't drifted into obscure and unnecessarily inflated expensive rarity. the expansion pak is wicked btw. games that require expansion pak all have pretty vivid colour palettes and the difference is pretty noticeable. prepare to be blown away kiddo. iirc majora's mask came with the expansion pack bundled! but yeah, i think Majora's Mask is my favourite game ever!

lol tha'ss dank

Japanese and South Korean growth in the 1960s through 1980s would beg to differ. Both of these nations utilized significant state intervention in their economic growth. neither were centrally planned economies, they were examples of your standard protectionist Keynesians if anything. externalities can always tip the scale, see Norway for a more modern example. utilizing strategic state intervention is not what I was talking about, though even strategic intervention has it's limitations, and will fail eventually in most cases. They were not centrally planned economies like the Soviets, or North Korea, but they were also not standard protectionist Keynesians. Read Alice Amsden's description of how the Korean government directed and disciplined the chaebol. It also goes into some detail about how the government got the prices "wrong". Some would argue that Korean and Japanese growth slowed after the transformation to more market based economies. Of course this is part of the problem - socialism can (and should in my opinion) involve state intervention in the economy - but every time you mention socialism to a committed right-wing, free-market nutjob (not saying you are one by the way), they jump all over it and assume you must be talking about Stalin or Mao and that sort of idiocy. the worst side of this is that you can't seriously discuss stalin or mao, and i feel there's a lot to be said about both, good and bad. mao's "on contradiction" had a huge impact on french philosophy for example, but most people are probably not willing to read a paper that cites mao as a source. likewise, reading about the history of the first 2 or 3 years of the cultural revolution in parallel to the history of the french revolution can give you lots of insight on what went wrong and also what was done right and is inherent to the project of popular intervention in "state affairs" my opinion is that socialism is primarily a political project - namely, that labour is something that should be open to democracy and that workers can run a country on their own. the exact economic formula is secondary, and actually i'm not sure you can even find it without the political structures that are needed to properly investigate/encourage it. also, state socialism isn't necessarily grim and scary. we've lost decades not thinking about the extremely important problem of the relation between the masses and the state

Has any society ever reached the ideological "end goal" in a democratic country? - and is that even possible and desirable when you really think about it? I mean there are also backsides of social democratic society, it's probably healthy with a bit of liberalism and conservatism from time to time. I think it's easy to label leftist economic thinking as irresponsible and naive. But there are real life evidence that expansive public spending doesn't have to be dooming at all, it can actually help develop the economy quite a bit. But it's important to keep in mind that Scandinavian model was formed in a time of economic boom post-WWII, so of course it's not that simple to say just let go of the public wallet. But Cameron labelling Labour returning to their roots as "a national security risk", come the fuck on. The inequality of Britain is exploding. I know the Tories are not fightning for equality, but do people really believe this tight and cutting fiscal policy is progressive and any good for the country at all, when it's pretty evident that many people are facing much worse living standards for every day that goes by? what i mean is you must have a perspective of full socialism and work on finding better ways of achieving it, else you're just clinging on to some mythical idea of pre-mid-70's social democracy or, worse yet, patching the present system up as best as you can with some measures that aim to make our lives easier, which will never lead to a sustainable welfare state. in a way i think conservatives are kinda right about their economic ideas, the thing is the economy they defend isn't the only possible economy like at all (because it's not strictly about growth, but about accumulation first and growth as something it calls for, that's why neoliberals don't really care about keynesian measures boosting consumption etc) the state barely exists when it comes to production and servicing the goods, so these areas need to be taken back from private hands which is in itself a pretty antagonistic move (also one which is pretty much illegal under the UE, not that anyone should care), and on top of that, the state is also pretty much ruined, which means that you can't pull your punches against private property - basically we've got to steal back what we gave away AND find a way of balancing production, trade and consumption that doesn't rely on accumulation (ie stealing what belongs to the people, no matter what it is) to sustain itself, because if we don't then whatever we take back will eventually be lost again which, unless you have access to a vast pool of natural resources, is pretty tricky if you're the only state trying to pull it off, so maybe fireworks, propaganda an some stop-gap measures would be a cleverer move than trying to actually do something serious about the economy, but unless you have proper socialism in sight, then it's just that - fireworks, propaganda and stop-gap measures, with no larger plan behind

btw afaik both labour and the scandinavian social-democrats had a relatively strong actually socialist element in their heyday you can criticise its means and its vision and how soft it was but the thing is that social-democracy as we romanticise it (public industry, council estates, extensive healthcare, virtually free university, worker's rights galore) is a product of a brand of democratic socialism falling short of its goals not a product of wanting to be "social-democratic"

why is that a bad thing?

hi i'm sean nantel

i'm not sure labour parties anywhere in the world can do much at all at this point, except maybe in places where social-democracy never existed in the first place, which afaik is not the case in the uk although i might be wrong in fact if the greens or the snp are anything like their counterparts around here, i'd say it's an extremely bad thing that people who would vote for them are going to vote labour. but then again there isn't a two party system where i am, so i might not be reading this correctly, plus i'm glad these sorts of discourses are timidly making their way back into the mainstream

you know whylessness i'm one of the worst posters on watmm for many reasons but you pfft get outta this thread plz